The Dark Side of the Sun

11

'We are an old race. We have enjoyed all that the galaxy has to offer - I myself have seen the black mouth in the centre of the galaxy, and the bright dead stars beyond - and therefore as a race we must be doomed. You seek new experience as a pseudo-human; I study the birth of hydrogen in the interstellar abyss with the race called Pod. We sublimate our Creapiness, because it stifles us. Where do we go from here?'

Personal letter from His Furness CRabE + 687° to His Furness CReegE + 690°, reprinted in the anthology Post Joker

'Enter.'

Dom pushed open the door.

Tarli was lying on his stomach, reading. He glanced up and grinned. 'Come on in.'

Dom entered sheepishly and dumped the grav sandals on the bed.

'Yours,' he said. Tarli touched them thoughtfully.

'Yes,' he said, doubtfully, and switched off the cube.

'Gravity was on my side and I cheated and, well...' said Dom miserably.

'You're soaked,' said Tarli. He clapped his hands. There was a rush of air from one corner of the room and a young drosk appeared, took an order for clothing and a towel, and vanished. A moment later she was back.

'Have your people got, um, rigid rules about bodily exposure?' asked Tarli. 'If so, the ablution room is through there.'

Dom pulled his sodden shirt over his head and grunted.

'Only we get all sorts here, you see. Okay, Chaquaduc.' He clapped his hands again and the bowing figure disappeared. Dom glanced up.

'That's pretty neat. Field transference? Grandmother won't have it in the house. She says it's a wicked waste of power.'

Tarli held up his hand. 'Inductance surfaces under the skin, yes. It's a tradition with us. It impresses guests. Here.'

Dom caught a dragonskin belt and buckled it around a loose fitting robe intricately worked in yellow and grey silk. The Laothian boy opened an enamelled closet and handed him a smaller version of the sword.

'Hey!'

'It's only a koto. Purely ceremonial. Please accept it. Apart from anything else, by custom it's a mortal insult if you don't. I'd have to fight you again, with swords and without armour. And before that I'd have to teach you to use it.' He glanced sidelong at Dom's neck, 'You've been getting a few lessons anyway, I hear.'

Dom's hand flew to his neck and he winced, not just from the bruises.

'I thought Laothian girls went in more for flower arranging,' he muttered.

Tarli grinned. 'Oh yes? The nearest flowers to us are on Boon-dock, the next planet out. The biggest ones are motile roses - you have to get the plant in an arm-lock before you can prune it.'

'I bet she'd be good at it.'

'Pretty good, probably. She's first on the shamsword lists, that's out of about five hundred true shamuri. You have to be expert to get on the lists'.

Dom fingered the blade of the koto and grunted.

'Archery, now, I'm better at that. She hasn't got the patience. Sharli's only about thirtieth in the list.'

'Anything she's not good at?'

'There's our third national pastime.'

'What's that? Pig-sticking? Crushing rocks with the fingers?'

'No. Micro-circuitry design. It's an art, you know . Come on, it's time for dinner.'

Dom was surprised as they made their way towards the main hall. He was on Laoth, a world that made the best shipware and Class Five minds that were classed as humans, and he had seen no robots apart from the horse and the mechanisms in the garden. Laothians obviously didn't like to surround themselves with their creations.

As they walked through a hall lined with lacquered panels, Tarli said slowly: 'Father is very annoyed.'

'About me?'

'Indirectly, yes. It wasn't your coming here - he likes visitors. It's just that we are getting some uninvited ones. How many days before you discover Jokers World?'

'After tonight, three days.'

'Have you got any ideas?'

'Some,' said Dom noncommittally.

'I hope so,' said Tarli. 'There's fifty ships hanging around our system now, waiting for you to make a move. Some of them are toting weaponry, too. Terra Novae has got a whole fleet. There's even a class of a hulk from Whole Erse, it's probably the only one they have got. There's going to be a real shoot-out when you lead them to Jokers World. And, uh, what's worrying Father . . . '

'You can put his mind at rest. I don't think the Jokers had anything to do with Laoth,' said Dom quickly.

Tarli sighed with relief. 'The trouble they're putting us to!' he went on. 'We have to send out squads every hour to clear up these bugs United Spies are dropping round the palace. They crawl into every crevice - look at that one!'

A thing like a jewelled praying mantis was creeping along the top of one of the coloured panels. It tried to scurry away as they approached, but Tarli flicked it on to the floor with the end of his sword and crushed it.

'Looks like a standard Earth model,' he said. 'See what I mean?'

'The message behind all this is that you're glad to see me but you'd be even happier to see me go,' said Dom.

Tarli said hurriedly: 'Please don't take it the wrong way. I'll tell you one thing, we'll make sure you go vertically, and protected. Still, you're not our only worry. Have you heard about the bank disappearing?'

Dom shook his head.

'Nothing like it has happened before.'

The hall doors swung open before them. There were only eight for the meal. The round table had been collapsed back into the memory-store, and a plain Laothian dining mat spread in its place. Besides Tarli and Dom there was Joan, Keja, the Emperor, Sharli, Hrsh-Hgn and a small dapper Laothian. The children's drosk servants stood behind them, and Isaac moved over to place himself behind Dom. He was holding Ig.

'Thanks,' said Dom, taking the creature. 'Where has he been? And how about you?'

'Just looking around the old place, boss. Ig's sort of the unofficial mascot of the bug-clearing crews - he can really root them out.'

Sharli looked up and blushed when Dom saw her.

The main course, kai shellfish, was eaten in silence, except for the efforts of a phnobic trio playing chlong at the other end of the hall.

A cool night breeze brought the tinkling of the leaves of the robot garden floating into the room.

The Emperor, with great ceremony, poured out a syrupy clear liquid that was deceptively light on the tongue and burned in the throat. The servants disappeared at a handclap. The trio hurried to the end of a phrase, unstrung their instruments and hurried away.

'Now,' said the Emperor. 'Let us talk.'

'Spies?' murmured Joan, into her glass. The Emperor raised his eyebrows.

'But of course, my dear,' he said. 'Over there the inq-player in the trio deposited an Ear before he left, my son's droskservant reports regularly to their unpronounceable planet, and this room swarms with bugs and pinpoints. This very gentleman on my left' - the dapper man smiled - 'is an accomplished spy. His name is Magane. One of his many jobs is to spy upon me. He reports to me regularly in case I act ill-advisedly. Where is Jokers World?' he ended abruptly.

Dom ran a finger round the edge of his glass.

'You have a mere seventy-two hours to discover it,' Ptarmigan prompted.

'That's unfair!' said Keja.

'He doesn't have to tell me.'

'I think I'm getting the idea, ' said Dom mildly. 'I can feel the edges of a concept. The dark side of the sun... it's a bit non-committal, isn't it? Perhaps it refers to another set of dimensions?'

'You don't believe that,' said the Emperor. 'And neither do I. Jokers World is a singularity in this continuum. Probability suggests that this is the only universe in which they existed, although we can't locate them through math. My belief is that they were a billion to one chance that only cropped up in our particular space time.'

'I think so too,' said Dom. 'There are only four to five examples of life apart from the races in the life bubble, and they are big and - well, not life as we think of it. Like the Bank or Chatogaster. With them life is just another attribute, like mass or age. No, I think the Jokers were the first life-as-we-can-grasp-it in the galaxy, and I agree with the idea that they probably got our own shows on the road. I don't know why I agree. It just seems right.'

'I don't know about this idea,' said Keja. The Emperor smiled.

'You see, my dear, the universe has no time for life. By rights it shouldn't exist. We don't realize the odds.'

Dom nodded. 'We're so used to the idea of life as an essential part of the universe,' he said. 'Even in pre-Sadhim times we peopled other stars with imaginary beings and kidded ourselves that life off Earth was an odds-on chance. We didn't want to be alone.'

'Nor did the Jokersss,' said Hrsh-Hgn , leaning forward. 'So they altered chancess . . . '

'They peopled the stars too, only they must have been biological geniuses. They filled every ecological niche, too, from cool suns to frozen space . . . ' Dom began. Then he stopped.

He knew about the Jokers. Other sentences thronged in his head, floated like icebergs in his mind. They had entered of their own accord - or had been put there.

He knew all about the Jokers. He remembered how they felt, surveying the empty planets, knowing the inbuilt block that every race ran up against eventually - the limitations of their evolutionary outlook...

He saw Jokers World, and sat stunned. The others carried on talking. The conversation coiled round him unheeded.

'The dark side of the sun sounds poetic,' said Keja brightly. 'How about Screamer and Groaner?'

'The Internal Planetss of Protosstar Five?' said Hrsh-Hgn. 'Far too hot, and short-lived. They did not exist ten thousand yearss ago. So radioactive, too.'

'You're talking as if Jokers are human,' said Keja. 'It's never been proved. Couldn't they be silicoid? Look at the Creapii.'

'How about Rats?'

It was Tarli. He looked at their faces and shrugged.

'Well, we know what things are like on its planet. And the reversed-entropy situation might fit the Dark Side of the Sun saying.'

'The Creapii say any creatures on Tenalp can't possibly be intelligent,' said Ptarmigan sharply. 'And we'll have no more talk about that world in this place.'

'I think it's Earth,' said Joan firmly. The Emperor turned.

'That's a very homocentric statement. Can you justify it?'

She nodded. 'It's an old theory, after all. The Jokers were human, and I mean human human — sorry, Hrsh-Hgn, but you know what I mean - and they finally settled on Earth long before we were anything more than apes. They interbred with us eventually. Circumstantial evidence points to this. A lot of aliens consider the Jokers were human. Earth was the only planet apart from the Creapii homeworld to produce a race capable of reaching even its satellite... thirdly, Earthmen are the sort who would build something like the Chain Stars or the Centre of the Universe, just for the hell of it. Lastly, Earth is the home of the Joker Institute. It practically runs the planet. Half the directors of the Board of Earth are also in the Institute management committee. And the theory runs that the whole shooting match is run by a clique of pure-blooded Jokers as a sly way of thwarting Joker studies. They have made attempts on Dom's life, for their ridiculous reasons. They don't want Jokers World found by anyone, but themselves.'

Hrsh-Hgn coughed. 'I sshould point out that ssimilar theoriess have been current with phnobes, drosks, Creapii, tarquins, sspoonerss and a sscore of otherss. Every race sseess itsself in the Jokerss. The Creapii ssay, who but Creapii could amasss the knowledge to capture the Centre of the Universse? The phnobess ssay, who but phnobes would have the insight into Totality to fasshion the Chain Sstars sso perfectly? The sspoonerss say, who but such ass we could have the reimtole into gramepe to sset the Maze? The tarquins broadcast, who but—'

'Point made,' said the Emperor.

'There is only one Sun in the universe,' said Dom.

They watched him struggle with his thoughts.

'It's simple,' he said, and looked perplexedly at their expressions, 'there are plenty of stars, but the real Sun, the red bright thing is intelligent life.'

It was tantalizingly close. He saw through them and beyond the room, into the cosmospolitan world of the fifty-two known races, and inside that, snug as the yolk in the egg, the world of the Jokers on the dark side of the Sun.

He wondered if the knowledge was being fed into his mind, and decided against it. He could provide too clear a chain of reasoning. All the loose ends tied up neatly, just like in a good probability math equation.

He had thought his father went knowingly to his death, as a good probability mathemagician should do. But his father had also been going to ...

He heard a damp sizzle. Someone said: 'This really is too bad.' Someone was standing in the doorway.

Ways frowned into the muzzle of his molecule stripper and stepped further into the room.

'Good evening, Your Eminence, and assembled gentry. Now, at this point someone usually makes an impassioned call for the guard.'

The walls disappeared. Three guards fired at Ways simultaneously, and disappeared in clouds of light dust.

'The essence of the molecule stripper is the little matrix engine which can, in very rare circumstances, arc over and reverse the field,' said Ways. 'I believe that just happened.'

The Emperor recovered first. He poured out more wine, proffered the glass to Ways, and smiled thinly.

'Would you explain how you got in?' he said. 'I must review our alarm system.'

'Certainly. I brought my ship down on the terrace. I expect most of your alarms failed.'

'You are lucky,' said Ptarmigan mildly.

'I was built so. You made me, in fact.'

'Ah yes. Luck as an electronic faculty. I remember supervising the plans myself. What a pity we didn't think of incorporating some kind of switch.'

'It wouldn't have worked,' said Ways. 'But enough of this chitter-chatter. How can I kill Dom Sabalos, who is invulnerable? If I dropped a rock on his head Brownian motion would contrive to knock it off course.'

Sharli swung her koto. It flashed towards Ways' chest and collapsed like tinfoil. She stared at it in disbelief.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'A statistically-possible chance can happen to anyone. Excuse me.' He drew a simple United Spies official-issue assassination gun and fired at Dom again.

The bullet stopped in mid-air and boiled.

A faint tremor ran round the universe.

'Molecular resistance,' said Ways. 'Damn.' He sat down on the mat and took up the glass of wine. He smiled at them, and gestured with the stripper.

'There must be a hundred more ships up there,' he said. 'Phnobic, drosk, Creap, Spooner, Pod. All watching this place and each other. How many planets in this system, your Eminence?'

'Since the First Sirian Bank shot out of his orbit and into interspace, I expect there are now six,' said Ptarmigan.

'Correct. The Bank is now in orbit forty million miles out beyond - what's the name of your outermost world?'

'Far Out,' said Tarli.

'So you see, everyone feels a burning interest in Dom's moves during the next few days. Me too. The arrangements have been modified slightly. We are all going to Jokers World.'

He waved them into silence. 'Dom and I are lucky. He is protected - by the Jokers, it is believed - while my luck is genuine silicon-chip certain. However, I am afraid the rest of you aren't lucky. Do I make my point? The terms 'hostage' and 'kill' are unsavoury, and therefore I will not use them . . . '

A mechanical bat wheeled into the dusk as they trooped across the terrace. Ways' little ship was there. It was small, small enough to have its shape dictated by the single matrix engine it contained. A saddle for the pilot and a frame for the auxiliary equipment were wrapped over the front of the coil, and landing gear was simply welded on to the engine housing. It was a machine for getting from place to place with the minimum of comfort and the maximum of efficiency - and it was fast. It had no name.

Dom climbed into the saddle, closed the transparent housing and inspected the controls. Ways' voice with its final instructions was muffled by the plastic.

'Let us be quite clear. Should I lose contact with you, or should you make any improper move, I shall be forced to take steps. Wait for us in orbit.'

The ship lifted smoothly. Once out of atmosphere Dom could survey most of the Tau Ceti system on the tiny scanner screen. The ships showed up as blue pinpoints. A long way out was something else - the scanner kept flickering from red to blue as the Class Two brain built into it tried to decide whether it was a ship or a world. As Dom watched, the blip disappeared. The Bank had ducked into interspace. Dom remembered seeing the huge matrix engine in one of the caverns. It wouldn't take much to float a planet.

Ten minutes later the Drunk With Infinity was a bright star over Laoth's terminator. Ways had chosen a good ship. Dom set up the co-ordinates he had been given on the matrix computer and sighed.

The jump was short, lasting barely half an hour subjective time. It ended in the middle of a fleet.

Ways said: 'Open up the communicator circuits.'

He saw the main cabin of the Drunk, with the hostages standing mutely in the middle of the floor. Most were, at least. Joan I was being supported, and Isaac was sprawled on the floor.

Ways walked into the field of view. 'I've run into a little pocket of resistance,' he said. 'Don't let that worry you.'

'What's the fleet for?' said Dom.

'Company. Who knows if we may have to fight, survey, or merely land on a dead world?'

Dom laughed hysterically in the tiny cabin, and stopped only when he saw Ig cowering away on the control panel and gazing at him in wide-eyed terror.

'You're fools, ' he told the communicator. 'You think I will lead you to a planet?'

The scene of the Drunk flickered out, and another face looked at him. It was thin, topped off by a mop of black hair, and had unmistakably been born on Earth.

'I am sorry about this,' it said. 'My name is Franz Asman, of the Joker Institute. This is our fleet. Ways is our tool.'

'Earthman, eh?' said Dom. 'That means you don't really think the threat of reprisals is enough to stop me running away. An Earthman would let his grandmother fry if he saw any personal profit in it.'

'Sadhim preserve us from interworld animosity,' said Asman wearily. 'As a matter of fact, you know, I've been studying you for some time. There's a staff of two hundred at the Institute who have been studying you for some time, too. We know exactly what you will do in any given situation, and in this one you won't run.'

'Studying me?' Behind Asman's head he could see vague figures, in front of a long panel covered with intricate patterns of coloured lines.

'This is our job. Do you know what an astrologer was?'

'Sure,' said Dom. 'I was born under O'Brien the Hunter.'

'We are the new astrologers. We evaluate—'

—by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those whose probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverer of Jokers World. That particular profile had been in existence for some time. For no known reason questions relating to Jokers World usually became nonsense when rendered into p-math, but it was possible, just possible, to make up an equation from the outlines round the logical holes.

Then it meant sifting again. That had not been difficult. There were only three potential discoverers this year. One was a phnobic monk, the other a three-month-old girl on Third Eye. Both had been killed easily.

But Dom was a different matter. The Institute was at a loss to understand why. His father had also been a high-probability Discoverer, and there had been no difficulty there. Yet something prevented Dom from being conveniently removed. He was too lucky.

Something wanted him to discover Jokers World.

'Yes,' said Dom. 'It's the Jokers.'

'So we think,' said Asman. 'Do you know why we can't let you?'

'I think I can follow your reasoning,' said Dom. 'You fear the Jokers. That's because you don't know them. You think that contact with even the remnants of their culture will destroy us. I expect you have some idea that men are better off without gods.'

'You laugh at us. Oh, we can't deny that the Joker artifacts have done something to stimulate interracial co-operation.'

Dom heard himself shout: 'They caused it! The Creapii invented the matrix engine just so that they could find other lifeforms to help them answer the Joker riddles!'

'That is so. But Dom, listen. Before Sadhim, before star travel even, you know that most men believed in some kind of omnipresent god? Not the Sadhimist Small Gods, answerable to natural forces, but a real Director of the Universe? But if it had turned out that He really did exist chaos would have been let loose on the planet. He would have ceased to become a matter of comforting Belief but a matter of fact - you don't believe in the sun, either. And men would have perished of a cosmic inferiority complex. You can't live and know of such greatness.

'We need the idea of Jokers because they are a unifying force among the races, but we can't afford to find their world. Supposing it is dead - is that the end of even the greatest race? If they still live, will they enslave us or ignore us? Or worse, befriend us?'

'We can only let you go now to the dark side of the sun. But you must understand that we can't let you return.'

'I know what the Jokers World is,' said Dom slowly. 'I've known for some time, I think, without realizing it. And I think I'm coming to realize where it is. There is only one Sun in the universe - our universe - and the Jokers gave it to us. Will you lock your fleet on to this ship?'

Asman nodded.

'Then follow me.'

Interspace glowed around him. Dom switched off the set and tried to ignore the orange-gold glow that filled the ship and in which it floated.

To no one he said: 'Why now? And why me?'

Ig shrugged, and turned his pointed, rat-like nose towards him. He spoke. The words arrived in Dom's head without the need for a cumbersome physical route.

'The trouble was that we never found a way to become empathic. Telepathy - that's merely a higher form of speech. But to know how another being, another creature feels - that is impossible.'

'You were lonely,' said Dom. 'All those empty years ...'

'Isaac would say: close, but no cigar. We searched even the alternate universes, it is true, right along to the dark impossible ones that are the stuff of nightmares. There was life. The Bank and Chatogaster are small fry. In some universes the very suns live. There is a galaxy that sings. In one universe, over there—' a paw pointed and one claw disappeared momentarily into another continuum— 'there is nothing but thought, which pervades all. Not only thought, but understanding. But it is alien to us. How blithely you use the word alien: you have no idea how alien a thing may be.

'We discovered - as the Creapii are discovering - that the ultimate barrier is one's viewpoint. Dimly they realize that even their most objective statements about the universe cannot be freed from the Creapii taint because they ultimately derive from Creapii minds and emotions. That's why they are the great ambassadors of inter-racial harmony, and why they try so hard to be everything but Creapii.'

'So you invented us,' said Dom. 'At least that theory is true? You wanted to get, uh, different points of view?'

'Close again. All we had to do was make it easier for intelligent life to evolve. That at least is not difficult; it's well within the range of your sciences. Though it was damn difficult to hit the right combination for cold-helium life. By the way, I have a small bomb surgically implanted in me. The Earthmen did it. Very subtle. I wouldn't worry; I have inactivated it.'

Ig paused and scratched an ear.

'We left artifacts to tantalize,' he said. 'I'm afraid we cheated. Be sure that before we left we were very thorough in cleaning up the galaxy. On some worlds we had to build an entirely new crust, down to the fossils. We had to replace metals in the grounds as ores, replenish oilfields, relay coal measures - we wanted to make sure you had a start in life. We gave you reconditioned worlds, but we left you the Towers and the Chain Stars and so on. All cultural fakes, I'm afraid. Made to awe rather than inform. But we had to leave the clue. That was artistically correct.

'The dark side of the sun,' said Dom. 'It was two clues. If you hadn't wanted us to translate it, we never would have done. That was clue one. After all, we couldn't even have translated Phnobic without the phnobes there to help us out. And the sun - you turned your back on intelligence, and became dull-minded animals.'

'Please! Swamp-igs are reasonably bright, considering their environment. We selected our new selves with care. Believe me, it is pleasant to have no enemies and to lie in the warm mud. We had to build in safeguards - a genetic twist to make us lucky animals, so that we were venerated rather than hunted. And an alarm, so that when the time came we would remember. These little bodies have made good hiding places.'

'I'll just ask again: why me?' said Dom.

'You live at the right time. You are naturally cosmopolitan. You come from Widdershins. That was our world, once. Long ago, of course. You are rich, there is a certain amount of glamour attached to your position. Let's say it was fate.'

He squinted through the canopy at the glowing, heatless fires of interspace.

'Excuse me,' said Dom. 'But you don't look like a super race.'

Ig's paws were darting rapidly across the console of the matrix computer. He looked up and stared at Dom -

- Dom rubbed his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. A few seconds later he tried to remember what he had seen during that moment of contact, but it had gone now, leaving only an impression of greatness and understanding.

'Thank you,' said Ig quietly. 'You see, people expect an advanced race to land in golden ships and say, "Throw away your weapons, cease fighting among yourselves, and join the great galactic brotherhood." It isn't like that. Young races do that.'

'What happens now?'

'Now?'

. . . we will meet you, came the thought. Together, perhaps, we will see the universe as it really is. And when we meet you, we will do so as equals. We are all mere sub-species of the one race of bright sun dwellers, after all. And the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. Now...

'Now,' said Ig, 'we will talk.'

The fleet hung against the shimmering bulk of Widdershins. Other ships were flashing into existence all through the system, as the followers homed in on the interspace shadow. The radio was a gabble of many tongues.

'They're going to fight it out!' moaned Joan. 'Oh my God, they're going to fight!'

The control deck of the Earth command ship was dominated by the big state-of-space circlescreen. They watched the incoming ships form a rough pattern. Their commanders had been doing some very rapid diplomacy.

Asman walked over from one of the control desks, shaking his head.

'I'm sorry,' he began. 'Widdershins eh? Are you Widdershines Jokers, then? You were only a small colony to begin with, it's not inconceivable . . . '

The ship trembled. Something was rising out of interspace, a great bulk with a voice that boomed through the pickup system.

'ho there! i will prosecute economic sanctions AGAINST THE FIRST RACE TO MAKE AN AGGRESSIVE ACT!'

The Bank took up a watchful orbit closer in towards See-Why.

Dom slid back the hatch of the small ship and stepped out into space.

He walked carefully, unsure of his footing, and stopped a dozen metres from the ship. The faintest of shimmers hung around him. He was holding something in his outstretched hands.

Ig stood up on his ridiculous hind pair of legs and spoke.

In the command ships lights dimmed, circuitry blew out and the walls trembled to the roar of the sound.

There was a short pause. Then the little Joker lowered his voice. The message was clearer then, but almost as devastating. It was: Land. We, the Jokers, the galaxy-striders, the star-shapers, ask it.

You have a great deal to teach us.

* * *

After a struggle Dom pacified the wild windshell and coaxed it around towards the shore.

Five miles away, by the joke that was the Joker's Tower, more ships were landing. Quietly, trying to avoid catching each other's visual apparatus, the fifty-two races were making their way into the swamp.

Dom had left Ig seated in the mud, the focus of a wide and growing ring of listeners. And other Igs were dog-paddling along the water lanes. Something new was going to happen to the universe. It would involve all the races. They were, after all, only aspects of the one great race of thinking creatures - the dwellers on the bright side of the sun. It would take time, but one day something would come back out of interest to Widdershins, in the dank swamp, and say: it began here.

But just for once - for twice - Dom was playing truant. Though there was still one duty to perform. Balancing on the rocking shell he removed the stopper from the small bottle and tipped its contents into the sea. Then carefully, to avoid the shell's stings, he stuck his head into the water to hear, far off and faint, the words Thank you in sea-noise.

He looked back to the distant beach. A figure had wandered down to the surf line, wrapped in a golden glow. She was watching him thoughtfully.

Dom urged the shell through the breakers. Now, he thought, we will listen.

THE END