PROLOG: A YEAR BEFORE

     

      THE MAN from Earth came to a decision. It had been slow in coming and developing, but it was here.

            It had been weeks since he had felt the comforting deck of his ship and the cool, dark blanket of space about it. Originally, he had intended a quick report to the local office of the Interstellar Spatio-analytic Bureau and a quicker retreat to space. Instead, he had been held here.

            It was almost like a prison.

            He drained his tea and looked at the man across the table. He said, “I’m not staying any longer.”

           

            The other man came to a decision. It had been slow in coming and developing, but it was here. He would need time, much more time. The response to the first letters had been nil. They might have fallen into a star for all they had accomplished.

            That had been no more than he had expected, or, rather, no less. But it was only the first move.

            It was certain that, while future moves developed, he could not allow the man from Earth to squirm out of reach. He fingered the smooth black rod in his pocket.

            He said, “You don’t appreciate the delicacy of the problem.”

           

            The Earthman said, “What’s delicate about the destruction of a planet? I want you to broadcast the details to all of Sark; to everyone on the planet.”

            “We can’t do that. You know it would mean panic.”

            “You said at first you would do it.”

            “I’ve thought it over and it just isn’t practical.”

            The Earthman turned to a second grievance. “The representative of the I.S.B. hasn’t arrived.”

            “I know it. They are busy organizing proper procedures for this crisis. Another day or two.”

            “Another day or two! It’s always another day or two! Are they so busy they can’t spare me a moment? They haven’t even seen my calculations.”

            “I have offered to bring your calculations to them. You don’t want me to.”

            “And I still don’t. They can come to me or I can go to them.” He added violently, “I don’t think you believe me. You don’t believe Florina will be destroyed.”

            “I believe you.”

            “You don’t. I know you don’t. I see you don’t. You’re humoring me. You can’t understand my data. You’re not a Spatio-analyst. I don’t even think you’re who you say you are. Who are you?”

            “You’re getting excited.”

            “Yes, I am. Is that surprising? Or are you just thinking, Poor devil, Space has him. You think I’m crazy.”

            “Nonsense.”

            “Sure you do. That’s why I want to see the I.S.B. They’ll know if I’m crazy or not. They’ll know.”

            The other man remembered his decision. He said, “Now you’re not feeling well. I’m going to help you.”

            “No, you’re not,” shouted the Earthman hysterically, “because I’m going to walk out. If you want to stop me, kill me, except that you won’t dare. The blood of a whole world of people will be on your hands if you do.”

            The other man began shouting, too, to make himself heard. “I won’t kill you. Listen to me, I won’t kill you. There’s no need to kill you.”

            The Earthman said, “You’ll tie me up. You’ll keep me here. Is that what you’re thinking? And what will you do when the I.S.B. starts looking for me? I’m supposed to send in regular reports, you know.”

            “The Bureau knows you’re safely with me.”

            “Do they? I wonder if they know I’ve reached the planet at all? I wonder if they received my original message?” The Earthman was giddy. His limbs felt stiff.

            The other man stood up. It was obvious to him that his decision had come none too soon. He walked slowly about the long table, toward the Earthman.

            He said soothingly, “It will be for your own good.” He took the black rod from his pocket.

            The Earthman croaked, “That’s a psychic probe.” His words were slurred, and when he tried to rise, his arms and legs barely quivered.

            He said, between teeth that were clenching in rigor, “Drugged!”

            “Drugged!” agreed the other man. “Now look, I won’t hurt you. It’s difficult for you to understand the true delicacy of the matter while you’re so excited and anxious about it. I’ll just remove the anxiety. Only the anxiety.”

            The Earthman could no longer talk. He could only sit there. He could only think numbly, Great Space, I’ve been drugged. He wanted to shout and scream and run, but he couldn’t.

            The other had reached the Earthman now. He stood there, looking down at him. The Earthman looked up. His eyeballs could still move.

            The psychic probe was a self-contained unit. Its wires needed only to be fixed to the appropriate places on the skull. The Earthman watched in panic until his eye muscles froze. He did not feel the fine sting as the sharp, thin leads probed through skin and flesh to make contact with the sutures of his skull bones.

            He yelled and yelled in the silence of his mind. He cried, No, you don’t understand. It’s a planet full of people. Don’t you see that you can’t take chances with hundreds of millions of living people?

            The other man’s words were dim and receding, heard from the other end of a long, windy tunnel. “It won’t hurt you. In another hour you’ll feel well, really well. You’ll be laughing at all this with me.”

            The Earthman felt the thin vibration against his skull and then that faded too.

            Darkness thickened and collapsed about him. Some of it never lifted again. It took a year for even parts of it to lift.

 

 

ONE: THE FOUNDLING

 

 

      Rik put down his feeder and jumped to his feet. He was trembling so hard he had to lean against the bare milk-white wall.

            He shouted, “I remember!”

            They looked at him and the gritty mumble of men at lunch died somewhat. Eyes met his out of faces indifferently clean and indifferently shaven, glistening and white in the imperfect wall illumination. The eyes reflected no great interest, merely the reflex attention enforced by any sudden and unexpected cry.

            Rik cried again, “I remember my job. I had a job!”

            Someone called, “Shoddop!” and someone else yelled, “Siddown!”

            The faces turned away, the mumble rose again. Rik stared blankly along the table. He heard the remark, “Crazy Rik,” and a shrug of shoulders. He saw a finger spiral at a man’s temple. It all meant nothing to him. None of it reached his mind.

            Slowly he sat down. Again he clutched his feeder, a spoonlike affair, with sharp edges and little tines projecting from the front curve of the bowl, which could therefore with equal clumsiness cut, scoop and impale. It was enough for a millworker. He turned it over and stared without seeing at his number on the back of the handle. He didn’t have to see it. He knew it by heart. All the others had registration numbers, just as he had, but the others had names also. He didn’t. They called him Rik because it meant something like “moron” in the slang of the kyrt mills. And often enough they called him “Crazy Rik.”

            But perhaps he would be remembering more and more now. This was the first time since he had come to the mill that he had remembered anything at all from before the beginning.  If he thought hard! If he thought with all his mind!

            All at once he wasn’t hungry; he wasn’t the least hungry. With a sudden gesture, he thrust his feeder into the jellied briquet of meat and vegetables before him, pushed the food away, and buried his eyes in the heels of his palms.  His fingers thrust and clutched at his hair and painstakingly he tried to follow his mind into the pitch  from which it had extracted a single item--one muddy, undecipherable item.

            Then he burst into tears, just as a clanging bell announced the end of his lunch shift.

 

            Valona March fell in beside him when he left the mill that evening.  He was scarcely conscious of her at first, at least as an individual.  It was only that he heard his footsteps matched. He stopped and looked at her.  Her hair was something between blonde and brown.  She wore it in two thick plaits that she clamped together with little magnetized green-stoned pins.  They were very cheap pins and had a faded look about them.  She wore the simple cotton dress which was all that was needed only an open, sleeveless shirt and cotton slacks.

            She said, “I heard something went wrong lunchtime.”

            She spoke in the sharp, peasant accents one would expect.  Rik’s own language was full of flat vowels and had a nasal touch.  They laughed at him because of it and imitated his way of speaking, but Valona would tell him that that was only their  own ignorance.

            Rik mumbled, “Nothing’s wrong, Lona.”

            She persisted. “I heard you said you remembered something. Is that Right, Rik?”

            She called him Rik too.  There wasn’t anything else to call him.  He couldn’t remember his real name.  He had tried desperately enough.  Valona had tried with him.  One day she had obtained a torn city directory somehow and had read all the first names to him.  None had seemed more familiar than any other.

            He looked her full in the face and said, “I’ll have to quit the mill.”

            Valona frowned.  Her round, broad face with its flat, high cheekbones was troubled. “I don’t think you can.  It wouldn’t be right.”

            “I’ve got to find out more about myself.”

            Valona licked her lips. “I don’t think you should.”

            Rik turned away.  He knew her concern to be sincere.  She had obtained the mill job for him in the first place.  He had had no experience with mill machinery.  Or perhaps he had, but just didn’t remember.  In any case, Lona had insisted that he was too small for manual labor and they had agreed to the nightmarish days when he could scarcely make sounds and when he didn’t know what food was for, she had watched him and fed him.  She had kept him alive.

            He said, “I’ve got to.”

            “Is it the headaches again, Rik?”

            “No.  I really remember something.  I remember what my job was before--Before!”

            He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her.  He looked away. The warm, pleasant sun was at least two hours above the horizon.  The monotonous rows of workers’ cubicles that stretched out and round the mills were tiresome to look at, but Rik knew that as soon as they topped the rise the field would lie before them in all the beauty of crimson and gold.

            He liked to look at the fields.  From the very first the sight had soothed and pleased him.  Even before he knew that the colors were crimson and gold, before he knew that there were such things as colors, before he could express his pleasure in anything more than a soft gurgle, the headaches would flicker away faster in the fields.  In those days Valona would borrow a diamagnetic scooter and take him out of the village every idle-day.  They would skim along, a foot above the road, gliding on the cushioned smoothness of the counter-gravity field, until they were miles and miles away from any human habitation and there would be left only the wind against his face, fragrant with the kyrt blossoms.

            They would sit beside the road then, surrounded by color and scent, and between them share a food briquet, while the sun glowed down upon them until it was time to return again.

            Rik was stirred by the memory. He said, “Let’s go to the fields, Lona.”

            “It’s late.”

            “Please. Just outside town.”

            She fumbled at the thin money pouch she kept between herself and the soft blue leather belt she wore, the only luxury of dress she allowed herself.

            Rik caught her arm. “Let’s walk.”

           

            They left the highway for the winding, dustless, packed-sand roads half an hour later. There was a heavy silence between them and Valona felt a familiar fear clutching at her. She had no words to express her feelings for him, so she had never tried.

            What if he should leave her? He was a little fellow, no taller than herself and weighing somewhat less, in fact. He was still like a helpless child in many ways. But before they had turned his mind off he must have been an educated man. A very important educated man.

            Valona had never had any education besides reading and writing and enough trade-school technology to be able to handle mill machinery, but she knew enough to know that all people were not so limited. There was the Townman, of course, whose great knowledge was so helpful to all of them. Occasionally Squires came on inspection tours. She had never seen them close up but once, on a holiday, she had visited the City and seen a group of incredibly gorgeous creatures at a distance. Occasionally the millworkers were allowed to listen to what educated people sounded like. They spoke differently, more fluently, with longer words and softer tones. Rik talked like that more and more as his memory improved.

            She had been frightened at his first words. They came so suddenly after long whimpering over a headache. They were pronounced queerly. When she tried to correct him he wouldn’t change.

            Even then she had been afraid that he might remember too much and then leave her. She was only Valona March. They called her Big Lona. She had never married. She never would. A large, big-footed girl with work-reddened hands like herself could never marry. She had never been able to do more than look at the boys with dumb resentment when they ignored her at the idle-day dinner festivals. She was too big to giggle and smirk at them.

            She would never have a baby to cuddle and hold. The other girls did, one after the other, and she could only crowd about for a quick glimpse of something red and hairless with screwed-up eyes, fists impotently clenched, gummy mouth--

            “It’s your turn next, Lona.”

            “When will you have a baby, Lona?”

            She could only turn away.

            But when Rik had come, he was like a baby. He had to be fed and taken care of, brought out into the sun, soothed to sleep when the headaches racked him.

            The children would run after her, laughing. They would yell, “Lona’s got a boy friend. Big Lona’s got a crazy boy friend. Lona’s boy friend is a rik.”

            Later on, when Rik could walk by himself (she had been as proud the day he took his first step as though he were really only one year old, instead of more like thirty-one) and stepped out, unescorted, into the village streets, they had run about him in rings, yelling their laughter and foolish ridicule in order to see a grown man cover his eyes in fear, and cringe, with nothing but whimpers to answer them. Dozens of times she had come charging out of the house, shouting at them, waving her large fists.

            Even grown men feared those fists. She had felled her section head with a single wild blow the first day she had brought Rik to work at the mill because of a sniggering indecency concerning them which she overheard. The mill council fined her a week’s pay for that incident, and might have sent her to the City for further trial at the Squire’s court, but for the Townman’s intervention and the plea that there had been provocation.

            So she wanted to stop Rik’s remembering. She knew she had nothing to offer him; it was selfish of her to want him to stay mind-blank and helpless forever. It was just that no one had ever before depended upon her so utterly. It was just that she dreaded a return to loneliness.

            She said, “Are you sure you remember, Rik?”

            “Yes.”

            They stopped there in the fields, with the sun adding its reddening blaze to all that surrounded them. The mild, scented evening breeze would soon spring up, and the checkerboard irrigation canals were already beginning to purple.

            He said, “I can trust my memories as they come back, Lona. You know I can. You didn’t teach me to speak, for instance. I remembered the words myself. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

            She said reluctantly, “Yes.”

            “I even remember the times you took me out into the fields before I could speak. I keep remembering new things all the time. Yesterday I remembered that once you caught a kyrt fly for me. You held it closed in your hands and made me put my eye to the space between your thumbs so that I could see it flash purple and orange in the darkness. I laughed and tried to force my hand between yours to get it, so that it flew away and left me crying after all. I didn’t know it was a kyrt fly then, or anything about it, but it’s all very clear to me now. You never told me about that, did you, Lona?”

            She shook her head.

            “But it did happen, didn’t it? I remember the truth, don’t I?”

            “Yes, Rik.”

            “And now I remember something about myself from before. There must have been a before, Lona.”

            There must have been. She felt the weight on her heart when she thought that. It was a different before, nothing like the now they lived in. It had been on a different world. She knew that because one word he had never remembered was kyrt. She had to teach him the word for the most important object on all the world of Florina.

            “What is it you remember?” she asked.

            At this, Rik’s excitement seemed suddenly to die. He hung back. “It doesn’t make much sense, Lona. It’s just that I had a job once, and I know what it was. At least, in a way.”

            “What was it?”

            “I analyzed Nothing.”

            She turned sharply upon him, peering into his eyes. For a moment she put the flat of her hand upon his forehead, until he moved away irritably. She said, “You don’t have a headache again, Rik, have you? You haven’t had one in weeks.”

            “I’m all right. Don’t you go bothering me.”

            Her eyes fell, and he added at once, “I don’t mean that you bother me, Lona. It’s just that I feel fine and I don’t want you to worry.”

            She brightened. “What does ‘analyzed’ mean?” He knew words she didn’t. She felt very humble at the thought of how educated he must once have been.

            He thought a moment. “It means--it means ‘to take apart.’ You know, like we would take apart a sorter to find out why the scanning beam was out of alignment.”

            “Oh. But, Rik, how can anyone have a job not analyzing anything? That’s not a job.”

            “I didn’t say I didn’t analyze anything. I said I analyzed Nothing. With a capital N.”

            “Isn’t that the same thing?” It was coming, she thought. She was beginning to sound stupid to him. Soon he would throw her off in disgust.

            “No, of course not.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I can’t explain though. That’s all I remember about that. But it must have been an important job. That’s the way it feels. I couldn’t have been a criminal.”

            Valona winced. She should never have told him that. She had told herself it was only for his own protection that she warned him, but now she felt that it had really been to keep him bound tighter to herself.

           

            It was when he had first begun to speak. It was so sudden it had frightened her. She hadn’t even dared speak to the Townman about it. The next idle-day she had withdrawn five credits from her life-hoard--there would never be a man to claim it as dowry, so that it didn’t matter--and taken Rik to a City doctor. She had the name and address on a scrap of paper, but even so it took two frightening hours to find her way to the proper building through the huge pillars that held the Upper City up to the sun.

            She had insisted on watching and the doctor had done all sorts of fearful things with strange instruments. When he put Rik’s head between two metal objects and then made it glow like a kyrt fly in the night, she had jumped to her feet and tried to make him stop. He called two men who dragged her out, struggling wildly.

            Half an hour afterward the doctor came out to her, tall and frowning. She felt uncomfortable with him because he was a Squire, even though he kept an office down in the Lower City, but his eyes were mild, even kind. He was wiping his hands on a little towel, which he tossed into a wastecan, even though it looked perfectly clean to her.

            He said, “Where did you meet this man?”

            She had told him the circumstances cautiously, reducing it to the very barest essentials and leaving out all mention of the Townman and the patrollers.

            “Then you know nothing about him?”

            She shook her head. “Nothing before that.”

            He said, “This man has been treated with a psychic probe. Do you know what that is?”

            At first she had shaken her head again, but then she said in a dry whisper, “Is it what they do to crazy people, Doctor?”

            “And to criminals. It is done to change their minds for their own good. It makes their minds healthy, or it changes the parts that make them want to steal and kill. Do you understand?”

            She did. She grew brick-red and said, “Rik never stole anything or hurt anybody.”

            “You call him Rik?” He seemed amused. “Now look here, how do you know what he did before you met him? It’s hard to tell from the condition of his mind now. The probing was thorough and brutal. I can’t say how much of his mind has been permanently removed and how much has been temporarily lost through shock. What I mean is that some of it will come back, like his speaking, as time goes on, but not all of it. He should be kept under observation.”

            “No, no. He’s got to stay with me. I’ve been taking good care of him, Doctor.”

            He frowned, and then his voice grew milder. “Well, I’m thinking of you, my girl. Not all the bad may be out of his mind. You wouldn’t want him to hurt you someday.”

            At that moment a nurse led out Rik. She was making little sounds to quiet him, as one would an infant. Rik put a hand to his head and stared vacantly, until his eyes focused on Valona; then he held out his hands and cried, feebly, “Lona--”

            She sprang to him and put his head on her shoulder, holding him tightly. She said to the doctor, “He wouldn’t hurt me, no matter what.”

            The doctor said thoughtfully, “His case will have to be reported, of course. I don’t know how he escaped from the authorities in the condition he must have been in.”

            “Does that mean they’ll take him away, Doctor?”

            “I’m afraid so.”

            “Please, Doctor, don’t do that.” She wrenched at the handkerchief, in which were the five gleaming pieces of credit-alloy. She said, “You can have it all, Doctor. I’ll take good care of him. He won’t hurt anyone.”

            The doctor looked at the pieces in his hand. “You’re a mill-worker, aren’t you?”

            She nodded.

            “How much do they pay you a week?”

            “Two point eight credits.”

            He tossed the coins gently, brought them together in his closed palm with a tinkle of metal, then held them out to her. “Take it, girl. There’s no charge.”

            She accepted them with wonder. “You’re not going to tell anyone, Doctor?”

            But he said, “I’m afraid I have to. It’s the law.”

            She had driven blindly, heavily, back to the village, clutching Rik to her desperately.

            The next week on the hypervideo newscast there had been the news of a doctor dying in a gyro-crash during a short failure in one of the local transit power-beams. The name was familiar and in her room that night she compared it with that on the scrap of paper. It was the same.

            She was sad, because he had been a good man. She had received his name once long before from another worker as a Squire doctor who was good to the mill hands and had saved it for emergencies. And when the emergency had come he had been good to her too. Yet her joy drowned the sorrow. He had not had the time to report Rik. At least, no one ever came to the village to inquire.

            Later, when Rik’s understanding had grown, she had told him what the doctor had said so that he would stay in the village and be safe.

           

            Rik was shaking her and she left her reveries.

            He said, “Don’t you hear me? I couldn’t be a criminal if I had an important job.”

            “Couldn’t you have done wrong?” she began hesitantly. “Even if you were a big man, you might have. Even Squires--”

            “I’m sure I haven’t. But don’t you see that I’ve got to find out so that others can be sure? There’s no other way. I’ve got to leave the mill and village and find out more about myself.”

            She felt the panic rise. “Rik! That would he dangerous. Why should you? Even if you analyzed Nothing, why is it so important to find out more about it?”

            “Because of the other thing I remember.”

            “What other thing?”

            He whispered, “I don’t want to tell you.”

            “You ought to tell somebody. You might forget again.”

            He seized her arm. “That’s right. You won’t tell anyone else, will you, Lona? You’ll just be my spare memory in case I forget.”

            “Sure, Rik.”

            Rik looked about him. The world was very beautiful. Valona had once told him that there was a huge shining sign in the Upper City, miles above it even, that said: “Of all the Planets in the Galaxy, Florina is the Most Beautiful.”

            And as he looked about him he could believe it.

            He said, “It is a terrible thing to remember, but I always remember correctly, when I do remember. It came this afternoon.”

            “Yes?”

            He was staring at her in horror. “Everybody in the world is going to die. Everybody on Florina.”

           

           

TWO: THE TOWNMAN

     

     

      Myrln Terens was in the act of removing a book-film from its place on the shelf when the door-signal sounded. The rather pudgy outlines of his face had been set in lines of thought, but now these vanished and changed into the more usual expression of bland caution. He brushed one hand over his thinning, ruddy hair and shouted, “One minute.”

            He replaced the film and pressed the contact that allowed the covering section to spring back into place and become indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. To the simple millworkers and farm hands he dealt with, it was a matter of vague pride that one of their own number, by birth at any rate, should own films. It lightened, by tenuous reflection, the unrelieved dusk of their own minds. And yet it would not do to display the films openly.

            The sight of them would have spoiled things. It would have frozen their none too articulate tongues. They might boast of their Townman’s books, but the actual presence of them before their eyes would have made Terens seem too much the Squire.

            There were, of course, the Squires as well. It was unlikely in the extreme that any of them would visit him socially at his house, but should one of them enter, a row of films in sight would be injudicious. He was a Townman and custom gave him certain privileges but it would never do to flaunt them.

            He shouted again, “I’m coming!”

            This time he stepped to the door, closing the upper seam of his tunic as he went. Even his clothing was somewhat Squirelike. Sometimes he almost forgot he had been born on Florina.

            Valona March was on the doorstep. She bent her knees and ducked her head in respectful greeting.

            Terens threw the door wide. “Come in, Valona. Sit down. Surely it’s past curfew. I hope the patrollers didn’t see you.”

            “I don’t think so, Townman.”

            “Well, let’s hope that’s so. You’ve got a bad record, you know.”

            “Yes, Townman. I am very grateful for what you have done for me in the past.”

            “Never mind. Here, sit down. Would you like something to eat or drink?”

            She seated herself, straight-backed, at the edge of a chair and shook her head. “No, thank you, Townman. I have eaten.”

            It was good form among the villagers to offer refreshment. It was bad form to accept. Terens knew that. He didn’t press her.

            He said, “Now what’s the trouble, Valona? Rik again?”

            Valona nodded, but seemed at a loss for further explanation. Terens said, “Is he in trouble at the mill?”

            “No, Townman.”

            “Headaches again?”

            “No, Townman.”

            Terens waited, his light eyes narrowing and growing sharp. “Well, Valona, you don’t expect me to guess your trouble, do you? Come, speak out or I can’t help you. You do want help, I suppose.”

            She said, “Yes, Townman,” then burst out, “How shall I tell you, Townman? It sounds almost crazy.”

            Terens had an impulse to pat her shoulder, but he knew she would shrink from the touch. She sat, as usual, with her large hands buried as far as might be in her dress. He noticed that her blunt, strong fingers were intertwined and slowly twisting.

            He said, “Whatever it is, I will listen.”

            “Do you remember, Townman, when I came to tell you about the City doctor and what he said?”

            “Yes, I do, Valona. And I remember I told you particularly that you were never to do anything like that again without consulting me. Do you remember that?”

            She opened her eyes wide. She needed no spur to recollect his anger. “I would never do such a thing again, Townman. It’s just that I want to remind you that you said you would do everything to help me keep Rik.”

            “And so I will. Well, then, have the patrollers been asking about him?”

            “No. Oh, Townman, do you think they might?”

            “I’m sure they won’t.” He was losing patience. “Now, come, Valona, tell me what is wrong.”

            Her eyes clouded. “Townman, he says he will leave me. I want you to stop him.”

            “Why does he want to leave you?”

            “He says he is remembering things.”

            Interest leaped into Terens’ face. He leaned forward and almost he reached out to grip her hand. “Remembering things? What things?”

           

            Terens remembered the day Rik had first been found. He had seen the youngsters clustered near one of the irrigation ditches just outside the village. They had raised their shrill voices to call him.

            “Townman! Townman!”

            He had broken into a run. “What’s the matter, Rasie?” He had made it his business to learn the youngsters’ names when he came to town. That went well with the mothers and made the first month or two easier.

            Rasie was looking sick. He said, “Looky here, Townman.”

            He was pointing at something white and squirming, and it was Rik. The other boys were yelling at once in confused explanation. Terens managed to understand that they were playing some game that involved running, hiding and pursuing. They were intent on telling him the name of the game, its progress, the point at which they had been interrupted, with a slight subsidiary argument as to exactly which individual or side was “winning.” All that didn’t matter, of course.

            Rasie, the twelve-year-old black-haired one, had heard the whimpering and had approached cautiously. He had expected an animal, perhaps a field rat that would make good chasing. He had found Rik.

            All the boys were caught between an obvious sickness and an equally obvious fascination at the strange sight. It was a grown human being, nearly naked, chin wet with drool, whimpering and crying feebly, arms and legs moving about aimlessly. Faded blue eyes shifted in random fashion out of a face that was covered with a grown stubble. For a moment the eyes caught those of Terens and seemed to focus. Slowly the man’s thumb came up and inserted itself into his mouth.

            One of the children laughed. “Looka him, Townman. He’s finger-sucking.”

            The sudden shout jarred the prone figure. His face reddened and screwed up. A weak whining, unaccompanied by tears, sounded but his thumb remained where it was. It showed wet and pink in contrast to the rest of the dirt-smeared hand.

            Terens broke his own numbness at the sight. He said, “All right, look, fellows, you shouldn’t be running around here in the kyrt field. You’re damaging the crop and you know what that will mean if the farm hands catch you. Get going, and keep quiet about this. And listen, Rasie, you run to Mr. Jencus and get him to come here.”

            Ull Jencus was the nearest thing to a doctor the town had. He had passed some time as apprentice in the offices of a real doctor in the City and on the strength of it he had been relieved of duty on the farms or in the mills. It didn’t work out too badly. He could take temperatures, administer pills, give injections and, most important, he could tell when some disorder was sufficiently serious to warrant a trip to the City hospital. Without such semiprofessional backing, those unfortunates stricken with spinal meningitis or acute appendicitis might suffer intensively but usually not for long. As it was, the foremen muttered and accused Jencus in everything but words of being an accessory after the fact to a conspiracy of malingering.

            Jencus helped Terens lift the man into a scooter cart and, as unobtrusively as they might, carried him into town.

            Together they washed off the accumulated and hardened grime and filth. There was nothing to be done about the hair. Jencus shaved the entire body and did what he could by way of physical examination.

            Jencus said, “No infection I c’n tell of, Townman. He’s been fed. Ribs don’t stick out too much. I don’t know what to make of it. How’d he get out there, d’you suppose, Townman?”

            He asked the question with a pessimistic tone as though no one could expect Terens to have the answer to anything. Terens accepted that philosophically. When a village has lost the Townman it has grown accustomed to over a period of nearly fifty years, a newcomer of tender age must expect a transition period of suspicion and distrust. There was nothing personal in it.

            Terens said, “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

            “Can’t walk, y’know. Can’t walk a step. He’d have to be put there. Near’s I c’n make out, he might’s well be a baby. Everything else seems t’be gone.”

            “Is there a disease that has this effect?”

            “Not’s I know of. Mind trouble might do it, but I don’t know nothing ‘tall about that. Mind trouble I’d send to the City. Y’ever see this one, Townman?”

            Terens smiled and said gently, “I’ve just been here a month.”

            Jencus sighed and reached for his handkerchief. “Yes. Old Townman, he was a fine man. Kept us well, he did. I been here ‘most sixty years, and never saw this fella before. Must be from ‘nother town.”

            Jencus was a plump man. He had the look of having been born plump, and if to this natural tendency is added the effect of a largely sedentary life, it is not surprising that he tended to punctuate even short speeches by a puff and a rather futile swipe at his gleaming forehead with his large red handkerchief.

            He said, “Don’t ‘xactly know what t’say t’the patrollers.”

            The patrollers came all right. It was impossible to avoid that. The boys told their parents; their parents told one another. Town life was quiet enough. Even this would be unusual enough to be worth the telling in every possible combination of informer and informee. And in all the telling, the patrollers could not help but hear.

            The patrollers, so called, were members of the Florinian Patrol. They were not natives of Florina and, on the other hand, they were not countrymen of the Squires from the planet Sark. They were simply mercenaries who could be counted on to keep order for the sake of the pay they got and never to be led into the misguidance of sympathy for Florinians through any ties of blood or birth.

            There were two of them and one of the foremen from the mill came with them, in the fullness of his own midget authority.

            The patrollers were bored and indifferent. A mindless idiot might be part of the day’s work but it was scarcely an exciting part. One said to the foreman, “Well, how long does it take you to make an identification? Who is this man?”

            The foreman shook his head energetically. “I never saw him, Officer. He’s no one around here!”

            The patroller turned to Jencus. “Any papers on him?”

            “No, sir. He just had a rag ‘bout him. Burned it t’prevent infection.”

            “What’s wrong with him?”

            “No mind, near’s I c’n make out.”

            At this point Terens took the patrollers aside. Because they were bored they were amenable. The patroller who had been asking the questions put up his notebook and said, “All right, it isn’t even worth making a record of. It has nothing to do with us. Get rid of it somehow.”

            Then they left.

            The foreman remained. He was a freckled man, red of hair, with a large and bristly mustache. He had been a foreman of rigid principles for five years and that meant his responsibility for the fulfillment of quota in his mill rested heavily upon him.

            “Look here,” he said fiercely. “What’s to be done about this? The damn folk are so busy talking, they ain’t working.~

            “Send him t’City hospital, near’s I c’n make out,” said Jencus, wielding his handkerchief industriously. “Noth’n’ I c’n do.”

            “To the City!” The foreman was aghast. “Who’s going to pay? Who’ll stand the fees? He ain’t none of us, is he?”

            “Not’s far’s I know,” admitted Jencus.

            “Then why should we pay? Find out who he belongs to. Let his town pay.”

            “How we going t’find out? Tell me that.”

            The foreman considered. His tongue licked out and played with the coarse reddish foliage of his upper lip. He said, “Then we’ll just have to get rid of him. Like the patroller said.”

            Terens interrupted. “Look here. What do you mean by that?”

            The foreman said, “He might as well be dead. It would be a mercy.”

            Terens said, “You can’t kill a living person.”

            “Suppose you tell me what to do then.”

            “Can’t one of the townpeople take care of him?”

            “Who’d want to? Would you?”

            Terens ignored the openly insolent attitude. “I’ve got other work to do.”

            “So have all the folk. I can’t have anyone neglecting mill work to take care of this crazy thing.”

            Terens sighed, and said without rancor, “Now, Foreman, let’s be reasonable. If you don’t make quota this quarter I might suppose it’s because one of your workers is taking care of this poor fellow, and I’ll speak up for you to the Squires. Otherwise I’ll just say that I don’t know of any reason you couldn’t make quota, in case you don’t make it.”

            The foreman glowered. The Townman had only been here a month, and already he was interfering with men who had lived in town all their lives. Still, he had a card marked with Squire’s marks. It wouldn’t do to stand too openly against him too long.

            He said, “But who’d take him?” A horrible suspicion smote him. “I can’t. I got three kids of my own and my wife ain’t well.”

            “I didn’t suggest that you should.”

            Terens looked out the window. Now that the patrollers had left, the squirming, whispering crowd had gathered closer about the Townman’s house. Most were youngsters, too young to be working, others were farm hands from the nearer farms. A few were millworkers, away from their shifts.

            Terens saw the big girl at the very edge of the crowd. He had noticed her often in the past month. Strong, competent, and hard-working. Good natural intelligence hidden under that unhappy expression. If she were a man she might have been chosen for Townman’s training. But she was a woman; parents dead, and plain enough she was to preclude romantic side interests. A lone woman, in other words, and likely to remain so.

            He said, “What about her?”

            The foreman looked, then roared, “Damn it. She ought to be at work.”

            “All right,” soothed Terens. “What’s her name?”

            “That’s Valona March.”

            “That’s right. I remember now. Call her in.”

            From that moment Terens had made himself an unofficial guardian of the pair. He had done what he could to obtain additional food rations for her, extra clothing coupons and whatever else was required to allow two adults (one unregistered) to live on the income of one. He had been instrumental in helping her obtain training for Rik at the kyrt mills. He had intervened to prevent greater punishment on the occasion of Valona’s quarrel with a section head. The death of the City doctor had made it unnecessary for him to attempt further action there than he had taken, but he had been ready.

            It was natural for Valona to come to him in all her troubles, and he was waiting now for her to answer his question.

           

            Valona was still hesitating. Finally she said, “He says everyone in the world will die.”

            Terens looked startled. “Does he say how?”

            “He says he doesn’t know how. He just says he remembers that from before he was like, you know, like he is. And he says he remembers he had an important job, but I don’t understand what it is.”

            “How does he describe it?”

            “He says he an--analyzes Nothing with a capital N.”

            Valona waited for comment, then hastened to explain, “Analyze means taking something apart like--”

            “I know what it means, girl.” Terens remained lost.

            Valona watched him anxiously. “Do you know what he means, Townman?”

            “Perhaps, Valona.”

            “But, Townman, how can anyone do anything to Nothing?”

            Terens got to his feet. He smiled briefly. “Why, Valona, don’t you know that everything in all the Galaxy is mostly Nothing?”            No light of understanding dawned on Valona, but she accepted that. The Townman was a very educated man. With an unexpected twinge of pride, she was suddenly certain that her Rik was even more educated.

            “Come.” Terens was holding his hand out to her.

            She said, “Where are we going?”

            “Well, where’s Rik?”

            “Home,” she said. “Sleeping.”

            “Good. I’ll take you there. Do you want the patrollers to find you on the street alone?”

           

           

            The village seemed empty of life in the nighttime. The lights along the single street that split the area of workers’ cabins in two gleamed without glare. There was a hint of rain in the air, but only of that light warm rain that fell almost every night. There was no need to take special precautions against it.

            Valona had never been out so late on a working evening and it was frightening. She tried to shrink away from the sound of her own footsteps, while listening for the possible distant step of the patrollers.

            Terens said, “Stop trying to tiptoe, Valona. I'm with you.”

            His voice boomed in the quiet and Valona jumped. She hurried forward in response to his urging.

 

            Valona’s hut was as dark as the rest and they stepped in gingerly. Terens had been born and brought up in just such a hut and though he had since lived on Sark and now occupied a house with three rooms and plumbing, there was still something of a nostalgia about the barrenness of its interior. One room was all that was required, a bed, a chest of drawers, two chairs, a smooth poured-cement floor, a closet in one corner.

            There was no need for kitchen facilities, since all meals were eaten at the mill, nor for a bathroom, since a line of community outhouses and shower cells ran along the space behind the houses. In the mild, unvarying climate, windows were not adapted for protection against cold and rain. All four walls were pierced by screened openings and eaves above were sufficient ward against the nightly windless sprinkles.

            In the flare of a little pocket light which he held cupped in one palm Terens noted that one corner of the room was marked off by a battered screen. He remembered getting it for Valona rather recently when Rik had become too little of a child or too much of a man. He could hear the regular breathing of sleep behind it.

            He nodded his head in that direction. “Wake him, Valona.”

            Valona tapped on the screen. “Rik! Rik, baby!”

            There was a little cry.

            “It’s only Lona,” said Valona. They rounded the screen and Terens played his little light upon their own faces, then upon Rik.

            Rik threw an arm up against the glare. “What’s the matter?”

            Terens sat down on the edge of the bed. Rik slept in the standard cottage bed, he noted. He had obtained for Valona an old, rather rickety cot at the very first, but she had reserved that for herself.

            “Rik,” he said, “Valona says you’re beginning to remember things.”

            “Yes, Townman.” Rik was always very humble before the Townman, who was the most important man he had ever seen. Even the mill superintendent was polite to the Townman. Rik repeated the scraps his mind had gathered during the day.

            Terens said, “Have you remembered anything else since you told this to Valona?”

            “Nothing else, Townman.”

            Terens kneaded the fingers of one hand with those of the other. “All right, Rik. Go back to sleep.”

            Valona followed him out of the house. She was trying hard to keep her face from twisting and the back of one rough hand slid across her eyes. “Will he have to leave me, Townman?”

            Terens took her hands and said gravely, “You must be a grown woman, Valona. He will have to come with me for just a short while but I’ll bring him back.”

            “And after that?”

            “I don’t know. You must understand, Valona. Right now it is the most important thing in all the world that we find out more about Rik’s memories.”

            Valona said suddenly, “You mean everybody on Florina might die, the way he says?”

            Terens’ grip tightened. “Don’t ever say that to anyone, Valona, or the patrollers may take Rik away forever. I mean that.”

            He turned away and walked slowly and thoughtfully back to his house without really noticing that his hands were trembling. He tried futilely to sleep and after an hour of that he adjusted the narco-field. It was one of the few pieces of Sark he had brought with him when he first returned to Florina to become Townman. It fitted about his skull like a thin black felt cap. He adjusted the controls to five hours and closed contact.

            He had time to adjust himself comfortably in bed before the delayed response shorted the conscious centers of his cerebrum and blanketed him into instantaneous, dreamless sleep.

           

           

THREE: The Librarian

     

     

      THEY LEFT the diamagnetic scooter in a scooter-cubby outside the City limits. Scooters were rare in the City and Terens had no wish to attract unnecessary attention. He thought for a savage moment of those of the Upper City with their diamagnetic ground-cars and anti-gray gyros. But that was the Upper City. It was different.

            Rik waited for Terens to lock the cubby and fingerprint-seal it. He was dressed in a new one-piece suit and felt a little uncomfortable. Somewhat reluctantly he followed the Townman under the first of the tall bridgelike structures that supported the Upper City.

            On Florina, all other cities had names, but this one was simply the “City.” The workers and peasants who lived in it and around it were considered lucky by the rest of the planet. In the City there were better doctors and hospitals, more factories and more liquor stores, even a few dribbles of very mild luxury. The inhabitants themselves were somewhat less enthusiastic. They lived in the shadow of the Upper City.

            The Upper City was exactly what the name implied, for the City was double, divided rigidly by a horizontal layer of fifty square miles of cementalloy resting upon some twenty thousand steel-girdered pillars. Below in the shadow were the “natives.” Above, in the sun, were the Squires. It was difficult to believe in the Upper City that the planet of its location was Florina. The population was almost exclusively Sarkite in nature, together with a sprinkling of patrollers. They were the upper class in all literalness.

            Terens knew his way. He walked quickly, avoiding the stares of passers-by, who surveyed his Townman clothing with a mixture of envy and resentment. Rik’s shorter legs made his gait less dignified as he tried to keep up. He did not remember very much from his only other visit to the City. It seemed so different now. Then it had been cloudy. Now the sun was out, pouring through the spaced openings in the cementalloy above to form strips of light that made the intervening space all the darker. They plunged through the bright strips in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic fashion.

            Oldsters sat on wheeled chairs in the strips, absorbing the warmth and moving as the strip moved. Sometimes they fell asleep and would remain behind in the shade, nodding in their chairs until the squeaking of the wheels when they shifted position woke them. Occasionally mothers nearly blocked the strips with their carriageci offspring.

            Terens said, “Now, Rik, stand up straight. We’re going up.”

            He was standing before a structure that filled the space between four square-placed pillars, and from ground to Upper City.

            Rik said, “I’m scared.”

            Rik could guess what the structure was. It was an elevator that lifted to the upper level.

            These were necessary, of course. Production was below, but consumption was above. Basic chemicals and raw food staples were shipped into Lower City, but finished plastic ware and fine meals were matters for Upper City. Excess population spawned below; maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, construction laborers were used above.

            Terens ignored Rik’s expression of fright. He was amazed that his own heart beat so violently. Not fright, of course. Rather a fierce satisfaction that he was going up. He would step all over that sacred cementalloy, stamp on it, scuff his dirt upon it. He could do that as a Townman. Of course he was still only a Florinian native to the Squires, but he was a Townman and he could step on the cementalloy whenever he pleased.

            Galaxy, he hated them!

            He stopped himself, drew a firm breath and signaled for the elevator. There was no use thinking hate. He had been on Sark for many years; on Sark itself, the center and breeding place of the Squires. He had learned to bear in silence. He ought not forget what he had learned now. Of all times, not now.

            He heard the whir of the elevator settling at the lower level, and the entire wall facing him dropped into its slot.

            The native who operated the elevator looked disgusted. “Just two of you.”

            “Just two,” said Terens, stepping in. Rik followed.

            The operator made no move to restore the fallen wall to its original position. He said, “Seems to me you guys could wait for the two o’clock load and move with it. I ain’t supposed to run this thing up and down for no two guys.” He spat carefully, making sure that the sputum hit lower-level concrete and not the floor of his elevator.

            He went on, “Where’s your employment tickets?”

            Terens said, “I’m a Townman. Can’t you see it by my clothes?”

            “Clothes don’t mean nothing. Listen, you think I’m risking my job because you maybe picked up some uniform somewheres? Where’s your card?”

            Terens, without another word, presented the standard document-folder all natives had to carry at all times: registration number, employment certificate, tax receipts. It was open to the crimson of his Townman’s license. The operator scanned it briefly.

            “Well, maybe you picked that up, too, but that’s not my business. You got it and I pass you, though Townman’s just a fancy name for a native to my way of figgering. What about the other guy?”

            “He’s in my charge,” said Terens. “He can come with me, or shall we call a patroller and check into the rules?”

            It was the last thing Terens wanted but he suggested it with suitable arrogance.

            “Awrright! Y’don’t have to get sore.” The elevator wall moved up, and with a lurch the elevator climbed. The operator mumbled direfully under his breath.

            Terens smiled tightly. It was almost inevitable. Those who worked directly for the Squires were only too glad to identify themselves with the rulers and make up for their real inferiority by a tighter adherence to the rules of segregation, a harsh and haughty attitude toward their fellows. They were the “uppermen” for whom the other Florinians reserved their particular hate, unalloyed by the carefully taught awe they felt for the Squires.

            The vertical distance traveled was thirty feet, but the door opened again to a new world. Like the native cities of Sark, Upper City was laid out with a particular eye to color. Individual structures, whether dwelling places or public buildings, were inset in an intricate multicolored mosaic which, close at hand, was a meaningless jumble, but at a distance of a hundred yards took on a soft clustering of hues that melted and changed with the angle of view.

            “Come on, Rik,” said Terens.

            Rik was staring wide-eyed. Nothing alive and growing! Just stone and color in huge masses. He had never known houses could be so huge. Something stirred momentarily in his mind. For a second the hugeness was not so strange. . . And then the memory closed down again.

            A ground-car flashed by.

            “Are those Squires?” Rik whispered.

            There had been time for only a glance. Hair close-cropped, wide, flaring sleeves of glossy, solid colors ranging from blue to violet, knickers of a velvety appearance and long, sheer hose that gleamed as if it were woven of thin copper wire. They wasted no glance at Rik and Terens.

            “Young ones,” said Terens. He had not seen them at such close quarters since he left Sark. On Sark they were bad enough but at least they had been in place. Angels did not fit here, thirty feet over Hell. Again he squirmed to suppress a useless tremble of hatred.

            A two-man flatcar hissed up behind them. It was a new model that had built-in air controls. At the moment it was skimming smoothly two inches above surface, its gleaming flat bottom curled upward at all edges to cut air resistance. Still, the slicing of air against its lower surface sufficed to produce the characteristic hiss which meant “patrollers.”

            They were large, as all patrollers were; broad-faced, flatcheeked, long, straight black hair, light brown in complexion. To the natives, all patrollers looked alike. The glossy black of their uniforms, enhanced as they were by the startling silver of strategically placed buckles and ornamental buttons, depressed the importance of the face and encouraged the impression of likeness still more.

            One patroller was at the controls. The other leaped out lightly over the shallow rim of the car.

            He said, “Folder!” stared mechanically and momentarily at it and flipped it back at Terens. “Your business here.”

            “I intend consulting the library, Officer. It is my privilege.” The patroller turned to Rik. “What about you?”

            “I--” began Rik.

            “He is my assistant,” interposed Terens.

            “He has no Townman privileges,” said the patroller.

            “I’ll be responsible for him.”

            The patroller shrugged. “It’s your lookout. Townmen have privileges, but they’re not Squires. Remember that, boy.”

            “Yes, Officer. By the way, could you direct me to the library?”

            The patroller directed him, using the thin, deadly barrel of a needle-gun to indicate direction. From their present angle, the library was a blotch of brilliant vermilion deepening into crimson toward the upper stories. As they approached, the crimson crept downward.

            Rik said with sudden vehemence, “I think it’s ugly.”

            Terens gave him a quick, surprised glance. He had been accustomed to all this on Sark, but he, too, found the garishness of Upper City somewhat vulgar. But then, Upper City was more Sark than Sark itself. On Sark, not all men were aristocrats. There were even poor Sarkites, some scarcely better off than the average Florinian. Here only the top of the pyramid existed, and the library showed that.

            It was larger than all but a few on Sark itself, far larger than Upper City required, which showed the advantage of cheap labor. Terens paused on the curved ramp that led to the main entrance. The color scheme on the ramp gave the illusion of steps, somewhat disconcerting to Rik, who stumbled, but giving the library the proper air of archaism that traditionally accompanied academic structures.

            The main hall was large, cold, and all but empty. The librarian behind the single desk it contained looked like a small, somewhat wrinkled pea in a bloated pod. She looked up and half rose.

            Terens said quickly, “I’m a Townman. Special privileges. I am responsible for this native.” He had his papers ready and marched them before him.

            The librarian seated herself and looked stern. She plucked a metal sliver from a slot and thrust it at Terens. The Townman placed his right thumb firmly upon it. The librarian took the sliver and put it in another slot where a dim violet light shone briefly.

            She said, “Room 242.”

            “Thank you.”

           

            The cubicles on the second floor had that icy lack of personality that any link in an endless chain would have. Some were filled, their glassite doors frosted and opaque. Most were not.

            “Two forty-two,” said Rik. His voice was squeaky.

            “What’s the matter, Rik?”

            “I don’t know. I feel very excited.”

            “Ever been in a library before?”

            “I don’t know.”

            Terens put his thumb on the round aluminum disk which, five minutes before, had been sensitized to his thumbprint. The clear glass door swung open and, as they stepped within, it closed silently and, as though a blind had been drawn, became opaque.

            The room was six feet in each direction, without window or adornment. It was lit by the diffuse ceiling glow and ventilated by a forced-air draft. The only contents were a desk that stretched from wall to wall and an upholstered backless bench between it and the door. On the desk were three “readers.” Their frosted-glass fronts slanted backward at an angle of thirty degrees. Before each were the various control-dials.

            “Do you know what this is?” Terens sat down and placed his soft, plump hand upon one of the readers.

            Rik sat down too.

            “Books?” he asked eagerly.

            “Well.” Terens seemed uncertain. “This is a library, so your guess doesn’t mean much. Do you know how to work the reader?”

            “No. I don’t think so, Townman.”

            “You’re sure? Think about it a little.”

            Rik tried valiantly. “I’m sorry, Townman.”

            “Then I’ll show you. Look! First, you see, there’s this knob, labeled ‘Catalog’ with the alphabet printed about it. Since we want the encyclopedia first, we’ll turn the knob to E and press downward.”

            He did so and several things happened at once. The frosted glass flared into life and printing appeared upon it. It stood out black on yellow as the ceiling light dimmed. Three smooth panels moved out like so many tongues, one before each reader, and each was centered by a tight light-beam.

            Terens snapped a toggle switch and the panels moved back into their recesses.

            He said, “We won’t be taking notes.”

            Then he went on, “Now we can go down the list of E’s by turning this knob.”

            The long line of alphabetized materials, titles, authors, catalog numbers flipped upward, then stopped at the packed column listing the numerous volumes of the encyclopedia.

            Rik said suddenly, “You press the numbers and letters after the book you want on these little buttons and it shows on the screen.”

            Terens turned on him. “How do you know? Do you remember that?”

            “Maybe I do. I’m not sure. It just seems the right thing.”

            “Well, call it an intelligent guess.”

            He punched a letter-number combination. The light on the glass faded, then brightened again. It said: “Encyclopedia of Sark, Volume 54, Sol-Spec.”

            Terens said, “Now look, Rik, I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, so I won’t tell you what’s in my mind. I just want you to look through this volume and stop at anything that seems familiar. Do you understand?”

            “Yes.”

            “Good. Now take your time.”

            The minutes passed. Suddenly Rik gasped and sent the dials spinning backward.

            When he stopped, Terens read the heading and looked pleased. “You remember now? This isn’t a guess? You remember?”

            Rik nodded vigorously. “It came to me, Townman. Very suddenly.”

            It was the article on Spatio-analysis.

            “I know what it says,” Rik said. “You’ll see, you’ll see.” He was having difficulty breathing normally and Terens, for his part, was almost equally excited.

            “See,” said Rik, “they always have this part.”

            He read aloud haltingly, but in a manner far more proficient than could be accounted for by the sketchy lessons in reading he had received from Valona. The article said:

            “It is not surprising that the Spatio-analyst is by temperament an introverted and, often enough, maladjusted individual. To devote the greater part of one’s adult life to the lonely recording of the terrible emptiness between the stars is more than can be asked of someone entirely normal. It is perhaps with some realization of this that the Spatio-analytic Institute has adopted as its official slogan the somewhat wry statement, “We Analyze Nothing.”“

            Rik finished with what was almost a shriek.

            Terens said, “Do you understand what you’ve read?”

            The smaller man looked up with blazing eyes. “It said, ‘We Analyze Nothing.’ That’s what I remembered. I was one of them.”

            “You were a Spatio-analyst?”

            “Yes,” cried Rik. Then, in a lower voice, “My head hurts.”

            “Because you’re remembering?”

            “I suppose so.” He looked up, forehead furrowed. “I’ve got to remember more. There’s danger. Tremendous danger! I don’t know what to do.”

            “The library’s at our disposal, Rik.” Terens was watching carefully, weighing his words. “Use the catalog yourself and look up some texts on Spatio-analysis. See where that leads you.”

            Rik flung himself upon the reader. He was shaking visibly. Terens moved aside to give him room.

            “How about Wrijt’s Treatise of Spatio-analytic Instrumentation?” asked Rik. “Doesn’t that sound right?”

            “It’s all up to you, Rik.”

            Rik punched the catalog number and the screen burned brightly and steadily. It said, “Please Consult Librarian for Book in Question.”

            Terens reached out a quick hand and neutralized the screen. “Better try another book, Rik.”

            “But . . .” Rik hesitated, then followed orders. Another search through the catalog and then he chose Enning’s Composition of Space.

            The screen filled itself once more with a request to consult the librarian. Terens said, “Damn!” and deadened the screen again.

            Rik said, “What’s the matter?”

            Terens said, “Nothing. Nothing. Now don’t get panicky, Rik. I just don’t quite see--”

            There was a little speaker behind the grillwork on the side of the reading mechanism. The librarian’s thin, dry voice emerged therefrom and froze them both.

            “Room 242! Is there anyone in Room 242?”

            Terens answered harshly, “What do you want?”

            The voice said, “What book is it you want?”

            “None at all. Thank you. We are only testing the reader.”

            There was a pause as though some invisible consultation was proceeding. Then the voice said with an even sharper edge to it, “The record indicates a reading request for Wrijt’s Treatise of Spatio-analytical Instrumentation, and Enning’s Composition of Space. Is that correct?”

            “We were punching catalog numbers at random,” said Terens.

            “May I ask your reason for desiring those books?” The voice was inexorable.

            “I tell you we don’t want them. . . . Now stop it.” The last was an angry aside to Rik, who had begun whimpering.

            A pause again. Then the voice said, “If you will come down to the desk you may have access to the books. They are on a reserved listing and you will have to fill out a form.”

            Terens held out a hand to Rik. “Let’s go.”

            “Maybe we’ve broken a rule,” quavered Rik.

            “Nonsense, Rik. We’re leaving.”

            “We won’t fill out the form?”

            “No, we’ll get the books some other time.”

            Terens was hurrying, forcing Rik along with him. He strode down the main lobby. The librarian looked up.

            “Here now,” she cried, rising and circling the desk. “One moment. One moment!”

            They weren’t stopping for her.

            That is, until a patroller stepped in front of them. “You’re in an awful hurry, laddies.”

            The librarian, somewhat breathless, caught up to them. “You’re 242, aren’t you?”

            “Look here,” said Terens firmly, “why are we being stopped?”

            “Didn’t you inquire after certain books? We’d like to get them for you.”

            “It’s too late. Another time. Don’t you understand that I don’t want the books? I’ll be back tomorrow.”

            “The library,” said the woman primly, “at all times endeavors to give satisfaction. The books will be made available to you in one moment.” Two spots of red burned high upon her cheekbones. She turned away, hurrying through a small door that opened at her approach.

            Terens said, “Officer, if you don’t mind--”

            But the patroller held out his moderately long, weighted neuronic whip. It could serve as an excellent club, or as a longer-range weapon of paralyzing potentialities. He said, “Now, laddy, why don’t you sit down quietly and wait for the lady to come back? It would be the polite thing to do.”

            The patroller was no longer young, no longer slim. He looked close to retirement age and he was probably serving out his time in quiet vegetation as library guard, but he was armed and the joviality on his swarthy face had an insincere look about it.

            Terens’ forehead was wet and he could feel the perspiration collecting at the base of his spine. Somehow he had underestimated the situation. He had been sure of his own analysis of the matter, of everything. Yet here he was. He shouldn’t have been so reckless. It was his damned desire to invade Upper City, to stalk through the library corridors as though he were a Sarkite. . .

            For a desperate moment he wanted to assault the patroller and then, unexpectedly, he didn’t have to.

            It was just a flash of movement at first. The patroller started to turn a little too late. The slower reactions of age betrayed him. The neuronic whip was wrenched from his grasp and before he could do more than emit the beginning of a hoarse cry it was laid along his temple. He collapsed.

            Rik shrieked with delight, and Terens cried, “Valona! By all the devils of Sark, Valona!"

           

           

FOUR: The Rebel

     

     

      TERENS RECOVERED almost at once. He said, “Out. Quickly!” and began walking.

            For a moment he had the impulse to drag the patroller’s unconscious body into the shadows behind the pillars that lined the main hall, but there was obviously no time.

            They emerged onto the ramp, with the afternoon sun making the world bright and warm about them. The colors of Upper City had shifted to an orange motif.

            Valona said anxiously, “Come on!” but Terens caught her elbow.

            He was smiling, but his voice was hard and low. He said, “Don’t run. Walk naturally and follow me. Hold on to Rik. Don’t let him run.”

            A few steps. They seemed to be moving through glue. Were there sounds behind them from the library? Imagination? Terens did not dare look.

            “In here,” he said. The sign above the driveway he indicated flickered a bit in the light of afternoon. It didn’t compete very well with Florina’s sun. It said: Ambulance Entrance.

            Up the drive, through a side entrance, and between incredibly white walls. They were blobs of foreign material against the aseptic glassiness of the corridor.

            A woman in uniform was looking at them from a distance. She hesitated, frowned, began to approach. Terens did not wait for her. He turned sharply, followed a branch of the corridor, then another one. They passed others in uniform and Terens could imagine the uncertainty they aroused. It was quite unprecedented to have natives wandering about unguarded in the upper levels of a hospital. What did one do?

            Eventually, of course, they would be stopped.

            So Terens felt his heartbeat step up when he saw the unobtrusive door that said: To Native Levels. The elevator was at their level. He herded Rik and Valona within and the soft lurch as the elevator dropped was the most delightful sensation of the day.

            There were three kinds of buildings in the City. Most were Lower Buildings, built entirely on the lower level. Workers’ houses, ranging up to three stories in height. Factories, bakeries, disposal plants. Others were Upper Buildings: Sarkite homes, theaters, the library, sports arenas. But some few were Doubles, with levels and entrances both below and above; the patroller stations, for instance, and the hospitals.

            One could therefore use a hospital to go from Upper City to Lower City and avoid in that manner the use of the large freight elevators with their slow movements and overattentive operators. For a native to do so was thoroughly illegal, of course, but the added crime was a pinprick to those already guilty of assaulting patrollers.

            They stepped out upon the lower level. The stark aseptic walls were there still, but they had a faintly haggard appearance as though they were less often scrubbed. The upholstered benches that lined the corridors on the upper level were gone. Most of all there was the uneasy babble of a waiting room filled with wary men and frightened women. A single attendant was attempting to make sense out of the mess, and succeeding poorly.

            She was snapping at a stubbled oldster who pleated and unpleated the wrinkled knee of his raveling trousers and who answered all questions in an apologetic monotone.

            “Exactly what is your complaint? . . . How long have you had these pains? . . . Ever been to the hospital before? . . Now look, you people can’t expect to bother us over every little thing. You sit down and the doctor will look at you and give you more medicine.”

            She cried shrilly, “Next!” then muttered something to herself as she looked at the large timepiece on the wall.

            Terens, Valona and Rik were edging cautiously through the crowd. Valona, as though the presence of fellow Florinians had freed her tongue of paralysis, was whispering intensely.

            “I had to come, Townman. I was so worried about Rik. I thought you wouldn’t bring him back and--”

            “How did you get to Upper City, anyway?” demanded Terens over his shoulder, as he shoved unresisting natives to either side.

            “I followed you and saw you go up the freight elevator. When it came down I said I was with you and he took me up.”

            “Just like that.”

            “I shook him a little.”

            “Imps of Sark,” groaned Terens.

            “I had to,” explained Valona miserably. “Then I saw the patrollers pointing out a building to you. I waited till they were gone and went there too. Only I didn’t dare go inside. I didn’t know what to do so I sort of hid until I saw you coming out with the patroller stopping--”

            “You people there!” It was the sharp, impatient voice of the receptionist. She was standing now, and the hard rapping of her metal stylus on the cementalloy desk top dominated the gathering and reduced them to a hard-breathing silence.

            “Those people trying to leave. Come here. You cannot leave without being examined. There’ll be no evading work-days with pretended sick calls. Come back here!”

            But the three were out in the half shadow of Lower City. There were the smells and noise of what the Sarkites called the Native Quarter about them and the upper level was once more only a roof above them. But however relieved Valona and 13.1k might feel at being away from the oppressive richness of Sarkite surroundings, Terens felt no lifting of anxiety. They had gone too far and henceforth there might be no safety anywhere.

            The thought was still passing through his turbulent mind when Rik called, “Look!”

            Terens felt salt in his throat.

            It was perhaps the most frightening sight the natives of the Lower City could see. It was like a giant bird floating down through one of the openings in the Upper City. It shut off the sun and deepened the ominous gloom of that portion of the City. But it wasn’t a bird. It was one of the armed ground-cars of the patrollers.

            Natives yelled and began running. They might have no specific reason to fear, but they scattered anyway. One man, nearly in the path of the car, stepped aside reluctantly. He had been hurrying on his way, intent on some business of his own, when the shadow caught him. He looked about him, a rock of calm in the wildness. He was of medium height, but almost grotesquely broad across the shoulders. One of his shirt sleeves was slit down its length, revealing an arm like another man’s thigh.

            Terens was hesitating, and Rik and Valona could do nothing without him. The Townman’s inner uncertainty had mounted to a fever. If they ran, where could they go? If they remained where they were, what would they do? There was a chance that the patrollers were after others altogether, but with a patroller unconscious on the library floor through their act, the chances of that were negligible.

            The broad man was approaching at a heavy half trot. For a moment he paused in passing them, as though with uncertainty. He said in a conversational voice, “Khorov’s bakery is second left, beyond the laundry.”

            He veered back.

            Terens said, “Come on.”

            He was sweating freely as he ran. Through the uproar, he heard the barking orders that came naturally to patroller throats. He threw one look over his shoulder. A half dozen of them were piling out of the ground-car, fanning out. They would have no trouble, he knew. In his damned Townman’s uniform, he was as conspicuous as one of the pillars supporting the Upper City.

            Two of the patrollers were running in the right direction. He didn’t know whether or not they had seen him, but that didn’t matter. Both collided with the broad man who had just spoken to Terens. All three were close enough for Terens to hear the broad man’s hoarse bellow and the patrollers’ sharp cursing. Terens herded Valona and Rik around the corner.

            Khorov’s bakery was named as such by an almost defaced “worm” of crawling illuminated plastic, broken in half a dozen places, and was made unmistakable by the wonderful odor that filtered through its open door. There was nothing to do but enter, and they did.

            An old man looked out from the inner room within which they could see the flour-obscured gleam of the radar furnaces. He had no chance to ask their business.

            Terens began, “A broad man--” He was holding his arms apart in illustration, and the cries of “Patrollers! Patrollers!” began to be heard outside.

            The old man said hoarsely, “This way! Quickly!”

            Terens held back. “In there?”

            The old man said, “This one is a dummy.”

            First Rik, then Valona, then Terens crawled through the furnace door. There was a faint click and the back wall of the furnace moved slightly and hung freely from the hinges above. They pushed through it and into a small room, dimly lit, beyond.

           

            They waited. Ventilation was bad, and the smell of baking increased hunger without satisfying it. Valona kept smiling at Rik, patting his hand mechanically from time to time. Rik stared back at her blankly. Once in a while he put a hand to his flushed face.

            Valona began, “Townman--”

            He snapped back in a tight whisper, “Not now, Lona. Please!”

            He passed the back of his hand across his forehead, then stared at the dampness of Ms knuckles.

            There was a click, magnified by the close confinement of their hiding place. Terens stiffened. Without quite realizing it, he raised clenched fists.

            It was the broad man, poking his immense shoulders through the opening. They scarcely fit.

            He looked at Terens and was amused. “Come on, man. We’re not going to be fighting.”

            Terens looked at his fists, and let them drop.

            The broad man was in markedly poorer condition now than when they had first seen him. His shirt was all but removed from his back and a fresh weal, turning red and purple, marked one cheekbone. His eyes were little and the eyelids crowded them above and below.

            He said, “They’ve stopped looking. If you’re hungry, the fare here isn’t fancy, but there’s enough of it. What do you say?”

 

            It was night in the City. There were lights in the Upper City that lit the sky for miles, but in the Lower City the darkness was clammy. The shades were drawn tightly across the front of the bakery to hide the illegal, past-curfew lights away from it.

            Rik felt better with warm food inside him. His headache began to recede. He fixed his eyes on the broad man’s cheek.

            Timidly he asked, “Did they hurt you, mister?”

            “A little,” said the broad one. “It doesn’t matter. It happens every day in my business.” He laughed, showing large teeth. “They had to admit I hadn’t done anything but I was in their way while they were chasing someone else. The easiest way of getting a native out of the way--” His hand rose and fell, holding an invisible weapon, butt-first.

            Rik flinched away and Valona reached out an anxious, protective arm.

            The broad man leaned back, sucking at his teeth to get out particles of food. He said, “I’m Matt Khorov, but they just call me the Baker. Who are you people?”

            Terens shrugged. “Well. . .”

            The Baker said, “I see your point. What I don’t know won’t hurt anyone. Maybe. Maybe. At that, though, you might trust me. I saved you from the patrollers, didn’t I?”

            “Yes. Thank you.” Terens couldn’t squeeze cordiality into his voice. He said, “How did you know they were after us? There were quite a few people running.”

            The other smiled. “None of them had the faces you three were wearing. Yours could have been ground up and used for chalk.”

            Terens tried to smile in return. He didn’t succeed well. “I'm not sure I know why you risked your life. Thank you, anyway. It isn’t much, just saying ‘Thank you,’ but there’s nothing else I can do right now.”

            “You don’t have to do anything.” The Baker’s vast shoulders leaned back against the wall. “I do this as often as I can. It’s nothing personal. If the patrollers are after someone I do my best for him. I hate the patrollers.”

            Valona gasped. “Don’t you get into trouble?”

            “Sure. Look at this.” He put a finger gently on his bruised cheek. “But you don’t think I ought to let it stop me, I hope. That’s why I built the dummy oven. So the patrollers wouldn’t catch me and make things too hard for me.”

            Valona’s eyes were wide with mingled fright and fascination.

            The Baker said, “Why not? You know how many Squires there are on Florina? Ten thousand. You know how many patrollers? Maybe twenty thousand. And there are five hundred million of us natives. If we all lined up against them . . .” He snapped his fingers.

            Terens said, “We’d be lining up against needle-guns and blaster-cannon, Baker.”

            The Baker retorted, “Yeah. We’d have to get some of our own. You Townmen have been living too close to the Squires. You’re scared of them.”

            Valona’s world was being turned upside down today. This man fought with patrollers and spoke with careless self-confidence to the Townman. When Rik plucked at her sleeve she disengaged his fingers gently and told him to sleep. She scarcely looked at him. She wanted to hear what this man said.

            The broad man was saying, “Even with needle-guns and blast-cannon, the only way the Squires hold Florina is with the help of a hundred thousand Townmen.”

            Terens looked offended, but the Baker went on, “For instance, look at you. Very nice clothes. Neat. Pretty. You’ve got a nice little shack, I’ll bet, with book-films, a private hopper and no curfew. You can even go to Upper City if you want to. The Squires wouldn’t do that for you for nothing.”

            Terens felt in no position to lose his temper. He said, “All right. What do you want the Townmen to do? Pick fights with the patrollers? What good would it do? I admit I keep my town quiet and up to quota, but I keep them out of trouble. I try to help them, as much as the law will allow. Isn’t that something? Someday--”

            “Aah, someday. Who can wait for someday? When you and I are dead, what difference will it make who runs Florina? To us, I mean.”

            Terens said, “In the first place, I hate the Squires more than you do. Still--” He stopped, reddening.

            The Baker laughed. “Go ahead. Say it again. I won’t turn you in for hating the Squires. What did you do to get the patrollers after you?”

            Terens was silent.

            The Baker said, “I can make a guess. When the patrollers fell over me they were plenty sore. Sore in person, I mean, and not just because some Squire told them to be sore. I know them and I can tell. So I figure that there’s only one thing that could have happened. You must’ve knocked down a patroller. Or killed him, maybe.”

            Terens was still silent.

            The Baker lost none of his agreeable tone. “It’s all right to keep quiet but there’s such a thing as being too cautious, Townman. You’re going to need help. They know who you are.”

            “No, they don’t,” said Terens hastily.

            “They must have looked at your cards in the Upper City.”

            “Who said I was in the Upper City?”

            “A guess. I’ll bet you were.”

            “They looked at my card, but not long enough to read my name.”

            “Long enough to know you’re a Townman. All they have to do is find a Townman missing from his town or one who can’t account for his movements today. The wires all over Florina are probably scorching right now. I think you’re in trouble.”

            “Maybe.”

            “You know there’s no maybe. Want help?”

            They were talking in whispers. Rik had curled up in the corner and gone to sleep. Valona’s eyes were moving from speaker to speaker.

            Terens shook his head. “No, thanks. I--I’ll get out of this.”

            The Baker’s ready laughter came. “It will be interesting to see how. Don’t look down on me because I haven’t got an education. I’ve got other things. Look, you spend the night thinking about it. Maybe you’ll decide you can use help.”

 

            Valona’s eyes were open in the darkness. Her bed was only a blanket thrown on the floor, but it was nearly as good as the beds she was used to. Rik slept deeply on another blanket in an opposite corner. He always slept deeply on days of excitement after his headaches passed.

            The Townman had refused a bed and the Baker had laughed (he laughed at everything, it seemed), turned out the light and told him he was welcome to sit up in the darkness.

            Valona’s eyes remained open. Sleep was far away. Would she ever sleep again? She had knocked down a patroller!

            Unaccountably, she was thinking of her father and mother.

            They were very misty in her mind. She had almost made herself forget them in the years that had stretched between them and herself. But now she remembered the sound of whispered conversations during the night, when they thought her asleep. She remembered people who came in the dark.

            The patrollers had awakened her one night and asked her questions she could not understand but tried to answer. She never saw her parents again after that. They had gone away, she was told, and the next day they had put her to work when other children her age still had two years of play time. People looked after her as she passed and other children weren’t allowed to play with her, even when work time was over. She learned to keep to herself. She learned not to speak. So they called her “Big Lona” and laughed at her and said she was a half-wit.

            Why did the conversation tonight remind her of her parents?

            “Valona.”

            The voice was so close that its light breath stirred her hair and so low she scarcely heard it. She tensed, partly in fear, partly in embarrassment. There was only a sheet over her bare body.

            It was the Townman. He said, “Don’t say anything. Just listen. I am leaving. The door isn’t locked. I’ll be back, though. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

            She reached in the darkness, caught his hand, pressed it with her fingers. He was satisfied.

            “And watch Rik. Don’t let him out of your sight. And Valona.” There was a long pause. Then he went on, “Don’t trust this Baker too much. I don’t know about him. Do you understand?”

            There was a faint noise of motion, an even fainter distant creak, and he was gone. She raised herself to one elbow and, except for Rik’s breathing and her own, there was only silence.

            She put her eyelids together in the darkness, squeezing them, trying to think. Why did the Townman, who knew everything, say this about the Baker, who hated patrollers and had saved them? Why?

            She could think of only one thing. He had been there. Just when things looked as black as they could be, the Baker had come and had acted quickly. It was almost as though it had been arranged or as if the Baker had been waiting for it all to happen.

            She shook her head. It seemed strange. If it weren’t for what the Townman had said, she would never think this.

            The silence was broken into quivering pieces by a loud and unconcerned remark. “Hello? Still here?”

            She froze as a beam of light caught her full. Slowly she relaxed and bunched the sheet about her neck. The beam fell away.

            She did not have to wonder about the identity of the new speaker. His squat broad form bulked in the half-light that leaked backward from the flash.

            The Baker said, “You know, I thought you’d go with him.”

            Valona said weakly, “Who, sir?”

            “The Townman. You know he left, girl. Don’t waste time pretending.”

            “He’ll be back, sir.”

            “Did he say he would be back? If he did, he’s wrong~ The patrollers will get him. He’s not a very smart man, the Townman, or he’d know when a door is left open for a purpose. Are you planning to leave too?”

            Valona said, “I’ll wait for the Townman.”

            “Suit yourself. It will be a long wait. Go when you please.”

            His light-beam suddenly left her altogether and traveled along the floor, picking out Rik’s pale, thin face. Rik’s eyelids crushed together automatically, at the impact of the light, but he slept on.

            The Baker’s voice grew thoughtful. “But I’d just as soon you left that one behind. You understand that, I suppose. If you decide to leave, the door is open, but it isn’t open for him.”

            “He’s just a poor, sick fellow--” Valona began in a high, frightened voice.

            “Yes? Well, I collect poor sick fellows and that one stays here. Remember!”

            The light-beam did not move from Rik’s sleeping face.

           

           

FIVE: The Scientist

     

     

      DR. Selim Junz had been impatient for a year, but one does not become accustomed to impatience with time. Rather the reverse. Nevertheless the year had taught him that the Sarkite Civil Service could not be hurried; all the more so since the civil servants themselves were largely transplanted Florinians and therefore dreadfully careful of their own dignity.

            He had once asked old Abel, the Trantorian Ambassador, who had lived on Sark so long that the soles of his boots had grown roots, why the Sarkites allowed their government departments to be run by the very people they despised so heartily.

            Abel had wrinkled his eyes over a goblet of green wine.

            “Policy, Junz,” he said. “Policy. A matter of practical genetics, carried out with Sarkite logic. They’re a small, no-account world, these Sarkites, in themselves, and are only important so long as they control that everlasting gold mine, Florina. So each year they skim Florina’s fields and villages, bringing the cream of its youth to Sark for training. The mediocre ones they set to filing their papers and filling their blanks and signing their forms and the really clever ones they send back to Florina to act as native governors for the towns. Townmen they call them.”

            Dr. Junz was a Spatio-analyst, primarily. He did not quite see the point of all this. He said so.

            Abel pointed a blunt old forefinger at him and the green light shining through the contents of his goblet touched the ridged fingernail and subdued its yellow-grayness.

            He said, “You will never make an administrator. Ask me for no recommendations. Look, the most intelligent elements of Florina are won over to the Sarkite cause wholeheartedly, since while they serve Sark they are well taken care of, whereas if they turn their backs on Sark the best they can hope for is a return to a Florinian existence, which is not good, friend, not good.”

            He swallowed the wine at a draught and went on. “Further, neither the Townmen nor Sark’s clerical assistants may breed without losing their positions. Even with female Florinians, that is. Interbreeding with Sarkites is, of course, out of the question. In this way the best of the Florinian genes are being continually withdrawn from circulation, so that gradually Florina will be composed only of hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

            “They’ll run out of clerks at that rate, won’t they?”

            “A matter for the future.”

           

            So Dr. Junz sat now in one of the outer anterooms of the Department for Florinian Affairs and waited impatiently to be allowed past the slow barriers, while Florinian underlings scurried endlessly through a bureaucratic maze.

            An elderly Florinian, shriveled in service, stood before him.

            “Dr. Junz?”

            “Yes.”

            “Come with me.”

            A flashing number on a screen would have been as efficient in summoning him and a fluoro-channel through the air as efficient in guiding him, but where manpower is cheap, nothing need be substituted. Dr. Junz thought “manpower” advisedly. He had never seen women in any government department on Sark. Florinian women were left on their planet, except for some house servants who were likewise forbidden to breed, and Sarkite women were, as Abel said, out of the question.

            He was gestured to a seat before the desk of the Clerk to the Undersecretary. He knew the man’s title from the channeled glow etched upon the desk. No Florinian could, of course, be more than a clerk, regardless of how much of the actual threads of office ran through his white fingers. The Undersecretary and the Secretary of Florinian Affairs would themselves be Sarkites, but though Dr. Junz might meet them socially, he knew he would never meet them here in the department.

            He sat, still impatiently, but at least nearer the goal. The Clerk was glancing carefully through the file, turning each minutely coded sheet as though it held the secrets of the universe. The man was quite young, a recent graduate perhaps, and like all Florinians, very fair of skin and light of hair.

            Dr. Junz felt an atavistic thrill. He himself came from the world of Libair, and like all Libairians, he was highly pigmented and his skin was a deep, rich brown. There were few worlds in the Galaxy in which the skin color was so extreme as on either Libair or Florina. Generally, intermediate shades were the rule.

            Some of the radical young anthropologists were playing with the notion that men of worlds like Libair, for instance, had arisen by independent but convergent evolution. The older men denounced bitterly any notion of an evolution that converged different species to the point where interbreeding was possible, as it certainly was among all the worlds in the Galaxy. They insisted that on the original planet, whatever it was, mankind had already been split into subgroups of varying pigmentation.

            This merely placed the problem further back in time and answered nothing so that Dr. Junz found neither explanation satisfying. Yet even now he found himself thinking of the problem at times. Legends of a past of conflict had lingered, for some reason, on the dark worlds. Libairian myths, for instance, spoke of times of war between men of different pigmentation and the founding of Libair itself was held due to a party of browns fleeing from a defeat in battle.

            When Dr. Junz left Libair for the Arcturian Institute of Spatial Technology and later entered his profession, the early fairy tales were forgotten. Only once since then had he really wondered. He had happened upon one of the ancient worlds of the Centaurian Sector in the course of business; one of those worlds whose history could be counted in millennia and whose language was so archaic that its dialect might almost be that lost and mythical language, English. They had a special word for a man with dark skin.

            Now why should there be a special word for a man with dark skin? There was no special word for a man with blue eyes, or large ears, or curly hair. There was no--

            The Clerk’s precise voice broke his reverie. “You have been at this office before, according to the record.”

            Dr. Junz said with some asperity, “I have indeed, sir.”

            “But not recently.”

            “No, not recently.”

            “You are still in search of a Spatio-analyst who disappeared”-- the Clerk flipped sheets--”some eleven months and thirteen days ago.”

            “That’s right.”

            “In all that time,” said the Clerk in his dry, crumbly voice out of which all the juice seemed carefully pressed, “there has been no sign of the man and no evidence to the effect that he ever was anywhere in Sarkite territory.”

            “He was last reported,” said the scientist, “in space near Sark.”

            The Clerk looked up and his pale blue eyes focused for a moment on Dr. Junz, then dropped quickly. “This may be so, but it is not evidence of his presence on Sark.”

            Not evidence! Dr. Junz’s lips pressed tightly together. It was what the Interstellar Spatio-analytic Bureau had been telling him with increasing bluntness for months.

            No evidence, Dr. Junz. We feel that your time might be better employed, Dr. Junz. The Bureau will see to it that the search is maintained, Dr. Junz.

            What they really meant was, Stop wasting our dough, Junz!

            It had begun, as the Clerk had carefully stated, eleven months and thirteen days ago by Interstellar Standard Time (the Clerk would, of course, not be guilty of using local time on a matter of this nature). Two days before that he had landed on Sark on what was to be a routine inspection of the Bureau’s offices on that planet, but which turned out to be--well, which turned out to be what it was.

            He had been met by the local representative of the I.S.B., a wispy young man who was marked in Dr. Junz’s thoughts chiefly by the fact that he chewed, incessantly, some elastic product of Sark’s chemical industry.

            It was when the inspection was almost over and done with that the local agent had recalled something, parked his lastoplug in the space behind his molars and said, “Message from one of the field men, Dr. Junz. Probably not important. You know them.”

            It was the usual expression of dismissal: You know them. Dr. Junz looked up with a momentary flash of indignation. He was about to say that fifteen years ago he himself had been a “field man,” then he remembered that after three months he had been able to endure it no longer. But it was that bit of anger that made him read the message with an earnest attention.

            It went: Please keep direct coded line open to I.S.B. Central HQ for detailed message involving matter of utmost importance. All Galaxy affected. Am landing by minimum trajectory.

            The agent was amused. His jaws had gone back to their rhythmic champing and he said, “Imagine, sir. ‘All Galaxy affected.’ That’s pretty good, even for a field man. I called him after I got this to see if I could make any sense out of him, but that flopped. He just kept saying that the life of every human being on Florina was in danger. You know, half a billion lives at stake. He sounded very psychopathic. So, frankly, I don’t want to try to handle him when he lands. What do you suggest?”

            Dr. Junz had said, “Do you have a transcript of your talk?”

            “Yes, sir.” There was a few minutes searching. A sliver of film was finally found.

            Dr. Junz ran it through the reader. He frowned. “This is a copy, isn’t it?”

            “I sent the original to the Bureau of Extra-Planetary Transportation here on Sark. I thought it would be best if they met him on the landing field with an ambulance. He’s probably in a bad way.”

            Dr. Junz felt the impulse to agree with the young man. When the lonely analysts of the depths of space finally broke over their jobs, their psychopathies were likely to be violent.

            Then he said, “But wait. You sound as though he hasn’t landed yet.”

            The agent looked surprised. “I suppose he has, but nobody’s called me about it.”

            “Well, call Transportation and get the details. Psychopathic or not, the details must be on our records.”

            The Spatio-analyst had stopped in again the next day on a last-minute check before he left the planet. He had other matters to attend to on other worlds, and he was in a moderate hurry. Almost at the doorway, he said, over his shoulder, “How’s our field man doing?”

            The agent said, “Oh, say--I meant to tell you. Transportation hasn’t heard from him. I sent out the energy pattern of his byperatomic motors and they say his ship is nowhere in near space. The guy must have changed his mind about landing.”

            Dr. Junz decided to delay his departure for twenty-four hours. The next day he was at the Bureau of Extra-Planetary Transportation in Sark City, capital of the planet. He met the Florinian bureaucracy for the first time and they shook their heads at him. They had received the message concerning the prospective landing of an analyst of the I.S.B. Oh yes, but no ship had landed.

            But it was important, Dr. Junz insisted. The man was very sick. Had they not received a copy of the transcript of his talk with the local I.S.B. agent? They opened their eyes wide at him. Transcript? No one could be found who remembered receiving that. They were sorry if the man were sick, but no I.S.B. ship had landed, and no I.S.B. ship was anywhere in near space.

            Dr. Junz went back to his hotel room and thought many thoughts. The new deadline for his leaving passed. He called the desk and arranged to be moved to another suite more adapted to an extended occupancy. Then he arranged an appointment with Ludigan Abel, the Trantorian Ambassador.

            He spent the next day reading books on Sarkite history, and when it was time for the appointment with Abel, his heart had become a slow drumbeat of anger. He was not going to quit easily, he knew that.

            The old Ambassador treated it as a social call, pumped his hand, had his mechanical bartender rolled in, and would not allow any discussion of business over the first two drinks. Junz used the opportunity for worth-while small talk, asked about the Florinian Civil Service and received the exposition on the practical genetics of Sark. His sense of anger deepened.