reconciliation. He calls himself Quanah Parker, in memory of his mother. Lately he talks about having her bones and his sister's moved here, so they can rest beside his. Oh, I don't blinker myself. We Indians have a steep, tough road to walk, and a lot of us will foil by the wayside. But Quanah's gotten.us started."

"And you brought him to that," Tarrant said.

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"Well, I worked against the prophets, I used what influence I had toward getting peace into the minds of the People. And you, from your side, kept your promise."

Tarrant grinned crookedly. It had cost. You couldn't simply buy politicians, you had to buy or push men who in their turn could strike deals with the grim incorruptibles. But Quanah did not go to jail or hang.

"I suspect you're too modest," Tarrant said. "Never mind. We've done our work. Maybe we've justified our long lives; I don't know. So you're ready to travel?"

Peregrino nodded. "I can't do anything more here that others can't whom I've helped train. And I have been on this reservation more than a quarter century. Quanah's covered for me, kept me pretty much tucked in a corner, discouraged those who remember from talking to outsiders about me. But it isn't like the prairie. Folks are wondering. If any real word leaked to the newspapers—ah, that worry's at an end. I'll leave him a letter, and my blessing."

He looked out the window. It faced west. His hand lifted to his lips the brew of a people who themselves were once barbarians, southward raiding, northward retreating in war after war for their freedom. He said, "It's time for me to start over." *

XV

Coming Together

1

RAIN ROARED. It washed away heat and grime, turned the air into flying, stinging gray. When lightning flashed, the hue became brief mercury, while thunder trampled down noise of motors, horns, water spurting from wheels. One bolt stabbed the new Empire State Building, but dissolved in the steel web under the masonry. Though the hour was early afternoon, headlights glimmered on cars and buses. Even mid town, pedestrians became few, trudging hunched beneath umbrellas or dodging from marquee to awning. Taxis were not to be had.

Uptown, Laurace Macandal's street lay altogether bare. Ordinarily it bore life enough, and after dark bustled and glittered. Several night clubs had sprung up among the neighborhood's modest tenements, small shops, and this old mansion she had renovated. Hard times or no, white folks still came to Harlem for jazz, dance, comedy, a little freedom from care such as they told each other Negroes were born to. Just now, everybody was inside, waiting out the weather.

She glanced at a clock and beckoned to one of the maids. "Listen well, Gindy," she said. "You haven't been long in service, and something very important will happen today. I don't want you making mistakes."

"Yes, Mama-lo." Awe shivered in the girl's voice.

Laurace shook her head. "That, for instance. I have told you before, I am only *Mama-lo' at holy times."

"I, Fse sorry, . . . ma'm." Tears blurred sight of the woman who stood before the girl—a woman who looked

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young and yet somehow old as time; tall, slim, in a maroon dress of quiet elegance, a silver snake bracelet on her left wrist and at her throat a golden pendant whose intertwined circle and triangle surrounded a ruby; too dark to be called high yellow, but with narrow face, arched nose, hair straight and stiff. "I keeps forgettin'."

Laurace smiled and reached to pat the maid's hand. "Don't be afraid, dear." Her voice, which could be a trumpet, sang like a violin. "You're young, with much to learn. Mainly I want you to understand that my visitor today is special. That's why no men will be around except Joseph, and he's to stay with the car. You will help in the kitchen. Don't leave it. No, there is nothing wrong with the way you serve at table, and you're prettier than Conchita, but she ranks higher.

Rank must be earned, by service as well as faith and study. Your time will come, I'm sure. Mainly, Cindy, you are to keep silence. You may not speak a single word to anybody, ever, about who my guest was or anything else you might happen to see or hear. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'm."

"Good. Now be off with you, child. Oh, and do work harder on your English. You'll never get anywhere in the world unless you sound educated. Are educated. Master Thomas tells me you aren't deing so well at arithmetic, either. If you need extra help, ask him for it. Teaching isn't just his job, it's his calling."

"Y-yes, ma'm."

Laurace inclined her head and half closed her big eyes, as if listening. "Your good angel hovers near," she said. "Go in peace."

The girl trotted off, pert in her starched uniform, radiant in her sudden joy.

Alone, Laurace prowled about, picked up objects, fiddled with them, put them down again. She had made this room Victorian, oak wainscots, heavy furniture, thick carpet and drapes, glass-fronted cabinets for carefully chosen curios, a shelf of books still more select, on top of which rested the white bust of a man who had been black. Electric bulbs in a glass chandelier were dim; rain's twilight crowded close. The effect was impressive without being overly strange.

When, from a bow window, she saw the car she had dispatched arrive at the curb, she set restlessness aside and

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straightened. Most would depend on what impression she herself made.

The chauffeur got out, unfolded a large umbrella, came around to the right side and opened the rear door. He escorted his passenger to the porch, where he rang the bell for her. Laurace didn't see that, but she heard and knew. She likewise knew of the two maids who received the visitor, took her coat, and guided her down the hall.

As she entered the room, Laurace went to meet her. "Welcome, welcome," she said, and clasped both hands in hers.

Clara Rosario's fingers responded only slightly, as did her mouth to the smile offered her. She seemed alien, her own finery a little too bright-colored. Though her hair was marcelled midnight, skin tawny, lips full, she was of white race, hazel-eyed, straight-nosed, wide across the cheekbones. Laurace stood three inches higher. Nonetheless Clara carried herself boldly, as well she might, given a figure like hers.

"Thank you," she said, with a staccato accent. Glancing about: "Quite a place you got here."

"We'll be private in the sanctum," said Laurace. "It has a liquor cabinet. Or would you prefer tea or coffee? I'll order it brought."

"Uh, thanks, but I could use a drink right now." Clara laughed nervously.

"You can stay for dinner, can't you? I promise you a cordon bleu meal. By then we should have completed our . . . business, and be able to relax and enjoy it."

"Well, not too late. They expect me there, you know? I jolly them along and— Could be trouble, too, for me to head off. Men are kind of on edge these days, wondering what's going to go wrong next, you know?"

"Besides, we don't want anybody wondering what you're up to," Laurace agreed. "Don't worry. I'll send you back in plenty of time." She took Clara's arm. "This way, please."

When the door had shut behind them, Clara stood a while, tensed. Between curtained windows, the smaller room was wholly foreign; Straw mats -covered the floor, leopard pelts the curiously shaped chairs. Two African masks dominated one wall. On a shelf between them rested a human skull.

Opposite stretched an eight-foot python

skin. At the farther end stood a marble altar. Upon its red-bordered white cloth were a knife, a crystal bowl full of water, and a bronze candlestick with seven twisty branches. Lighting was from a single heavily shaded lamp on a table beside silver boxes for cigarettes and matches and an incense holder whose smoke turned breath pungent. Almost lost in their everydayness were the cabinet and console radio that flanked the entrance, or the coffee table which near the middle held glasses, ice bucket, seltzer, carafe, ashtrays, small dishes of delicacies.

"Don't be alarmed," said Laurace. "You must have seen magicians' lairs in the past."

Clara nodded. "A few times," she gulped. "You mean you—"

"Well, yes and no. These things aren't for use; they're meant to convey sacredness, power, mystery. Also," Laurace added matter-of-fact!y, "nobody would dare open that door without my leave, under any circumstances whatsoever. We can talk in perfect safety."

Clara rallied. She would not have endured through her centuries without ample courage; and her hostess offered nothing but friendship, of a sort and provided it be possible. "I guess we've gone mighty different ways, you and me."

"Time we bring them together. Would you like some music? I can get two good stations."

"No, let's just talk." Clara grimaced. "I don't need music all the time, you know? I run a high-class house."

"Poor dear." Much sorrow was in the gentleness. "You don't have it so easy, do you? Have you ever?"

Clara lifted her head. "I get by. How about that drink?"

She chose a strong bourbon-and-branch, together with a cigarette, and settled onto the sofa before the table. Laurace poured a glass of Bordeaux and sat down on a chair across from her. For a space there was silence, apart from the dulled noise of the rainstorm.

Then Clara said, half defiantly, "Well, what about it? What are we going to talk about?"

"Suppose you start," Laurace answered, her words continuing soft. "Whatever you want. This is just the first of pur real meetings. We'll need many more. We have everything to learn about each other, and decide, and finally do."

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find me? When you showed up at my apartment and, and told me you're immortal too—" It had not brought on hysteria, but Laurace had soon realized she'd better go. Afterward it had been a matter of three careful telephone conversations, until now. "I thought at first you were crazy, you know?

But you didn't act it and how could a crazy person have found out? Later I wondered if you wanted to blackmail me, but that didn't make sense either. Only . . . all right, how do you know what I am, and how can 1 know you really are what you claim?" She raised her glass in a jerky motion and drank deep. "I don't want to offend you, but, well, I've got to be more sure."

"Naturally you're cautious," Laurace said. "Do you think I'm not? We've both had to be, or die.

But look around you. Would something like this belong to any criminal such as you ever knew?"

"N-no. . . . Unless the prophet of a cult— But I never heard of you, and I would have, as rich as you must be."

"I'm not. Nor is the organization I lead. It does require me to maintain the appearance of, m-m, solidity. As to your questions, though;" Laurace sipped of her wine. Her voice grew slow, almost dreamy:

"I don't know when I was born. If any record was made, I couldn't tell where to find it, and probably it's long lost. Who cared about a pickaninny slave? But from what I remember, and what I deduced after I began to study, I must be about two hundred years old. That isn't much, set against your age. Fourteen hundred, did you say? But of course I wondered, more and more desperately, whether I was quite alone in the world or not.

"Any others like me must be hiding the fact like me. Men can go into a variety of occupations, lives. Women have fewer opportunities. When at last I had the means to search, it made sense to begin with the trade that a woman might very well, even most likely, be forced into."

"Whoredom," said Clara starkly.

"I told you before, I pass no judgments. We do what we must, to survive. One such as you could have left a trail, a trail often broken but perhaps possible to follow, given time and patience.

After all, she wouldn't expect anybody would think to try. Newspaper files, police and court records, tax rolls and other registers where prostitution had been legal, old photographs—things like that, gathered, sifted, compared. Some of my agents have been private detectives, some have been . . . followers of mine. None knows why I wanted this information.

Slowly, out of countless fragments, a few parts fitted together. It seemed there had been a woman who did well in Chicago back in the nineties till she got into some kind of trouble, curiously similar to one in New York later, in New Orleans later still, again in New York—"

Clara made a slicing gesture. "Never mind," she snapped. "I get the idea. I should have remembered, in fact. It happened before."

"What?"

"Back in Konstantinopolis—Istanbul—oh, Lord, nine hundred years ago, it must have been. A man tracked me down pretty much the same way."

Laurace started to rise, sank back, leaned forward. "Another immortal?" she cried. "A man? What became of .him?"

"I don't know." Belligerently: "I wasn't glad to be found then, and I'm not sure I am now. You are a woman, I guess that makes a difference, but you've got to convince me, you know?"

"A man," Laurace whispered. "Who was he? What was he like?"

"Two. He had a partner. They were traders out of Russia. I didn't want to go off with them, so I shook them, and never heard anything since. Probably they're dead. Let's not talk it about it yet, okay?"

The rain-silence descended.

"What a horror of a life you have had," Laurace finally said.

Clara grinned on the left side of her mouth. "Oh, I'm tough. Between the times I work, when I live easy on what Fve earned and saved—or sometimes, yeah, I've married money—it's good enough that I want to keep going."

"I should think—you told me you've mostly been a, a madam since you came to America—isn't that better than it . . . used to be for you?"

"Not always."

SHE HATED sleeping where she worked. In Chicago she had an apartment five blocks away. Usually she could go home about two or three A.M., and the afternoons were her own; then business was slack enough for Sadie to manage. She'd go shopping downtown, or enjoy the sunshine and flowers in Jackson Park, or visit one of the museums built after the Columbian Exposition, or ride a trolley out into the countryside, all sorts of things, maybe with a couple of the girls, maybe by herself, but always ladylike.

Gas lamps flared. Pavement stretched ash-gray, empty as the moon. Lightly though she walked, her footfalls sounded loud in her ears. The two men who came out of an alley were tike more shadows until they fell in on either side of her.

She choked down a gasp. Fear chilled and keened. He on the right was a hulk, bristle-chinned and smelly. He on the left was hardly more than a boy. He had no color in his face except for the pus yellow the lamps gave it, and from time to time he giggled.

"Hello, Mrs. Ross," the big man said. His voice was gritty. "Nice evening, ain't it?"

Fool, she raged at herself, fool, I should have been careful, I should have spent what a bodyguard would cost, but no, I couldn't be bothered, I had to save every cent toward my next years of freedom— In a way that was ancient with her, she killed the fear. She couldn't afford it.

"I don't know you," she said. "Let me be."

"Aw, we know you. Mr. Santoni, he showed us on the street when you was passing by. He asked us we should have a little talk with you."

"Go, before I call a policeman."

The boy tittered. "Shut up, Lew," said the big man. "You get too impatient." To her: "Now don't be like that, Mrs. Ross. All we want to do is talk with you a while. You just come along quiet."

"I'll talk to your boss, Mr. Santoni, I'll speak to him again if he insists." Buy time. "Later today, yes."

"Oh, no. Not so soon. He says you been real unreasonable."

He wants to add my business to his string, he wants to

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end every independent house in the city, we're to do his will and pay him his tribute. Christ, before it's too late, send us a man with a sawed-off shotgun!

It was already too late for her. "He wants Lew and me should have a little talk with you first. He can't waste no more of his time arguing, you got me? Just come along quiet now, and you'll be all right. Lew, put that goddamn shiv back."

She tried to run. A long arm snapped her to a halt. The way they pinioned her was effective; further resistance could have led to a dislocated shoulder. Around the next corner waited a cabriolet and driver. The horse hadn't far to go before it reached a certain building.

Several times the big man-must restrain the boy. Afterward he would sponge her, speak soothingly, give her a smoke, before they resumed. Drawing on past experience, she avoided damage that would be permanent, on her if not on a mortal. They actually let her out of the cab in front of a doctor's house.

The hospital staff were amazed at how fast she healed, quite without marks. While they did not interrogate her, they understood more or less what had happened and expected it would be a very meek, obliging, frequently smiling person who left them. Well, a body so extraordinary might generate a personality equally jesilient.

Just the same, Carlotta Ross cut her losses, sold whatever she could and dropped from sight. She had never heard of the rival who later bushwhacked Santoni. She seldom bothered taking revenge.

Time did that for her, eventually. She was content to start over elsewhere, forewarned.

"I GET along, though. I'm used to the life. Pretty good at it, in fact." Clara laughed. "By now, I'd better be, huh?"

"Do you loathe all men?" Laurace asked.

"Don't pity me! . . . Sorry, you mean well, I shouldn't've flared up. No, I've met some that I guess were decent. Not usually hi my line of work, though, and not for me. I don't have to take them on any more myself; just take then-money. I couldn't have anybody for real anyway. Can I? Can you?"

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"Not forever, obviously. Unless someday we find others of our kind." Laurace saw the expression before her. "Others we like."

"Mind if I have a refill of this drink? I'll help myself." Clara did, and took a cigarette from her purse. Meanwhile she asked, no longer aggressive, almost shy: "What about you, Laurace? How do you feel? You were a slave once, you've said. That must have been as bad as anything I ever knew.

Maybe worse. Christ knows how many slaves I've seen in my life."

"Sometimes it was very bad. Other times it was,~ oh, comfortable. But never free. At last I ran away. White people who were against slavery got me to Canada. There I found ' work as a housemaid."

Clara studied Laurace before murmuring, "You don't talk or behave like a servant."

"I changed. My employers helped me. The Dufours, they were: kindly, mildly prosperous, in Montreal. When they saw I wanted to better myself, they arranged schooling for me—after working hours, and servants worked long hours in those days, so it took years—but I'll always be grateful to the Dufour family. I learned correct English, reading, writing, arithmetic. On my own, consorting with habitants, I picked up French of a sort. I turned into quite a bookworm, as far as circumstances allowed. That gave me a patchwork education; but as the years went on, I gradually filled many of the gaps in it.

"First I had to master memory. I was finding it harder and harder to pull whatever I wanted out of such a ragbag of recollections. It was becoming hard to think. I had to do something. You faced the same problem, I daresay."

Clara nodded. "Awful, for maybe fifty years. I don't know what I did or how, can't recall much and everything's jumbled. Might have gotten into real trouble and died, except—okay, I fell into the hands of a pimp. He, and later his son, they did my thinking for me. They weren't bad guys, by their lights, and of course my not growing old made me special, maybe magical, so they didn't dare abuse me, by the standards of the, uh, eighth century Near East, it must have been. I think they never let on to anybody else, but moved me to a different city every few years. Meanwhile, somehow, bit by bit, I got myself sorted out, and when the son died I felt ready to strike off on my own again. I wonder if most immortals aren't that lucky.

Somebody insane or witless wouldn't last long without a protector, most times and places. Would she?"

"I've thought that myself. I was luckier still. By the early twentieth century we had a science of psychology. Crude, largely guess work, but the idea that the mind can be understood and fixed makes a huge difference. I found autohyp-nosis did wonders— We'll talk about this later. Oh, we have so much to talk about."

"I guess you never got too badly confused, then."

"No, I kept control throughout. Of course, I moved around. It hurt to leave the Dufours, but people were wondering why I didn't age like them. Also, more and more I wanted independence, true independence. I went from job to job, acquired skills, saved my money. In 1900 I moved back to the States. There a colored person was less conspicuous, and here in New York you can go as unnoticed as you care to. I opened a small cafe. It did well—I am a good cook—and in time I was able to start a larger place, with entertainment. The war boomed business. Afterward Prohibition made profits larger yet. White customers; I kept another, less fancy den for blacks. One of my white regulars became a friend. At City Hall Be saw to it that I didn't pay off exorbitantly or have to worry about the mob muscling in."

Clara considered her surroundings. "You didn't buy this with the proceeds from two speakeasies,"

she said.

Laurace smiled. "Shrewd, aren't you? Well, the truth is that presently I took up with a pretty big-time rumrunner. White, but—"

DONALD O'BRYAN loved wind and water. At home he filled shelves with books about sailing ships, hung pictures of them on the walls, built models of them whose exquisite detail seemed impossible for such large hands. Besides the power cruiser he used in his business, he kept a sloop on Long Island Sound. When he started taking his black "housekeeper" on day trips, she went unchallenged by

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members of the yacht club. Everybody liked Don but nobody who was smart messed with him.

Heeled over on a broad reach, the boat rushed through swoosh and sparkle. Gulls soared white above.the wake, into which he had merrily cast scraps from lunch. When you ran before the wind, its booming was hushed to a cradle song and the air grew almost snug, so that you caught the live salt smell of it.

Reaching, a steersman must be careful. Don had secured the boom against an accidental jibe, but control remained tricky. He managed without effort. His body belonged where he was. His being had turned elsewhere.

Between watch cap and pea jacket, the snub-nosed face had lost its earlier cheerfulness. "Why won't you marry me?" he pleaded. "I want to make an honest woman of you, really I do."

"This is honest enough for me," she laughed.

"Flora, I love you. It's not only that you're grand in bed, though you are, you are. It's . . .

your soul. You're brave and dear and a thousand times more bright than me. It's proud Fd be to have you bear my children."

Humor died. She shook her head. "We're too different."

"Was the Queen of Sheba too different from King Solomon?"

"In this country she would be."

"Is it the law you fret about? Listen, not every state forbids marriage between the races, and the rest have to respect it once it's happened where it's allowed. That's in the Constitution."

The same Constitution that says a man can't take a glass of beer after a hot day's work, she thought. "No, it's what we'd have to live with. Hatred. Isolation from both your people and mine.

I couldn't do that to our children."

"Not everywhere," he argued. "Listen, you've heard me before, but listen. I won't keep my trade forever. In a few more years I'll have more money piled together than we could -spend in a hundred. Because I am really a careful, saving man, in spite of liking a good time. I'll take you to Ireland. To France. You always wanted to see France, you've said, and what I saw made me want to go back, during the war though it was. We can settle down wherever we like, in some sweet country where they don't care what the color of our skins may be, only the color of our hearts."

"Wait till then, and we'll talk about this." Maybe by then I can bring myself to it, to seeing time eat him hollow. Maybe I'll be sure by then that he won't grow bitter when I tell him—because I can never deceive him, not in any way that matters—and will even be glad to have me there in my strength, holding his hand as he ties on his deathbed.

"No, now! We can keep it secret if you want."

She stared across the dancing waves. "I can't do that either, darling. Please don't ask me to."

He frowned. "Is it you fear being the wife of a jailbird? I swear to God they'll never take me alive. Not that I expect they'll catch me at all."

She looked back at him. A lock of hair curled brown from beneath the cap and fluttered across his brow. How like a boy he seemed, a small boy full of love and earnestness. She remembered sons she had borne and buried. "What difference would it make whether a justice of the peace mumbled a few words over us, if we aren't free to stand together in sight of everybody?"

"I want to give you my vows."

"You have given them, dearest. I could weep for the joy of that."

"Well, there is this too," he said, rougher-toned. "I don't plan on dying, but we never know, and I want to make sure I leave you provided for. Won't you give my heart that ease?"

"I don't need an inheritance. Thank you, thank you, but I don't." She grimaced. "Nor do I want more to do with lawyers and the government than I can possibly help."

"Um. So." He gnawed his lip for a minute. "Well, I can understand that. All right." His smile burst forth like the sun between clouds. "Not that I'm giving up on making you Mrs. O'Bryan, mind you. I'll wear you down, I will. Meanwhile, however, I'll make arrangements. I don't trust bankers much anyway, and this is a profitable time to liquidate my real estate holdings. We'll put it in gold, and you'll know where the hoard is."

"Oh, Don!" The money was nothing, the wish was the 286

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whole world and half the stars. She scrambled to her knees in the cockpit and pressed herself against him.

He bent over. His left arm closed around her shoulders, his mouth sought hers. "Flora," he said huskily. "My beautiful strange Flora."

"—WE LOVED each other. I've never been afraid to love, Clara. You should learn how."

The other woman stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a fresh one. "What happened?"

Voice and visage grew blank. "A revenue boat intercepted him in 1924. When he bade fair to outrun them, they opened fire. He was killed."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Laurace shook herself. "Well, we're familiars of death, you and I." Once more calm: "He left me a quarter million in negotiable instruments. I needed to get away, sold my night clubs and spent the next four years traveling. First Ireland, England, France. In France I unproved my French and studied about Africa. I went there, Liberia, then the colonies along that coast, hoping to discover something about my ancestors. I made friends in the bush and added to what I'd learned from books, more of how those tribes live, what they live by, faith, ritual, secret societies, tradition. That caused me to return by way of Haiti, where I also spent a while."

Clara's eyes widened. "Voodoo?"

"Voudun," Laurace corrected. "Not black magic. Religion. What has sustained human beings through some of the crudest history on earth, and still does in some of its most hideous poverty and misrule. I remembered people here at home, and came back to Harlem."

"I see," Clara breathed. "You did start a cult."

Momentarily, Laurace was grim. "And you're/ thinking, 'What a nice racket.' It isn't like that in the least."

"Oh, no. I didn't mean—"

"You did." Laurace sighed. "Never mind. A natural thought. I don't blame you. But the fact is, I had no need to prey on superstition. Investments I'd made before going abroad had done well. I didn't like the look of the stock

market, and pulled out in time. Oh, by myself I'd be quite comfortably off." Seriously: "There were my people, though. There was also the matter of my own long-range survival. And, now, yours."

Clara showed near-bewilderment. "What've you done, then, if you haven't founded a church?"

Laurace spoke quickly, impersonally: "Churches and their leaders are too conspicuous, especially if they achieve some success. Likewise revolutionary movements. Not that I wish for a revolution.

I know how little bloodshed ever buys. That must be still more true of you."

"I never gave it your kind of thought," Clara said humbly. Her cigarette smoldered unnoticed between her fingers.

"What I am organizing is—call it a society, somewhat on the African and Haitian mode!. Remember, those outfits aren't criminal, nor are they for pleasure; they are parts of the whole, the cultures, bone and muscle as well as spirit. Mine does contain elements of both religion and magic. In Canada I was exposed to Catholicism, which is one root of voudun. I don't tefl anybody what church he should go to; but I open for him a vision of being not only a Christian, but belonging to the whole living universe. I don't lay curses or give blessings, but I say words and lead rites in which I am—not a goddess or Messiah, not even a saint, but she who is closer than most to understanding, to power.

"Oh, we have a practical aspect too. A Haitian would know what I mean by the surname I've taken.

But I don't call for gaining control—not by vote, like the Republicans and Democrats, or by violence, like the Communists, or by persuasion, like the Socialists. No, my politics is individuals quietly getting together under leadership they have freely accepted, helping each other, building a life and a future for themselves."

Clara shook her head. "I'm sorry, I can't quite see what you mean."

"Don't worry." Warmth was in the reply. "For the time being, think of it on the spiritual side as offering my followers something better than booze and coke. As for the material part, now that breadlines have gotten long, more and more hear about us and come to us, black, white, Puerto Rican, every race. Openly, we're just another among hundreds of volunteer groups doing poor relief. Quietly, as

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newcomers prove trustworthy and advance through our degrees of initiation—we take them into a community they can belong to, work in, believe in, modestly but adequately and with hope. In return, when I ask for it, they help me."

Laurace paused before continuing: "I can't explain it much better than that, today. You'll learn.

Truth to tell, I'm learning too. I never laid out any grand scheme, I fumbled my way forward, and still do. Maybe this will crash to ruin, or decay. But maybe—I can't foresee. Immortal leadership ought to make an important difference, but how to use it, I'm not yet sure. About all that I feel reasonably sure of is that we have to keep ourselves from being noticeable."

"Can you?"

"We can try. 'We' includes you, I trust." Laurace lifted her wine glass. "Here's to tomorrow."

Clara joined in the toast but remained troubled. "What1 re your plans for ... for the near future?'*

"Considerable," Laurace answered. "And you can do a great deal. You save your money, right? Well, we, the society, we're stretched thin. We badly need operating capital. Opportunities go begging.

For instance, since the crash, stocks are at rock-bottom prices."

"Because we've got a depression. I thought you said you left the market."

Laurace laughed. "If I'd foreseen exactly what would happen two years ago October, I'd have sold short at the right point and now own Wall Street. But I am not a sorceress—nor do I claim to be—and I've learned to play cautious. That doesn't mean timid or unthinking. Look, depressions don't last forever. People will always want homes, cars, a thousand different good, solid things; and sooner or later, they'll again be able to buy them. It may take fifty years to collect our profit, but immortals can wait."

"I see." Clara's features came aglow. "Okay. With that to look forward to, I can stand another fifty years in the life."

"You needn't. Times are changing."

"What men want won't change."

"No, though the laws may. No matter. Clara, shake free of that sordidness as fast as you can unload."

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except—" With forlorn determination: "I will not turn into a parasite on you. I won't."

"Oh, no," Laurace answered. "We take no parasites in. Quite aside from the money you contribute, you'll earn your keep. You may not appreciate it yet, but you have fourteen hundred years of experience behind you, with the insight, the intuition, that must have brought. Yours may well be a bitter wisdom, but we need it."

"What for?"

"For the building of our strength."

"Huh? Wait, you said—"

"I said I do not intend to overthrow the government, take over the country, anything stupid and ephemeral like that," Laurace declared. "My aim is the exact opposite. I want to build something so strong that with it we can say 'No' to the slavers, the lynch mobs, and the lords of state.

"Men seized my father, bore him away in chains, and sold him. They hounded me when I escaped, and would have caught me if other men had not broken their law. A few years ago, they shot down the man I loved, for nothing worse than providing a pleasure they said nobody must have. At that, he was lucky. He might have died earner, in their damned useless war. I £ould go on, but why? You could tell more, as much longer as you've lived.

"What's brought this death and misery, but that men have had power over other men?

"Don't mistake me. I am not an anarchist. Human beings are so made that the few will always rule the many. Sometimes they mean well—in spite of everything, I believe the founders of the United States did—but that doesn't long outlive them.

"The only partial security we who want to lead our own lives will ever have, we must create from within us. Oneness. Ongoing resolution. The means to live independent of the overlords. Only by guiding the poor and helpless toward this can we immortals win it for ourselves.

"Are you with me?"

XVI

Niche

THE HOTEL was new and rather soulless, but it stood near Old Town, with a fine tenth-floor view of roofs and narrow streets climbing to the stones of the Citadel. That mass stood darkling athwart stars dimmed by lamps and lightful panes. On the west side, the comer suite overlooked modem Ankara, Ulus Square, the boulevard, radiance glaring and flashing, opulent storefronts, crowded sidewalks, hasty automobiles. Heat.of a day in late summer lingered, and the windows stood open to catch whatever coolness crept in off the river and hinterland. Height muffled traffic noise, even car horns, to an undertone hardly more loud than the large fan whining on its stand.

For the American patron and his dinner guest, room service had set an elegant table and carried up an excellent meal. Through most of it they had sparred with small talk. The language in which they could most readily converse turned out to be Greek. Now they were at the stage of cheese, coffee, and liqueurs.

Oktay Saygun leaned back, held his Drambuie to the light before he sipped, creased his jowls with a smile. He was a stocky, paunchy man, his nose the single impressive thing about him. While not shabby, his business suit had clearly been years in use and inexpensive when bought. "Ah," he murmured, "delicious. You are a most knowledgeable gentleman, Kyrie McCready."

"I am glad you enjoyed this," replied the other. "I hope you feel more at ease with me."

Saygun cocked his head in birdlike fashion, if the bird be a well-fed owl or parrot. David McCready was two or three centimeters taller than he, lean and timber. Though the THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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dark hawk visage showed only geniality, the eyes—oddly Levantine for the name he bore—met his own and searched. "Did I give you the opposite impression?" Saygun asked. "I'm sorry. What a poor return for your hospitality. Not my intention at all, I assure you."

"Oh, I don't blame you. A telephone call, an invitation from a perfect stranger. I might want to lure you into some criminal scheme. Or I might be a foreign agent, a spy. These days they must swarm in every capital."

Saygun chuckled. "Who would bother to subvert a little bureaucrat in the purely civilian archives?

If anything, you would be the endangered one. Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants."

"Still, this is an uneasy time."

Saygun turned grave. His look wandered out the window, nightward. "Indeed," he said low. "An evil time. Herr Hitler was not content with engulfing Austria, was he? I fear Mister Chamberlain and Monsieur Daladier will let him work his will on Czechoslovakia too. And nearer home, the ambitions.of the Tsars live on in Red Russia." He turned his attention back, took forth a handkerchief, wiped his narrow brow and sleeked down his black hair. "Pardon me. You Americans prefer optimism always, not so? Well, whatever happens, civilization will survive. It has thus far, no matter what changing guises it wears."

"You are quite well-informed, Kyrie Saygun," McCready said slowly. "And something of a philosopher, it seems."

The Turk shrugged. "One reads the newspapers. One listens to the radio. The coffee shops have become a Babel of politics. I seek occasional relief hi old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring."

He drained his glass. McCready refilled it and asked, "Cigar?"

"Why, yes, thank you very much. That humidor of yours appears to hold promise."

McCready fetched two Havanas, a clipper which he offered first to his guest, and a lighter. As he settled himself again, his voice shivered the least bit. "May I get to my business now?"

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"Certainly. You would have been welcome to do so earlier. I assumed you, wished to become acquainted. Or, if I may put it thus, to feel me out."

McCready's grin was wry. "You did the better job of that, on me."

"Oh? I simply enjoyed a pleasant conversation with an interesting person. Everybody is fascinated by your wonderful country, and your career as a businessman has been remarkable."

McCready started his visitor's cigar for him and became occupied with his own. "We went on at length about me, when talk didn't ramble over ordinary matters. The upshot was that scarcely anything got said about you."

"There was nothing to say, really. I am as dull and insignificant a man as you will ever find. I cannot imagine you maintaining any interest in me." Saygun drank smoke, rolled it around his tongue, exhaled luxuriously, chased it with a taste of liqueur. "However, at the moment I am glad.

Pleasures like this seldom come to a minor official in a routine-bounded department of government.

Turkey is a poor country, and President Ataturk was rather ruthless about corruption."

McCready's tobacco kindled less smoothly. "My friend, you are anything but dull. You've proved yourself very shrewd, very skillful at hiding whatever you want to hide. Well, it's no great surprise. People in our situation who don't have those qualities, or can't acquire them, probably don't last long."

Beady eyes widened. "'Our' situation? What might that be?"

"Still cautious, are you? Understandable. If you are what I hope, that's an old, old habit. If not, then you are wondering whether I am a confidence man or a madman."

"No, no. Please. Your newspaper advertisement last year attracted me. Enigmatic, but somehow . . .

genuine. Indeed, wonderfully phrased."

"Thank you. Though composing it was largely the work of my partner. He has a gift for words."

"I take it you placed the advertisement in many places around the world?" McCready nodded and Saygun continued: "I suppose not only the language but the text, the message, varied according to region. Here—how did it go?—

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'Those who have lived so long that our forefathers are like brothers and comrades to them—* yes, that appeals to a Near Easterner, a citizen of an ancient land. Yet the average person who chances to see it gets the impression that a scholar is interested in meeting old people who have studied and meditated upon history, with a view to exploring whatever wisdom may be theirs. Did many respond?"

"No. Most who did were not quite right in the head or tried to cadge money. You were the only one in this country whom my agent decided I might care to follow up."

"It has taken you a considerable time. I had begun to think your organization was not serious, perhaps a hoax."

"I had to study a number of reports. Most I discarded. Then I started off around the world. This is my third interview."

"I gather an agent of yours met those who answered the advertisements everywhere that they were placed. Clearly, you have substantial resources, Kyrie McCready. For a purpose you have yet to reveal to me and, I daresay, have told none of the agents."

The American nodded. "I gave them certain secret criteria to apply." Peering through the smoke:

"The most important was that a respondent look young and in good health, even though the call seemingly was for old people. I explained that I don't want the fact publicized but I am searching for natural-born geniuses, with knowledge and insight far beyond their years, especially in history. With minds like that from different civilizations brought into contact, we may found a real science of it, beyond anything that thinkers like Spengler and Toynbee have proposed. The agents doubtless consider me a crackpot on this subject. However, I pay well."

"I see. Have the previous two whom you met proven satisfactory?"

"You know that isn't what I am really searching for," McCready said.

Saygun laughed. "In the present case, that is just as well. I am no genius of any kind. No, a total mediocrity. And content with it, which shows I am doubly dull." He paused. "But what about those other two?"

McCready chopped air with his cigar. "Damnation," he exclaimed, "must we shilly-shally all night?"

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Saygun leaned back in his chair. The broad face and small bland smile could be a visor over wariness, glee, anything. "God forbid I repay your generosity with discourtesy," he said. "Perhaps it would be best if you took the lead and made a forthright statement."

"I will!" McCready sat half crouched. "If I'm wrong about you, you won't take me for merely eccentric, you'll believe I'm a raving lunatic. In that case, I suggest you go home and never speak of this evening to anybody; because I'll deny everything and you'll be the one to look silly." In haste: "That's not a threat. For the convenience of us both, I request your silence."

Saygun elevated his glass. "From your viewpoint, you are about to take a risk," he replied. "I understand. I promise." He drank as if in pledge.

McCready stood up. "What would you say," he asked softly, "if I told you I am not an American by birth—that I was born in these parts, nearly three thousand years ago?"

Saygun gazed into his drink a while. The city mumbled. A drape stirred ever so slightly to the first night breath off the plateau of Anatolia. When he raised his eyes, he had gone expressionless. "I would call that a most unusual statement."

"No miracles, no magic," McCready said. "Somehow it happens. Once in ten million births, a hundred million, a billion? The loneliness— Yes, I am a Phoenician, from Tyre when Tyre was new." He began pacing, to and fro on the carpet. "I've spent most of all that time seeking for others, any others like me."

"Have you found them?"

McCready's tone harshened. "Three certain, and of them a single one is still alive to my knowledge, my partner whom I mentioned. He's tracked down two possibilities himself. As for the other two, we don't age, you know, but we can be killed the same as anybody else." Savagely, he ground his cigar out in an ashtray. "Like that."

"Then I suppose the two you have spoken with on this journey, they were disappointments?"

McCready nodded. He slammed fist into palm. "They're what I am officially after, highly intelligent and thoughtful . . . young people. Maybe I can find a place for them, I do have my enterprises, but—" He stopped on the floor, legs

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wide apart, and stared. "You're taking this very calmly, aren't you?"

"I admitted I am a dull person. Phlegmatic."

"Which gives me reason to think you're different from them. And my agent did make a quiet investigation. You could pass for a man in his twenties, but you've held your present job more than thirty years."

"My friends remark on it. Not with much envy; I am no Adonis. Well, some individuals are slow to grow wrinkled and gray."

"Friends— You're neither sociable nor unsociable. Affable, but never intimate. Effective enough at your desk, promoted according to seniority, but unambitious; you do everything by the book.

Unmarried. That's uncommon in Turkey, but not unheard of, and nobody is interested enough in you to wonder seriously."

"Yoiir judgment is less than flattering." Saygun didn't sound offended. "Reasonably accurate, though. I have told you, I am content to be what I am."

"An immortal?" McCready flung at him.

Saygun lifted a palm, cigar between fingers. "My dear sir, you leap to conclusions."

"It fits, it fits. Listen, you can be honest with me! Or at least bear with me. I can show you evidence that's convinced men more intelligent than either of us, if you'll cooperate. And— How can you just sit there like that?"

Saygun shrugged.

"If nothing else, even if I'm wrong about you and you suppose I'm crazy, you ought to show some excitement," McCready snapped. "A desire to escape, if nothing else. Or— But I think you are ageless yourself, you can join us and together we can— How old are you, anyway?"

Into the stillness that followed, Saygun said, a new steel in his tone: "Credit me with some brains, if you please. I have told you I read books. And I have had a year to consider what might lie behind that curious, evasive procedure of yours; and conceivably before then I have speculated about these matters. Would you mind taking your seat again? I prefer to talk in civilized wise." *

"My . . . apologies." First McCready went to the sideboard. He mixed a stiff Scotch and soda.

"Would you like this?"

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"No, thank you. Another Drambuie, if I may. Do you know, it never came to my attention before tonight. But then, only recently has Turkey become a modern, secular state. Marvelous stuff. I must lay some in before the next war makes it unobtainable."

McCready overcame interior tumult and returned to the table. "What do you want to say?" he asked.

Saygun barely smiled. "Well," he replied, "things were growing hectic, weren't they? To be expected, no doubt, when you made such extraordinary claims. Not that I deny them, kyrie. I am no scientist, to decide what is and is not possible. Nor am I so rude as to call my host deluded, let alone a liar. But we should calm down. May I tell you a story?"

"By all means," McCready rasped, and drank deep.

"Perhaps I can better label it a speculation," Saygun said. "A flight of fancy, like some works of Mr. H. G. Wells. What if such-and-such were true? What consequences?"

"Go on."

Saygun relaxed, smoked, sipped, let his voice amble. "Weft, now, shall we imagine a man bora rather long ago? For example, in Italy toward the end of the Roman Republic. Family of the equestrian class, undistinguished, its men seldom much interested in war or politics, seldom succeeding or failing greatly in commerce, often making careers in the civil service. The state and its conquered provinces had grown swiftly, enormously. There was need for clerks, registrars, annalists, archivists, every class of those workers who provide a government with its memory. Once Augustus had taken control, procedures were soon regularized, organization made firm, order and predictability instilled. For a peaceful man, the lower and median ranks of the civil service were a good place to be."

McCready inhaled sharply. Saygun ignored it: "Next I would like to borrow your imaginative concept of the occasional person who never grows old. Since you have obviously considered every ramification, I need not spell out the difficulties that the years must bring to such a man.

Perforce, when he reaches the normal retirement age, he gives up his position and moves away, telling his acquaintances that it will be to someplace with a mild climate and a low cost of living. Yet if he is entitled to a pension, he dares not draw it forever; and if pensions are not customary, he cannot live forever on savings, or even on investments. He must go back to work.

"Well, he seems youthful and he has experience. He re-enters the bureaucracy in a different city, under a different name, but quickly proves his worth and earns promotion from junior grade to about the middle of the hierarchy among the record-keepers. In due course he retires again. By then sufficient time has gone by that he can return to, say, Rome and start over.

"Thus it goes. I shan't bore you with details, when you can readily visualize them. For example, sometimes he marries and raises a family, which is pleasant—or if it happens not to be, will pass, so all he needs is patience. This does complicate his little deceptions, hence he spends other periods in tranquil bachelorhood, varied by discreet indulgences. He is never in any danger of being found out. His position in the archives enables him to make cautious but'adequate insertions, deletions, emendations. Nothing to harm the state, nothing to enrich himself, no, never. He simply avoids military service and, in general, covers his tracks." Saygun snickered.

"Oh, now and then he might slip in something like a letter of recommendation for the young recruit he plans to become. Please remember, though, that he does do honest work. Whether he puts stylus to wax, pen to paper, nowadays types or dictates, he helps maintain the memory of the state."

"I see," McCready whispered. "But states come and go."

"Civilization continues," responded Saygun. "The Princi-pate hardens into the Empire and the Empire begins to crack like drying mud, but people go on getting bom and getting married, they ply their trades and die, always they pay taxes, and whoever rules must hold the records of this or he has no power over the life of the people. The usurper or the conqueror may strike off heads at the top, but he will scarcely touch the harmless drudges of the civil service. That would be like chopping off his own feet."

"It has happened," McCready said bleakly.

Saygun nodded. "True. Corruption rewards its favorites with jobs. However, certain jobs are not especially tempting, while at the same time their holders would be hard to dispense with. Then occasionally barbarians, fanatics, mega-298

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lomaniacs attempt to make a clean sweep. They cause desolation. Nevertheless, more often than not, some continuity endures. Rome fell, but the Church preserved what it could."

"I suppose, though," McCready said, word by word, "this man . . . you are imagining . . . had moved to Constantinople."

Saygun nodded. "Of course. With Constantine the Great himself, who necessarily expanded the government offices in his new capital and welcomed personnel willing to transfer. And the Roman Empire, in its Byzantine incarnation, lasted another thousand years."

"After which—"

"Oh, there were difficult times, but one manages. Actually, my man was stationed in Anatolia when the Osmanlis overran it, and did not get back to Constantinople until they had taken it too and renamed it Istanbul. Meanwhile he had fitted into their order of things without many problems.

Changed his religion, but surely you can sympathize with that, and with a certain recurring necessity that an immortal Muslim or Jew faces." Saygun half grinned. "One wonders about possible women. Recurrent intactness?"

His mien went back to mock professorial: "Physically, this man would stay inconspicuous. The original Turks were not very unlike the people here, and soon melted into them the same as Hittites, Gauls, Greeks, Romans, countless nations had done before. The sultans reigned until after the World War. In name, at any rate; frequently not in fact. It made small difference to my man. He simply helped maintain the records.

"Likewise under the republic. I must confess I—my man prefers Istanbul and looks forward to his next period of working there. It is more interesting, and alive with ghosts. But you know that.

However, by now Ankara has become quite liveable."

"Is that all he wants?" McCready wondered. "Shuffling papers in an office, forever?"

"He is used to it," Saygun explained. "Perhaps it actually has a trifle more social value than soaring hopes and high adventure. Naturally, I wanted to hear what you had to say, but—forgive me—the situation you describe is ill-suited to

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one of my temperament. Let me wish you every good fortune.

"May I have your card? Here is mine." He reached in his pocket. McCready did likewise. They exchanged. "Thank you. We can, if you so desire, mail new cards to each other as occasion arises.

The time may possibly come when we have reason to communicate. Meanwhile, absolute confidentiality on both sides, agreed?"

"Well, but listen—"

"Please. I detest disputes." Saygun glanced at his watch. "My, my. Time flies, eh? I really must go. Thank you for an evening I will never forget."

He rose. McCready did too and, helplessly, shook hands. Having bade goodnight, the bureaucrat, still relishing his cigar, departed. McCready stood in the hall door till the elevator bore him off, down into the city and its crowds of the anonymous.

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XVII

Steel

THIS WAS not the forest of old, but there was cover aplenty for a hunter, oh, yes, and all too much quarry. First, though, Katya had open ground to cross. She went from the battered yellow brick of the Lazur Chemical Plant on her belly. The pavement beneath her was as rough, after nearly three months of war. It felt colder against her palms than did the wind on her face. Clouds and a little snow had slightly warmed the November air.

She slipped forward a meter or so at a time, stopped, peered about, before the next advance.

Heaven rested heavy, hiding the sun behind its gray. Sometimes it let fall a thin white flurry for the gusts to scatter. On Katya's left the ground sloped to the Volga. Ice floes drifted, bumped together, churned and turned on their way down its steel-hued stream. No boats dared moved among them. Scant help could come to the Russians from the east until the river froze hard. The shore opposite seemed deserted, steppe reaching, wan with winter, on and on into Asia.

To her right, beyond the railroad tracks, Mamaev Hill rose a hundred meters aloft. Its slopes were black. Shells and boots quickly beat snow into mud. She identified two or three gun emplacements.

Silence brooded. The soldiers who had contested that height for weeks must be catching their breath or a few moments' sleep, briefly brothers in exhaustion and wretchedness, before the next combat erupted.

The stillness foreboded. It was abnormal to hear no fire, anywhere, for this long a stretch. War waited—eyes and gunsights wholly upon her?

Nonsense, she snapped to herself, and moved onward.

Nevertheless, when she came in among walls, breath shuddered from a breast cage that had begun to ache.

She rose and stood crouched. These were not truly walls, after what had happened to them. Concrete blocks still Itfted sheer, but doorless doorways and glassless windows yawned on emptiness. A heap of rubble had spilled into the street.

Rifles cracked. A submachine gun chattered. A grenade popped, another, another. Shouts ripped raw.

She couldn't make out words. The sounds were un human. Her own rifle was off her shoulder and she inside the shell of a building as die first echoes died.

Boots thudded. They hit without rhythm, and too often a shard rattled from them. Whoever drew near stumbled and staggered more than he ran. Katya risked a peek around the door jamb. From behind a ruin some twenty meters south, a man lurched into the intersection of this street and the one down which he fled. He wore a Red Army uniform and helmet, but carried no weapon. Blood smeared his right hand and dripped down that leg. He stopped. She saw how he panted. He swung his head to and fro. Almost, she called to him, but checked herself. After a few seconds he continued his weaving way in the same direction, out of her view.

She brought her rifle up.

Two more men appeared, at a lope that should soon overtake him. Squarish helmets and gray-green garb proclaimed mem Germans. Either could easily have lifted his own firearm and shot the fugitive. So their officer must have told mem to bring him back for interrogation. That looked safe, a short run through an area believed to be free of life.

It had stabbed through Katya: Let the thing happen. I mustn't compromise my mission. But she knew too well what awaited that fellow. Also, what he could tell might prove as valuable as anything she would observe.

Decision was nearly instant. Sometimes she weighed a matter for years before she settled on what to do. Sometimes she could simply wait several decades and let time wear the problem away. Yet she had not stayed alive this long by being always hesitant. At need, she leaped with the unheeding energy of youth.

She fired. A German spun on his heel and flopped

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bonelessly down. His companion yelled and threw himself prone. His rifle barked. He probably hadn't seen her, but knew at once, more or less, whence that shot had come. Quick-witted. Not for the first time, the thought stirred in Katya that maybe among the invaders was one of her kind, as full of centuries and solitude as she was.

She barely noticed the thought, afar at the back of her skull. She had pulled inside straightway after shooting. A windowframe beckoned. She closed her eyes for three breaths while she considered the geometry of what she had seen. The enemy must be there. Quick, before he moves elsewhere. She stepped to the hole and squeezed trigger even as she aimed.

The butt gave her a stiff, friendly nudge. The soldier screamed. He let go his rifle and lifted his torso on hands that spread white, helpless, upon asphalt. She had gotten him in the back. Best silence him. Those yells would call his mates. She drew a bead. His face exploded.

Extraordinary marksmanship. By far the most shots in battle went wild. Comrade Zaitsev would be proud of her. She wished the German would lie still like the first, not writhe and kick and gush blood. Well, he was quiet now.

She. hadn't time to cringe. Surety the rest understood something had gone wrong. No matter how cautious, they would find this place within minutes.

Katya dashed forth, over the rabble, up the street, past her prey. Horrible, when it was human. Of course, then it hunted you likewise. She turned left down the cross street.

The Soviet soldier had not gone far. Her ambush had been quick, while he slowed still more. In fact, he was shuffling by a wrecked tram, leaning on it. Katya wondered if he would prove such a burden that she must abandon him. She sped in pursuit. "Stop!" she cried. "I'm your help!" Her voice sounded small and hollow among the ruins, beneath die leaden sky.

He obeyed, turned around, braced himself against the metal, slumped. She drew close and halted. He was quite young, she saw, not shaven lately but with just a dark fuzz over the skin. Otherwise his face was old, pinched, white as the snowflakes that drifted about and powdered his shoulders. His eyes stared and his jaw hung slack. Shock, she

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realized. That hand of his was pretty badly mangled. A grenade, no doubt.

"Can you follow me?" she asked. "We'll have to move fast."

His left forefinger rose and wobbled in the air, as if to trace her outline. "You are a soldier,"

he mumbled. "Like me. But you are a woman."

"What of it?" Katya snapped. She took hold of his forearm and shook him. "Listen. I can't stay.

That's death. Come along if you're able. Do you understand? Do you want to live? Come!"

He shuddered. Breath went raggedly down his throat. "I . . . can . . . try."

"Good. This way." Katya shoved him around and forward. Turn right at the next comer, left at the next after that, put a maze between yourself and the enemy. This'dis-trict was smashed, like the city center toward which she aimed—snags, debris, choked lanes, masonry still fire-blackened in spots, a wilderness where you could shake your hunters. Despite lacking sun or shadows, she kept her sense of direction ... A growl resounded.

"Take cover!" Katya ordered. The youth joined her beneath a rusted metal sheet which stuck out of a vast heap of wreckage like an awning. A stench hung beneath, oozing from bricks, beams, broken glass, thick and sickly-sweet even in the chill. A shell or bomb must have made a direct hit, bringing this whole tenement down on everybody inside. Children, their mothers, their babushkas?

No, most who couldn't fight were evacuated early on. Likeliest it was soldiers who rotted here.

Any building could become a fort when defenders fought invaders street by street. Which had these been? ... It didn't matter, least of all to them.

Her companion retched. He must have recognized the smell. That was a hopeful sign. He was coming out of his daze.

The aircraft swept low above rooflessness. She had a glimpse of it, lean, swift, swastika on its tail, then it was gone. Reconnaissance, or what? Probably the pilot wouldn't have noticed them, or troubled about them if he did. But you could never tell. The fascists had strafed crowds of 304

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evacuees waiting for ferries across the river. Two Soviet soldiers were game more fair.

The throbbing receded. Katya heard no other. "Let's go," she said.

The young man accompanied her for some paces before he exclaimed weakly, "Is this right, comrade?

I think we're headed south."

"We are," she told him.

"B-but, but the enemy has that part. Our people, they're in the north end of town."

"I know." She took his elbow and hurried him onward. "I have my orders. Turn back if you wish. I doubt you'll get far. Or you may come with me if you can. If you can't, I'll have to leave you. If you make a noise, or any kind of trouble for me, I must kill you. But I do believe it's your only chance."

He clenched his usable fist. "I'll try," he whispered. "Thank you, comrade."

She wondered whether Zaitsev would thank her. This mission was .worth more lives than a single cripple's. Well, sharpshooters must rely on then* own judgment oftener than not. And supposing she did get this private back to his unit, her superiors needn't know. Unless he really could tell something worthwhile—

The street ended at Krutoy Gully. On the opposite side of the ravine, buildings were equally damaged but more high and massive than here. That was where the central city began. "We have to get across," Katya said. "No bridge. We crawl down and creep up. You go first."

He nodded, jerkily, nevertheless a nod. Stooping, he scuttled over the open space and wriggled out of sight. She had been prepared to let him draw any fire. She hadn't wanted a stalking horse, but there he was, and if he proved hopelessly clumsy she couldn't let him destroy her too. Instead, he did well enough. So he'd been rather lightly shocked, and was shaking that off with the vitality of youth.

Rifle in hand, every sense honed, she followed. Dirt gritted, leafless bushes scratched. After they started up, his strength flagged. He scrabbled, slid back a way, sank together and sobbed for air. She slung her weapon and went on all fours to his side. He gave her a desperate look. "I can't," he wheezed. "I'm sorry. Go on."

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"We're nearly there." Her left hand clasped his. "Now, work, damn you, work." She clambered backward, boot heels dug into soil, straining like a horse at a mired field gun. He set his teeth and did what he was able. It sufficed. They reached the top and found shelter by a heap of bricks.

Her tunic was dank with sweat. Wind chilled her to the bone.

"Where ... are we ... bound?" coughed from him.

"This way." They got to their feet. She herded him along, keeping them next to walls, halting at each doorway or corner to listen and peer. A couple of fighters flew sentinel well above. Their drone fell insect-faint over the desolation. She began to hear a deeper rumble, artillery. A duel somewhere out on the steppe? Mamaev remained quiet. The whole city did, it seemed, one great graveyard that waited for the thunders of doomsday.

Her destination wasn't far. That would have been madness. She would not have been sent even this deep into the German-held sector, had she not repeatedly shown she could get about unseen as well as any commando—and, she knew, those expert killers were less expendable than she. If the recommended site proved unduly dangerous and she couldn't quickly find a better,,she was to give up and make her way back to the Lazur.

From behind one of the trees that still lined a certain boulevard, she gazed across a bomb crater and two crumpled automobiles. The building she wanted did appear safe. It belonged to a row of tenement houses, slab-sided and barrack-like. Though in sorry shape, it rose above what was left of its neighbors, a full six floors. The windows were blind holes.

Katya pointed. "Yonder," she told the young man. "When I signal, get over there and inside fast."

She took her binoculars from the case hung about her neck and searched for signs of enemy. Only broken panes, smudges, pockmarks came into view. Snow whirled dry on a gust that whistled. She chopped her hand downward and led the sprint. In the empty doorway she whirled about and crouched ready to fire at anything suspicious. The snow flurry had stopped. A scrap of paper tumbled along before the wind.

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were full of gloom. On the lower landings, doors blown off hinges lay in a chaos of things and dust. Above, they remained shut. On the top floor, she tried a knob. If necessary, she would shoot out the lock, but that door creaked faintly as it yielded.

Here the dimness was less. Smashed windows admitted light as well as cold. The apartment had been fairly good, two rooms plus a kitchen alcove. To be sure, the bathroom was a flight down, shared by the tenants of three floors. Concussion had cracked plaster off lath and spread chunks and powder across furniture and threadbare carpet. Rain blowing in had made a slurry, now hardened, under the sills. Mildew speckled what was left on the walls. The stains also marked drapes, bedclothes, a sofa. Blast had acted as capriciously as usual. A Stakhanovite poster clung garish and two framed photographs were likewise unfalien: a young couple at their wedding, a white-bearded Uncle Vanya who might be the grandfather of bride or groom. Three or four others had crashed. Some strewn books and magazines moldered. A small radio lay among them. A clock had gone silent on its table. Flowers in pots were brown stalks.

Apart from utensils and the like, Katya didn't notice more personal possessions. Maybe they had been meager enough for the family to take along at evacuation. She had no wish to investigate, when she might turn up a little girl's doll or a little boy's bear. She could merely hope the owners had escaped, all of them.

She went through the rooms. People had slept hi both. The first faced approximately north, the second east. With the door open between them, she could scan a full half circle, springing from window to window. That vision covered a dozen streets in both directions, because most of the vicinity was a crumbled wasteland. Yet it had never occurred to the enemy either to occupy or to dynamite such a watchpost. Well, everybody got stupid now and then, especially in war. This time Soviet intelligence had spied a Nazi blindness.

Returning to the room of entry, she found the infantryman hunched on the sofa. He had taken off his helmet and outer coat. The sweat in his shirt was rank. (Well, Katya thought, I'm scarcely a rose garden myself. When did I

last have a proper bath? Ages ago, that night in the forest when I went to earth in a peasant's hut—) His hair was curly. A hint of color had risen in his face.

"Beware taking a chill, comrade," she warned. "We'll be here a while." She set her rifle down and unshipped her canteen. "You must need water worse yet than I do, so you first, but don't take much. Swish it around in your month sfore you swallow. It has to last us."

While he did, she squatted, took his injured hand in both hers, shook her head and clicked her tongue. "Nasty," she said. "Those bones are a mess. At least no major blood vessel was cut. I can do something for it. Hold still. This will hurt."

He caught his breath repeatedly when she cleaned and wrapped the wounds. Thereafter she gave him a piece of chocolate. "We'll share my rations too," she promised. "They're scant, but hunger is a joy set beside our real problems, no?"

The bite revived him somewhat. He managed a shaky smile. "What is your name in Heaven, you angel?"

he quavered.

She checked both the windows. Nothing, except the distant cannon fire. "Me an angel?" she replied meanwhile with a grin. "What kind of Communist are you?"

"I'm not a Party member," he said humbly. "I should have joined, my rather wanted me to, but—

Well, after the war."

She put a chair in front of him and settled down. There was no sense in constantly staring ouU

She'd hear any important movement, as quiet as things were. A glance every few minutes would serve. "What are you, then?" she asked.

"Pyotr Sergeyevitch Kulikov, private, Sixty-Second Army."

A tingle passed through her spine. She whistled softly. "Kulikov! What a perfectly splendid omen."

"Eh? Oh ... oh, yes. Kutikovo. Where Dmitri Donskoi smote the Mongols." He sighed. "But that was

... six hundred years ago, almost."

"True." I remember how we rejoiced when the news reached our village. "And we aren't supposed to believe in omens any longer, are we?" She leaned forward, interested. "So you know the exact date of that battle, do you?" Even

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now, exhausted, in pain, penned up to wait for possible death. "You sound educated."

"My family in Moscow is. I hope someday to become a professor of classics." He tried to straighten. His voice took on a ghost of resonance. "But who and what are you, my rescuer?"

"Ekaterina Borisovna Tazurina." The latest of my names, my serf-created identities.

"A woman soldier—"

"We exist, you know." She mastered her annoyance. "I was a partisan before the fighting swept me here. Then they put me in uniform—not that mat's likely to make any difference if the Germans catch me—and when I'd passed Lieutenant Zaitsev's course, they raised me to sergeant because a sharpshooter needs some freedom of action."

Pyotr's eyes widened. They had heard about Zaitsev from end to end of the Soviet Union. "This must be a special mission for you, not just sniping."

Katya nodded. "Word came from Pavlov's House. Do you know what I mean?"

"Of course. A building hereabouts, right in among the Germans, that Sergeant Pavlov and a few heroes have held since—the end of September, hasn't it been?"

She forgave him repeating the obvious. He was hurt, bewildered, and oh, how young. "They maintain communication with us," she explained. "Certain things they've noticed give reason to believe the enemy plans a major thrust into our end of town. No, I wasn't told what things, no need for me to hear, but I was sent to watch from this point and report whatever I see."

"And you happened to pass by when— Incredible luck for me." Tears welled. "But my poor friends."

"What happened?"

"Our squad went on patrol. My unit's currently in a block of detached houses well south of Mamaev.

We didn't expect trouble, as quiet as it's gotten." Pyotr drew an uneven breath. "But all at once it was shooting and screaming and— My comrades dropped, right and left. I think I was the last one alive after ... a few minutes. And with this hand. What could I do but run?"

"How many Germans? Where did they come from? How were they equipped?"

"I c-couldn't tell. Everything went too fast." He sank his face into his left palm and shuddered.

"Too terrible."

She gnawed her lip, angry. "If you're with the Sixty-Second, you've had months of combat experience. The enemy drove you back from—Ostrov, was it? All the way across the plain to here.

And still you couldn't pay attention to what was going on around you."

He braced himself. "I can, can try to remember."

"That's better. Take your time. Unless something dislodges us first, we'll be sitting where we are till we've seen what headquarters ought to know about. Whatever that may be."

She checked the windows, came back, sat down again before him, took his good hand. Now that he was out of immediate danger, nature wanted him to sleep and sleep and sleep, but that couldn't be-allowed. What he had suffered wasn't overpoweringly severe, he was young and healthy, and when she spoke soothingly she saw how her femaleness helped rouse him.

Fragment by fragment, a half-coherent story emerged. It appeared the Germans had been reconnoitering. Their force was small, but superior to the Russian squad. Knowing themselves to be in hostile territory, they had kept totally alert and seen an opportunity to ambush Pyotr's group.

Yes, clearly they wanted prisoners to take back. Katya knew a grim hope that he was in fact the single survivor.

A scouting mission was a strong indication of a major attack hi the works. She wondered if she ought to consider that this information fulfilled her task, and return with it at once. Of course, when the squad failed to report, the officer who dispatched it would guess the truth; but that might not be for a considerable time. No, probably the story wasn't worth as much as tile possibility of her gaining more important knowledge here.

Send Pyotr? If he didn't make it, the Red Army wouldn't have lost much. Unless he blundered into captivity. Could he hold out a while under torture, or would his broken body betray him into betraying her? It wasn't a chance she wanted to take. Nor was it fair to him.

Helping him summon forth what his whole being cried out to forget—that wrought a curious intimacy.

In the end,

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while they shared water and bread, he asked shyly, "Are you from hereabouts, Katya Borisovna?"

"No. Far to the southwest," she answered.

"I thought so. You speak excellent Russian, but the accent— Though it isn't quite Little Russian either, I think."

"You've a sharp ear." Impulse seized her. Why not? It was no secret. "I'm a Kazak."

He started. Water spluttered from his lips. He wiped them, a clumsy, shaken gesture, and said, "A Cossack? But you, you're well educated yourself, I can hear that, and—"

She laughed. "Come, now. We're not a race of horse barbarians."

"I know—"

"Our schooling is actually better than average. Or used to be." The ray of mirth vanished behind winter clouds. "Before the Revolution, most of us were fanners, fishers, mer-"chants, traders who went far into Siberia. We did have our special institutions, yes, our special ways." Low: "Our kind of freedom."

That was why I drifted toward them after I ceased teaching embroidery at the cloister school in Kiev. That is why I have been with them and of them, almost from their beginnings, these four hundred years. A scrambling together of folk from Europe and Asia, down along the great rivers and over the unbounded steppes of the South, armed against Tatar and Turk, presently carrying war to those ancient foes. But mainly we were smallholders, we were a free people. Yes, women also, not as free as men but vastly more than they had come to be everywhere else. I was always a person in my own right, possessed of my own rights, and it was never very hard to start a new life in another tribe when I had been too long in one.

"I know. But— Forgive me," Pyotr blurted. "Here you are, a Soviet soldier, a patriot. I heard that, well, that Cossacks have gone over to the fascists wholesale.'*

"Some did," Katya admitted starkly. "Not most. Believe me, not most. Not after what we saw."

At first we had no knowledge. The commissars told us to flee. We stayed fast. They pleaded with us. They told us what horror Hitler wreaks wherever his hordes go. "Your newest lie," we jeered.

Then the German tanks rolled over our horizon, and we learned that for once the commissars had spoken truth. It didn't happen only to us, either. The war threw me together with people from the whole Soviet Ukraine, not Cossacks, ordinary Little Russians, little people driven to such despair that they fight side by side with the Communists.

Even so, yes, true, thousands and thousands of men have joined the Germans as workers or soldiers.

They see them as liberators.

"After all," she went on hastily, "it's in our tradition to resist invaders and rise against tyrants."

The Lithuanians were far away, they mostly left us alone and were content with the name of overlords. But the Polish kings goaded us into revolt, over and over. Mazeppa welcomed the Great Russians in and was made a prince of the Ukraine, but soon he found himself in league with the Swedes, hoping they might set us free. We finally made our peace with the Tsars, their yoke was not unbearably heavy any more; but later the Bolsheviks took power.

Pyotr frowned. "I've read about those Cossack rebellions."

Katya winced. Three centuries fell from her, and she stood again in her village when men—neighbors, friends, two sons of hers—galloped in after riding with Chmielnicki and shouted their boasts. Every Catholic or Uniate priest they or the serfs caught, they hanged in front of his altar alongside a pig and a Jew. "Barbaric times," she said. "The Germans have no such excuse."

"And the traitors have less yet."

Traitors? Vasili the gentle blacksmith, Stefan the laugh-terful, Fyodor the fair who was a grandson of hers and didn't know it— How many millions of dead there they seeking to avenge? The forgotten ones, the obliterated ones, but she remembered, she could still see starvation shrivel the flesh and dim the eyes, children of hers had died in her arms; Stalin's creatures shot her man Mikhail, whom she loved as much as the ageless can love any mortal, shot him down like a dog when he tried to take for his family some of the grain they were shipping out in cram-full freight trains; he was lucky, though, he didn't go on another kind of train, off to Siberia; she had met a few, a few, who came back; they had no teeth and spoke very little and worked 312

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like machines; and always you went in fear. Katya could not hold herself in. She must cry, "They had their reasons!"

Pyotr gaped at her. "What?" He rumbled through his mind. "Well, yes, kulaks."

"Free farmers, whose land that they had from then- fathers was torn from them, and they herded onto kolkhozes like slaves." Promptly: "That was how they felt, you understand."

"I don't mean the honest peasants," he said. "I mean the kulaks, the rich landowners."

"I never met any, and I traveled rather widely. Some were prosperous, yes, because they farmed wisely and worked hard."

"Well, I—I don't want to offend you, Katya, you of all people, but you can't have traveled as much as you think. It was before your time, anyway." Pyotr shook his head. "No doubt many of them meant well. But the old capitalist regime had blinded them. They resisted, they defied the law."

"Until they were starved to death."

"Ah, yes, the famine. A tragic . . . accident?" He ventured a smile. "We're not supposed to call it an act of God."

"I said—No matter." I said they were starved to death. The harvests never failed. The state simply took everything from us. That brought us at last to submission. "I only wanted to say that many Ukrainians feel they have a grievance." They never quite gave up hope. In their hearts., they resist yet.

Indignation flashed. "They are stupid!"

Katya sighed. "They certainly made a bad mistake, those who went over to the Nazis."

God help me, I might have myself. If Hitler had been willing, no, if he had been able to treat us as human beings, he would have had us all. This day he would hold Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk; Stalin would cower among his gulags in the farthest comer of Siberia, or be a refugee with the Americans. But no, the fascists burned, raped, slew, tortured, they dashed out the brains of babies and laughed while they machine-gunned children, women, the old, the unarmed, they bayoneted for sport, they racked prisoners apart or doused them with gasoline and set them alight, oh, it sickens me to think of them in holy Kiev!

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"You knew what was right, and did it," Pyotr said softly. "You are braver than I."

She wondered if fear of the NKVD had kept him from deserting. She had seen the corpses the Green Hats left along the roads by the thousands, for a warning;

"What made you join the partisans?" he asked.

"The Germans occupied our village. They tried to recruit men from among us, and killed those who refused. My husband refused."

"Katya, Katya!"

"Luckily, we were newly married and had no children." I was rather newly arrived there, bearing a fresh name. That has grown difficult under the Communists. I have to search out slovenly officials. But they are common enough. Poor Ilya. He was so glad, so proud of his bride. We could have been happy together for as long as nature allowed.

"Luckily?" Pyotr knuckled fresh tears. "Regardless, you were very brave."

"I am used to looking after myself."

"As young as you are?" he marveled.

She couldn't help smiling. "I'm older than I look." Rising: "Time for another survey."

"Why don't we each take a window?" he suggested. "We could watch almost without a*break. I feel much better. Thanks to you," he ended adoringly.

"Well, we could—" Thunder grumbled. "Hold! Artillery! Stay where you are."

She sped to the north room. Early winter dusk was falling, the wreckage gone vague among shadows, but Mamaev still bulked clear against the sky. Fire flickered there. The crashing waxed, widely about. "Our half-truce is over," she muttered when she came back to look east. "The big guns are busy."

He stood at the middle of the floor, his features hard to see in the quickly thickening murk but his voice uncertain. "Did the enemy begin it?"

Katya nodded. "I think so. The start of whatever they have planned. Now we earn our pay, I hope."

"Really?" The question trembled.

"If we can get some idea of what is going on. How I wish we had a moon tonight." She chuckled dryly. "But I

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wouldn't expect the Germans to pick their weather to oblige us. Keep quiet."

She shuttled between windows. Dark deepened. Thin snow on untrafficked streets was slightly helpful to eyes and night glasses. The cannonade mounted.

Abruptly breath hissed between her teeth. She risked leaning out for a better view. Cold fell around her like a cloak.

"What is it?" Pyotr tried to whisper.

"Hush, I told you!" She strained to be sure. Black blots on the next street over from this, headed straight north. . . . A hunter could interpret traces for a soldier. Those were perhaps a hundred men, afoot, therefore infantry, but they dragged several carte on which rested faintly sheening shapes that must be mortars . . .

They passed. She lowered her glasses and groped through the apartment till she found Pyotr. He had sat down, maybe in his weariness he had fallen asleep, but he sprang to his feet when she touched him.

Tautness keened within her. "Germans bound for Kratoy Gully," she said into his ear. "Got to be, on that route. If they wanted to go fight near the hill, they'd1 be headed westerly and I might never have seen them."

"What ... do they intend?"

"I don't know, but I can guess. It's surely part of a general offensive against our sector. The cannon—and maybe armor, attacking from the side—those should hold our people's attention.

Meanwhile yonder detachment establishes itself in the ravine. It has the makings of a strongpoint.

Our headquarters was in Tsaritsa Gorge, farther south, till the Germans took it, at heavy cost. If they take and hold the Kratoy, why, troops can scramble straight through it, or their engineers might throw a new bridge across."

"Do you mean we could lose the whole city?"

"Oh, that alone won't do it." We have our orders, directly from Stalin. Here, at this place he renamed in his own honor, here we stand. We die if need be, but the enemy shall not pass one centimeter beyond us. "Every little thing counts, though. It would surely cost us hundreds of lives. This is what I came for. Now I go back and tell."

She felt him shiver. "We go!"

A dead man's hand clenched around her throat. She swal-

lowed twice before she could say: "Not together. It's too important. This whole district will be aswarm. I'll have all I can do to get through alive, and I'm experienced. You must try by yourself. Wait here till—tomorrow night?—till it looks safer."

Between her hands, he straightened. "No. My comrades are fighting. I ran away once. Not again."

"What use will you be, with that wound of yours?"

"I can carry ammunition. Or—Katya, you might not make it. I might, by sheer luck, and let them know." He laughed, or sobbed. "A tiny, tiny chance, but who can say for certain?"

"Oh, God. You idiot."

"Every little thing counts, you said."

Yes, each scrap thrown into the furnace, it does become part of the steel. "I mustn't delay, Pyotr. Give me, well, half an hour till you start, so I can get clear. Count to, uh—"

"I know some old songs and about how long they take. I'll sing them in my head. While I think of you, Katya."

"Here." She undid objects and tossed them on the sofa. "Food, water. You'll need strength. No, I insist; I'm not injured. God keep you, lad, you—you Russian."

"We'll meet again. Won't we1? Say we will!"

Instead, she cast her arms about him and laid her mouth on his. Just for a minute. Just for a memory.

She stepped back. He stood. His breath went like flaws of wind in the dark (springtime wind?) amidst the hammering of the guns. "Do be careful," she said. Taking up her rifle, she felt her way to the door.

And down the stairs. And into the streets.

Tanks roared somewhere on her left. Would the Germans mount a night attack? Likelier a feint. But she was no strategist, merely a sharpshooter. Flashes etched skeletal buildings against a reddened sky. She felt the racket through her bootsoles. Hers was simply to deliver a message.

Or to survive? What had she to do with the cruel follies of mortals? Why was she here?

"Well, you see, Pyotr, dear, I am a Russian too."

A park, a piece of openness between these jagged walls, glimmered white before her. A solitary tree was left, the rest were stumps and splinters around a crater. She skirted 316

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it, keeping to shadows. Likewise would she skirt the ravine, and be most cautious when she came to the railroad tracks that led to the Lazur. She must arrive with her word.

She doubted Pyotr would. Well, if not, he'd stop a bullet or two that might otherwise have gone into somebody more effective. If somehow he kept alive—Maria of the mercies, let him, help him!—of course they'd never see each other, or hear, or anything. Suppose two grams of dust are whirled together for a moment when a storm runs over the steppe. Will it bring them back?

Certainly never her to him. She would be changing identities again before long. Whenever the Four Horsemen rode across the world, they opened easy ways for doing that. She could not have stayed much more with the Cossacks anyhow.

But first—

The guns boomed louder. Given the news she bore, the Soviet artillery would take aim at Kratoy Gully. It would blast the Germans out of there before they could dig in. That would be that, while the war went on.

Work, you guns. Bring down the wrath of Dazhbog and Perun, of St. Yuri the dragonslayer and St.

Alexander Nev-sky. Here we stand. The thing that bestrides all Europe shall come no farther than us. If we fight in the name of a monster, that makes no difference. And we don't really. Once this Stalingrad was Tsaritsyn. It can become something else someday in the future. But good for now to think that we hold fast in the City of Steel.

We will endure, and prevail, and abide the day of our freedom.

XVIH

judgment Day

1

AT FIRST it was as if half a century had never been. Snow-peaks gleamed against unutterable blue; in this clarity they seemed almost near enough to touch, though any of them might be fifty miles remote. A road that was little more than a track rose, fell, writhed through a darkness of deodars and gnarly wild fruit trees where langurs scampered. Then the forest opened onto pasture strewn with boulders, intensely green after the rains. Sheep and cattle grazed among stone threshing-floors. Tiny terraces carved from the valley walls bore maize, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, potatoes. A westering sun breathed a ghost of purple across the heights that looked into it, while across from them shadows lengthened, intricate over the wrinkles of the land. The air smelled of grass and glaciers.

As his mule brought him nearer the village, Wanderer began to see how much it had in fact changed.

It had grown. Most of the new houses were not earth-roofed stone but timber, two or three stories high, with carved and painted galleries; it was curious to find something so tike Swiss chalets here on the knees of the Himalayas. Wires ran from a former dwelling which must house a generator, and the fuel tanks outside it also supplied a battered truck. A satellite receiver dish quite likely served more than a single communal television set. The folk were still Bhutias, essentially Tibetan stock, and men still generally wore the traditional long woolen coat, women the sleeved cloak; but he spied occasional sneakers or blue jeans, and he wondered how 318

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many people held by the mingled Buddhism, Hinduism, and animism that had been the faith of their fathers.

Herders and workers in the fields swarmed to meet him, soon joined by those who had been at home.

Excitement capered and shouted. Any visit from outside was an event, and this newcomer was extraordinary. His two attendants were simply Gurkhas, familiar enough, guides to manage the animals and serve his needs, but he himself rode altogether strange, clad like a white man but broad of face and bronze of skin, his nose jutting yet his hair and eyes and cheekbones akin to theirs.

One woman, shriveled #nd toothless with age, made an abrupt sign against evil and scuttled from the crowd into a house. One man, equally old, drew a sharp breath before he bowed very low. They remembered his earlier call on them, Wanderer knew—when they were children and he just the same as today.

His senior Gurkha spoke with another woman, large and strong, who must be something like the mayor. She in turn addressed the villagers. A sort of calm descended. They eddied around the party, silent or talking in undertones, while it made its way through the lanes to a house at the northern edge of the settlement.

This seemed much as it had been. It remained the biggest, of stone and wood, an alien grace to its lines. Glass shone in the windows. Graveled paths twisted about the shrubs, dwarf trees, bamboo, and stones of a small, exquisite garden at the rear. The servants who emerged were of a new generation, but the man and woman who trod onto the verandah and waited were not.

Wanderer dismounted. Slowly, under awed stares and a hush, he walked to the steps and up. He bowed before the two, and they returned the gesture with equal gravity.

"Welcome," said the man, and "Oh, boundlessly welcome!" the woman. He was Chinese, powerfully built, rather flat of countenance and without guile in it. She was Japanese, well-formed in a petite fashion, cat-alert beneath the schooled serenity. Both wore robes, simple though of the best material.

They had used Nepati, of which Wanderer had but a few words. "Thank you," he replied in Mandarin Chinese. "I

have returned as I promised." He smiled. "This time I took the trouble to learn a language you understand."

"Fifty years," the woman breathed, using that tongue. "We could not be sure, we could only wait and wonder,"

"At last, at last," the man said as shakily. He raised his voice in the tribal dialect. "I told them we will hold a feast of rejoicing tomorrow," he explained. "Our servants will see to your men. Please come inside where we can be alone and honor you rightfully, sir—uh—"

"John Wanderer," the American supplied.

"Why, that is what you called yourself before," the woman said.

Wanderer shrugged. "What difference, after so long and in a foreign country? I like the name, take it again and again, and otherwise usually a version of it. Who are you being?"

"What does that matter any more?" It came as a bass cry from the man's throat. "We are what we are, together for always."

The room where they conferred was gracious, the furniture Chinese, a variety of objects on shelves. The pair had adventured widely before they raised up this home. That was in 1810, as nearly as Wanderer could figure from the calendar they employed. Subsequently they had absented themselves from time to time for years on end, gone to oversee the businesses that kept them prosperous, brought souvenirs back. Those included books; Tu Shan found his diversion mainly in handicrafts, but Asagao was quite a reader.

In the presence of their fellow immortal, they chose to recall those ancient names. It was as if they snatched for a handhold, now when once more their world was falling to pieces.

Nevertheless joy overrode uneasiness. "We hoped so, hoped you really were what you seemed to be,"

Asagao said. "How we hoped. More than an end to loneliness. Others like us, why, that gives meaning to these lives of ours. Does it not?"

"I can't say," Wanderer replied. "Besides you, my friend and I know of only one who is certainly alive, and he refuses to associate himself with us. We may be mere freaks." From 320

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the end table next his chair he lifted a cup and took a sip of the pungent local chong, followed by a mouthful of tea. They comforted.

"Surely we are on earth for a reason, however mysterious," Asagao insisted. "At least, Tu Shan and I have tried to serve some purpose beyond surviving."

"How did you find us, fifty years ago?" the man asked in his pragmatic way.

No real conversation had been possible then, when everything passed through an interpreter who had better not realize what meaning lay behind the words he rendered. Wanderer could just hint.

Presently he thought these two had caught his intent and were doing likewise. They made it clear that they had no wish to depart, nor did they invite him to prolong his stay. Yet they were abundantly courteous, and when he risked his guide's astonishment and suggested that he return in fifty years, their answer throbbed with eagerness. Today they all knew, past any doubt, what they were.

"I was always restless, never fond of cities, for I began as a wild plainsman," Wanderer related.

"After the first World War I set off around the world. My friend Hanno—he uses different identities, but between us he is Hanno—he had grown rich in America and gave me ample money, hoping I might come on the track of somebody like us. Nepal was not easy to reach or enter in those days, but I guessed that on that account it could harbor such persons. In Katmandu I caught rumors of a couple in the uplands who lived a kind of baronial existence among tribespeople whose benefactors and teachers they were. In spite of treating themselves well, they were considered holy. The story went that when they grew old they left on pilgrimage, and their son and his wife reappeared hi their place. Imagine how such a tale drew me."

Asagao laughed. "Things were never so simple, of course," she said. "Our people aren't fools. They keep up the fiction about us because that is plainly what we want, but they know quite well that the same two come back to them. They don't fear or envy us, their nature is to accept various lots in life. To them, yes, we are sacred and full of power, but we are also their friends. We sought long and far to find ourselves a home like this."

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"Besides," Tu Shan grunted, "they don't care to be overrun by worshippers, curiosity seekers, and the government and its tax collectors. At that, we have to deal with several visitors a year; more than that lately. Stories do get about. Only our distance from everything keeps them faint enough to protect us."

Wanderer nodded. "I would probably have ignored them if I hadn't been on the lookout. But nevertheless the modern world seems to be moving in."

"We cannot forbear to bring what is good," Asagao murmured. "Literacy, medicine, awareness, whatever lightens these hard lives without corrupting them too much."

Wanderer Weakened. "It would have happened anyway, wouldn't it? You are losing control, aren't you?"

"I said we get more strangers all the time," Tu Shan snapped. "And inspectors from the king. Such hardly ever sought us out before. Nor did they ask as many questions."

"We know the country is changing, the whole world is in upheaval," Asagao sighed. "Dear has this place been to us, but we understand that we must eventually disappear from it forever."

"Or else become known for what you are," Wanderer agreed low. "Do you wish that? If so, tell me.

I'll leave tomorrow, and in America change my name." He left unspoken that he had not uttered any modern name of Hanno's.

"We have thought of it," Tu Shan admitted. "Sometimes in the past we made no pretense." He paused.

"But that was always among simple countryfolk, and we could always withdraw and hide again when danger threatened. I am not sure we can do that any longer."

"You cannot, once you are found out. They will track you down if you try, for they have many means these days to hunt men. Afterward you will be slaves, no doubt well-housed and well-fed but never set free, animals for them to study."

"Is it really that bad?"

"I fear it is," Asagao said. To Wanderer: "We have spoken much about it, Tu Shan and I. The king of Nepal might treat us kindly, as his pet animals, but what if the Red Chinese or the Russians demand our persons?"

"At least keep your freedom," Wanderer urged. "You 322

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can proclaim yourselves when the times look auspicious to you, but I do not think they are yet, and once you have done so, there will be no more choices."

"Do you mean for us to go away with you?"

"I hope you will, or at any rate follow me soon. Hanno will provide for you—whatever you need that is in his power to get, and his power is great."

"We could go," she said slowly. "As I told you, we know how much people move about these days, and news leaps across thousands of miles. We have seen foreigners pass by and felt how they wondered about us. Even more do we feel the growing presence of the government. So in the last few decades we have begun making ready, as we did over and over in the past. We have taken care to have no children throughout that time. Our last living ones are long since settled down—we always reared them elsewhere—and believe us dead. We never enlightened them about us." She winced. "That would have hurt too much."

"Then the children born to two immortals are themselves mortal?" Wanderer whispered. She nodded.

He shook his head, in pain of his own. "Well, Hanno and I often speculated about that."

"I hate to go," Tu Shan said heavily.

"Go someday we must," Asagao answered. "We knew that from the start. Now finally we can fly straight to shelter, companionship, help. The sooner the better."

He shifted in his chair. "I still have things to do. Our villagers will miss us, and we will miss them."

"Always have we lost to death all those we loved. Let us instead remember these as they are today, alive. Let their memory of us fade gently into a legend that nobody else believes."

The windows were turning blue with dusk.

CORINNE MACANDAL, Mama-lo of the Unity and known to it as the daughter of its founder Laurace, halted her pacing when Rosa Donau entered. For a space the two women stood as if in confrontation.

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glass or silver. Silence weighted the air, somehow made heavier by an undertone of traffic on the street outside.

After a moment Rosa said unsurely, "I'm sorry to be this late. I was out for hours. Is this a bad time? Your message on my machine was that I should come right away, without calling back."

"No, you did well," Corinne told her.

"What's the matter? You look all tensed up."

"I am. Come." The black woman led the white into the adjoining chamber, where nobody dared enter unbidden. She ignored the arcane objects that crowded it and went directly to the coffee table.

Rosa turned as usual to face the altar and touched brow, lips, breast. She had spent too many centuries appealing to saints and appeasing demons to be certain that no real power dwelt in things called holy.

Corinne picked up a magazine that lay open on the table. She handed it to the other and pointed.

"Read that," she ordered.

Also here, the light was dim. The journal was one of respectable popular scholarship, like Smithsonian or National Geographic, Corinne indicated an advertisement near the back. Under the heading LONGEVITY STUDIES stood four column inches of text. The format was staid, the words discreet; most persons who noticed would find them dry, of interest to none except specialists.

They leaped at Rosa: "—very long-lived individuals in excellent health . . . young but prospectively long-lived are of similar interest.... scientific studies . . . recollections of history as actually experienced . . ."

Her hands began to shake. "Not again," broke from her.

Corinne started, recovered, gave her a searching look, but asked merely, "What do you make of it?"

Rosa dropped the magazine and stared down at its cover. "Probably nothing," she mumbled. "I mean, just what it says, somebody wants to, uh, examine and talk with folks who've gotten really old, or who might."

"How old?"

Rosa lifted her glance. "I tell you, it can't have anything to do with us!" she shrilled. "There are scientists trying to get a handle on what aging is, you know?"

Corinne shook her head. "The way this is phrased, somehow it doesn't quite fit that," she said slowly. "And how

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better might immortals try to get in touch with others like them?"

"It could be a scam. Or a trap." Desperation chattered. "Don't write to that box number, Laurace.

Don't. We've got too much to lose."

"Or to gain? What are you afraid of?"

"What could happen to us. And our work, everything we're doing." Rosa aimed a jerky gesture at the curtained windows. "The Unity'11 fall apart without us. What'll become of everybody that trusts us?"

Corinne's gaze went in the same direction, as if it pierced through to the swamp of horrible decay in which this house stood like an island. "I'm not sure we're doing much of anything any longer."

"We are, we are. We're saving some, at least. If we—tell anybody what we are—that's the end.

Nothing will ever be the same again."

Corinne swung her vision back to Rosa, tautened, and pounced. "You've seen something like this already, haven't you?"

"No." The Syrian made fending motions. "I mean, well—"

"It escaped you. It's written on you. Neither of us has stayed alive without getting pretty good at body language. Speak, or by God, I—I will contact this Willock fellow."

Rosa shuddered. Resistance collapsed. She swiped at tears. "I'm sorry. Yeah, yes, I did. Had almost forgotten, it was so long ago. Nothing more came of it, so I thought there was nothing to it. Till now."

"When? Where?"

"In the papers, then. I don't remember the date, but it was shortly before the war, World War Two, that is."

"About fifty years ago. Maybe exactly fifty years? Go on."

"Well, it was an ad sort of like this. Not just the same, but, well, I wondered."

"And you kept silent? You never called it to my attention."

"I was scared!" Rosa screamed. "Like I am now!" She stumbled to a chair, sank onto its zebra hide, and wept.

After a little while Corinne went to her, bent down, laid arms about the bowed shoulders and cheek close to cheek.

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"I understand, Aliyat, dear," she murmured. "You hadn't been with me but a few short years. You had finally, barely won to something good, something hopeful. After those dreadful centuries—yes, of course you were terrified of any change, and the change here would have been unforeseeable. Oh, I forgive you. You may even have been right."

She straightened. "Still," she said most softly, "that fifty-year interval is strong evidence for another immortal. Isn't it? He or she wouldn't risk a continuous campaign. The short-lived would be too likely to start wondering. Our kind has time, and learns patience."

"How do you know what they're like?" Rosa pleaded. "They could be bad. I told you how I met two men and— well, we didn't get along. If they're still alive, if they're behind this, I wouldn't put anything past them."

Corinne's tone parched. "I gather you made enemies of them. You had better pull yourself together and"explain, at long last, what did happen." She waved a hand. "Not today, as overwrought as you are. And ... yes, we must certainly stay cautious. I'll see what I can discover about Mr. Willock before deciding whether to contact him—and how, if I do."

She gentled again: "Meanwhile, don't worry too much, dear. We have resources. I haven't told you in any detail. Secrecy does become a habit* doesn't it? Besides, this kind of thing isn't your metier. But over the years I've developed my own connections, including a few persons in key official positions." The voice clanged. "We won't stay passive. We're not alone any more? Then we've got to claim our share in the world, or else make ready to defend what is ours."

THE TAX examiner ruffled several sheets of paper and frowned across his desk. "I think we ought to see your client in person," he said.

, "I believed I,mentioned to you, Mr. Tomek is vacationing abroad," Hanno replied with studied edginess. "I've shown you my power of attorney in this matter."

"Yes, yes. However. Naturally, you may accompany him, Mr. Levine, if he wants legal counsel at his side."

"Why? Have you any reason to suspect wrongdoing? I

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assure you, each detail in each one of his enterprises is in order. Haven't I been able to answer every single question you've put, these past two hours?"

"We have barely begun, Mr. Levine. I have never seen so complicated a web of transactions and interlocking arrangements."

"Go ahead and trace them out. If you turn up anything unlawful, I'll be totally surprised, but I'll be on call." Hanno drew breath. "Mr. Tomek is an old man. He's earned a long rest and as much pleasure as is possible at his age. I don't think you can make any case for calling him in, and if you try, I intend to protest formally, as high up the ladder as necessary." He left implied: Your superiors won't thank you for that.

Nasty young corporation mercenary, said the examiner's attitude, before he sagged a bit and his gray head bent. Fleetingly, Hanno pitied him. What a hell of a way to have spent the few worthwhile decades nature doled out, harassing people in their business and always with paper, never with more than a ghost of whatever blood-joy stirred in village busybody, religious inquisitor, state secret policeman.

Hanno dismissed the feeling: He's making me waste this afternoon, and yes, doubtless the dreariness has just started. He calculated his conciliation. "No offense. You have your duty to do. And you'll find us entirely cooperative. But—" try for a laugh— "I guarantee you won't make wages."

The auditor smiled sourly. "I admit you've given me what we need to conduct a preliminary check.

You understand, don't you, we accuse nobody. It would be easy to make honest mistakes in this, uh, cat's cradle."

"Mr. Tomek's staff keeps close track, you know. Now if you have no further need of me today, perhaps I should leave you to your work."

He ought to be calmer, inside as well as outside, Hanno thought when he left. There was nothing worse to fear than a dismal nuisance, because Charles Tomek's affairs were in truth defensible.

Every last one of the many steps by which a gross income of millions became a taxable income of some hundred thousands, was legal. Let IRS try its meanest. Not only governments could use computers. Human beings could.

And Washington had no state income tax yet. That had

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been one strong reason among many for moving to Seattle. For that matter, he hadn't really shot the afternoon. Thinking he might, he had made no other commitments; much of die long summer day remained for him to enjoy.

Nevertheless the session rankled. He knew why. I've been spoiled, he thought. Once this was a free country. Oh, I always knew that couldn't last, that here too things were bound to grind back to the norm—masters and serfs, whatever names they go by. And so far we continue happier than most of the world ever was. But damn, modern democracy has the technology to regiment us beyond anything Caesar, Torquemada, Suleyman, or Louis XIV dared dream of.

He sighed, standing in the elevator, suppressing the wish for a smoke although he was alone. Quite apart from the laws that multiplied around him tike bacteria, he owed consideration to the lungs of poor, vulnerable mortals. Indeed, be hadn't brought his tax liability down as far as he could have. A man who lived in a country ought to contribute his fair share to its maintenance and defense. Everything else was extortion.

John Wanderer disagrees, Hanno reflected. He speaks of human needs, threatened biosphere, scientific mysteries, and says it's romanticism to suppose private enterprise can cope with them all. No doubt he's right to some extent. But where do you draw the line?

Maybe I've been around too long, maybe it's prejudiced me. But I remember, for example, those glorious public works that government gave to Egypt, century after century, and how they benefitted the people—pyramids, statues of Rameses II, grain tribute to Rome, Aswan Dam. I remember small shops I've closed, men and women thrown out of jobs, because the regulations and required record-keeping changed them to losing propositions.

He came forth into downtown. A wind, strong and cold, thrust odors of salt water through automobile stench. Sunlight spilled from heaven. Crowds bustled. A street musician fiddled a tune he liked, to judge by his stance and his face. The wind flapped the skirts of a particularly delicious girl, as brave a sight as Old Glory on her staff above one building. The vitality caught at Hanno, blew the darkness out of him.

For a minute, practicality lingered. He must consider seriously, and soon, phasing out Charles Tomek. Death and

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cremation abroad, widower, childless, assets willed to various individuals and certain foundations. ... In due course Toraek's pet lawyer had better move away, drop out of sight. That would be much simpler to arrange; hundreds or thousands of men hi the United States must bear the name Joseph Levine . . . And the dozen additional identities in four different countries, ranging from magazine publisher to day laborer, yes, they ail needed attention. Those which he had created as boltholes, mere camouflage, against a day of need, probably remained safe. Others, though, were for diversification, so he could be active, carry out his undertakings and investments, without making any of them unduly noticeable; and by now some of them, such as Tannahill, were becoming so. How long could he keep up the dance?

How long did he actually wish to? He well understood that his resentment of the modem state sprang in large part from its erosion of privacy; and privacy, like liberty, was a pretty new and fragile idea. Gods damn it, he was a seaman, he wanted a deck again under his feet. But for most of the twentieth century,he had only been able to operate, if he would keep his secret, in offices, by mail and wire and telephone and computer, chasing paper profits, hardly better off—except for his yachts, women, feasts, luxuries, travels, and the hunt that was his ultimate purpose in life—hardly better off than that poor publican, his enemy.

To what end? Wealth? It was a Phoenician's way to strength. But how much strength would he ever find use for? No amount of money would stave off a nuclear warhead. At best, it would buy refuge for him and his, and the means to start over once the ashes had settled. For that, a million or two dollars were ample. Meanwhile, why not shut down his businesses hi the course of the next ten or a dozen years, then take a holiday for whatever time this civilization hung together? Didn't he deserve it?

Did his comrades want that, though? They were so earnest hi their different ways, those three.

And, of course, any day his renewed search might turn up others. Or anything else might happen.

The wind whooped. Suddenly Hanno laughed aloud with it. He ignored the stares he got. Maybe living through history had made him a touch paranoid. Yet he had also learned from it that every hour of freedom was a precious

gift, to be savored in fullness and stored away where thieves could not break in and steal. Here half a beautiful afternoon and a whole evening had fallen into his hands. What to do with them?

A drink in the revolving bar on the Space Needle? The view of mountains and water was incomparable, and Lord knew 'when the next clear day would happen along. No. This past interview had driven him too much into himself. He desired companionship. Natalia was still at work, pridefully and wisely declining to let nun support her. Tu Shan and Asagao were afar in Idaho, John Wanderer in the Olympics on one of his backpacking trips. He could drop into, say, Ernmett Watson's for a beer and some oysters and general friendliness—no, the danger of meeting a self-appointed poet was too great. Jokes aside, he didn't feel like chitchat with somebody he'd never see again.

That left a single possibility; and he hadn't visited Gian-notti's lab for quite a spell. Nothing spectacular could have happened there or he'd have been notified, but it was always interesting to get a personal progress report.

By the time of that decision, Hanno had reached the lot where he left the Buick registered to Joe Levine. He considered driving straight to his destination. Surely no one had put a tail on him.

But accidents could happen, and sometimes did. Immortality made caution a habit. Moreover, he intended to end up with Natalia. Therefore he bucked through traffic to Levine's place near the International District. It had parking of its own. In the apartment he opened a concealed safe and exchanged Levine's assorted identification cards for Robert Cauldwell's. A taxi brought him to a public garage where Cauldwell rented a space. Entering the Mitsubishi that waited, he returned to the streets.

He liked this tightly purring machine much better. Damn, it seemed only yesterday that Detroit was making the best cars for their price on earth.

His goal was a plain brick building, a converted warehouse, in a tight-industry section between Green Lake and the University campus. A brass plate on its door read RUFUS MEMORIAL INSTITUTE.

Those who asked were told that Mr. Rufus had been a friend of Mr. Cauldwell, the shipowner who endowed this laboratory for fundamental biological science. That satisfied their curiosity. The 330

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work being done interested them much more, emphasizing as it did molecular cytology and the effort to discover what made living beings grow old.

It had been a plausible way for Cauldwell to dispose of his properties and retire into obscurity.

Two magnate identities were more than Hanno could maintain after the government got thoroughly meddlesome. Tomek was pulling in the most money by then, and leaving less of a trail. Besides, this might offer a hope—

Director Samuel Giannotti was at his workbench. The staff was small though choice, administration was kept to an unfussy minimum, and he continued to be a practicing scientist. When Hanno arrived, he took time to shut down his experiment properly before escorting the founder to his office. It was a book-lined room as comfortably rumpled-look-ing as his large, bald-headed self. A swivel chair stood available for each man. Giannotti fetched Scotch from a cabinet, ice and soda from a fridge, and mixed mild drinks while Hanno charged his pipe.

"I wish you'd .give that foul thing up," Giannotti said, settling down. His voice was amicable.

The seat creaked to his weight. "Where'd you get it, anyway? From King Tutankhamen?"

"Before my time," Hanno drawled. "Do you mind? I know you've quit, but I didn't expect you'd take the Chris-ter attitude of so many ex-smokers."

"No, in my line of work we get used to stenches."

"Good. How's that line go from Chesterton?"

"'If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals,*" quoted Giannotti, who was a devotee. "Or else, later in the same essay, 'It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanism may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle.' Not that I've often heard you worry about morals or the spirit."

"I don't worry aloud about the oxygen supply, either—"

"Obviously."

"—or the other necessities of survival. It would annoy me less that we're heading into a new puritanical era if the puri-tanism concerned itself about things that matter." Hanno struck match to tobacco and drew the fire alight.

"Well, I worry about you. Okay, your body has recovered from traumas that would have finished off any of us ordinaries, but that doesn't mean your immortality is absolute. A bullet or a swig of cyanide would kill you as easily as me. I'm not at all convinced your cells can stand that kind of chemical insult forever."

"Pipe smokers don't inhale, and for me cigarettes are faute de mieux." Hanno's brows knotted slightly. "Just the same ... do you have any solid scientific reason for what you said?"

"No," Giannotti admitted. "Not yet."

"What are you turning up lately, if anything?"

Giannotti sipped from his glass. "We've learned of some very interesting work in Britain.

Fairweather at Oxford. It looks as though the rate at which cellular DNA loses methyl groups is correlated with lifespan, at least in the animals that have been studied. Jaime Escobar here is setting up to pursue this line of inquiry further. I myself will re-examine cells of yours from the same viewpoint, with special reference to glycosylation of proteins. On the QT, of course. I'd like fresh material from the four of you, blood, skin, biopsy sample of muscle tissue, to start new cultures for the purpose."

"Any time you want, Sam. But what does this signify, exactly?" *

"You mean 'What might it signify, at a guess?' We know little thus far. Well, I'll try to sketch it out for you, but I'll have to repeat stuff I've told you before."

"That's all right. I am a simon-pure layman. My basic thought habits were formed early in the Iron Age. Where it comes to science, I can use plenty of repetition."

Giannotti leaned forward, caught up in his quest. "The British themselves aren't sure. Maybe the demethylation is due to cumulative damage to the DNA itself, maybe the methylase enzyme becomes less active in the course of time, maybe something else. In any event, it may—at the present stage this is only a suggestion, you understand—it may result in deterioration of mechanisms that hitherto kept certain other genes from expressing themselves. Maybe those genes become free to produce proteins that have poisoning effects on still other cellular processes."

"The checks and balances begin to break down," Hanno said mutedly, through a cloud of blue smoke.

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"Probably true, but that's so vague and general a statement, practically a tautology, as to be useless." Giannotti sighed. "Now don't imagine that we have more than a single piece of the jigsaw puzzle here, if we have that much. And it's a puzzle in three dimensions, or four, or n, with the space not necessarily Euclidean. For instance, your regeneration of parts as complex as teeth implies more than freedom from senescence. It indicates retention of juvenile, even fetal characteristics, not in the gross anatomy but probably on the molecular level. And that fantastic immune system of yours must tie in somehow, too."

"Yeah." Hanno nodded. "Aging isn't a single, simple thing. It's a whole clutch of different . . .

diseases, all with pretty much the same symptoms, like flu or cancer."

"Not quite, I think," Giannotti replied. They had been over the same ground more than once, but the Phoenician was right about his need for that. He must have won to a terrifying degree of knowledge about himself, Giannotti sometimes thought. "There does appear to be a common factor in the case of every mortal organism with more than a single cell—and maybe the unicellulars too, maybe even the prokaryotes and viruses—if only we can find what it is. Conceivably this demethylatibn phenomenon gives us a clue to it. Anyhow, that's my opinion. I concede my grounds are more or less philosophical. Something as biologically fundamental as death ought to be in the very fabric of evolution, virtually from the beginning."

"Uh-huh. Advantage to the species, or, I should say, the line of descent. Get the older generations out of the way, make room for genetic turnover, allow more efficient types to develop.

Without death, we'd still be bits of jelly in the sea."

"There may be something to that." Giannotti shook his head. "But it can't be the whole story. It doesn't account for humans outliving mice by an order of magnitude, for instance. Or species that live indefinitely, like bristlecone pines." Weariness dragged at his smile. "No, most likely life has adapted itself to the fact, made the best it could of the fact, that sooner or later, one way or another, entropy will ring down the curtain on its wonderful chemical juggling act. Whether your kind represents the next step in evolution, a set of mutations that created a fail-safe system, I can't say."

"But you don't think so, do you?" Hanno asked. "We don't breed true."

"No, you don't," Giannotti said with a barely perceptible wince. "However, that may come.

Evolution is cut-and-try. If I may anthropomorphize," he added. "Often it's hard not to."

Hanno clicked his tongue. "You know, when you say things like that, I have trouble believing you're a believing Catholic."

"Separate spheres," Giannotti answered. "Ask any competent theologian. And I wish you would, for your own sake, you poor lonely atheist." Quickly: "The point is, the material world and the spirit world are not identical."

"And we'll, outlive the galaxies, you and I and everybody," he had said once toward dawn, when the bottle was low. "You may spend ten thousand years, or a million or a billion, in the flesh, but it will hardly mean more, then, than the three days that a premature baby had. Maybe less; the baby died innocent. . . But this is a fascinating problem, and it does have unlimited potentialities for the whole world, if we can solve it. Your existence cannot be a mere stochastic accident."

Hanno didn't argue, though lie preferred their everyday banter, or straightforward talk about the work. He had found after years- of acquaintance that here was one of the rare people whom he could trust with his secret; and in this case it might, just possibly, bring an end to the need for secrecy. If Sam Giannotti could endure knowing of lives that went on for millennia, and keep silent about them even with his wife, because of a faith whose elements Hanno remembered as having been ancient in Hiram's Tyre—so be it.

"But never mind," the scientist went on. "What I wish more, right now and always, is the same as ever. That you'd release me from my promise and let me make known—or better, make known yourself—what you are."

"Sorry," Hanno said. "Must I repeat why not?"

"Cast off that suspiciousness, can't you? I forget how many times I've told you, the Middle Ages are behind us. Nobody will burn you for a witch. Show the world the proofs you showed me."

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"I've learned to be leery of doing anything irrevocable."

"Will I never make you understand? I'm shackled. I can't so much as tell my staff the truth. We piddle around and— If you come out of the closet, Bob, discovering the immortality mechanism will become the human race's top priority. Every resource will go to it. The knowledge that it is possible is half the battle, I swear. They might crack it inside of ten years. Meanwhile, can't you see the dying down of war, arms races, terrorism, despotism, given such a prospect before everyone? How many needless deaths can you stand to have on your conscience?"

"And I've told you before, I doubt the outcome would be anything like that sweet," Hanno snapped.

"Three thousand years of experience, as close as makes no difference, say otherwise. An overnight revelation like that would upset too many applecarts."

He had no cause to repeat how he controlled the veto. If and when necessary, he would dispose of the things he had used to convince Giannotti. John Wanderer, Tu Shan, and Asagao were accustomed to following his lead, he far and away their senior. Should one of them rebel and reveal, that person possessed no evidence of the kind that Hanno had assembled. After forty or fifty years of.

observation, people might take the claim seriously; but why would an immortal spend so great a while in custody? Richelieu had been right, three and a half centuries ago. The risks were too large. If your body stayed youthful, you kept a young animal's strong desire to live.

Giannotti sank back into his chair. "Oh, hell, let's not rehash a stale argument," he muttered.

Louder: "I do ask you to put that pessimism and cynicism of yours aside and think again. When everybody can have your lifespan, you'll have no more reason to hide."

"Sure," Hanno agreed. "Why d'you suppose I founded this place? But let the change come gradually, with forewarning. Give me and my friends and the world time to prepare. Meanwhile, you said it, the argument has long since gone moldy."

Giannotti laughed, as a man may laugh when he can lower a burden from his shoulders. "Okay. Shop talk and gossip. What's new with you?"

—Time goes fast in congenial company. The hour was

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past six when Hanno pulled up in front of CauldwelTs house.

The unpretentious building on Queen Anne Hill had a magnificent view. He stood for a minute and savored it. Beneath a westering sun the distant mountains seemed to glimmer only half real, as if they rose in a dream or in elfiand. Southward, beyond the slim silhouette of the Space Needle, the light turned Elliot Bay to molten silver and touched treetops with gold. Farther on, Rainier bulwarked heaven, blue rock-mass and white purity. Air went cool into breath. Traffic noises were a whisper, and a robin loosed scraps of melody. Yes, he thought, this was a lovely planet, an Aladdin's hoard of wonders. Too bad how humans mucked it up. Nevertheless he intended to stick around.

A bit reluctantly, he went inside. Natalia Thurlow was there and the door not locked. She sat before the television watchingthe news. A jowly face and beaky nose filled the screen. The voice was lubricated, sonorous:

"—join in your noble cause. It is the cause of men and women of good will everywhere. This squandering of untold wealth on weapons of mass destruction, while human beings go hungry and homeless, must end, and end soon. I pledge myself—" The view panned back to show a packed auditorium. On the stage, American and Soviet flags flanked Edmund Moriarty. The United Nations banner was spread directly behind, and a streamer above read CONCERNED CITIZENS' COMMITTEE FOR

PEACE.

"Judas priest!" Hanno groaned. "Do you want me to barf on our nice new carpet?"

Natalia turned the set off and came to give him a hug and a kiss. He responded energetically. She was a rangy blond in her mid-thirties who knew well how to please him, not least by being an independent sort.

Having disengaged, she ran ringers through the hair he had rumpled. "Hey, big boy, you came out of that bad mood in a hurry," she laughed. "Not quite so fast, if you please. Dinner won't wait for more than a short drink. I expected you earlier." Usually she cooked. Hanno was good at it, but she found it relaxing after a day of working on computer software. She cocked her head. "Of course, afterward—"

"Well, all I want is a beer," he said. "Sam and I hoisted a couple at the lab."

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"What? I thought you had less fun in prospect."

"So did I, but I got out of die Internal Reaming Service sooner than I feared.'* He had mentioned he was in for such a session, though not the identities actually involved. He sought the kitchen.

She had already poured herself a sherry.

Returning with his mug of Ballard Bitter to sit down on the couch beside her, he found she had gone serious, half angry. "Bob," she said, "I insist you quit making nasty cracks about the government. Sure, it has its faults, including heavy-handedness, but it is ours."

"'Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' Yeah. Trouble is, the three classes of people aren't the same."

"I've heard you on the subject before, in case you've forgotten. If you're right about that being the nature of government, why bitch at this one? It is the only thing that stands between us and what is far worse."

"Not if Senator Moriarty has his way."

"Wait a minute," she said sharply. "You're entitled to call him mistaken, but not to call him ...

a traitor, the way I've heard you imply. He speaks for millions of perfectly decent Americans."

"So they imagine. His real constituency is industries that vote their tariff protections and subsidies, bums who vote their handouts, and intellectuals who vote their slogans. As for mis new-found pacifism of his, that's the current fashion. Before, his breed was always hell-bent to get us into foreign wars, except that we mustn't win any that were fought against Communists. Now he's picking up extra votes— someday they may help him into the White House—by telling us that violence never settles anything. If only the city fathers of Carthage could talk to bun."

She put irritation aside and riposted with a grin, "Plagiarizing Heinlein, are you?"

He had come to admire the deftness with which she could defuse a quarrel. They'd had too many lately. Chuckling, he relaxed. "You're right, I am a fool to waste good drinking time on politics, especially when it's in the company of a sexy woman."

Inwardly there passed through him: He may have delivered himself into my hands, though. I'll get a tape of the proceedings tomorrow. If they went as I imagine, well, the THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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next issue of The Chart Room is almost ready to go to press. I barely have time to pull TannahuTs editorial and slip in another that'll be pure Schadenfreude to write.

Natalia laid a hand over his. "You're pretty sexy yourself, for your information," she said.

"Horrible old reactionary, but if word got around about what you're like in bed, I'd have to fight the women off with a shillelagh."

Her smile faded. She sat quiet a while before adding softly, "No, I take that first part back. I think you're down on governments because you've seen victims of their blunders and, yes, cruelties. It would be better if you were in charge. Under that crusty exterior, you're fine and considerate."

"And too smart to want power," he interpolated.

"And you are not old, either," she went on. "Not in any way that counts."

"Sixty-seven, last time I looked." At Robert Cauldwell's birth certificate. "I could be your father, or your grandfather if my son and I had been a tad precocious." I could be your hundredfold-great-grandfather. Quite possibly I am.

He felt her gaze on him, but didn't meet it. "When / look, I see a person who appears younger than me. It's eerie." *.

"Persistent ancestors, I've told you." A bottle of hair dye, to pretend indulgence of that small vanity. "I've also told you you should start shopping for a newer model. I honestly don't want it to get too late for you."

"We'll see." A single time in their three-year union had she suggested marriage. Were he using a different, younger personality he might well have gone through with it. As was, he couldn't explain what a dirty trick on her it would be.

The thought flitted through him that if he did make known what he was and Giannotti's estimate of the rate of progress thereafter proved right, Natalia could become immortal herself. Probably rejuvenated, too; given such a command of biochemistry, that ought to be easy. But while he was fond of her, he had not permitted himself to fall really in love for centuries; and he didn't feel ready to unleash incalculable consequences on the world. Not this evening, at least.

She put on gaiety. "Who's your Danish pen pal?"

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He blinked. "What?"

"In today's mail. Otherwise nothing special— Hey, important, is it?"

His heart thudded. "I'll see. Excuse me a minute."

He'd not thought about the post. It lay on a corner table. As he took the envelope postmarked Copenhagen, he saw the printed name and address of a hotel and, hand-written above it, "Helmut Seeker."

His agent in Frankfurt, receiving responses to an advertisement published throughout northern Europe, then following up on any that seemed to come from a person who might fit his requirements—of course, Becker had merely been told that the Rufus Lab wanted to contact members of long-lived families; if they were young but showed intelligence, as evinced by an interest in history, that was ideal—

Hanno forced his mouth and hands into steadiness. He opened the letter. It was in stilted English, but there was no reason Natalia shouldn't read it. She knew about the project, considered the approach unscientific but tolerated it together with the rest of his eccentricities. In fact, he should give her every appearance of openness, to hide the excitement that roared within him.

"Apparently I've got a little trip ahead of me," he told her.

THEY WERE friendly folks in the Lost River country, and besides, Chinese farmers had always done well throughout Idaho. So when Mr. and Mrs. Tu became tenants of the property that Tomek Enterprises owned, neighbors made them welcome. Their background was interesting to hear about, he a small landowner in Taiwan, she the daughter of a Japanese trade representative there. Marriages tike that faced.problems in Asia, even this long after the war. Also, they had some difficulties with the Kuomintang government, nothing terrible but enough to make them feel restricted and harassed. Through her family they met Mr. Tomek himself, who arranged for them to come to America.

At first their Engtish was broken, but they soon became pretty good at it. Still, they never quite fitted in. They managed the fields and herds well. They kept the house spic and span, and if THE. BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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some things in it were kind of odd, you had to expect that. They were well-behaved, polite, helpful. However, they held themselves back, joined no church or social club or anything, got along in company but didn't really open up, repaid invitations with fine food and pleasant conversation but took no lead in sociability. Well, they were Orientals, and maybe that made them feel sensitive about having had no children.

After six years they did stir gossip and uneasiness. They'd gone off on vacations from time to time, like most people, except that they said practically nothing about where it was to or what they'd done. Now they came back with a pair of youngsters from Chicago, slum kids, been in trouble, one of them black. It wasn't an adoption, the Tus explained; they simply aimed to see what a real home in a healthy environment could do. They had letters to show this was okay with the authorities.

Their neighbors worried about mischief, misleading of their own children, maybe drugs. Edith Harmon, who was a forceful lady, took it upon herself to call when Shan was away and have a heart-to-heart talk with Asagao. "I understand yonr feelings, dear, and it's kind of you, but we have so much do-gooding these days."

Asagao smiled and asked, "Is do-badding better?" She went on at once: "I promise you it will be all right. My husband and I have guided lives before now."

"Really?"

"It gives meaning to ours. Or perhaps you have heard about the Buddhist concept of acquiring merit. Here, let me warm that coffee for you."

And it did succeed. There was a little friction at first, especially in school. The boy got into a couple of fights, the girl was caught shoplifting. Their fosterers straightened them out fast and thoroughly. Shan might not be the smartest man alive, but he was no dummy either, and he had a way of getting others to do what he wanted that did not come just from great physical strength. Asagao was quiet, gentle, and—the neighborhood discovered—sharp as a tack. The kids worked hard on the ranch and soon worked hard in school. They became popular. After four years they left, of an age and qualified to take jobs waiting for them

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elsewhere. Folks missed them, and didn't object to the new waifs who then arrived. Instead, the community felt proud.

The Tus didn't go looking for children. They told how they had been appalled at what they read or saw on TV, afterward witnessed for themselves. Inquiring around, they came on an outfit, small but with branches in several big cities, that tried to make placements. Mutual trust developed. The original experience showed what they had to offer and what sort of kids would likely benefit from it. After that, the organization chose and sent.

Shan and Asagao figured three at a time was as much as they could rightly handle, and not if those all came at once. So two years had passed when they got the third member of the second group. She was a fourteen-year-old from New York. They met her at the Pocatello airport and drove her back to their place.

To start with, Juanita was a handful and a half, nervous as a trapped bobcat, often sullen, sometimes exploding in screams and curses that shocked the ranch hands. They had learned patience and firmness, though. The youngsters already there had gotten to a point where they too were a steadying, calming force. Above all, the married couple was, and also the beautiful land, open air, honest labor, hearty food. It helped that this was summer; Juanita didn't have school to cope with as well. Soon she was turning into quite the little lady.

One day Asagao asked her to come along, the two of them alone, and help pick berries in a hidden nook of the hills, more than an hour away on horseback. They packed a lunch and took their tune.

On the way home, shy young dreams began to reach lips. Asagao well knew how to keep talk aflow without pushing.

Yesterday a thunderstorm had broken a hot spell. The air was full of wayward breezes and soft smells. Light was lengthening from the west, but still held that upland brilliance which made the mountains seem almost next door and yet left you feeling what a vastness you looked across. Clouds towered white into dizzying depths of blue. The valley rolled in a thousand shades of green, twinkly with irrigation, on and on toward the orchards and ranch buildings. Red-winged blackbirds darted and cried over the pasture, and cattle near the fence line lifted large eyes to watch the 341

horses pass. Leather squeaked, hoofs plopped, riding was oneness in a lazy sweet rhythm.

"I really would like to learn about your religion, Mrs. Tu," Juanita said. She was a dark, thin girl who walked with a limp. Her father used to beat her, as he did her mother, till at last she put a kitchen knife in his shoulder and ran off. In the saddle she was on her way to centaurhood, and corrective surgery was scheduled for later this year. Meanwhile she did her share of chores, assigned to allow for the handicap. "It must be wonderful if—" she flushed, glanced aside, dropped her voice—"if it's got believers like you and Mr. Tu."

Asagao smiled. "Thank you, love, though we are quite ordinary, you know. I think you had better get back into your own church. Of course we'll be glad to explain what we can. All our children have been interested. But what we live by can't actually be put in words. It's very alien to this country. It might not even be a religion by your standards, but more a way of life, of trying to get in harmony with the universe."

Juanita gave her a quick, searching regard. "Like the Unity?"

"The what?"

"The Unity. Where I come from. Except they—they couldn't take me. I asked a guy who belongs, but he said it's ... a lifeboat as full as it can carry." A sigh. "Then I got lucky and got found by—for—you. I think prob'ly this is better. You'll fix me to go live anyplace. The Unity, you stay with it. I think. But I don't know much about it. They don't talk, the members."

"Your friend must have, if you heard about it."

"Oh, word gets around. The dope dealers, now, they hate it. But I guess it's only in the New York area. And like I said, the higher you go in it, the less you tell. Manuel, he's too young. He grew up in it, his parents did too, but they say he's not ready yet. He doesn't know much except about the housing and education and—well, members help each other."

"That sounds good. I have heard of such organizations."

"Oh, this isn't a co-op exactly, and it's not like, uh, the Guardian Angels, except for what they call sentinel stance, and— It's sort of like a church, except not that either.

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Members can believe anything they want, but they do have—services? Retreats? That's how come I wondered if this was like the Unity."

"No, can't be. We're simply a family. We wouldn't have any idea how to run anything larger."

"I guess that's why the Unity stopped growing," Juanita said thoughtfully. "Mama-lo can only keep track of so much."

"Mama-lo?"

"The name I've heard. She's kind of a—a high priestess? Except it isn't a church. But they say she's real powerful. They do what she wants, in the Unity."

"Hm. How long has this been going on?"