Norstrilia

HIS OWN STRANGE ALTAR

Rod McBan remembered falling and falling. He shouted into the wet adhesive darkness, but there was no reply. He thought of cutting himself loose from his big umbrella and letting himself drop to the death below him, but then he thought of C’mell and he knew that his body would drop upon her like a bomb. He wondered about his desperation, but could not understand it (Only later did he find out that he was passing telepathic suicide screens which the underpeople had set up, screens fitted to the human mind, designed to dredge filth and despair from the paleocortex, the smell-bite-mate sequence of the nose-guided animals who first walked Earth; but Rod was cat enough, just barely cat enough, and he was also telepathically subnormal, so that the screens did not do to him what they would have done to any normal man of Earth — delivered a twisted dead body at the bottom. No man had ever gotten that far, but the underpeople resolved that none ever should.) Rod twisted in his harness and at last he fainted.

He awakened in a relatively small room, enormous by Earth standards but still much smaller than the storerooms which he had passed through on the way down.

The lights were bright.

He suspected that the room stank but he could not prove it with his smell gone.

A man was speaking, “The Forbidden Word is never given unless the man who does not know it plainly asks for it.”

There was a chorus of voices singing, “We remember. We remember. We remember what we remember.”

The speaker was almost a giant, thin and pale. His face was the face of a dead saint, pale, white as alabaster, with glowing eyes. His body was that of man and bird both, man from the hips up, except that human hands grew out of the elbows of enormous clean white wings. From the hips down his legs were bird-legs, ending in horny, almost translucent bird-feet which stood steadily on the ground.

“I am sorry, Mister and Owner McBan, that you took that risk. I was misinformed. You are a good cat on the outside but still completely a human man on the inside. Our safety devices bruised your mind and they might have killed you.”

Rod stared at the man as he stumbled to his feet. He saw that C’mell was one of the people helping him. When he was erect, someone handed him a beaker of very cold water. He drank it thirstily. It was hot down here — hot, stuffy, and with the feel of big engines nearby.

“I,” said the great bird-man, “am E’telekeli.” He pronounced it Ee-telly-kelly. “You are the first human being to see me in the flesh.”

“Blessed, blessed, blessed, fourfold blessed is the name of our leader, our father, our brother, our son the E’telekeli” chorused the underpeople.

Rod looked around. There was every kind of underperson imaginable here, including several that he had never even thought of. One was a head on a shelf, with no apparent body. When he looked, somewhat shocked, directly at the head, its face smiled and one eye closed in a deliberate wink. The E’telekeli followed his glance. “Do not let us shock you. Some of us are normal, but many of us down here are the discards of men’s laboratories. You know my son.”

A tall, very pale young man with no features stood up at this point. He was stark naked and completely unembarrassed. He held out a friendly hand to Rod. Rod was sure he had never seen the young man before. The young man sensed Rod’s hesitation.

“You knew me as A’gentur. I am the E’ikasus.”

“Blessed, blessed, threefold blessed is the name of our leader-to-be, the Yeekasoose!” chanted the under-people.

Something about the scene caught Rod’s rough Norstrilian humor. He spoke to the great underman as he would have spoken to another Mister and Owner back home, friendily but bluntly.

“Glad you welcome me, Sir!”

“Glad, glad, glad is the stranger from beyond the stars!” sang the chorus.

“Can’t you make them shut up?” asked Rod.

“’Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ says the stranger from the stars!” chorused the group.

The E’telekeli did not exactly laugh, but his smile was not pure benevolence.

“We can disregard them and talk, or I can blank out your mind every time they repeat what we say. This is a sort of court ceremony.”

Rod glanced around. “I’m in your power already,” said he, “so it won’t matter if you mess around a little with my mind. Blank them out.”

The E’telekeli stirred the air in front of him as though he were writing a mathematical equation with his finger; Rod’s eyes followed the finger and he suddenly felt the room hush.

“Come over here and sit down,” said the E’telekeli.

Rod followed.

“What do you want?” he asked as he followed.

The E’telekeli did not even turn around to answer. He merely spoke while walking ahead,

“Your money, Mister and Owner McBan. Almost all of your money.”

Rod stopped walking. He heard himself laughing wildly. “Money? You? Here? What could you possibly do with it?”

“That,” said the E’telekeli, “is why you should sit down.”

“Do sit,” said C’mell, who had followed.

Rod sat down.

“We are afraid that Man himself will die, and leave us alone in the universe. We need Man, and there is still an immensity of time before we all pour into a common destiny. People have always assumed that the end of things is around the corner, and we have the promise of the First Forbidden One that this will be soon. But it could be hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions. People are scattered, Mister McBan, so that no weapon will ever kill them all on all planets, but no matter how scattered they are, they are still haunted by themselves. They reach a point of development and then they stop.”

“Yes,” said Rod, reaching for a carafe of water and helping himself to another drink, “but it’s a long way from the philosophy of the universe down to my money. We have plenty of barmy swarmy talk in Old North Australia, but I never heard of anybody asking for another citizen’s money, right off the bat.”

The eyes of the E’telekeli glowed like cold fire but Rod knew that this was no hypnosis, no trick being played upon himself. It was the sheer force of the personality burning outward from the bird-man.

“Listen carefully, Mister McBan. We are the creatures of Man. You are gods to us. You have made us into people who talk, who worry, who think, who love, who die. Most of our races were the friends of man before we became underpeople. Like C’mell. How many cats have served and loved man, and for how long? How many cattle have worked for man, been eaten by man, been milked by men across the ages, and have still followed where men went, even to the stars? And dogs. I do not have to tell you about the love of dogs for men. We call ourselves the Holy Insurgency because we are rebels. We are a government. We are a power almost as big as the Instrumentality. Why do you think Teadrinker did not catch you when you arrived?”

“Who is Teadrinker?”

“An official who wanted to kidnap you. He failed because his underman reported to me, because my son E’ikasus, who joined us in Norstrilia suggested the remedies to the Doctor Vomact who is on Mars. We love you, Rod, not because you are a rich Norstrilian, but because it is our faith to love the Mankind which created us.”

“This is a long slow wicket for my money,” said Rod. “Come to the point, sir.”

The E’telekeli smiled with sweetness and sadness. Rod immediately knew that it was his own denseness which made the bird-man sad and patient. For the very first time he began to accept the feeling that this person might actually be the superior of any human being he had ever met.

“I’m sorry,” said Rod. “I haven’t had a minute to enjoy my money since I got it. People have been telling me that everybody is after it. I’m beginning to think that I shall do nothing but run the rest of my life…”

The E’telekeli smiled happily, the way a teacher smiles when a student has suddenly turned in a spectacular performance. “Correct. You have learned a lot from the Catmaster, and from your own self. I am offering you something more — the chance to do enormous good. Have you ever heard of Foundations?”

Rod frowned. “The bottoms of buildings?”

“No. Institutions. From the very ancient past.”

Rod shook his head. He hadn’t.

“If a gift was big enough, it endured and kept on giving, until the culture in which it was set had fallen. If you took most of your money and gave it to some good, wise men, it could be spent over and over again to improve the race of man. We need that. Better men will give us better lives. Do you think that we don’t know how pilots and pinlighters have sometimes died, saving their cats in space?”

“Or how people kill underpepple without a thought?” countered Rod. “Or humiliate them without notice that they do it. It seems to me that you must have some self-interest, sir.”

“I do. Some. But not as much as you think. Men are evil when they are frightened or bored. They are good when they are happy and busy. I want you to give your money to provide games, sports, competitions, shows, music, and a chance for honest hatred.”

“Hatred?” said Rod. “I was beginning to think that I had found a Believer bird… somebody who mouthed old magic.”

“We’re not ending time,” said the great man-bird. “We are just altering the material conditions of Man’s situation for the present historical period. We want to steer mankind away from tragedy and self-defeat. Though the cliffs crumble, we want Man to remain. Do you know Swinburne?”

“Where is it?” said Rod.

“It’s not a place. It’s a poet, before the age of space. He wrote this. Listen.

“Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble

Till the terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides crumble.

The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.”

“Do you agree with that?”

“It sounds nice, but I don’t understand it,” said Rod. “Please sir, I’m tireder than I thought. And I have only this one day with C’mell. Can I finish the business with you and have a little time with her?”

The great underman lifted his arm. His wings spread like a canopy over Rod.

“So be it!” he said, and the words rang out like a great song.

Rod could see the lips of the underpeople chorusing, but he did not notice the sound.

“I offer you a tangible bargain. Tell me if you find I read your mind correctly.”

Rod nodded, somewhat in awe.

“You want your money, but you don’t want it. You will keep five hundred thousand credits, FOE money, which will leave you the richest man in Old North Australia for the rest of a very long life. The rest you will give to a foundation which will teach men to hate easily and lightly, as in a game, not sickly and wearily, as in habit. The trustees will be Lords of the Instrumentality whom I know, such as Jestocost, Crudelta, the Lady Johanna Gnade.”

“And what do I get?”

“Your heart’s desire.” The beautiful wise pale face stared down at Rod like a father seeking to fathom the puzzlement of his own child. Rod was a little afraid of the face, but he confided in it, too.

“I want too much. I can’t have it all.”

“I’ll tell you what you want.”

“You want to be home right now, and all the trouble done with. I can set you down at the Station of Doom in a single long jump. Look at the floor — I have your books and your postage stamp which you left in Amaral’s room. They go too.”

“But I want to see Earth!”

“Come back, when you are older and wiser. Some day. See what your money has done.”

“Well—” said Rod.

“You want C’mell.” The bland wise white face showed no embarrassment, no anger, no condescension. “You shall have her, in a linked dream, her mind to yours, for a happy subjective time of about a thousand years. You will live through all the happy things that you might have done together if you had stayed here and become a c’man. You will see your kitten-children flourish, grow old, and die. That will take about one half-hour.”

“It’s just a dreamy,” said Rod. “You want to take megacredits from me and give me a dreamy!”

“With two minds? Two living, accelerated minds, thinking into each other? Have you ever heard of that?”

“No,” said Rod.

“Do you trust me?” said the E’telekeli.

Rod stared at the man-bird inquisitively and a great weight fell from him. He did trust this creature more than he had ever trusted the father who did not want him, the mother who gave him up, the neighbors who looked at him and were kind. He sighed, “I trust you.”

“I also,” added the E’telekeli, “will take care of all the little incidentals through my own network and I will leave the memory of them in your mind. If you trust me that should be enough. You get home, safe. You are protected, off Norstrilia, into which I rarely reach, for as long as you live. You have a separate life right now with C’mell and you will remember most of it. In return, you go to the wall and transfer your fortune, minus one-half FOE megacredit, to the Foundation of Rod McBan.”

Rod did not see that the underpeople thronged around him like worshippers. He had to stop when a very pale, tall girl took his hand and held it to her cheek. “You may not be the Promised One, but you are a great and good man. We can take nothing from you. We can only ask. That is the teaching of Joan. And you have given.”

“Who are you?” said Rod in a frightened voice, thinking that she might be some lost human girl whom the underpeople had abducted to the guts of the Earth.

“E’lamelanie, daughter of the E’telekeli.”

Rod stared at her and went to the wall. He pushed a routine sort of button. What a place to find it! “The Lord Jestocost,” he called. “McBan speaking. No, you fool, I own this system.”

A handsome, polished plumpish man appeared on the screen. “If I guess right,” said the strange man, “you are the first human being ever to get into the depths. Can I serve you, Mister and Owner McBan?”

“Take a note—” said the E’telekeli, out of sight of the machine, beside Rod.

Rod repeated it.

The Lord Jestocost called witnesses at his end.

It was a long dictation, but at last the conveyance was finished. Only at one point did Rod balk. When they tried to call it the McBan Foundation, he said, “Just call it the One Hundred and Fifty Fund.”

“One Hundred and Fifty?” asked Jestocost.

“For my father. It’s his number in our family. I’m to-the-hundred-and-fifty-first. He was before me. Don’t explain the number. Just use it.”

“All clear,” said Jestocost. “Now we have to get notaries and official witnesses to veridicate our imprints of your eyes, hands and brain. Ask the Person with you to give you a mask, so that the cat-man face will not upset the witnesses. Where is this machine you are using supposed to be located? I know perfectly well where I think it is.”

“At the foot of Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, in a forgotten market,” said the E’telekeli. “Your servicemen will find it there tomorrow when they come to check the authenticity of the machine.” He still stood out of line of sight of the machine, so that Jestocost could hear him but not see him.

“I know the voice,” said Jestocost. “It comes to me as in a great dream. But I shall not ask to see the face.”

“Your friend down here has gone where only underpeople go,” said the E’telekeli, “and we are disposing of his fate in more ways than one, my Lord, subject to your gracious approval.”

“My approval does not seem to have been needed much,” snorted Jestocost, with a little laugh.

“I would like to talk to you. Do you have any intelligent underperson near you?”

“I can call C’mell. She’s always somewhere around.”

“This time, my lord, you cannot. She’s here.”

“There, with you? I never knew she went there.” The amazement showed on the face of the Lord Jestocost.

“She is here, nevertheless. Do you have some other underperson?”

Rod felt like a dummy, standing in the visiphone while the two voices, unseen by one another, talked past him. But he felt, very truly, that they both wished him well. He was almost nervous in anticipation of the strange happiness which had been offered to him and C’mell, but he was a respectful enough young man to wait until the great ones got through their business.

“Wait a moment,” said Jestocost.

On the screen, in the depths, Rod could see the Lord of the Instrumentality work the controls of other, secondary screens. A moment later Jestocost answered:

“B’dank is here. He will enter the room in a few minutes.”

’Twenty minutes from now, my Sir and Lord, will you hold hands with your servant B’dank as you once did with C’mell? I have the problem of this young man and his return. There are things which you do not know, and I would rather not put them on the wires.”

Jestocost hesitated only for the slightest of moments. “Good, then,” he laughed. “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.”

The E’telekeli stood aside. Someone handed Rod a mask which hid his cat-man features and still left his eyes and hands exposed. The brain print was gotten through the eyes.

The recordings were made.

Rod went back to the bench and table. He helped himself to another drink of water from the carafe. Someone threw a wreath of fresh flowers around his shoulders. Fresh flowers! In such a place… He wondered. Three rather pretty undergirls, two of them of cat origin and one of them derived from dogs, were loading a freshly dressed C’mell toward him. She wore the simplest and most modest of all possible white dresses. Her waist was cinched by a broad golden belt. She laughed, stopped laughing and then blushed as they led her to Rod.

Two seats were arranged on the bench. Cushions were disposed so that both of them would be comfortable. Silky metallic caps, like the pleasure caps used in surgeries, were fitted on their heads. Rod felt his sense of smell explode within his brain; it came alive richly and suddenly. He took C’mell by the hand and began walking through an immemorial Earth forest, with a temple older than time shining in the clear soft light cast by Earth’s old moon. He knew that he was already dreaming. C’mell caught his thought and said,

“Rod, my master and lover, this is a dream. But I am in it with you…”

Who can measure a thousand years of happy dreaming — the travels, the hunts, the picnics, the visits to forgotten and empty cities, the discovery of beautiful views and strange places? And the love, and the sharing, and the re-reflection of everything wonderful and strange by two separate, distinct and utterly harmonious personalities. C’mell the c’girl and C’roderick the c’man: they seemed happily doomed to be with one another. Who can live whole centuries of real bliss and then report it in minutes? Who can tell the full tale of such real lives — happiness, quarrels, reconciliations, problems, solutions and always sharing, happiness, and more sharing… ?

When they awakened Rod very gently, they let C’mell sleep on. He looked down at himself and expected to find himself old. But he was a young man still, in the deep forgotten underground of the E’telekeli, and he could not even smell. He reached for the thousand wonderful years as he watched C’mell, young again, lying on the bench, but the dream-years had started fading even as he reached for them.

Rod stumbled on his feet. They led him to a chair. The E’telekeli sat in adjacent chair, at the same table. He seemed weary.

“My Mister and Owner McBan, I monitored your dreamsharing, just to make sure it stayed in the right general direction. I hope you are satisfied.”

Rod nodded, very slowly, and reached for the carafe of water, which someone had refilled while he slept.

“While you slept, Mister McBan,” said the great E’man, “I had a telepathic conference with the Lord Jestocost, who has been your friend, even though you do not know him. You have heard of the new automatic planoform ships.”

“They are experimental,” said Rod.

“So they are,” said the E’telekeli, “but perfectly safe. And the best ‘automatic’ ones are not automatic at all. They have snake-men pilots. My pilots. They can outperform any pilots of the Instrumentality.”

“Of course,” said Rod, “because they are dead.”

“No more dead than I” laughed the white calm bird of the underground. “I put them in cataleptic trances, with the help of my son the doctor E’ikasus, whom you first knew as the monkey-doctor A’gentur. On the ships they wake up. One of them can take you to Norstrilia in a single long fast jump. And my son can work on you right here. We have a good medical workshop in one of those rooms. After all, it was he who restored you under the supervision of Doctor Vomact on Mars. It will seem like a single night to you, though it will be several days in objective time. If you say goodbye to me now, and if you are ready to go, you will wake up in orbit just outside the Old North Australian subspace net. I have no wish for one of my underpeople to tear himself to pieces if he meets Mother Hitton’s dreadful little kittons, whatever they may be. Do you happen to know?”

“I don’t,” said Rod quickly, “and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. It’s the Queen’s secret.”

“The Queen?”

“The Absent Queen. We use it to mean the Commonwealth government. Anyhow, Mister bird, I can’t go now. I’ve got to go back up to the surface of Earth. I want to say goodbye to the Catmaster. And I’m not going to leave this planet and abandon Eleanor. And I want my stamp that the Catmaster gave me. And the books. And maybe I should report about the death of Tostig Amaral.”

“Do you trust me, Mister and Owner McBan?” The white giant rose to his feet; his eyes shone like fire.

The underpeople spontaneously chorused, “Put your trust in the joyful lawful, put your trust in the loyal-awful bright blank power of the under-bird!”

“I’ve trusted you with my life and my fortune, so far,” said Rod, a little sullenly, “but you’re not going to make me leave Eleanor. No matter how much I want to get home. And I have an old enemy at home that I want to help. Houghton Syme the Hon. Sec. There might be something on Old Earth which I could take back to him.”

“I think you can trust me a little further,” said the E’telekeli. “Would it solve the problem of the Hon. Sec. if you gave him a dreamshare with someone he loved, to make up his having a short life?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I can,” said the master of the underpeople, “have his prescription made up. It will have to be mixed with plasma from his blood before he takes it. It would be good for about three thousand years of subjective life. We have never let this out of our own undercity before, but you are the Friend of Earth, and you shall have it.”

Rod tried to stammer his thanks, but he mumbled something about Eleanor instead: he just couldn’t leave her.

The white giant took Rod by the arm and led him back to the visiphone, still oddly out of place in this forgotten room, so far underground.

“You know,” said the white giant, “that I will not trick you with false messages or anything like that?”

One look at the strong, calm, relaxed face — face so purposeful that it had no fretful or immediate purpose — convinced Rod that there was nothing to fear.

“Turn it on, then,” said the E’telekeli. “If Eleanor wants to go home we will arrange with the Instrumentality for her passage. As for you, my son E’ikasus will change you back as he changed you over. There is only one detail. Do you want the face you originially had or do you want it to reject the wisdom and experience I have seen you gain?”

“I’m not posh,” said Rod. “The same old face will do. If I am any wiser, my people will find it out soon enough.”

“Good. He will get ready. Meanwhile, turn on the visiphone. It is already set to search for your fellow-citizen.”

Rod flicked it on. There was a bewildering series of flashes and a kaleidoscopic dazzlement of scenes before the machine seemed to race along the beach at Meeya Meefla and searched out Eleanor. This was a very strange screen indeed: it had no visiphone at the other end. He could see Eleanor, looking exactly like his Norstrilian self, but she could not observe that she was being seen.

The machine focused on Eleanor/Rod McBan’s face. She/he was talking to a very pretty woman, oddly mixed Norstrilian and Earthlike in appearance.

“Ruth Not-from-here,” murmured the E’telekeli, “the daughter of the Lord William Not-from-here, a Chief of the Instrumentality. He wanted his daughter to marry ‘you’ so that they could return to Norstrilia. Look at the daughter. She is annoyed at ‘you’ right now.”

Ruth was sitting on the bench, twisting away at her fingers in nervousness and worry, but her fingers and face showed more anger than despair. She was speaking to Eleanor, the ‘Rod McBan.’

“My father just told me!” Ruth cried out “Why, oh why did you give all your money for a Foundation of some kind? The Instrumentality just told him. I just don’t understand. There’s no point in us getting married now—”

“Suits me,” said Eleanor/Rod McBan.

“Suits you, does it!” shrieked Ruth. “After the advantages you’ve taken of me!”

The false Rod McBan merely smiled at her friendlily and knowledgeably. The real Rod, watching the picture ten kilometers below, thought that Eleanor seemed to have learned a great deal about how to be a young rich man on Earth.

Ruth’s face changed suddenly. She broke from anger to laughter. She snowed her bewilderment. “I must admit,” she said honestly, “that I didn’t really want to go back to the old family home in Old North Australia. The simple, honest life, a little on the stupid side. No oceans. No cities. Just sick, giant sheep and worlds full of money with nothing to spend it on. I like Earth and I suppose I’m decadent…”

Rod/Eleanor smiled right back at her. “Maybe I’m decadent too. I’m not poor. I can’t help liking you. I don’t want to marry anybody. But I have big credits here, and I enjoy being a young man—”

“I should say you do!” said Ruth. “What an odd thing for you to say!”

The false ‘Rod McBan’ gave no sign that he/she noted the interruption. “I’ve just about decided to stay here and enjoy things. Everybody’s rich in Norstrilia, but what good does it do? It had gotten pretty dull for me, I can tell you, or I wouldn’t have taken the risk of coming here. Yes. I think I’ll stay. I know that Rod—” He/she gasped. “Rod MacArthur, I mean, a sort of relative of mine. Rod can get the tax taken off my personal fortune so that I can stay right here.”

(“I will, too,” said the real Rod McBan, far below the surface of the Earth.)

“You’re welcome here, my dear,” said the Ruth Not-from-here to the false Rod McBan.

Down below, the E’telekeli gestured at the screen. “Seen enough?” he said to Rod.

“Enough,” said Rod, “but make sure that she knows I am all right and that I am trying to take care of her. Can you get in touch with the Lord Jestocost or somebody and arrange for Eleanor to stay here and keep her fortune? Tell her to use the name of Roderick Henry McBan the first. I can’t let her have the name of the Owners of the Station of Doom, but I don’t think Earthpeople will notice the difference anyhow. She’ll know it’s all right with me, and that’s all that matters. If she really likes it here in a copy of my body, may the great sheep sit on her!”

“An odd blessing,” said the E’telekeli, “but it can all be arranged.”

Rod made no move to leave. He had turned off the screen but he just stood there.

“Something else?” said the E’telekeli.

“C’mell,” said Rod.

“She’s all right,” said the lord of the underworld. “She expects nothing from you. She’s a good underperson.”

“I want to do something for her.”

“There is nothing she wants. She is happy. You do not need to meddle.”

“She won’t be a girlygirl forever,” Rod insisted. “You underpeople get old. I don’t know how you manage without stroon.”

“Neither do I,” said the E’telekeli. “I just happen to have long life. But you’re right about her. She will age soon enough, by your kind of time.”

“I’d like to buy the restaurant for her, the one the bear-man has, and let it become a sort of meeting place open to people and underpeople. She could give it the romantic and interesting touch so that it could be a success.”

“A wonderful idea. A perfect project for your Foundation,” smiled the E’telekeli. “It shall be done.”

“And the Catmaster?” asked Rod. “Is there anything I can do for him?”

“No, do not concern yourself with C’william,” said the E’telekeli. “He is under the protection of the Instrumentality and he knows the sign of the Fish.” The great underman paused to give Rod a chance to inquire what that sign might be, but Rod did not note the significance of the pause, so the birdlike giant went on. “C’william has already received his reward in the good change which he has made in your life. Now, if you are ready, we will put you to sleep, my son E’ikasus will change you out of your cat-body and you will wake in orbit around your home.”

“C’mell? Can you wake her up so I can say goodbye after that thousand years?”

The master of the underworld took Rod gently by the arm and walked him across the huge underground room, talking as they went. “Would you want to have another goodbye, after that thousand years she remembers with you, if you were she? Let her be. It is kinder this way. You are human. You can afford to be rich with kindness. It is one of the best traits which you human people have.”

Rod stopped. “Do you have a recorder of some kind, then? She welcomed me to Earth with a wonderful little song about ‘high birds crying’ and I want to leave one of our Norstrilian songs for her.”

“Sing anything,” said the E’telekeli, “and the chorus of my attendants will remember it as long as they live. The others would appreciate it too.”

Rod looked around at the underpeople who had followed them. For a moment he was embarrassed at singing to all of them, but when he saw their warm, adoring smiles, he was at ease with them. “Remember this, then, and be sure to sing it to C’mell for me, when she awakens.” He lifted his voice a little and sang.

The chorus sang it back at him with a wealth and richness which he had never heard in the little song before.

“And now,” said the E’telekeli, “the blessing of the First Forbidden One be upon you.” The giant bowed a little and kissed Rod McBan on the forehead. Rod thought it strange and started to speak, but the eyes were upon him.

Eyes — like twin fires.

Fire — like friendship, like warmth, like a welcome and a farewell.

Eyes — which became a single fire.

He awakened only when he was in orbit around Old North Australia.

The descent was easy. The ship had a viewer. The snake-pilot said very little. He put Rod down in the Station of Doom, a few hundred meters from his own door. He left two heavy packages. An Old North Australian patrol ship hovered overhead and the air hummed with danger while Norstrilian police floated to the ground and made sure that no one besides Rod McBan got off. The Earth ship whispered and was gone.

“I’ll give you a hand, Mister,” said one of the police. He clutched Rod with one mechanical claw of his ornithopter, caught the two packages in the other, and flung his machine into the air with a single beat of the giant wings. They coasted into the yard, the wings tipped up, Rod and his packages were deposited deftly and the machine flapped away in silence.

There was nobody there. He knew that Aunt Doris would come soon. And Lavinia. Lavinia! Here, now, on this dear poor dry Earth, he knew how much Lavinia suited him. Now he could spiek, he could hier!

It was strange. Yesterday — or was it yesterday? (for it felt like yesterday) — he had felt very young indeed. And now, since his visit to the Catmaster, he felt somehow grown up, as if he had discovered all his personal ingrown problems and had left them behind on Old Earth. He seemed to know in his deepest mind that C’mell had never been more than nine-tenths his, and that the other tenth — the most valuable and beautiful and most secret tenth of her life — was forever given to some other man or underman whom he would never know. He felt that C’mell would never give her heart again. And yet he kept for her a special kind of tenderness, which would never recur. It was not marriage which they had had, but it was pure romance.

But here, here waited home itself, and love.

Lavinia was in it, dear Lavinia with her mad lost father and her kindness to a Rod who had not let much kindness into his life.

Suddenly, the words of an old poem rose unbidden to his mind:

He spieked. He spieked very loud, “Lavinia!” Beyond the hill the cry came back, right into his mind, “Rod, Rod! Oh, Rod! Rod?”

“Yes,” he spieked. “Don’t run. I’m home.” He felt her mind coming near, though she must have been beyond one of the nearby hills. When he touched minds with Lavinia, he knew that this was her ground, and his too. Not for them the wet wonders of Earth, the golden-haired beauties of C’mell and Earth people! He knew without doubt that Lavinia would love and recognize the new Rod as she had loved the old.

He waited very quietly and then he laughed to himself under the grey nearby friendly sky of Norstrilia. He had momentarily had the childish impulse to rush across the hills and to kiss his own computer. He waited for Lavinia instead.