Chapter Six

 

            Looking about him, Retief saw nothing but a dense blackness; then a strip of greenish light appeared, which widened a moment later into a view of a sunny hillside, broken by a heap of blackish boulders apparently deposited by a melting glacier. Suddenly a great black horse came into view, walking calmly, with a small boy perched in the elaborate saddle.

 

            "Hail, Sir Knight," Retief called cheerfully. "Didst thou unhorse the outlaw Farbelow?"

 

            "Not I, Commander," Sobhain replied. "I saw the scoundrel scuttling from the thicket yonder, and captured his mount. At sight of him, his mob of rascals fled hither." He came up to Retief, just as Magnan, looking bewildered, emerged from behind the stone-pile, looking about fearfully. He halted at the sight of the horse, apparently not noticing the diminutive rider, and ducked back behind the boulder.

 

            At that point, Boss hurried past Magnan and disappeared with a long-drawn wail like a man falling from a height.

 

            "There!" Magnan bleated. "You see? Poor Mr. Boss 'proceeded boldly' and just look what happened to him!"

 

            and what, precisely, happened to him? the Voice demanded relentlessly.

 

            "Well, I don't rightly know," Magnan replied reluctantly, "but it surely wasn't anything pleasant,"

 

            if you are here in search of pleasure, benmagnan, the Voice countered, you have perhaps erred in venturing abroad today.

 

            "I'm here in the discharge of my duties as First Secretary of Embassy of Terra; specifically as Deputy Counselor of Embassy For Trivial Affairs!" Magnan rejoined testily.

 

            then let us hear no more of 'pleasures', the Voice closed the subject.

 

            "Stand fast, sir," Retief called to his immediate supervisor. "I'm going to try something."

 

            "Try what?" Magnan yelped. "I demand to know what you propose. After all, my life is at stake! As well as your own, of course," he added.

 

            "Reasonable, Mr. Magnan," Retief said, "but there's no time. Prince Sobhain is out there alone."

 

            "Merely more illusion!" Magnan dismissed the idea. "In any case, I'm sure a case could be made that we've done all we could. Hardly our affair if the lad chooses to interfere in matters outside his legitimate interest-cluster!"

 

            "Still," Retief countered. "It can hardly be our duty to stand idly by while he intercepts a gang of Rath cut-throats."

 

            "Idly?" Magnan queried as if Amazed by an Egregious Non Sequitur, (1214-m). "We're lost in chaos, struggling to regain a stable paradigm, and you call that 'idle'?"

 

            "Precisely," Retief confirmed. "Have you noticed the pattern of the events—or apparent events—of the past few hours?"

 

            "Of course!" Magnan confirmed emphatically. "The pattern consists of our plunging ever deeper into matters not properly of concern to the Embassy of Terra. And I say it's high time that we take action to extricate ourselves from the deepening maelstrom!"

 

            "Close, Ben," Retief commented. "But it's more structured than that."

 

            enough! the Big Voice, now only Middle-sized, interjected, these speculations regarding matters lying well beyond your abilities to conceptualize, are feckless!

 

            "I guess they're feckful enough to require further investigation!" Magnan stated sharply. "After all, there's only one reality!"

 

            this 'reality to which you so frequently allude, the Voice began in a tone of disparagement, can you define it more cogently than in terms of appearances?

 

            "Certainly!" Magnan promptly assured the bodiless entity. "It's ah, well, perhaps I can't actually define it, but you know as well as I—"

 

            tell me, benmagnan, is the past real? in the same sense as that itch you are now experiencing behind your left pinna, for example.

 

            "Yes, indeed," Magnan replied.

 

            and the future? the Voice pressed him relendessly. is it, too, an example of your reality?

 

            "Precisely," Magnan stated, unperturbed.

 

            and now, the present? is it the same?

 

            "Well, no, they're not all the same, of course," Magnan hedged. "The present is what we preceive as immediate experience. The past is that which we experience in retrospect. The future is that which is experienced in anticipation."

 

            then the mode of your perception imposes constraints upon external time, space, and vug?  The Voice's tone was unmistakably sarcastic.

 

            "You're twisting my words," Magnan rasped. "Anyway, that's the well-established Anthropic Principle."

 

            i am attempting, the Voice contradicted, to grasp your curious conception of that which is and will continue to be, quite independently of your opinions. one can hardly expect the writ of the anthropic principle to run here.

 

            "As to that," Magnan bluffed. "We shall see!" He turned to Retief, and inquired earnestly: "What do you think, Jim?"

 

            "Voice is ahead on points," Retief told him. "You better try for a knockout."

 

            "Here's one for you, Mister Smarty," Magnan addressed the circumambient space/time/vug: "Conceive of space/time/Vug as an endless strip of paper; stretching off that way is the past, and the other way is the future. Now, with a sharp shears, we cut the strip right across; to the left is the past, to the right, the future. The cut is the present. The paper hasn't moved, any more than the space dimension; the two halves are in contact, the cut is of zero width, and is merely a position relative to past and future. Not one atom of paper is in the cut; every one lies on one side or the other of the cut. That position represents the present, which endures for no finite period. Ergo the present is not a substantive phenomenon."

 

            nor is the unrealized future—nor the discarded past. in short, there is no reality. is that your thesis?

 

            "Only that there's no real difference," Magnan amended. "If I'm traveling in a ground-car on a highway and I see a signpost ahead, very well. I continue to approach it, and for one infinitely short instant I am beside it; then it is behind me. And all the while, the signpost is unchanged."

 

            yet we can change the future by our actions now, the Voice reminded him.

 

            "And that is precisely what I intend to do!" Magnan stated triumphantly. "What do you say, Retief?" he went on; "what should we do now to improve the future which rushes at us so relentlessly?" Receiving no reply, he spun on the uncertain footing, peering into the light-shot darkness. "Retief, where are you?" he wailed.

 

            "Oh, dear, abandoned, alone in chaos with a disembodied voice which offers nothing but sophistries and yivshish! What am I to do?"

 

            "Stand fast, Ben," Retief s voice spoke near at hand. Magnan jumped, staring even more frantically into the confusion of whirling, colored wisps and guttering streamers all around him. At least, he consoled himself, there were no pesky gnats here.

 

            "One hardly has a frame of reference by which to establish one's position," the bewildered diplomat carped. "And where are you? It's bad enough talking with the Voice, without having one's own colleague abruptly disappear!"

 

            "You're merely perceiving me, or not perceiving me, in an inappropriate mode, sir," Retief pointed out. "Concentrate on perceiving me as immediate experience, as you describe it."

 

            "Well ... I'll try," Magnan offered uncertainly. He made an effort to envision Retief, clad in impervious armor, seated on a mountainous white horse, lance in hand; somehow his effort slipped its focus, and he felt a sudden weight across his narrow shoulders, and sniffed a powerful aroma of horse-sweat. Looking down, he discovered the source of the aroma directly beneath him. He raised his surprisingly heavy hand to his forehead, with a slight squeak, and heard a metallic clatter! as his ingeniously jointed gauntlet touched the raised visor of his helmet, the weight of which, though mostly carried by his shoulders, was swiftly giving him a headache.

 

            "No, confound it!" he barked. "I didn't want to be somebody's knight-in-armor!" In expressing his resentment at this unexpected turn of events, Magnan unintentionally kicked his feet, thereby putting spurs to his mount, which responded by leaping into a full charge. Magnan's visor clang!ed down, reducing his view to what could be seen through three narrow hand-filed slits in the steel. He was gripping a wad of leather reins in his left hand, while his right gripped the shaft of a long but light-weight spear with a flaring hand-guard, quite inadequate, Magnan noted in panic; and the shank of the lance was firmly clamped against his side by his upper arm.

 

            "Help!" he yelled, his voice having an echoic quality inside the heavy casque.

 

            What he saw through the visor was far from encouraging: swirling fog, wisps of vapor, layer on layer, growing more opaque with each bound of his mighty steed.

 

            "I'll be killed!" he yelped.

 

            that is hardly a wise position to adopt while immersed in a malleable extra-spatial, non-temporal, infravuggish anomaly, the Voice commented casually.

 

            " 'Adopt' my aunt Prissy!" Magnan yelled furiously. "I happen to be caught in an avalanche of misfortune, swept along like a drop in a tidal wave, and you natter of 'adopting a position' as if I had deliberately chosen this grotesque form of self-destruction! Why don't you do something helpful, instead of giving redundant advice!"

 

            very well, came the silent reply. I shall do what I can to rationalize your seemingly irrational situation.

 

            At that moment, the fog seemed to thin ahead, then Magnan burst through a final wispy veil of mist into a sunlit glade, a smooth-clipped lawn surrounded by the giant oak trees of an apparently impenetrable forest. A faded 'Reward for Retief poster was tacked to one of the biggest oaks. Then, from the black shadows before him, a black shape stirred. A gigantic black horse emerged from the darkness, on his back an equally gigantic man in glittering black armor, bearing on his sable shield a griffon or in sinister chief, a bend gules, and in dexter base a human skull proper.

 

            "The Black Knight of Farbelow!" Magnan realized at once, not knowing how he knew. Even as he thought frantically, "I've got to get out of here immediately," he settled himself in the saddle, set his feet firmly in the stirrups, gripped his lance, adjusting its angle to just below the horizontal, and put spurs to his mount. The black knight seemed to pivot lazily to face him squarely, then appeared to grow larger with astonishing rapidity as he charged to meet Magnan's attack. How big, sharp and close his lance-point seemed! Before Magnan had time for further thought, the shock came, the lance vibrated under his arm and shattered, but Lord Farbelow, looming gigantic, was tottering in his saddle, the stump of his lance tossed aside. Magnan was only dimly aware of a great pain in his ribs as he fought to retain his seat; then the black charger was past. There was a great crash!, and Magnan wheeled his sturdy Lippenzaner and looked back to see Farbelow lying on his back, while the black horse cantered away. The fallen knight raised himself to his elbows, lifted his visor to reveal the face of Counselor of Embassy Sidney Overbore, his eyes unfocused, and a trickle of blood dribbling from his nose.

 

            "Gosh, Sir," Magnan babbled. "I didn't mean—"

 

            "I crie thee mercie, Sir Knight," the fallen warrior blurted dazedly. "Spare me, and I shall make my devoir as thy vassal before all men on Lordsday next!"

 

            "Gee," Magnan persisted, heedlessly. "I only; I mean, I wasn't ..."

 

            The man on the ground tossed his dented shield from him. "Bother this bootless quest for chivalric honors," he grunted, then caught Magnan's eyes. "And what boots it for thy honor, sirrah, to slay a helpless man?"

 

            Magnan abruptly realized that he had drawn his unconscionably heavy sword from its jeweled sheath. At the third try, he returned the great slab of edged steel to its place. "Gee, sir, I hope you didn't think—" he started, then changed his mind.

 

            "Arise, Sir Knight," he commanded, "and let me not again have report of your terrorizing your subordinates!"

 

            "Sure, sir," Farbelow/Overbore hastened to agree, as he clambered heavily to his feet, his gleaming black grenouilliers stained with brown earth and green grass, at which he brushed noisily with a steel-encased hand.

 

            "Throw down your baldric," Magnan ordered. "Place your helm beside it. Retrieve your horse and begone!"

 

            The black knight hastened to comply, at the same time edging toward the nearest clump of bushes. Magnan heaved a great sigh and relaxed slightly.

 

            "Tis well yon varlet brast his spear," he muttered to his attendant angel. "Else I'd have gone down over my horsetail instead of he. Whew! That was dreadful! And now what do I do?"

 

            As if in reply, a feminine voice called 'Help!' from the shadowy woods. Magnan scrambled down from the big, smelly white horse and hurried over to assist Gaby through the last barrier of brush and out onto the smooth-mowed lawn, where shafts of sunlight striking through the forest canopy made patches of vivid green against black shadow.

 

            "Oh, Benny," the girl breathed. "How brave! How noble! I saw it all. Twas soothing to my wounded pride to see the great bully brought low by my paladin!" His reply was muffled by her enthusiastic kiss. He struggled free, protesting.

 

            "Really, my child, this is most unseemly! What in the world happened to you? What did that great ugly brute do ...?"

 

            "Fear not, my brave one," she quickly reassured him. "My virtue is just as good as it was before. The bum didn't even take off his armor!"

 

            "Come," Magnan urged, taking one hand, "let's find a way out of this gloomy woods."

 

            "No sweat, Ben," she replied. "We're only a few rods from Transfer Point Sixteen."

 

            "B-but ..." Magnan stammered. "Where have you been? What happened to you? You went to the back of the cave, and—and after that, in Boss's office ..."

 

            "And you came to my rescue, Benny," she supplied.

 

            "That was cute. I was just admiring the scenery, until old Blackie came along. He had big idears, the jerk."

 

            Magnan looked about nervously, saw only the big black Percheron grazing at the edge of the wood. "Where is he?" he inquired vaguely. "If he should come back—"

 

            "I know, Benny. You'd have it to do all over again; but he ain't coming back, honey," Gaby reassured him, while running a finger along his profile. "I seen you brast a spear on his lunch. He'll be back in there, heaving, till dark." She cast a glance at the sun, just above the treetops. "And that won't be long; maybe a hour. We better get clear o' the woods 'fore dark. C'mon." She took his gauntleted hand and tugged it. He went along dazedly.

 

            "I suppose," he said, as if judiciously (27-b), "that we may as well. Waiting won't help."

 

            "Don't go wasting that 27 on me, Ben," Gaby chided gently. "Just be candid, spontaneous-like. Be yourself. If waiting around here for Blackie makes you nervous, hell, it would anybody."

 

            "Me? Nervous?" Magnan inquired with a ghastly parody of a chuckle. He strode ahead, tugging the girl along.

 

            "Hey!" she protested. "The transfer point's yonder!" She pointed off the way Sir Farbelow had staggered. Magnan allowed her to turn him. They pushed into the thick underbrush.

 

            "Damn this armor!" Magnan blurted. "It's heavy hot. Wait a minute." He halted and began to fumble with the fastenings of his cuirass.

 

            "Not that way, silly," Gaby said, brushing his hands aside. "You got to do the gorget first." She demonstrated. "A body'd think you never had on a suite of proof before ..." she mused.

 

            "Well," Magnan started, "actually, that is, how silly, my dear. Now just get these confounded greaves .loose if you will, and we'll be off."

 

            "Why, Benny!" Gaby cried. "Embroidered long-johns! That's real sporty!"

 

            Magnan at once turned away in response to an obscure impulse toward modesty, then, remembering the ludicrous trap-door seat, kept turning, executing a clumsy pirouette.

 

            "Aw, Benny," Gaby exclaimed. "Yer full o' surprises! I never knowed you could dance and all!" As she spoke the sound of a five-man combo sprang up from an invisible source, playing I Wont Dance.

 

            " 'Can't make me'," he murmured in consonance with the music. " 'Never gonna dance, only gonna love ...' "

 

            Gaby seized his arm and snuggled up to it. "Ben," she sighed, "yer so romantic and all ..."

 

            "Nonsense, my girl," Magnan replied severely, disengaging his arm. "Now, we've no time for dalliance; we must get back and tell the others!"

 

            "What others?" Gaby asked, releasing her grip reluctantly. "Tell 'em what?"

 

            "Why, as to that," Magnan temporized. "The Ambassador, for one. Heavens! He has no idea of the dangers lurking here in the boondocks! But, come to think of it, he's likely involved!"

 

            "This here ain't the boondocks, Benny," Gaby objected. "Them's yonder." She pointed vaguely. "What's that got to do with anything, anyways?"

 

            "Though the Counselor's errand in the bush was, undeniably, venal and treacherous in the extreme," Magnan orated, "nonetheless, it is one's duty to warn him of hidden danger."

 

            "What dangers was them, Benny?" Gaby cooed. "Old Blackie was the only danger in these parts, and you trimmed him down to size. If he didn't dirty his underwear, he's got a bad case o' constipation!"

 

            Magnan recoiled. "Gabrielle, how gross!" he objected. "Surely you're aware that there are matters to which a lady doesn't allude!"

 

            "I don't know how to allude," she pointed out. "Anyways, I ain't no lady. I'm what you call a grisette, that's 'little gray' in Standard, means a chippy, you know, I ain't never claimed different, Ben; I thought you knew it and liked me anyways!"

 

            "I do, I do," Magnan hastened to reassure her, as her tears started. "Do don't cry," he urged, confusedly.

 

            "Cry if I wanta," she sobbed. "Aw, heck! It ain't nothing like Eddie said!"

 

            "Eh?" Magnan came back sharply. "Would that be Dirty Eddie, otherwise known as Looie Segundo?"

 

            "Sure! 'Dirty' is right!" she snarled, turning on Magnan. "I shoulda known—you and yer white horse—just more o' his tricks!"

 

            "I assure you, Gaby," Magnan stated firmly, "that I am not a part of anyone's tricks. I am Benjamin O. Magnan, late of Caney, Kansas, and a Foreign Service Officer of Class One in the Terran Foreign Service, a Consul General of Career in the Terran Consular Service, and a Career Minister in the Terran Diplomatic Service, now assigned as Deputy Counselor and Budget and Fiscal Office to the Terran Mission to Goldblatt's Other world, or Sardon as it's officially listed."

 

            "See? Three people at once," Gaby retorted. "Come off it, Benny—or whatever your name really is—show yourself—if there is any self—or are you just something Eddie thought up to tease me? Even if you're nothing at all, you musta had a good laugh at the way I come on to you—" She paused to resume sobbing.

 

            "Good lord," Magnan remarked. "What in the world can I do to convince you that I'm a real, live human, from Terra itself?"

 

            "See?" Gaby challenged hody. "You can't just be humern, you got to come on like a pure-breed from Terra—if there really is any such place and it ain't just a myth!"

 

            "I assure you, my child," Magnan tried again, "I give you my solemn assurance that I am not only a true Terran, but an official representative of Terra in her contacts with other worlds!"

 

            "You keep taking in even more and more territory," Gaby charged sadly. "I wanna believe in you, Benny, but how can I?" She looked up beguilingly at him with large violet eyes from which tears had washed the paint. He grabbed her and kissed her. She sighed and snuggled up to his arm, which she clutched possessively. "OK, Benny," she murmured. "I'll take what I can get, even if you ain't real."

 

            "B-but," he started, then wisdom belatedly prevailed and he fell silent.

 

            "C'mon," she urged, "let's get outa this loose nation." He followed uncertainly as she tugged him toward an azalea in full flower. She led him around behind it to a patch of velvety grass, and just as Magnan was readying a shocked protest, Retief came around the bush and said:

 

            "We don't have much time. The Vug flux is approaching critical density for a phase-change."

 

            "Hello, Jim," Magnan greeted his colleague. "I won't bore you by asking where you've been—or where I've been, but please indulge me by saying something comprehensible." He paused to fan himself with his hand. "I must say I'm quite undone by all this. Do you happen to know the way back to the cave?"

 

            "Steady, Ben," Retief counseled. "This is a little heavy, I know, but we're in the cave. It's just a matter of focusing your awareness on the correct level of vibrational phenomena."

 

            "You did it again!" Magnan charged. "I specifically asked you to say something comprehensible!" He looked around wildly. "Where's Gaby?" he demanded. "Indeed, where are you?"

 

            "Look behind you," Retief suggested. Magnan spun and saw, a few feet away, a small-white-painted booth— one which he had seen before. He dashed to it, rounded the side and saw Gaby behind the counter of the icecream stand, just as he had first seen her: middle-aged, work-worn, coarse-featured. She looked at him in astonishment.

 

            "Hold on, dearie," she said quickly and turned her back. "I got to fix my face."

 

            "Gaby! It is you!" Magnan blurted, "but—but what's happened?"

 

            "It's what hasn't happened," the woman corrected, and turned to face him. To his astonishment, the work-and time-worn look was gone.

 

            "Gaby!" Magnan blurted. She recoiled. "You was going to take me out of all this!" she reproved sadly. "We was to of wed, respectable, and settle down!"

 

            "Gabrielle, my dear," Magnan said in a shaken tone, "you appear to have somehow gained an erroneous impression. I am hardly ready to retire to a life-of-wedded-bliss-in-a-rose-covered-cottage, or any other form of domicile!"

 

            "Why not?" Gaby demanded. "I guess I ain't enough of a lady fer ya," she tried vainly to hold her delicate features in an expression of contemptuous fury, but to her own obvious annoyance, a tear dribbled down from one large violet eye to the top of her turned-up nose.

 

            Magnan was quick to produce a monogrammed hanky to wipe it away. "Really, my child, I didn't mean—" he stammered. Then she was hugging his arm in her usual possessive manner.

 

            "Tell me one thing, Benny," she cooed. "How'ed you know about the rose-covered cottage? Took a deal o' horse-manure to grow them flars in this here lousy soil, too."

 

            Magnan leaned back to stare at her. "Y-you mean ...?" She tugged at his arm. "Right over here," she said over her shoulder.

 

2

 

            Retief was standing beside Magnan in the whirling, multi-colored, but gnat free fog listening to the Voice saying we can apparently change the ostensible future by our latent actions. Magnan, beside him, said something and abruptly Retief found himself immersed in a dense billow of smog.

 

            "Stand fast, Ben," Retief called. Magnan replied, and they chatted for a few moments; then the Voice spoke up again:

 

            i suggest you rematch paradigms, quickly, it said, in a tone of urgency, it would be unwise to continue in this unsymmetrical mode.

 

            "Oh, we're getting close to something, eh?" Retief replied, and focused his attention on detecting the direction from which the Voice emanated.

 

            here now, no meddling of that sort! the silent presense reprimanded sharply.

 

            "Retief!" Magnan's voice was a wail, receding in the distance.

 

            "Right here, sir," Retief called. He took a step toward the reedy voice, and the surface underfoot seemed to dissolve into a heaving layer of golf-ball-sized pebbles, into which he sank to the waist.

 

            "Wrong scale." He directed the thought toward the sense of the Voice. "You can't drown me in golf balls."

 

            those are hydrogen atoms! the silent Voice corrected sharply.

 

            The consistency of the entrapping mass changed, became gravel-like. Retief disengaged his feet from the loose material, climbed a low slope to emerge in sunlight. When he looked back, the wisps of luminous fog were drifting away, dispersing, to reveal a shadowy hollow. Far below, there was a flicker of movement, as a large slug-like creature scuttled for concealment. Retief picked a shallow gulley as the most navigable route, went across the grass arid descended into the shadows where the thing had disappeared. Barely visible under a slaty overhang was a black opening. Once again, the persistent gnats swarmed about him.

 

            don't you dare! came the sharp warning. Retief sensed that its source was close—dead ahead, inside the tunnel. He picked up an apple-sized rock and threw it into the recess, eliciting a meaty whap! and a low grunt, followed by scuffling sounds. He selected a larger missile and pegged it after the first. This time, the unhandsome triangular head of Chief Smeer emerged, marred by a greenish contusion below one yellow eye.

 

            "That done it!" the cop barked. "Yer unner arrest!" He hauled his ungainly length out into the open, awkwardly attempting to assume a look of dignity while at the same time brushing mud and debris from his cop-blue harness with two large, multi-fingered hands.

 

            Retief expanded his telepathic sensitivity in the way he had mastered by conversations with the Voice, and at once picked up sub-vocalization:

 

            ... let this outlaw give me the slip now. Old Fussbritches wouldn't like that. And I guess I got a score or two to settle my ownself...

 

            As the slug-like cop leaped at him, twisting onto its back as Retief stepped aside, he looked down at the long, armor-plated underside of the creature, located the ochre patch just aft of the third pair of short, scuttling legs, and delivered a jack-hammer kick to the leathery hide. In instant reflex, the long torso whipped itself into a tight ball, the projecting legs no longer able to reach the rocky ground. Smeer's bug-like face looked at Retief with what he interpreted as a despairing expression.

 

            "Dirty pool, Retief," Smeer said mournfully. "I bet you looked up Sardonic physiology in a book or like that."

 

            "On the trip out," Retief conceded, "I did happen to glance through an article on exobiology."

 

            "Oh, you come here planning to attack us kindly locals," Smeer commented as if granting an interview to a Groaci sob-sister.

 

            "I learned a number of other interesting things, too," Retief told him.

 

            "That's ridiculous," Smeer dismissed the idea. "I've protected all sensitive data under four levels of obfuscation—which reminds me: how is it you're not still spinning your wheels in that lovely null-entropic pseudo-environment I evoked just for you?"

 

            "You work on that," Retief suggested. "In the meantime, I might consider not knocking your IQ back down to the pre-goldblatt level, if you just drop the whole scam right here."

 

            "What? And disappoint poor Sid?"

 

            "Sid will survive to hang," Retief assured the unhappy creature. At the same time, he extended his awareness in a fine-focused tendril with which he lightly brushed the surface of the alien consciousness, noting the weak suture lines.

 

            "Really!" Smeer objected, simultaneously beginning to waggle his antennae in an uncontrollable reflexive search for the source of his discomfort. "Drat it!" he carped, at last stilling the primitive snoof organs, except for a residual twitching.

 

            "I haven't done that since I was a very small eater," he commented, as if confiding in a sympathetic interviewer. Then he fixed a baleful eye on Retief. "Alas, you force me to unleash my big guns, unhappy meddler!" he intoned, the impressiveness of his pronouncement somewhat marred by his awkward curled position, peering out from under his own appetite. "Just wait'll I get uncurled here, fellow, and I'll show you a few tricks you ain't seen yet!" he concluded.

 

            "That might be a while," Retief told him. "I took the time to fuse your primary motor ganglion in that position.

 

            have a care, rash terran! the Voice warned, somewhat muffled, would you attempt to defy the ssp?

 

            "Oh, I already did that," Retief replied cooly. "You gave yourself away, back in the entropic vacuole."

 

            to be sure, Voice conceded, you duped me. but even that apparent kink in the harmonious unfolding of destiny can, with a trifling adjustment to one's world view, be subsumed within the ssp. one of the chief virtues, really, of the concept.

 

            "I'm talking SAP," Retief informed the gabby alien with finality. "As principle which required Mr. Magnan's gestalt and mine re-converge now!"

 

            "Oh, dear," Magnan's voice groaned from near at hand. Retief turned to see his colleague hurrying past, his back to Retief.

 

            "Hold on, Ben," Retief called after him. Magnan hesitated, half-turned, stammering: "B-but Gaby is just—oh, it's you, Retief: Gracious, I hardly know where to begin. Where have you been?"

 

            "Right here, sir," Retief reassured the agitated First Secretary. "It's just a matter of viewpoint."

 

            "Viewpoint?" Magnan yelled. "While I was being set upon by metallic monsters—"

 

            "Just one, Benny," Gaby murmured coming up behind him. He leapt as if jabbed by a sharp stick.

 

            "Gaby!" he choked. "Don't ever creep up on me like that!"

 

            "I never crept," she objected. "Oh, hi, Jimmy." She wisely dropped the subject. "What's next?"

 

            "I was hoping," Magnan blurted before Retief could speak, "that you could tell me—or us, that is, child. You said something about Transfer Point Sixteen, I believe: you seem to know your way around this maze. So, shall we be off?"

 

            "What about the rose-covered cottage and all?" Gaby protested. "You ain't changed yer mind?"

 

            "Mind?" Magnan echoed. "I feel as if I've lost it."

 

            "Not quite, Ben," Retief corrected. "In feet, it's your mind that's complicating matters at the moment."

 

            "Who, me?" Magnan wailed. "I categorically deny that! Jim," he appealed to his colleague. "Why in the world would I—?"

 

            "It's quite involuntary, of course," Retief pointed out. "And unconscious. It's an automatic response to being suddenly immersed in the SSP."

 

            "What's that?" Magnan demanded. "A supersonic some-thing-or-other? Kindly explain yourself, Retief!"

 

            the retiefbeing refers to the strong sardonic principle, the Voice put in sharply.

 

            "You see," Retief explained, "when Captain Goldblatt took the young worm under his wing, so to speak, and by patient training, taught it to communicate, he thereby unleashed its latent intellect, with the natural result that the Strong Sardonic Principle came into play, evoking the curious universe into which we've wandered, because we naively accepted its basic postulates, while our own Universe, generated by the Strong Authropic Principle, became attenuated to the status of an unrealized potential. We have to stop fighting the problem and solve it instead."

 

            "Indeed? And just how does one go about that, may I inquire?" Magnan yelped. "It reminds one of the old limerick:

 

-

"A Phi Beta Kappa named Carradine

Once stepped outside of his paradigm

And since he came back,

he hangs round the track

and he says, "pal, can you spare a dime?" '

-

 

            "Apt indeed, sir," Retief congratulated his immediate supervisor. "But now, let's get busy."

 

            "Damn," Gaby wailed, "I'm scared! The ground is getting all bumpy, and this here fog—"

 

            "Ignore that, my dear," Magnan counseled. "Your surroundings are purely illusory."

 

            "I guess this here gravel I got in my shoe ain't no dern loose nation!" she riposted spiritedly. "Already got blisters, chasing around in the hot sun, and—"

 

            "Of course your blisters are real enough," Magnan conceded soothingly. "But then we must recall that all reality is illusion."

 

            "I can't recall nothing I ever heard of, and something silly as that anyways—" She broke off and recoiled as if suddenly noticing Chief Smeer for the first time.

 

            "Hey!" That there's one of them pillars!" she told her biographers. "Quick, Benny! let's go!" She seized his arm and hauled him, protesting, into the shelter of the boulders. "We got to do something!" she hissed. "Them critters is mean as a snake!"

 

            "Don't be absurd," Magnan chided unemphatically. "Chief Smeer represents the forces of Law and Order here on Sardon." He favored the local cop with a Congratulatory Smile, Second Class, Inferiors, for the Encouragement of.

 

            "Don't go showing me no second class SSCIE, Terry!" Smeer rebuked him sharply. "I rate a first-class Grimace, Ritual, Relations, for the Cementing of!"

 

            "Benny!" Gaby put in. "You gonna let that there pillar smart off at you?"

 

            "I really must protest your use of the pejorative epithet, Gabrielle," Magnan rebuked the indignant girl. "As for his 'smarting off,' I'm sure Chief Smeer meant only to suggest adherence to established protocol, in which, of course, he was quite correct. Do excuse me, Chief: I was a bit carried away for the moment, I fear,"

 

            "Talking about carried away," Smeer riposted cheekily, "I and my boys are gonna take this here wanted crinimal away right now, which they's a reward out on the sucker. Stand aside, there, Ben."

 

            "I can hardly stand idly by, Chief," Magnan stated firmly, "while you violate the diplomatic immunity of a diplomatic member of the staff of the Embassy of Terra."

 

            "Yer own boss throwed the sucker to the throng," Smeer reminded him sharply, and abruptly uncoiled. The sinuous alien used two of the arms grouped at his upper end to rub his thorax gently. Magnan's eye was caught by the glint of polished black metal briefly exposed below his cuff. Impulsively, he reached out quickly and grabbed the armored wrist.

 

            "It's him!" he yelped. "Retief, the Black Knight of Farbelow was really Chief Smeer here! Somehow, he assumed the form of a high Terran official—"

 

            "Nope," Smeer corrected. "You done that, Ben. I taken that mental image o' yours, and used it to mould the latent energies and all."

 

            "He's a tricky one, aren't you, worm?" Retief challenged.

 

            "Yer on a bum lay, jailbird," Smeer retorted. "If you think I'm the one that's been lousing up the paradigm. That's old Worm—"

 

            enough, the Voice cut in sharply. Smeer fell silent in mid-expostulation.

 

            "Retief," Magnan appealed. "What is going on here? I confess I'm quite at sea."

 

            "I suggest you avoid vivid analogies for the present, sir," Retief replied, waving away the shadowy vista of white-capped surf which for a moment had almost blocked off the jungle view. "The space/time/Vug continuum appears to be in a highly malleable state just now/here/vorg, because the SAP and SSP are in head-to-head confrontation, thereby attenuating what we may as well think of as the fabric of space/time/Vug, so the latent energies tend to assume any form offered as a template by a strong visujalization."

 

            "I see, sort of," Magnan replied vaguely. "And in that case, let's just visualize ourselves safely back where we belong!" He closed his eyes as if in concentration.

 

            "Hey! Don't go—" Smeer started, but subsided when Retief thrust him aside. "I suggest you proceed carefully, sir," he told Magnan. "Let's give the matter some thought at this point, rather than acting impulsively."

 

            "Just think ..." Magnan mused aloud. "If only we hadn't been in such a hurry to get to Staff Meeting on time, we'd never have become embroiled in this madness. So it's all the fault of Ambassador Shortfall, really, for being such a martinet!"

 

            "If that thought soothes you, Ben," Retief said, "I'm sure it's all right to go ahead and have it."

 

            "Darn right!" Magnan confirmed. "And things were going so well: after my stunning coup in making contact with TERRI in the person of Big, my career was assured! I was dreaming of promotion: just savor the sound of it: 'Career Ambassador Benjamin O. Magnan'. Sensuous, eh?"

 

            "Virtually pornographic, sir," Retief confirmed.

 

            " 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'it might have been'," Magnan quoted gloomily.

 

            "Hey, that ain't the way it goes!" Smeer corrected at once. "I seen it in a Terry tape once: The saddest words on sea or shore are 'once it was and is no more.' Whatever that means."

 

            "That's a corruption of the original." Magnan dismissed the idea.

 

            "Oh, yeah?" Smeer retorted. "Well, I guess the SSP is as valid as the SAP on any day!"

 

            "That is a question for the philosophers," Magnan adjudicated. "Or possibly the Cosmologists. In fact," he went on, "if I ever everge from this contretemps, I have decided, on the basis of the SAP, to do so with a large fortune, in gold. Oddly perhaps, gemstones don't move me, but the solid bulk of gold coin—that's fat city. This is no mere greedy impulse, you understand, Retief; I shall employ an adequate portion of my wealth to endow a Chair of Experimental Cosomology at Omaha State, my old alma mater.

 

            "You might object," he mused aloud, "that no such discipline as Experimental Cosmology exists—but it should, if every Tom, Dick and Meyer is going to go around begetting his own Universe. No wonder there's no harmony in human affairs. The thing must be reduced to a strict scientific basis!"

 

            "How do you figger to haul all this jack out of here?" Smeer inquired sardonically. "Kinda heavy to back-pack."

 

            "So long as I am evoking the mineral from primordial energies," Magnan replied loftily, "I may as well evoke it neady stacked in the vaults at the Cora Exchange County Bank, over on Choctaw."

 

            "Good idea," Retief approved.

 

            "Still," Magnan rambled on, "all this is still highly theoretical: the Philosophical Discourse Dogma of course assumes the existence of other powerful intellects, equally capable with Man of evoking realities. But nobody expected them to be like this!"

 

            you consider such intellects to be hypothetical? the Voice thundered, having regained its former volume and timbre, surely you do not attempt to deny the copernican principle, of which the principle of mediocrity is but a special case.

 

            "Well, not exactly," Magnan temporized, "but after all, it's fer simpler to suppose that I'm merely hallucinating. That's Occam's Razor, you know: the simplest thesis is the best one."

 

            sirwilliamfoccam knew nothing of collapsin schrodinger functions, the Voice reminded him curtly.

 

            "That's not the point," Magnan whined.

 

            what, then, IS the point? the relentless Voice demanded.

 

            "Well," Magnan started gamely, "the point is, Retief and I were dispatched on a perfectly routine errand, and were set upon by a mob led by Chief Smudge, and took refuge in an unlikely establishment known as the Cloud Cuckoo Club, where Will Shakespeare was a regular; then a mob of local dacoits burst in, and I was raped away to a jungle fastness."

 

            what IS a 'jungle fastness? the Voice wanted to know.

 

            "Well, it's just what the term suggests," Magnan explained. "A thieves' den in the jungle. Or anyway, that's what it looks like. They were about to clap me into a concentration camp when my colleague Mr. Retief chanced along, and things grew rapidly worse!"

 

            you consider that an explanation? the Voice boomed silently.

 

            "How can I explain when I don't understand myself?" Magnan demanded, not illogically.

 

            one should never undertake to explain that of which one has no comprehension, the Voice chided sternly, pray allow me to enlighten you ...

 

            "Can you?" Magnan yelped. "Will you? Please do! I fear I'll lose my sanity soon—"

 

            "Easy, Ben," Retief counseled. "I think we've stumbled into a node here, a point where the two paradigms overlap, like two overlapping circles, only in four or five dimensions. All we have to do is get outside of it, and the SAP will be in charge again. Meanwhile, what we think of as reality is malleable, and we're forming it with our minds. Captain Goldblatt was the first human here, so he impressed a basic pattern on the whole scene: we've only been modifying the details."

 

            Magnan groaned. "The captain must have been a strange character," he commented.

 

            "What makes you think so, Fancy-pants?" A resonant voice demanded from directly behind Magnan. He leapt, startled, and hit the ground running, but halted after a few paces and stood dithering.

 

            "It's no use, I suppose," he declared, looking around hopefully as if for someone to contradict him. All he saw, besides Retief and the suddenly subdued Smeer, was a middle-aged but still burly red-head in a handsomely tailored but well-worn yachting outfit. "Like Boss but younger and broader!" Magnan burst out.

 

            "Naw," the stranger dismissed the remark and thrust out a work-hardened hand.

 

            "Sol's the handle," he said in a confident tone. "Sorry if I snuck up on you, Mister—"

 

            "Magnan," the frail diplomat blurted, grasping the proffered member. "Hi, Sol," he added. "Actually we've met—or will meet, or—anyway Retief and I were just going, ha, ha, so if you'll excuse us ..."

 

            "Going where, Mister Mumble?" Sol challenged, not releasing his firm grip on Magnan's hand. "Reckon you boys better stay put until I can get things straightened out here some."

 

            "What things were those, Mr. Sol?" Magnan wondered aloud.

 

            Sol waved a burly arm in an all-encompassing gesture. "I reckon you noticed a few little 'nomalies'," he suggested vaguely. His eyes strayed to Smeer, now flattened against the major boulder as if attempting to squeeze under it. "Like that there grateful critter," Sol amplified. "Got too big fer its britches which it ain't even got any."

 

            "Have a care, Cap," Smeer snarled. "You seem to forget the Accommodation."

 

            "You boys came up with that one," he dismissed the complaint. "I never agreed to no Accommodation. The old SAP can steamroller yer lousy SSP any day o' the week. Now, I'm telling ya: you lay off messing around, or I'll lay the whole thing on Herself."

 

            "Don't be a fool!" Smeer cautioned sharply. "If you should disturb her meditations with such trivia, she might well eliminate the entire nuisance from her Event Horizon. That includes you and your ill-considered arrangements, as well as my (innocent) self! We can work this out so that the interests of all parties are protected. Shall we begin by restoring the present time/space/Vug locus to its primordial pre-realization mode?"

 

            "Now he's doing it," Magnan groaned. "Can't anyone talk sense?"

 

            sense is of the essence of my utterances, the Voice reproved. I call to your attention snut's third law of motion—

 

            "Not so fast," Magnan cut him off. "The H theorem has never been rigorously confirmed, so that leaves Snut's Law in abeyance."

 

            would you have recourse to the perfect (so-called) cosmological principle? the Voice taunted.

 

            "Hardly," Magnan dismissed the suggestion. "Still, it was established by Crmblynski's work that the cosmic background radiation emanates from a pattern of widely distributed nodal points, one of which, of course, is located congruently with Goldblatt's Other World, rather than from the entire Universe; and since the Copernican Principle still holds sway ..."

 

            next, you'll be invoking the cryptic concept, the Voice predicted.

 

            "I would hardly dignify such an absurdity by discussing it," Magnan announced to the Galactic Press. ("Go ahead and quote me on that, fellows, and that's M-A-G-N-A-N, Benjamin O.").

 

            unwittingly, the Voice informed him, you ally yourself with the proponents of the sap, and the ssp as well, for that matter, whom you avow to condemn.

 

            "Yivshish!" Magnan charged. "Pure YivshishI I wash my allegorical hands of the entire matter!"

 

            "Not quite yet, I suggest, Ben," Retief contributed. "We still have some unfinished business here." At that moment, as if on cue, the sound of a horse's frantic hooves sounded from beyond the boulder. Magnan flattened himself against the giant stone and eased around to catch a glimpse of the source of the sound.

 

            "Heavenly days!" he gasped, turning a stricken glance back at Retief. "It's a gang of horrid ruffians!"

 

            "Staff meeting?" Retief suggested.

 

            "Jape if you must," Magnan snapped, "but these fellows appear to mean business!"

 

            "What are they doing?" Retief asked.

 

            "Apparently, they're literally beating the figurative brush," Magnan supplied. "Do you suppose they're looking for me? Or for us, rather, of course."

 

            "Why would they do that?" Retief inquired.

 

            "Well, we are, after all, interlopers on their presumed turf," Magnan pointed out.

 

            "Hardly," Retief countered. "We're the guests of Chief Smeer here; right, Chief?"

 

            "Don't try to get me mixed up in yer private problems," the local grunted. "I got plenty o' my own. Them Rath guys got nothing to do with me."

 

            "You're far too modest, Captain," Retief told the surly fellow.

 

            " 'Captain?' " Magnan and Smeer echoed as one. "Why, the rascal is a mere local Chief of Constabulary," Magnan elaborated his objection.

 

            "Here—" Sol blurted and fell silent.

 

            "—lost yer reaction mass, Mister," Smeer was muttering.

 

            "Actually," Retief told Magnan, "I suppose there's not much left of the original Goldblatt persona after two hundred years of submergence in a paradigm incompatible with his existence."

 

            "I'm losing you again, Jim," Magnan complained. "As I understand it, Captain Goldblatt made planetfall on this unexplored world, inhabited by the caterpillar-like people we know as the Sardons: in his extremity, marooned here, and wounded after an uncontrolled landing, he was helped by a local animal of which he made a pet. The creature, and indeed all its kind, were at the threshold of a mentational breakthrough into higher-order intellectual levels; under the captain's tutelage, his pet achieved that breakthrough and his latent intellect was manifested; accordingly, it altered space/time/Vug, it, or should I say he-or-she evoked a Universe, as required by the SAP. Previously, other highly intelligent races had not evoked observable universes, because it is characteristic of the peculiarly human way of thinking so to organize the exocosm, and of course that first Sardonic genius, whom I suppose we may as well call the Great Worm, having had his intellect shaped by a Terran, acquired that same capacity, and its evocation was accordingly compatible with the Captain's. Do you agree?"

 

            Retief nodded and Magnan went on: "Then, it appears, a second Terran vessel, wandering far from the space-lanes, arrived here, and abruptly Worm was presented with several dozen new paradigms which, originating virtually in superimposition with its own, and the compatible one of the captain, tended to overwhelm its own halcyon conceptualization. It of course resorted to appeal to the captain to join it in rejecting the intrusions. He agreed ..." Magnan's voice trailed off. 'That's about as far as I've puzzled it out," he admitted. "And none of it actually helps us to deal with the situation. Where are we now, actually, Jim?" Magnan whimpered. "And why is this place so unlike the city, and that idyllic park we found inside the fence, as well?"

 

            "Because we blundered," Retief told him. "We somehow penetrated the paradigmatic surface-tension and got out of one paradigm, but not into the adjacent one, but only into the zone where they partially merge. At least that's my analysis." He turned to Smeer. "What do you say, Captain?"

 

            "Look here," Sol began, but the police chief spoke louder:

 

            "Why," Smeer demanded coldly, "do you persist in addressing me in that manner? You may call me 'Chief'."

 

            "The fact, as I analyze it," Retief said, "is that as the Goldblatt paradigm began to conflict at various points with his erstwhile pet's world-view, under pressure of the new arrivals, the locals—you, chief, in your new, over-educated state, began to feel resentful of your formerly well-beloved mentor, and undertook to oppose his paradigm. This led, after some time, to a direct ego-to-ego confrontation. The pressure thus generated on the Cosmic All by two powerful entities of almost identical character, led to a merging of paradigms, a hitherto totally non-existant situation, since no two Terrans of equal potency had ever so opposed each other, and all previous alien Strong Principles were too mismatched to the SAP to mesh in that fashion. In the process, the Goldblatt persona was submerged in that of Worm, though not completely; he was, and is, still able to follow exocosmic affairs through the Worm mind, and to express himself as the false Junior. He also selected a prime specimen from the local population to act as his vehicle; he controls Smeer here, and sees through his eyes. So to some extent, the Chief here can be thought of as representing Captain Goldblatt himself."

 

            "B-but—" Magnan objected. Sol, meanwhile, had moved a few feet and stood with his back to the others.

 

            "There's something in what you say," Smeer conceded glumly. "But I insist the presence of this pesky Terran inside my cranial cartilage doesn't make me him\"

 

            "Ignore us," Retief suggested. "Just relax your alertness, and let the Goldblatt aspect of your compound mind come to the fore."

 

            "That's it," Smeer's vocal organs gasped. "With that damn pillar asleep, now maybe we can get someplace. Sure, I'm Sol Goldblatt; got into some strange places in my time, but this one beats 'em all. I been listening: you're dead right about that pillar coming along to help me out there at the beginning, when I was alone and lost and starving. Took me right along to as nice a tavern as ever had a roaring fireplace and fresh bagels and lox, and plenty o' rare steaks and cold draft. Good stuff, too. Reminded me a lot of the home-brew lager an old uncle of mine used to lay down every year. Then the sumbuck—the worm, not Unc Izzy—started trying to change things: kept stocking the reefer with some kinda lightning-bugs, and putting hoob-juice in the kegs—stuff like that. At first I didn't know what was going wrong, but after a while I figgered it out: he was trying to make the Club over to suit him. So I called him on it, and he tried to pull a fast one on me—locked me up in the ladies' room—no ladies here then, so it was OK—but I outfoxed him and tricked him into Bottomless Cave, but I blundered: I let him sweet-talk me into the cave to see it, and he faked up a replica of my old neighborhood, and I went for it, went charging into my old house like a kid, expecting to see my Ma and all—got confused, lost my head—and he had me. Sorry about old Smeer here giving you a hard time, but I couldn't help it. I was still in the Cave, o' course, and he and the army of pillars he'd conned into being his slaves bustled me through a tunnel and into the Park— said it was twice five miles o' farmland; had a wall around. Left me in the woods, crippled, as if my mind was wrapped up in cobwebs. I try to break out, but it's too tough. I'm locked in some kinda room, maybe underground; no windows. After a while, I noticed you fellers' mind-fields and started trying to contact you on the same level of abstraction as I had to talk to Worm on, and it worked, after a while. It was Retief here had a strong enough persona to punch through old Wiggly's shielding. Then, as you know, Herself butted in and started to mess things up. I couldn't get through until just now, when Wiggly konked out all of a sudden and now I ..." Smeer's body went limp and his voice ceased.

 

            "Just who," Magnan put in urgently, "is this Herself to which you refer?"

 

            "Beats me," Sol admitted. "But I do know she's the one behind the trouble here. Me and Wiggly would of got along good, only she kept butting in."

 

            Retief probed gently, found the flaccid, immaterial membrane that was Smeer's endocosm-exocosm interface. He explored its surface, found the complex extrusion formed by the encapsulated ego-gestalt of the captain; he shaped his probe and punctured the confining membrane.

 

            "—and now all of a sudden," the unconscious Smeer boomed out. "Hold on, I think I'm free ..." As Smeer spoke, Sol turned back toward Retief.

 

            "Careful, Captain," Retief cautioned. "The membrane has kept you isolated from entropy. That's what's kept you alive all these years. Easy, now. You need to feel your way back into your own neurons."

 

            "It's ... strange," Smeer's strained voice said. "Like if a fella was to try to put on starched longjohns. It hurts my hair, but I can almost—" the voice broke off and Smeer uttered a groan and his jaw fell slack, as did the mind-form under Retief s touch.

 

            "Good lord," Magnan muttered. "I'm not sure I understand what's happening here. In fact, I'm quite certain I don't."

 

            "Over that way," Gaby suggested; she had retreated a few feet when confronted by the worm-like Smeer; now she advanced uncertainly. "Only shack around here's yonder," she offered, pointing. "Sod dug-out," she explained.

 

            "Gaby—not our rose-covered cottage!" Magnan blurted.

 

            "Sure not," Gaby reassured him. "Other side o' the hill. More like hole in the ground." She forged ahead.

 

            Retief was maintaining contact with the intricately convoluted, but rapidly dwindling shape which represented the captive mind of Captain Goldblatt. Still holding close rapport, he felt out across the adjacent substrate which was the redoubtable mind-field of the super Sardon known as Chief Smeer, who, or which retaliated with a desperate lunge of mind-force which Retief struck down.

 

            "Be reasonable, Chief," he urged, probing an attenuated area on the impalpable surface, which winced at his touch.

 

            "Let go," Retief urged the shaken entity. "We can probably work out an accommodation that will give your paradigm ample room for expression, but if you kill a Galactic hero, it will be war to the knife."