The Dream Master

III

he was a dog.

But he was no ordinary dog.

He was driving out into the country, by himself.

Big, a German Shepherd in appearance—except for his head—he sat on his haunches in the front seat, staring out the window at the other cars and at what he could see of the countryside. He passed other cars because he was moving in the high-acceleration lane.

It was a cold afternoon and snow lay upon the fields; the trees wore jackets of ice, and all the birds in the sky and on the ground seemed exceptionally dark.

The dog opened his mouth and his long tongue touched the windowpane and his breath steamed it. His head was larger than any dog's head, excepting perhaps an Irish Wolf­hound's. His eyes were deep-set and dark, and his mouth was opened because he was laughing.

He raced on.

The car finally moved across the highway, slowing, en­tered the extreme righthand lane, and after a time turned into a cutoff. It moved up a country road for several miles, then it turned into a narrow lane and parked it­self beneath a tree.

After a moment, the engine stopped and the door opened.

The dog left the car and pushed the door most of the way shut with his shoulder. When he saw the dome-light go out he turned and walked away into the field, heading toward the woods.

He raised his paws carefully. He examined his footprints.

When he entered the woods he took several deep breaths.

Then he shook himself all over.

He barked a strange, un-doglike bark and began to run.

He ran among the trees and the rocks, jumped over frozen puddles, small gullies, raced up hills and down slopes, dashed past glassy, rainbow-dotted bushes, moved beside an icy creekbed.

He stopped and panted. He sniffed the air.

He opened his mouth and laughed, a thing he had learned from men.

Then, taking a very deep breath, he threw his head back and howled—a thing he had not learned from men.

In fact, he was not certain where he had learned it.

His howl rolled across the hills and echoed among them like a great horn-note.

His ears pricked upright as he listened to the echoes.

Then he heard an answering howl, which was like, yet not like, his own.

There could be no howl quite like his own, because his voice was not wholly the voice of dogs.

He listened, he sniffed, he howled again.

Again, there came an answer. Nearer, this time...

He waited, tasting the breezes for the messages they bore.

It was a dog that came toward him up the hill, rapidly at first, then slowing its pace to a walk. It stopped forty feet away and stared at him. Then it lowered its head.

It was some kind of floppy-eared hound—big, mongrel...

He sniffed once more, made a small noise in his throat.

The dog bared its teeth.

He moved toward it, and it did not move until he was about ten feet away. Then it turned again and began to draw back.

He stopped.

The dog watched him, carefully, and began to circle. It moved to his leeward side and sniffed the wind.

Finally, he made a noise at the dog, deep down in his throat. It sounded strangely like "Hello."

The dog growled at him. He took a step toward it.

"Good dog," he finally said.

It cocked its head to one side.

"Good dog," he said again.

He took another step toward it, and another. Then he sat down.

"... Ver-ry good dog," he said.

Its tail twitched, slightly.

He rose and walked up to it. It sniffed him all over. He returned the compliment. Its tail wagged, and it circled a-round and around him and threw its head back and barked twice.

It moved in an ever-widening circle, occasionally lower­ing its head to the ground. Then it darted off into the woods, head still lowered.

He approached the place where it had last stood and sniffed at the ground. Then he turned and followed the trail through the trees.

After a few seconds he had caught up with it and they were running side by side.

Then he sped on ahead, and the trail circled and dipped and looped. Finally, it was strong indeed.

A rabbit broke from the cover of a small shrub.

He ran it down and seized it in his huge jaws.

It struggled, so he tossed his head.

Its back made a snapping sound and it ceased its strug­gles.

Then he held it a moment longer and looked around.

The hound came rushing up to him, quivering all over.

He dropped the rabbit at its feet.

The hound looked up at him, expectantly.

He watched it.

It lowered its head and tore at the small carcass. The blood made smoke in the cold air. Stray snowflakes landed upon the dog's brown head.

It chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed...

Finally, he lowered his own head and tore at the thing.

The meat was warm and raw and wild. The dog drew back as he seized upon it, a snarl dying in its throat.

He was not especially hungry, though, so he dropped it and moved away. The dog leapt upon it once more.

After that, they hunted together for several hours.

He always beat the hound to the kill, but he always left it for him to eat.

Altogether, they ran down seven rabbits. The last two they left untouched.

The dog sat down and stared at him.

"Good dog," he told it

It wagged its tail.

"Bad dog," he told it.

The tail stopped wagging.

"Very bad dog."

Its head fell. It looked up at him.

He turned and walked away.

It followed him, tail between its legs.

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

The dog cringed.

Then he barked five times and howled.

The ears and tail rose again. It moved up to his side, sniffing at him once more.

He made a laughing noise.

"Good dog," he said.

The tail wagged. '

He laughed again.

"Mi-cro, ceph, al-ic, id-i-ot," he said.

The tail continued to wag.

He laughed.

"Good dog, good dog, good dog, good dog, good dog."

It ran in a small circle, lowered its head between its front paws and looked up at him.

He bared his fangs and snarled. Then he leapt at it and bit it on the shoulder.

It made a yelping noise and ran away.

"Fool!" he growled. "Fool, fool, fool, fool, fooll"

There was no reply.

He howled again, a sound like that of no other animal on earth.

And then he returned to the car, nosed the door open and climbed inside.

He leaned upon a button on the dashboard and the engine started. The door swung itself all the way open, then slammed. With a paw, he pressed out the necessary coordinates. The car backed out from under the tree, then moved up the lane toward the road.

It hurried back onto the highway and then it was gone.

Somewhere a man was walking.

He could have worn a heavier coat this chill morning, but he was fond of the one with the fur collar.

Hands in his pockets, he walked along the guard-fence. On the other side of the fence the cars roared by.

He did not turn his head.

He could have been in any number of other places, but he chose to be there.

He chose to be walking on this chill morning.

He chose not to care about anything but walking.

The cars sped by and he walked slowly, but steadily.

He did not encounter anyone else on foot.

His collar was turned up, against the wind, but it did not stop all of the cold.

He walked on, and the morning bit him and tugged at his clothing. The day held him, walking, in its infinite gallery, unsigned and unnoticed.

Christmas Eve.

... The opposite of New Years:

It is the time of year for family reunions, for Yule logs and trees blazing—for gifts, and for the eating of special foods and the drinking of special drinks.

It is the personal time, rather than the social time; it is the time of focusing upon self and family, rather than society at large; it is the time of rimed windows, star-coated angels, of burning bushes, captured rainbows, of fat Santas with

two pairs of trousers (because the youngsters who sit upon their laps are easily awed); and the time of cathedral win­dows, blizzards, carols, bells, manger scenes, season's greet­ings from those far removed (even if they live but a short distance away), of broadcast Dickens and holly and candles, of poinsettia and evergreen, of snowbanks, firs, spruces, pines, of the Bible and Medieval England, of "What Child is This?" and "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem," of the birth and the promise, the light in the darkness; the time, and the time to be, the feeling before the realization, the realization before the happening, the trafficking of red and green, the chang­ing of the year's guard, of tradition, loneliness, sympathy, empathy, sentimentality, singing, faith, hope, charity, love, desire, aspiration, fear, fulfillment, realization, faith, hope, death; a time of the gathering together of stones and the casting away of stones, of embracing, getting, losing, laugh­ing, dancing, mourning, rending, silence, speaking, death, and not speaking. It is a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted...

Charles Render and Peter Render and Jill DeVille began a quiet Christmas Eve together.

Render's apartment was set atop a tower of steel and glass. It had about it a certain air of permanency. Books lined the walls, an occasional piece of statuary punctuated the shelves; primitive paintings in primary colors were set in open spaces. Small mirrors, concave and convex (and now framed by boughs of holly), were hung in occasional places.

Greeting cards stood upon the mantelpiece. Potted plants (two in the living room, one in the study, two in the kitchen, and a bedroom shrub) wore tinsel, wore stars. Music flooded the suite.

The punch bowl was a pink jewel in a diamond setting. It held court on the low coffee table of fruitwood, its atten­dant cups glittering in the diffused light.

It was the time of opening of Christmas presents...

Jill turned within hers, swirling it about her like a soft-toothed sawblade.

"Ermine!" she exclaimed. "How grand! How flne! Oh, thank you, dear Shaper!"

Render smiled and blew wreathes of smoke.

The light caught her coat.

"Snow, but warm! Ice, but soft..." she said.

"The skins of dead animals," he remarked, "are highly potent tributes to the prowess of the hunter. I hunted them for you, going up and down in the Earth, and to and fro in it. I came upon the finest of white creatures and said, 'Give me your skins,' and they did. Mighty is the hunter, Render."

"I have a thing for you," said she.

"Oh?"

"Here. Here is your gift."

He peeled away the wrappings.

"Cufflinks," he said, "totemic ones. Three faces, one above another—golden. Id, ego, and superego—thus shall I name them, the highest face being the most exalted."

"It is the lowest one that is smiling," said Peter.

Render nodded to his son.

"I did not specify which one was the highest," he told him, "and he is smiling because he has pleasures of his own which the vulgar herd shall never understand."

"Baudelaire?" said Peter.

"Hm," said Render. "Yes, Baudelaire."

"... Badly misphrased," said his son.

"Circumstance," said Render, "is a matter of time and chance. Baudelaire at Christmas is a matter of something old and something new."

"Sounds like a wedding," said Peter.

Jill flushed, above her snowfield of fur, but Render did not seem to notice.

"Now it is time for you to open your gifts," he said.

"All right."

Peter tore at the wrappings.

"An alchemistry set," he remarked, "just what I've always wanted—complete with alembics, retorts, bain-marie, and a supply of elixir vitae. Great! Thanks, Miss DeVille."

"Please call me 'Jill.'"

"Sure, Jill. Thanks."

"Open the other one."

"Okay."

He tore away the white, with its holly and bells.

"Fabulous!" he noted. "Other things I've always wanted —something borrowed and something blue: the family album in a blue binding, and a copy of the Render Report for the Senate Sub-committee Hearings on Sociopathic Maladjustment among Government Employees. Also, the complete works of Lofting, Grahame, and Tolkein. Thank you, Dad. —Oh my! There's still more! Tallis, Merely, Mozart, and good dead Bach. Fine sounds to fill my room! Thank you, thank you! What can I give you in return?—Well, lessee . ..

"Howzabout these?" he asked.

He handed his father a package, Jill another.

Render opened his, Jill hers.

"A chess set"—Render.

"A compact"—Jill.

"Thank you"—Render.

"Thank you"—Jill.

"You're both welcome."

"How are you coming with the recorder?" asked Render.

"Give a listen," said Peter.

He assembled his recorder and played.

He played of Christmas and holiness, of evening and blazing star, of warm hearth, wassail, shepherds, kings, light, and the voices of angels.

When he was finished he disassembled the recorder and put it away.

"Very good," said Render.

"Yes-good," said Jill. "Very ..."

"Thanks."

"How was school?" asked Jill.

"Fine," said Peter.

"Will the change be much of a bother?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm good. I'm a good student. Dad has trained me well—very, very well."

"But there will be different instructors ..."

He shrugged.

"If you know an instructor, then you only know an in­structor," he said. "If you know a subject though, you know a subject. I know many subjects."

"Do you know anything about architecture?" she asked suddenly.

"What do you want to know?" he said, smiling.

She drew back and glanced away.

"The fact that you ask the question the way you do in­dicates that you know something about architecture."

"Yes," he agreed, "I do. I've been studying it recently."

"That's all I wanted to know—really..."

"Thanks. I'm glad you think I know something."

"Why is it that you know architecture, though? I'm sure it isn't a part of the normal curriculum."

"Nihil hominum." He shrugged.

"Okay—I just wondered." She looked quickly in the di­rection of her purse. "What do you think of it?" she asked, reaching for her cigarettes.

He smiled.

"What can you think about architecture? It's like the sun: It's big, it's bright, and it's there. That's about all— unless you want to get specific."

She flushed again.

Render lit her cigarette.

"I mean, do you like it?"

"Invariably, if it is old and far away—or, if it is new and I am inside it when it is cold outside. I am utilitarian in matters of physical pleasure and romantic in those pertaining to sensibility."

"God!" said Jill, and looked at Render. "What have you been teaching your son?"

"Everything I can," he replied, "as fast as I can."

"Why?"

"I don't want him to be stepped on someday by something

the size of a skyscraper, all stuffed full of facts and modem physics."

"It is not in good taste to speak of people as though they were absent," said Peter.

"True," said Render, "but good taste is not always in good taste."

"You make it sound as though someone owes somebody an apology," he noted.

"That is a matter which the individual must decide for himself, or it is without value."

"In that case," he observed, "I've just decided that I don't owe anybody an apology. If anybody owes me one though, I'll accept it like a gentleman, and in good taste."

Render stood, stared down at his son.

"Peter—" he began.

"May I have some more punch?" asked Jill. "It's quite good, and mine is all gone."

Render reached for the cup.

"I'll get it," said Peter.

He took the cup and stirred the punch with its crystal ladle. Then he rose to his feet, leaning one elbow on the back of his chair.

"Peter!"

He slipped.

The cup and its contents fell into Jill's lap. The contents ran in strawberry tracery through the white fur of her coat. The cup rolled to the sofa, coming to rest in the center of a widening stain.

Peter cried and seized his ankle, sitting down on the floor.

The guest-buzzer sounded.

Render mentioned a long medical term, in Latin. He stooped then and took his son's foot in one hand, his ankle in the other.

"Does this hurt?"

"Yes!"

"This?"

"Yes! It hurts all over!"

"How about this?"

"Along the side... There!"

Render helped him to his feet, held him balanced on his sound foot, reached for his crutches.

"Come on. Along with me. Dr. Heydell has a hobby-lab in his apartment, downstairs. That fast-cast is coming off. I want to X-ray the foot again."

"No! It's not—"

"What about my coat?" said Jill.

The buzzer sounded again.

"Damn everything!" announced Render, and he pushed the call-dot.

"Yes! Who is it?"

There came a sound of breathing.

Then, "Uh, it's me, boss. Did I pick a bad time?"

"Bennie! No, listen—I didn't mean to snap at you, but all hell's just broken loose. Come on up. By the time you get here things will be normal and unhectic again."

"... Okay, if you're sure it's all right, that is. I just wanted to stop in for a minute. I'm on my way to some­where else."

"Sure thing. Here's the door."

He tapped the other circle.

"You stay here and let her in, Jill. Well be back in a few minutes."

"What about my coat? And the sofa... ?"

"All in good time. Don't worry. C'mon, Pete."

He guided him out into the hall, where they entered an ele­vator and directed it to the sixth floor. On the way down, their elevator sighed past Bennie's, on its way up.

The door clicked. Before it could open though, Render pressed the "Hold" button.

"Peter," he said, "why are you acting like a snotty adoles­cent?"

Peter wiped his eyes.

"Hell, I'm pre-puberty," he said, "and as for being snot­ty..."

He blew his nose.

Render's hand began to rise, fell back again.

He sighed.

"We'll discuss it later."

He released the "Hold" button and the door slid open.

Dr. Heydell's suite was located at the end of the corri­dor. A large wreathe of evergreen and pine cones hung upon the door, encircling its brass knocker.

Render raised the knocker and let it fall.

From within, there came the faint sounds of Christmas music. After a moment, there was a footfall on the other side, and the door opened.

Dr. Heydell stood before them, looking up from behind thick glasses.

"Well, carolers," he announced in a deep voice. "Come in, Charles, and ...."

"My son, Peter," said Render.

"Glad to meet you, Peter," said Heydell. "Come in and join the party."

He drew the door all the way open and stepped aside.

They entered into a blast of Christmas, and Render ex­plained, "We had a little accident upstairs. Peter's ankle was broken a short time ago, and he fell on it again just now. I'd like to use your X-ray to check it out."

"Surely," said the small doctor. "Come this way. Sorry to hear about it."

He led them through his living room, about which seven or eight people were variously situated.

"Merry Christmas!"

"Hi there, Charlie!"

"Merry Christmas, Doc!"

"How's the brain-cleaning business?"

Render raised one hand automatically, nodded in four different directions.

"This is Charles Render. He's in neuroparticipation," Hey­dell explained to the rest, "and this is his son, Peter. We'll be back in a few minutes. Need my lab."

They passed out of the room, moved two steps into a ves­tibule. Heydell opened the insulated door to his insulated laboratory. The laboratory had cost him considerable time

and expense. It had required the consent of the local build­ing authorities, it had had to subscribe to more than full hospital shielding standards, and it had required the agree­ment of the apartment management, which in turn had been predicated upon the written consent of all the other tenants. Some of the latter had required economic suasion, Render understood.

They entered the laboratory, and Heydell set his apparatus in operation. He took the necessary pictures and ran them through the speed-dry, speed-develop process.

"Good," he announced, as he studied them. "No more damage, and the fracture is healing nicely."

Render smiled. He noticed that his hands had been shak­ing.

Heydell slapped him on the shoulder.

"So come on out and try our punch."

"Thanks, Heydell. I believe I will." He always called him by his last name, since they were both Charlies.

They shut down the equipment and left the lab.

Back in the living room, Render shook a few hands and sat down on the sofa with Peter.

He sipped his punch, and one of the men he had only just met, a Dr. Minton, began talking to him.

"So you're a Shaper, eh?"

"That's right."

"I've always wondered about that area. We had a bull-session going back at the hospital, just the other week..."

"Oh?"

"Our resident psychiatrist mentioned that neuropy treat­ments are no more nor less successful than ordinary thera­peutic courses."

"I'd hardly consider him in a position to judge—especial­ly if it's Mike Mismire you're talking about, and I think you are.

Dr. Minton spread his hands, palms upward.

"He said he's been collecting figures."

"The change rendered the patient in a neuropy session is a qualitative one. I don't know what he means by 'success-

ful.' The results are successful if you eliminate the patient's problem. There are various ways of doing it—as many as there are therapists—but neuropy is qualitatively superior to some­thing like psychoanalysis because it produces measurable, organic changes. It operates directly upon the nervous system, beneath a patina of real and simulated afferent im­pulses. It induces desired states of self-awareness and ad­justs the neurological foundation to support them. Psycho­analysis and allied areas are purely functional. The problem is less likely to recur if it is adjusted by neuropy."

"Then why don't you use it to cure psychotics?"

"It has been done, a couple times. But it is normally too risky an undertaking. Remember, 'participation' is the key word. Two nervous systems, two minds are involved. It can turn into a reverse-therapy session—anti-neuropy—if the pattern of aberrance is too strong for the operator to con­trol. His state of self-awareness is then altered, his neurological underpinnings are readjusted. He becomes psychotic himself, suffering actual organic brain damage."

"It would seem that there'd be some way to cut down on that feedback," said Minton.

"Not yet," Render explained, "there isn't—not without sacrificing some of the operator's effectiveness. They're work­ing on the problem right now in Vienna, but so far the answer seems far away."

"If you find one you can probably go into the more sig­nificant areas of mental distress," said Minton.

Render drank his punch. He did not like the stress that the man had laid upon the word 'significant.'

"In the meantime," said Render, after a moment, "we treat what we can treat in the best way we know, and neuropy is certainly the best means known."

"There are those who say that you don't really cure neuroses, but cater to them—that you satisfy patients by giving them little worlds all their own to be neurotic in— vacations from reality, places where they're second in com­mand to God."

"That is not the case," said Render. "The things which oc-

cur in those little worlds are not necessarily things which please them. They are not near to command at all; the Shaper—or, as you say, God—is. It is a learning experience. You learn by pleasure and you learn by pain. Generally, in these cases, it is more painful than it is pleasurable." He lit a cigarette, accepted another cup of punch.

"So I do not consider the criticism a valid one," he fin­ished.

"... And it is quite expensive," said Minton.

Render shrugged.

"Did you ever price an Omnichannel Neural Transmission and Receiver outfit?"

"No."

"Do it sometime," said Render.

He listened to a Christmas carol, put out his cigarette, and stood.

"Thanks a lot, Heydell," he said. "I've got to be going now."

"What's the hurry?" asked Heydell. "Stay awhile."

"Like to," said Render, "but there are people upstairs I have to get back to."

"Oh? Many?"

"A couple."

"Bring them down. I was about to set up a buffet, and there's more than enough. I'll feed them and ply them with drinks."

"Well—" said Render.

"Fine!" said Heydell. "Why not just call them from here?"

So he did.

"Peter's ankle is all right," he said.

"Great. Now what about my coat?" asked Jill.

"Forget it for now. I'll take care of it later."

"I tried some lukewarm water, but it's still pinkish..."

"Put it back in the box, and don't fool around with it any more! I said I'd take care of it."

"Okay, okay. We'll be down in a minute. Bennie brought a gift for Peter, and something for you. She's on her way to her sister's place, but she says she's in no hurry."

"Capital. Drag her down. She knows Heydell." "Fine." She broke the connection.

Christmas Eve.

....he opposite of New Year's:

It is the personal time, rather than the social time; it is the time of focusing upon self and family, rather than society. It is a time of many things: A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. It is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted .. .

They ate from the buffet. Most of them drank the warm Ronrico and cinnamon and cloves and fruit cocktail and ginger-flavored punch. They talked of plastasac lungs and blood screens and diagnosis by computer, and of the worth-lessness of penicillin. Peter sat with his hands folded in his lap: listening, watching. His crutches lay at his feet. Music flooded the room.

Jill sas listening, also.

When Render talked everyone listened. Bennie smiled, took another diink. Playboy doctor or not, when Render talked it was with the voice of a disc jockey and the logic of the Jes­uits. Her boss was known. Who knew Minton? Who knew Heydell? Other doctors, that's all. Shapers were big-time, and she was his secretary-receptionist. Everybody knew of the Shapers. There was nothing controversial about being a heart specialist or a bone man, an anesthesiologist or an in­ternal medicine buff. Her boss was her measure of glory. The other girls always asked her about him, about his magic machine... "Electronic Svengalis," that's what Time had called them, and Render had gotten three paia-graphs, two more than any of the others—excepting Baitel-metz, of course.

The music changed to light classical, to ballet. Bennie felt a year's end nostalgia and she wanted to dance again, as she had once long ago. The season and the company, compounded with the music and the punch and the decoia-tions, made her foot tap, slowly, and turned her mind to

memories of a spotlight and a stage filled with color and movement and herself. She listened to the talk.

"... If you can transmit them and receive them, then you can record them, can't you?" Minton was asking.

"Yes," said Render.

"That's what I thought. Why don't they write more about that angle of the thing?"

"Another five or ten years—perhaps less—and they will. Right now though, the use of playback is restricted to qualified personnel."

"Why?"

"Well"—Render paused to light another cigarette—"to be completely frank, it is to keep the whole area under con­trol until we know more about it. The thing could be ex­ploited commercially—and perhaps with disastrous results —if it were left wide open."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I could take a fairly stable person and in his mind construct any sort of dream that you could name, and many that you could not—dreams ranging from vio­lence and sex to sadism and perversion—dreams with a plot, like a total-participation story, or dreams which border upon insanity itself: wish-fulfillment dreams on any subject, cast in any manner. I could even pick a visual arts style, from expressionism to surrealism, if you'd like. A dream of violence in a cubist setting? Like that? Great! You could even be the horse of Guernica. I could set it up. I could re­cord the whole thing and play it back to you, or anyone else, any number of times."

"God!"

"Yes, God. I could make you God, too, if you'd like that —and I could make the Creation last you a full seven days. I control the time-sense, the internal clock, and I can stretch actual minutes into subjective hours."

"Sooner or later this thing will happen, won't it?"

"Yes."

"What will the results be?"

"No one really knows."

"Boss," asked Bennie softly, "could you bring a memory to life again? Could you resurrect something from out of the past and make it live over again in a person's mind, and make it just as though the whole thing was real, all over again?"

Render bit his lip, stared at her strangely.

"Yes," he said, after a long pause, "but it wouldn't really be a good thing to do. It would encourage living in the past, which is now a nonexistent time. It would be a detri­ment to mental health. It would encourage regression, re­version, would become another means of neurotic escape into the past."

The Nutcracker Suite finished, the sounds of Swan Lake filled the room.

"Still," she said, "I should like so to be the swan again . .."

She rose slowly and executed a few clumsy steps—a hefty, tipsy swan in a russet dress.

She flushed then and sat down quickly. Then she laughed and everyone joined her.

"Where would you like to be?" Minton asked Heydell.

The small doctor smiled.

"Back on a certain weekend during the summer of my third year in med school," he said. "Yes, I'd wear out that tape in a week. How about you, son? he asked Peter.

"I'm too young to have any good memories yet," Peter replied. "What about you, Jill?"

"I don't know ... I think I'd like being a little girl again," she said, "and having Daddy—I mean, my father—read to me on a Sunday afternoon, in the wintertime."

She glanced at Render then.

"And you, Charlie?" she asked. "If you were being un­professional for a moment, what would your moment be?"

"This one," he said, smiling. "I'm happy right where I am, in the present, where I belong."

"Are you, are you really?"

"Yes!" he said, and he took another cup of punch.

Then he laughed.

"Yes, I really am."

A soft snore came from beside him. Bennie had dozed off.

And the music went round and round, and Jill looked from father to son and back again. Render had replaced the fast-cast on Peter's ankle. The boy was yawning now. She studied him. What would he be in ten years? Or fifteen? A burnt-out prodigy? Master of some as yet unexploited quantity?

She studied Peter, who was watching his father.

"... But it could be a genuine art form," Minton was saying, "and I don't see how censorship..."

She studied Render.

"... A man does not have a right to be insane," he was saying, "any more than he has a right to commit suicide..."

She touched his hand and he jumped, as though awakened from a doze, jerking his hand away.

"I'm getting tired," she said. "Would you take me home now?"

"In a while," he replied, nodding. "Let's let Bennie catch a little more shuteye first, though," and he turned back to Minton.

Peter turned to her and smiled.

Suddenly, she was really very tired.

Always before, she had liked Christmas.

Across from her, Bennie continued to snore, a faint smile occasionally flickering across her features.

Somewhere, she was dancing.

Somewhere, a man named Pierre was screaming, possibly because he was no longer a man named Pierre.

Me? I'm Vital, like it says in Time, your weekly. Move

in for a close pan-shot, Charlie. No, don't you pan! My pan. See? There. The expression always comes to the man on the cover after he's read the article behind the cover. It's too late then, though. Well, they mean well, but you know... Send a boy to bring me a pitcher of water and a basin, okay? 'Death of the Bit,' that's what they called it. Said

a man could work the same bit for years, moving about a vast and complex sociological structure known as 'the cir­cuit,' and letting the thing fall upon new and virgin ears on each occasion. Oh, living death! Worldwide telecommuni­cations pushed this wheelchair downhill countless elections ago. It bounces now among the rocks of Limbo. We are come upon a new and glorious and vital era... . So, all you people out there in Helsinki and Tierra del Fuego, tell me if you've heard this one before: It concerns an old-time comic with what they called a "bit." One night he did a broadcast performance, and as was his wont he did his bit. Good and pat and solid was his bit, and full of point, balance, and antithesis. Unfortunately, he was out of a job after that, because everyone then knew this bit. Despairing, scraping himself with potsherds, he mounted the rail of the nearest bridge. About to cast himself down into the dark and flowing death-symbol below, he was suddenly halted by a voice. 'Do not cast yourself down into the dark and flow­ing death-symbol below,' said the voice. 'Throw away your potsherds and come down from that rail.' Turning about, he saw a strange creature—that is to say, ugly—all in white, regarding him with a near-toothless smile. 'Who are you, oh strange, smiling creature all in white?' he asked. 'I am an Angel of Light,' she replied, 'and I am come to stop you from killing yourself.' He shook his head. 'Alas,' said he, "but I must kill myself, for my bit is all used up.' Then she raised a palm, thus... 'Despair not,' she said. 'Despair not, for we Angels of Light can work miracles. I can render unto thee more bits than can possibly be used in the brief, wearisome span of mortal existence.' Then, 'Pray,' said he, 'tell me what I must do to effect this miraculous occurrence.' —'Sleep with me,' replied the Angel of Light. 'Is this not somewhat irregular and unangelic?' he asked. 'Not at all,' said she. 'Read the Old Testament carefully and you will be surprised at what you learn of angelic relations.' —'Very well,' he agreed, throwing away his potsherds. And they went away and he did his other bit, despite the fact that she was scarcely the most comely among the Daugh-

ters of Light. The following morning he arose eagerly, tapped the skin he had touched to love and cried, 'Awake! Awake! It is time for you to render me my perpetual supply of bits!' She opened one eye and stared up at him. 'How long have you been doing your bitf she asked him. 'Thirty years,' said he. 'And how old does that make you?' she inquired. 'Uh—forty-five,' he replied. She yawned then and smiled. 'Is that not rather old to be believing in Angels of Light?' she asked. Then he went off and did his other bit, of course... . Now let me have a little soothing music, huh? That's good. Really makes you wince, doesn't it —You know why?—Where do you hear soothing music these days, any­how? —Well, in dentists' offices, and banks and stores and places like that where you always have to wait real long to get served. You hear soothing music while you're under­going all this massive trauma. The result of this? Soothing music is now about the most unsoothing thing in the world. It always makes me hungry, too. They play it in all those restaurants where they're slow in waiting on you. You wait on them, that's what it is—and they play you this damn soothing music. Well... . Where's that boy with the pitcher and the basin, anyhow? I want to wash my hands... . You hear about the AF man who made it out to Centauras? He discovered a race of humanoid creatures and got to work learning their customs, folkways, mores and taboos. Finally, he touched upon the question of reproduction. A delicate young female then took him by the hand and led him to a large factory where Centaurians were being assembled. Yes, that's right—torsos were going by on conveyor belts, and balls screwed in, brains dropped into the skulls, fingernails inserted, organs stuffed in, and so on. He voiced his amaze­ment at this, and she said, 'Why? How do you do it on Earth?' Then, taking her by her delicate hand, he said, 'Come with me over yonder hill and I shall demonstrate.' During the course of his demonstration she began to laugh hysterically. 'What is the matter?' he inquired. 'Why are you laughing at me?' —'This,' she replied, 'is the way we make cars.'... Fade me, Babes, and sell some toothpaste!

"... Aiee! That I, Orpheus, should be torn into pieces by such as ye! But in a sense, perhaps, it is fitting. Come then, ye Corybantes, and work your will upon the singer!"

Darkness. A scream.

Silence ...

Applause!

She always came early and entered alone; and she always sat in the same seat.

She sat in the tenth row, on the righthand aisle, and her only real trouble was at intermission time: she could never tell when someone wanted to get past her.

She arrived early, and she remained until the theater was silent.

She loved the sound of a trained voice, which was why she preferred British actors to Americans.

She like musicals, not so much because she liked the music, but because she liked the feeling of voices which throbbed. This is also why she was fond of verse plays.

She liked the Elizabethans, but she did not like King Lear.

She was stimulated by the Greek plays, but she could not bear Oedipus Rex.

She did not like The Miracle Worker, nor The Light That Failed.

She wore tinted glasses, but not dark ones. She did not carry a cane.

On a certain night, before the curtain went up for the final act, a spotlight pierced the darkness. A man stepped into the hole it made and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?"

No one answered.

"It is an emergency," he said. "If there is a doctor here, will you please visit the office in the main lobby, immediate­ly?"

He looked around the theater as he spoke, but no one moved.

"Thank you," he said, and left the stage.

Her head had jerked toward the circle of light when it appeared.

After the announcement, the curtain was rung up and the movement and the voices began again.

She waited, listening. Then she stood and moved up the aisle, brushing the wall with her fingertips.

When she reached the lobby she stopped and stood there.

"May I help you, Miss?"

"Yes, I'm looking for the office."

"It's right there, to your left.

She turned and moved to her left, her hand extended slightly before her.

When she touched the wall she moved her hands quickly until they struck a door jamb.

She knocked upon the door and waited.

"Yes?" It opened.

"You need a doctor?"

"You're a doctor?"

"That's right."

"Quick! This way!"

She followed the man's footsteps inside and up a corridor that paralleled the aisles.

Then she heard him climb seven stairs and she followed him up them.

They came to a dressing room and she followed him in­side.

"Here he is."

She followed the voice.

"What happened?" she asked, reaching out.

She touched a man's body.

There was a gurgling rasp and a series of breathless coughs.

"Stagehand," said the man. "I think he's choking on a piece of taffy. He's always chewing the stuff. There seems to be something back up in his throat. Can't get at it, though."

"Have you sent for an ambulance?"

"Yes. But look at him—he's turning blue! I don't know if they'll be here in time."

She dropped the wrist, forced the head backwards. She felt down along the inside of the throat.

"Yes, there is some sort of obstruction. I can't get at it either. Get me a short, sharp knife—a sterile one—fast!"

"Yes, ma'am, right away!"

He left her there alone.

She felt the pulses of the carotids. She placed her hands on the heaving chest. She pushed the head further back­wards and reached down the throat again.

A minute went by, and part of another.

There came a sound of hurrying footsteps.

"Here you are... We washed the blade in alcohol..."

She took the knife in her hands. In the distance there was the sound of an ambulance siren. She could not be sure though, that they would make it in time.

So she examined the blade with her fingertips. Then she explored the man's neck.

She turned, slightly, toward the presence she felt be­side her

"I don't think you had better watch this," she stated. "I am going to do an emergency tracheotomy. It's not a pretty sight"

"Okay. I'll wait outside."

Footsteps, going away . ..

She cut

There was a sigh. There was a rushing of air.

There was wetness ... a bubbling sound.

She moved the head. When the ambulance arrived at the stage door, her hands were steady again, because she knew that the man was going to live.

"... Shallot," she told the doctor, "Eileen Shallot, State Psych."

"I've heard of you. Aren't you ...?"

"Yes, I am, but it's easier to read people than Braille."

"I see—yes. Then we can get in touch with you at State?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Doctor. Thank you," said the manager.

She returned to her seat for the rest of the play.

After the final curtain, she sat there until the theater was emptied.

Sitting there, she still sensed the stage.

To her, the stage was a focal point of sound, rhythm, the sense of movement, some nuances of light and dark— but not of color: It was the center of a special kind of briliance for her: It was the place of the pathema-mathema-poeima pulse, of the convulsion of life through the cycle of passions and perceptions; the place where those capa­ble of noble suffering suffered nobly, the place where the clever Frenchmen wove their comedies of gossamer among the pillars of Idea; the place where the black poetry of the nihilists whored itself for the price of admission from those it mocked, the place where blood was spilt and cries were uttered and songs were sung, and where Apollo and Dionysius smirked from the wings, where Arlecchino per­petually tricked Capitano Spezzafer out of his trousers. It was the place where any action could be imitated, but where there were really only two things behind all actions: the happy and the sad, the comic and the tragic—that is, love and death—the two things which named the human condi­tion; it was the place of the heroes and the less-than-heroes; it was the place that she loved, and she saw there the only man whose face she knew, walking, symbol-studded, upon its surface. ... To take up arms against a sea of troubles, ill-met by moonlight, and by opposing end them—who hath called forth the mutinous winds, and 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war—for those are pearls that were his eyes... . What a piece of work is a man! Infinite in faculty, in form and in moving!

She knew him in all his roles, who could not exist with­out an audience. He was Life.

He was the Shaper...

He was the Maker and the Mover.

He was greater than heroes.

A mind may hold many things. It learns. It cannot teach itself not to think, though.

Emotions remain the same, qualitatively, throughout life; the stimuli to which they respond are subject to quantita­tive variations, but the feelings are stock in trade.

This why the theater survives: it is cross-cultural; it con­tains the North Pole and the South Pole of the human condition; the emotions fall like iron filings within its field.

A mind cannot teach itself not to think, but feelings fall into destined patterns.

He was her theater ...

He was the poles of the world.

He was all actions.

He was not the imitation of actions, but the actions them­selves.

She knew he was a very capable man named Charles Render.

She felt he was the Shaper.

A mind may hold many things.

But he was more than any one thing:

He was every.

... She felt it.

When she stood to leave, her heels made echoes across the emptied dark.

As she moved up the aisle, the sounds returned to her and returned to her.

She was walking through an emptied theater, away from an emptied stage. She was alone.

At the head of the aisle, she stopped.

Like distant laughter, ended by a sudden slap, there was silence.

She was neither audience nor player now. She was alone in a dark theater.

She had cut a throat and saved a life.

She had listened tonight, felt tonight, applauded tonight.

Now, again, it was all gone away, and she was alone in a dark theater.

She was afraid.

The man continued to walk along the highway until he reached a certain tree. He stood, hands in his pockets, and

stared at it for a long while. Then he turned and headed back in the direction from which he had come. Tomorrow was another day.

"Oh, sorrow-crowned love of my life, why hast thou for­saken me? Am I not fair? I have loved thee long, and all the places of silence know my wailings. I have loved thee beyond myself, and I suffer for it. I have loved thee beyond life with all its sweetness, and the sweetnesses have turned to cloves and to almonds. I am ready to leave this my life for thee. Why shouldst thou depart in the greatwinged, manylegged ships over the sea, bearing with thee thy Lares and Penates, and I here alone? I shall make me a fire, to burn. I shall make me a fire—a conflagration to incinerate time and to burn away the spaces that separate us. I would be with thee always. I shall not go gently and silent into that holocaust, but wailing. I am no ordinary maiden, to pine away my life and to die, dark-eyed and sallow. For I am of the blood of the Princes of the Earth, and my arm is as the arm of a man's in the battle. My upraised sword smites the helm of my foe and he falls down before it. I have never been subdued, my lord. But my eyes are sick of weeping, and my tongue of crying out. To make me to see thee, and then to never see thee again is a crime beyond expiation. I cannot forgive my love, nor thee. There was a time when I laughed at the songs of love and the plaints of the maidens by the riverside. Now is my laughter drawn, as an arrow from a wound, and I am myself without thee and alone. Forgive me not, love, for having loved thee. I want to fuel a fire with memory and my hopes. I want to set to burning my already burning thoughts of thee, to lay thee like a poem upon a campfire, to burn thy rhythmic utterance to ash. I loved thee, and thou hast departed. Never again will I see thee in this life, hear again the music of thy voice, feel again the thunder of thy touch. I loved thee, and I am forsaken and alone. I loved thee, and my words fell upon ears that were deaf and my self upon eyes that saw not. Am I not fair, oh winds of the Earth, who

wash me over, who stoke these, my fires? Why then hast thou forsaken me, oh life of the heart in my breast? I go now to the flame my father, to better be received. In all the passes of loving, there will never be another such as thee. May the gods bless thee and sustain thee, oh light, and may their judgment not come too heavy upon thee for this thing thou hast done. Aeneas, I burn for thee! Fire, be my last love!"

There was applause as she swayed within the lighted cir­cle and fell. Then the room was darkened.

A moment later the light was restored, and the other members of the Act a Myth Club rose and came forward to congratulate her on her perceptive interpretation. They dis­cussed the significance of the folk-motif, from the suttee to the immolation of Brunhilde. Good, basic—fire—they decided. "Fire... my last love"—good: Eros and Thanatos in a final cleansing burst of flame.

After they had used up their appreciation, a small, stooped man and his birdlike, birdtracked wife moved to the center of the room.

"Heloise and Abelard," the man announced.

A respectful silence gathered about them.

A beefy man in his middle-forties moved to his side, face glazed with perspiration.

"My chief castrater," said Abelard.

The big man smiled and bowed.

"Now, let us begin..."

There was a single clap and darkness fell.

Like deep-burrowing, mythological worms, power lines, pipelines, and pneumatic tubes stretch themselves across the continent. Pulsing, peristalsis-like, they drink of the Earth and the thunderbolt. They take oil and electricity and water and coal-wash and small parcels and large pack­ages and letters into themselves. Passing through them, be­neath the Earth, these things are excreted at their proper destinations, and the machines who work in these places take over from there.

Blind, they sprawl far away from the sun; without taste, the Earth and the thunderbolt go undigested; without smell or hearing, the Earth is their rock-filled prison. They only know what they touch; and touching is their constant func­tion.

Such is the deep-buried joy of the worm.

Render had spoken with the staff psychologist and had in­spected the physical education equipment at the new shool. He had also inspected the students' quarters and had been satisfied.

Now, though, as he left Peter once again at the place of education, he felt somehow dissatisfied. He was not certain why. Everything had seemed in as good order as it had been when first he had visited. Peter had seemed in high spirits, too. Exceptionally high spirits.

He returned to his car and drifted out onto the highway— that great rootless tree whose branches covered two continents (and once the Bering Bridgeway was completed would enfold the world, saving only Australia, the polar icecaps, and islands)—he wondered, and wondering, he found no answer to his discontent.

Should he call Jill and ask about her cold? Or was she still angry over her coat and the Christmas that had accompanied it?

His hands fell into his lap, and the countryside jumped up and down around him as he moved through the ranks of the hills.

His hand twitched toward the panel once more.

"Hello?"

"Eileen, Render here. I didn't get to call you when it happened, but I heard about that tracheotomy you performed at the Play House..."

"Yes," she said, "good thing I was handy—me and a sharp knife. Where are you calling from?"

"My car. I just left Peter at school. On my way back now."

"Oh? How is he? His ankle... ?"

"Fine. We had a little scare there at Christmas, but noth-

ing came of it. —Tell me how it happened at the Play House, if it doesn't bother you."

"Blood bother a doctor?" She laughed softly. "Well, it was late, right before the last act..."

Render leaned back and smiled, lit a cigarette, listened.

Outside, the country settled down to a smooth plain and he coasted across it like a bowling ball, right in the groove all the way to the pocket.

He passed a walking man.

Beneath high wires and above buried cables, he was walk­ing again, beside a great branch of the road-tree, walking through snow-specked air and broadcast power.

Cars sped by, and a few of their passengers saw him.

His hands were in the pockets of his jacket and his head was low, because he looked at nothing. His collar was turned up and heaven's melting contributions, the snowflakes, were collected on the brim of his hat.

He wore rubbers. The ground was wet and a little muddy.

He trudged on, a stray charge within the field of a great generator.

"... Dinner tonight at the P & S?"

"Why not?" said Render.

"Say eight?"

" 'Eight.' Tally-ho!"

Some of them dropped down out of the sky, but mainly they came spinning in off the roads ...

The cars released their people onto platforms within the great car-hives. The air-taxis set theirs free in landing areas, near to the kiosks of the underground belt-way.

But whatever the means by which they arrived, the peo­ple toured Exhibit Hall on foot.

The building was octagonal, its roof an inverted soup bowl. Eight non-functional triangles of black stone provided decora­tion at each corner, without.

The soup bowl was a selective filter. Right now, it was sucking all the blue out of the gray evening and was glowing faintly on the outside—whiter than all the dirty snows of yesterday. Its ceiling was a cloudless summer sky at eleven o'clock in the a.m., without a sun to mar its Morning Glory frosting.

The people flowed beneath this sky, passed among the exhibits, moved like a shallow stream through a place of rocks.

They moved in ripples and random swirlings. They eddied; they churned, bubbled, babbled. Occasionally, there was a sparkle...

They poured steadily from the parked machines beyond the blue horizon.

After they had run their course, they completed the cir­cuit by returning to the metal clouds which had borne them to the running.

It was Outward that they passed.

Outward was the Air Force-sponsored Exhibit which had been open for the past two weeks, twenty-four hours a day, and which had drawn spectators from all over the world.

Outward was a survey of Man's achievements in Space.

Heading Outward was a two-star general, with a dozen colonels, eighteen lieutenant colonels, many majors, numerous captains, and countless lieutenants on his staff. Nobody ever saw the general, excepting the colonels and the people from Exhibits, Incorporated. Exhibits, Incorporated owned Exhibit Hall, there by the spaceport, and they set things up in good taste for all the exhibitionists who employed them.

First, to the right, as you entered Toadstool Hall (as it had been dubbed by some Vite), was the Gallery.

In the Gallery were the mural-sized photos that a spec­tator could almost walk off into, losing himself in the high, slender mountains behind Moonbase III (which looked as if they would sway in the wind, were there any wind to sway them); or wander through the bubble-cap of that undermoon city, perhaps running a hand along one of the cold lobes of the observational cerebrum and feeling its rapid thoughts

clicking within; or, passing by, enter that rusty desert be­neath the greenish sky, cough once or twice, spit bloody spittle, circle the towering walls of the above-ground Port Complex—bluegray, monolithic, built upon the ruins of God knows what—and enter into that fortress where men move like ghosts in a Martian department store, feel the texture of those glassite walls, and make some of the soft and only noises in the whole world; or pass across Mercury's Acre of Hell in the cool of the imagination, tasting the colors—the burning yellow, the cinnamon and the orange—and come to rest at last in Big Ice Box, where Frost Giant battles Fire Wight, and where each compartment is sealed and separately maintained—as in a submarine or transport rocket, and for the same, basic reason; or stroll on out in the direction of the Outer Five, where the hero is heat and cold the villain, stand there in a frosted oven beneath a mountain, hands in pockets, and count the colored streaks in the walls like opals, see the sun as a brilliant star, shiver, exhale vapors, and agree that these are all very wonderful places to have circling about the sun, and nice pictures, too.

After the Gallery were the Grav-rooms, to which one might climb by means of a stairway smelling of fresh-cut lumber. At the top, one might select the grav one wished—Moon-weight, Mars-weight. Merc-weight—and ride back to the floor of the Hall on a diminishing cushion of air, elevator-like, knowing for a moment the feeling of weight personal car­ried on the chosen world impersonal. The platform drops down, the landing is muffled... Like falling into hay, like falling into a feather bed.

Next, there was a waist-high rail—brass. It went around the Fountain of the Worlds.

Lean over, look down...

Scooped out of the light was a bottomless pool of black...

It was an orrery.

In it, the worlds swung on magnetic lines, glowing. They moved around a burning beachball of a sun; the distance to the outer ones was scaled down, and they shone frostily, palely, through the murk; the Earth was emerald, turquoise;

Venus was milky jade; Mars, an orange sherbet; Mercury, but­ter, Galliano, breadcrust, fresh-baked.

Food and riches hung in the Fountain of the Worlds. Those who hungered and lusted leaned on the brass rail and stared. Such is the stuff dreams are made of.

The others looked and passed by, going on to see the full-sized reconstruction of the decompression chamber of Moonbase I, or to hear the valve manufacturer's representa­tive give little-known facts concerning the construction of the pressure-locks and the power of the air pumps. (He was a short, red-haired man who knew many statistics.) Or they rode across the Hall in the cars of the overhead-suspension monorail. Or they saw the 20-minute Outward—With Stops At Spots film, which was so special as to feature a live narrator rather than soundtrack. They mounted freshly-heaped wall-cliffs in scaleboats, and they operated the pincers of the great claw-cans, used for off-Earth strip-mining.

Those who hungered stayed longer, though, in one place.

They stayed longer, laughed less.

They were the part of the flow which formed pools, sparkled...

"Interested in heading out some day?"

The boy turned his head, shifted on his crutches.

He regarded the lieutenant colonel who had addressed him. The officer was tall. Tanned hands and face, dark eyes, a small moustache and a narrow, brown pipe, smoldering, were his most prominent features, beyond his crisp and tailor­ed uniform.

"Why?" asked the boy.

"You're about the right age to be planning your future. Careers have to be mapped out pretty far in advance. A man can be a failure at thirteen if he doesn't think ahead."

"I've read the literature..."

"Doubtless. Everyone your age has. But now you're see­ing samples—and mind you, they're only samples—of the actuality. That's the big, new frontier out there—the great

frontier. You can't know the feeling just from reading the booklets."

Overhead, the monorail-car rustled on its way across the Hall. The officer indicated it with his pipe.

"Even that isn't the same as riding the thing over a Grand Canyon of ice," he noted.

"Then it is a deficiency on the part of the people who write the booklets," said the boy. "Any human experience should be describable and interpretable—by a good enough writer."

The officer squinted at him.

"Say that again, sonny."

"I said that if your booklets don't say what you want them to say, it's not the fault of the material."

"How old are you?"

"Ten."

"You seem pretty sharp for your age."

The boy shrugged, lifted one crutch and pointed it in the direction of the Gallery.

"A good painter could do you fifty times the job that those big, glossy photos do."

"They are very good photos."

"Of course, they're perfect. Expensive too, probably. But any of those scenes by a real artist could be priceless."

"No room out there for artists yet. Ground-breakers go first, culture follows after."

"Then why don't you change things and recruit a few artists? They might be able to help you find a lot more ground-breakers."

"Hm," said the officer, "that's an angle. Want to walk around with me some? See more of the sights?"

"Sure," said the boy. "Why not? 'Walk' isn't quite the proper verb, though..."

He swung into step beside the officer and they moved about the exhibits.

The scaleboats did a wall crawl to their left, and the claw-cans snapped.

"Is the design of those things really based on the struc­ture of a scorpion's pincers?"

"Yes," said the officer. "Some bright engineer stole a trick from Nature. That is the kind of mind we're interested in recruiting."

The boy nodded.

"I've lived in Cleveland. Down on the Cuyahoga River they use a thing called a Hulan Conveyor to unload the ore-boats. It is based on the principle of the grasshopper's leg. Some bright young man with the sort of mind you're interested in recruiting was lying in his back yard one day, pulling the legs off grasshoppers, and it hit him: 'Hey,' he said, 'there might be some use to all this action.' He took apart some more grasshoppers and the Hulan Conveyer was born. Like you say, he stole a trick that Nature was wasting on things that just hop around in the fields, chewing tobacco and being pesty. My father once took me on a boat trip up the river and I saw the things in operation. They're great metal legs with claws at the end, and they make the most godaw­ful unearthly noise I ever heard—like the ghosts of all the tortured grasshoppers. I'm afraid I don't have the kind of mind you're interested in recruiting."

"Well," said the officer, "it seems that you might have the other kind."

"What other kind?"

"The kind you were talking about: The kind that will see and interpret, the kind that will tell the people back home what it's really like out there."

"You'd take me on as a chronicler?"

No, we'd have to take you on as something else. But that shouldn't stop you. How many people were drafted for the World Wars for the purpose of writing war novels? How many war novels were written? How many good ones? There were quite a few, you know. You could plan your back­ground to that end."

"Maybe," said the boy.

They walked on.

"Come this way?" asked the officer.

The boy nodded and followed him out into a corridor and then into an elevator. It closed its door and asked them where they wished to be conveyed.

"Sub-balc," said the lieutenant colonel.

There was scarcely a sensation of movement, then the doors opened again. They stepped out onto the narrow bal­cony which ran around the rim of the soup bowl. It was glassite-enclosed and dimly lit.

Below them lay the pens and a part of the field.

"There will be several vehicles lifting off shortly," said the officer. "I want you to watch them, to see them go up on their wheels of fire and smoke."

" 'Wheels of fire and smoke,' " said the boy, smiling. "I've seen that phrase in lots of your booklets. Real poetic, yes sir."

The officer did not answer him. None of the towers of metal moved.

"These don't really go out, you know," he finally said. "They just convey materials and personnel to the stations in orbit. The real big ships never land."

"Yes, I know. Did a guy really commit suicide on one of your exhibits this morning?"

"No," said the officer, not looking at him, "it was an accident. He stepped into the Mars Grav-room before the platform was in place or the air cushion built up. Fell down the shaft."

"Then why isn't that exhibit closed?"

"Because all the safety devices are functioning properly. The warning light and the guard rail are both working all right."

"Then why did you call it an accident?"

"Because he didn't leave a note. —There! Watch now, that one is getting ready to lift!" He pointed with his pipe.

A blizzard of vapors built up around the base of one of the steel stalagmites. A light was born in its heart. Then the burning was beneath it, and waves of fumes splashed across the field, broke, rose high into the air.

But not quite so high as the ship.

... Because it was moving now.

Almost imperceptibly, it had lifted itself above the ground. Now, though, the movement could be noted.

Suddenly, with a great gushing of flame, it was high in the air, darting against the gray.

It was a bonfire in the sky, then a flare; then it was a star, rushing away from them.

"There is nothing quite like a rocket in flight," said the officer.

"Yes," said the boy. "You're right."

"Do you want to follow it?" said the man. "Do you want to follow that star?"

"Yes," said the boy. "Someday I will."

"My own training was pretty hard, and the requirements are even tougher these days."

They watched two more ships lift off.

"When was the last time you were out, yourself?" asked the boy.

"It's been awhile..." said the man.

"I'd better be going now. I've got a paper to write for school."

"Let me give you some of our new booklets first."

"Thanks, I've got them all."

"Okay, then... Good night, fella."

"Good night. Thanks for the show."

The boy moved back toward the elevator. The officer re­mained on the balcony, staring out, staring up, holding onto his pipe which had gone out.

The light, and twisted figures, struggling . .. Then darkness.

"Oh, the steel! The pain as the blades enter! I am many mouths, all of them vomiting blood!" Silence. Then comes the applause.