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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/32256-8.txt b/32256-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d94ab88 --- /dev/null +++ b/32256-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4847 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Time, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Big Time + +Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber + +Illustrator: Virgil Finlay + +Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32256] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + + +By FRITZ LEIBER + +THE BIG TIME + + _You can't know there's a war on--for the Snakes coil and Spiders + weave to keep you from knowing it's being fought over your live and + dead body!_ + +Illustrated by FINLAY + + + + +CHAPTER 1 + + When shall we three meet again + In thunder, lightning, or in rain? + + When the hurlyburly's done. + When the battle's lost and won. + + --Macbeth + +ENTER THREE HUSSARS + + +My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe +me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate +chiefly outside space and time--not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such +places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either. + +I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also +bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I +need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity +Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the +Change War, a war of time travelers--in fact, our private name for being +in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back +to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help +our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long +killing business, believe me. + +You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all +the time and maybe you've had hints of it without realizing. + +Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be +bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the +next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing +because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt +sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever +been scared of Ghosts--not the story-book kind, but the billions of +beings who were once so real and strong it's hard to believe they'll +just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever wondered about those things +you may call devils or Demons--spirits able to range through all time +and space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of +space between the galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole +universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you've had hints +of the Change War. + +How I got recruited into the Change War, how it's conducted, what the +two sides are, why you don't consciously know about it, what I really +think about it--you'll learn in due course. + + * * * * * + +The place outside the cosmos where I and my pals do our nursing job I +simply call the Place. A lot of my nursing consists of amusing and +humanizing Soldiers fresh back from raids into time. In fact, my formal +title is Entertainer and I've got my silly side, as you'll find out. + +My pals are two other gals and three guys from quite an assortment of +times and places. We're a pretty good team, and with Sid bossing, we run +a pretty good Recuperation Station, though we have our family troubles. +But most of our troubles come slamming into the Place with the beat-up +Soldiers, who've generally just been going through hell and want to +raise some of their own. As a matter of fact, it was three newly arrived +Soldiers who started this thing I'm going to tell you about, this thing +that showed me so much about myself and everything. + +When it started, I had been on the Big Time for a thousand sleeps and +two thousand nightmares, and working in the Place for five hundred-one +thousand. This two-nightmares routine every time you lay down your dizzy +little head is rough, but you pretend to get used to it because being on +the Big Time is supposed to be worth it. + +The Place is midway in size and atmosphere between a large nightclub +where the Entertainers sleep in and a small Zeppelin hangar decorated +for a party, though a Zeppelin is one thing we haven't had yet. You go +out of the Place, but not often if you have any sense and if you are an +Entertainer like me, into the cold light of a morning filled with +anything from the earlier dinosaurs to the later spacemen, who look +strangely similar except for size. + +Solely on doctor's orders, I have been on cosmic leave six times since +coming to work at the Place, meaning I have had six brief vacations, if +you care to call them that, for believe me they are busman's holidays, +considering what goes on in the Place all the time. The last one I spent +in Renaissance Rome, where I got a crush on Cesare Borgia, but I got +over it. Vacations are for the birds, anyway, because they have to be +fitted by the Spiders into serious operations of the Change War, and you +can imagine how restful that makes them. + +"See those Soldiers changing the past? You stick along with them. Don't +go too far up front, though, but don't wander off either. Relax and +enjoy yourself." + +Ha! Now the kind of recuperation Soldiers get when they come to the +Place is a horse of a far brighter color, simply dazzling by comparison. +Entertainment is our business and we give them a bang-up time and send +them staggering happily back into action, though once in a great while +something may happen to throw a wee shadow on the party. + + * * * * * + +I am dead in some ways, but don't let that bother you--I am lively +enough in others. If you met me in the cosmos, you would be more apt to +yak with me or try to pick me up than to ask a cop to do same or a +father to douse me with holy water, unless you are one of those +hard-boiled reformer types. But you are not likely to meet me in the +cosmos, because (bar Basin Street and the Prater) 15th Century Italy and +Augustan Rome--until they spoiled it--are my favorite (Ha!) vacation +spots and, as I have said, I stick as close to the Place as I can. It is +really the nicest Place in the whole Change World. (Crisis! I even +_think_ of it capitalized!) + +Anyhoo, when this thing started, I was twiddling my thumbs on the couch +nearest the piano and thinking it was too late to do my fingernails and +whoever came in probably wouldn't notice them anyway. + +The Place was jumpy like it always is on an approach and the gray velvet +of the Void around us was curdled with the uneasy lights you see when +you close your eyes in the dark. + +Sid was tuning the Maintainers for the pick-up and the right shoulder of +his gold-worked gray doublet was streaked where he'd been wiping his +face on it with quick ducks of his head. + +Beauregard was leaning as close as he could over Sid's other shoulder, +one white-trousered knee neatly indenting the rose plush of the control +divan, and he wasn't missing a single flicker of Sid's old fingers on +the dials; Beau's co-pilot besides piano player. Beau's face had that +dead blank look it must have had when every double eagle he owned and +more he didn't were riding on the next card to be turned in the gambling +saloon on one of those wedding-cake Mississippi steamboats. + +Doc was soused as usual, sitting at the bar with his top hat pushed back +and his knitted shawl pulled around him, his wide eyes seeing whatever +horrors a life in Nazi-occupied Czarist Russia can add to being a drunk +Demon in the Change World. + +Maud, who is the Old Girl, and Lili--the New Girl, of course--were +telling the big beads of their identical pearl necklaces. + +You might say that all us Entertainers were a bit edgy; being Demons +doesn't automatically make us brave. + +Then the red telltale on the Major Maintainer went out and the Door +began to darken in the Void facing Sid and Beau, and I felt Change Winds +blowing hard and my heart missed a couple of beats, and the next thing +three Soldiers had stepped out of the cosmos and into the Place, their +first three steps hitting the floor hard as they changed times and +weights. + + * * * * * + +They were dressed as officers of hussars, as we'd been advised, +and--praise the Bonny Dew!--I saw that the first of them was Erich, my +own dear little commandant, the pride of the von Hohenwalds and the +Terror of the Snakes. Behind him was some hard-faced Roman or other, and +beside Erich and shouldering into him as they stamped forward was a new +boy, blond, with a face like a Greek god who's just been touring a +Christian hell. + +They were uniformed exactly alike in black--shakos, fur-edged pelisses, +boots, and so forth--with white skull emblems on the shakos. The only +difference between them was that Erich had a Caller on his wrist and the +New Boy had a black-gauntleted glove on his left hand and was clenching +the mate in it, his right hand being bare like both of Erich's and the +Roman's. + +"You've made it, lads, hearts of gold," Sid boomed at them, and Beau +twitched a smile and murmured something courtly and Maud began to chant, +"Shut the Door!" and the New Girl copied her and I joined in because the +Change Winds do blow like crazy when the Door is open, even though it +can't ever be shut tight enough to keep them from leaking through. + +"Shut it before it blows wrinkles in our faces," Maud called in her +gamin voice to break the ice, looking like a skinny teen-ager in the +tight, knee-length frock she'd copied from the New Girl. + +But the three Soldiers weren't paying attention. The Roman--I remembered +his name was Mark--was blundering forward stiffly as if there were +something wrong with his eyes, while Erich and the New Boy were yelling +at each other about a kid and Einstein and a summer palace and a bloody +glove and the Snakes having booby-trapped Saint Petersburg. Erich had +that taut sadistic smile he gets when he wants to hit me. + +The New Boy was in a tearing rage. "Why'd you pull us out so bloody +fast? We fair chewed the Nevsky Prospekt to pieces galloping away." + +"Didn't you feel their stun guns, _Dummkopf_, when they sprung the +trap--too soon, _Gott sei Dank_?" Erich demanded. + +"I did," the New Boy told him. "Not enough to numb a cat. Why didn't you +show us action?" + +"Shut up. I'm your leader. I'll show you action enough." + +"You won't. You're a filthy Nazi coward." + +"_Weibischer Engländer!_" + +"Bloody Hun!" + +"_Schlange!_" + +The blond lad knew enough German to understand that last crack. He threw +back his sable-edged pelisse to clear his sword arm and he swung away +from Erich, which bumped him into Beau. At the first sign of the +quarrel, Beau had raised himself from the divan as quickly and silently +as a--no, I won't use that word--and slithered over to them. + +"Sirs, you forget yourselves," he said sharply, off balance, supporting +himself on the New Boy's upraised arm. "This is Sidney Lessingham's +Place of Entertainment and Recuperation. There are ladies--" + + * * * * * + +With a contemptuous snarl, the New Boy shoved him off and snatched with +his bare hand for his saber. Beau reeled against the divan, it caught +him in the shins and he fell toward the Maintainers. Sid whisked them +out of the way as if they were a couple of beach radios--simply nothing +in the Place is nailed down--and had them back on the coffee table +before Beau hit the floor. Meanwhile, Erich had his saber out and had +parried the New Boy's first wild slash and lunged in return, and I heard +the scream of steel and the rutch of his boot on the diamond-studded +pavement. + + * * * * * + +Beau rolled over and came up pulling from the ruffles of his shirt bosom +a derringer I knew was some other weapon in disguise--a stun gun or even +an Atropos. Besides scaring me damp for Erich and everybody, that +brought me up short: us Entertainers' nerves must be getting as naked as +the Soldiers', probably starting when the Spiders canceled all cosmic +leaves twenty sleeps back. + +Sid shot Beau his look of command, rapped out, "I'll handle this, you +whoreson firebrand," and turned to the Minor Maintainer. I noticed that +the telltale on the Major was glowing a reassuring red again, and I +found a moment to thank Mamma Devi that the Door was shut. + +Maud was jumping up and down, cheering I don't know which--nor did she, +I bet--and the New Girl was white and I saw that the sabers were working +more businesslike. Erich's flicked, flicked, flicked again and came away +from the blond lad's cheek spilling a couple of red drops. The blond lad +lunged fiercely, Erich jumped back, and the next moment they were both +floating helplessly in the air, twisting like they had cramps. + +I realized quick enough that Sid had shut off gravity in the Door and +Stores sectors of the Place, leaving the rest of us firm on our feet in +the Refresher and Surgery sectors. The Place has sectional gravity to +suit our Extraterrestrial buddies--those crazy ETs sometimes come +whooping in for recuperation in very mixed batches. + +From his central position, Sid called out, kindly enough but taking no +nonsense, "All right, lads, you've had your fun. Now sheathe those +swords." + +For a second or so, the two black hussars drifted and contorted. Erich +laughed harshly and neatly obeyed--the commandant is used to free fall. +The blond lad stopped writhing, hesitated while he glared upside down at +Erich and managed to get his saber into its scabbard, although he turned +a slow somersault doing it. Then Sid switched on their gravity, slow +enough so they wouldn't get sprained landing. + + * * * * * + +Erich laughed, lightly this time, and stepped out briskly toward us. He +stopped to clap the New Boy firmly on the shoulder and look him in the +face. + +"So, now you get a good scar," he said. + +The other didn't pull away, but he didn't look up and Erich came on. Sid +was hurrying toward the New Boy, and as he passed Erich, he wagged a +finger at him and gayly said, "You rogue." Next thing I was giving Erich +my "Man, you're home" hug and he was kissing me and cracking my ribs and +saying, "_Liebchen! Doppchen!_"--which was fine with me because I do +love him and I'm a good lover and as much a Doubleganger as he is. + +We had just pulled back from each other to get a breath--his blue eyes +looked so sweet in his worn face--when there was a thud behind us. With +the snapping of the tension, Doc had fallen off his bar stool and his +top hat was over his eyes. As we turned to chuckle at him, Maud squeaked +and we saw that the Roman had walked straight up against the Void and +was marching along there steadily without gaining a foot, like it does +happen, his black uniform melting into that inside-your-head gray. + +Maud and Beau rushed over to fish him back, which can be tricky. The +thin gambler was all courtly efficiency again. Sid supervised from a +distance. + +"What's wrong with him?" I asked Erich. + +He shrugged. "Overdue for Change Shock. And he was nearest the stun +guns. His horse almost threw him. _Mein Gott_, you should have seen +Saint Petersburg, _Liebchen_: the Nevsky Prospekt, the canals flying by +like reception carpets of blue sky, a cavalry troop in blue and gold +that blundered across our escape, fine women in furs and ostrich plumes, +a monk with a big tripod and his head under a hood--it gave me the +horrors seeing all those Zombies flashing past and staring at me in that +sick unawakened way they have, and knowing that some of them, say the +photographer, might be Snakes." + +Our side in the Change War is the Spiders, the other side is the Snakes, +though all of us--Spiders and Snakes alike--are Doublegangers and Demons +too, because we're cut out of our lifelines in the cosmos. Your lifeline +is all of you from birth to death. We're Doublegangers because we can +operate both in the cosmos and outside of it, and Demons because we act +reasonably alive while doing so--which the Ghosts don't. Entertainers +and Soldiers are all Demon-Doublegangers, whichever side they're +on--though they say the Snake Places are simply ghastly. Zombies are +dead people whose lifelines lie in the so-called past. + + * * * * * + +"What were you doing in Saint Petersburg before the ambush?" I asked +Erich. "That is, if you can talk about it." + +"Why not? We were kidnapping the infant Einstein back from the Snakes in +1883. Yes, the Snakes got him, _Liebchen_, only a few sleeps back, +endangering the West's whole victory over Russia--" + +"--which gave your dear little Hitler the world on a platter for fifty +years and got me loved to death by your sterling troops in the +Liberation of Chicago--" + +"--but which leads to the ultimate victory of the Spiders and the West +over the Snakes and Communism, _Liebchen_, remember that. Anyway, our +counter-snatch didn't work. The Snakes had guards posted--most unusual +and we weren't warned. The whole thing was a great mess. No wonder Bruce +lost his head--not that it excuses him." + +"The New Boy?" I asked. Sid hadn't got to him and he was still standing +with hooded eyes where Erich had left him, a dark pillar of shame and +rage. + +"_Ja_, a lieutenant from World War One. An Englishman." + +"I gathered that," I told Erich. "Is he really effeminate?" + +"_Weibischer?_" He smiled. "I had to call him something when he said I +was a coward. He'll make a fine Soldier--only needs a little more +shaping." + +"You men are so original when you spat." I lowered my voice. "But you +shouldn't have gone on and called him a Snake, Erich mine." + +"_Schlange?_" The smile got crooked. "Who knows--about any of us? As +Saint Petersburg showed me, the Snakes' spies are getting cleverer than +ours." The blue eyes didn't look sweet now. "Are you, _Liebchen_, really +nothing more than a good loyal Spider?" + +"Erich!" + +"All right, I went too far--with Bruce and with you too. We're all +hacked these days, riding with one leg over the breaking edge." + +Maud and Beau were supporting the Roman to a couch, Maud taking most of +his weight, with Sid still supervising and the New Boy still sulking by +himself. The New Girl should have been with him, of course, but I +couldn't see her anywhere and I decided she was probably having a +nervous breakdown in the Refresher, the little jerk. + +"The Roman looks pretty bad, Erich," I said. + +"Ah, Mark's tough. Got virtue, as his people say. And our little +starship girl will bring him back to life if anybody can and if ..." + +"... you call this living," I filled in dutifully. + + * * * * * + +He was right. Maud had fifty-odd years of psychomedical experience, 23rd +Century at that. It should have been Doc's job, but that was fifty +drunks back. + +"Maud and Mark, that will be an interesting experiment," Erich said. +"Reminiscent of Goering's with the frozen men and the naked gypsy +girls." + +"You are a filthy Nazi. She'll be using electrophoresis and deep +suggestion, if I know anything." + +"How will you be able to know anything, _Liebchen_, if she switches on +the couch curtains, as I perceive she is preparing to do?" + +"Filthy Nazi I said and meant." + +"Precisely." He clicked his heels and bowed a millimeter. "Erich +Friederich von Hohenwald, _Oberleutnant_ in the army of the Third Reich. +Fell at Narvik, where he was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline +lengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report +Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to +provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the +_voyageurs_ underground. At your service." + +"Oh, Erich, it's all so lousy," I said, touching his hand, reminded that +he was one of the unfortunates Resurrected from a point in their +lifelines well before their deaths--in his case, because the date of his +death had been shifted forward by a Big Change after his Resurrection. +And as every Demon finds out, if he can't imagine it beforehand, it is +pure hell to remember your future, and the shorter the time between your +Resurrection and your death back in the cosmos, the better. Mine, bless +Bab-ed-Din, was only an action-packed ten minutes on North Clark Street. + +Erich put his other hand lightly over mine. "Fortunes of the Change War, +_Liebchen_. At least I'm a Soldier and sometimes assigned to future +operations--though why we should have this monomania about our future +personalities back there, I don't know. Mine is a stupid _Oberst_, thin +as paper--and frightfully indignant at the _voyageurs_! But it helps me +a little if I see him in perspective and at least I get back to the +cosmos pretty regularly, _Gott sei Dank_, so I'm better off than you +Entertainers." + +I didn't say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I +found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father's repose, +that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A. +Forzane, professor of physiology, born in Norway and buried in Chicago. +Woodlawn Cemetery is a nice gray spot. + +"That's all right, Erich," I said. "We Entertainers Got Mittens too." + +He scowled around at me suspiciously, as if he were wondering whether I +had all my buttons on. + +"Mittens?" he said. "What do you mean? I'm not wearing any. Are you +trying to say something about Bruce's gloves--which incidentally seem to +annoy him for some reason. No, seriously, Greta, why do you Entertainers +need mittens?" + +"Because we get cold feet sometimes. At least I do. Got Mittens, as I +say." + + * * * * * + +A sickly light dawned in his Prussian puss. He muttered, "Got mittens +... _Gott mit uns_ ... God with us," and roared softly, "Greta, I don't +know how I put up with you, the way you murder a great language for +cheap laughs." + +"You've got to take me as I am," I told him, "mittens and all, thank the +Bonny Dew--" and hastily explained, "That's French--_le bon Dieu_--the +good God--don't hit me. I'm not going to tell you any more of my +secrets." + +He laughed feebly, like he was dying. + +"Cheer up," I said. "I won't be here forever, and there are worse places +than the Place." + +He nodded grudgingly, looking around. "You know what, Greta, if you'll +promise not to make some dreadful joke out of it: on operations, I +pretend I'll soon be going backstage to court the world-famous ballerina +Greta Forzane." + +He was right about the backstage part. The Place is a regular +theater-in-the-round with the Void for an audience, the Void's gray +hardly disturbed by the screens masking Surgery (Ugh!), Refresher and +Stores. Between the last two are the bar and kitchen and Beau's piano. +Between Surgery and the sector where the Door usually appears are the +shelves and taborets of the Art Gallery. The control divan is stage +center. Spaced around at a fair distance are six big low couches--one +with its curtains now shooting up into the gray--and a few small tables. +It is like a ballet set and the crazy costumes and characters that turn +up don't ruin the illusion. By no means. Diaghilev would have hired most +of them for the Ballet Russe on first sight, without even asking them +whether they could keep time to music. + + + + +CHAPTER 2 + + Last week in Babylon, + Last night in Rome, + + --Hodgson + +A RIGHT-HAND GLOVE + + +Beau had gone behind the bar and was talking quietly at Doc, but with +his eyes elsewhere, looking very sallow and professional in his white, +and I thought--Damballa!--I'm in the French Quarter. I couldn't see the +New Girl. Sid was at last getting to the New Boy after the fuss about +Mark. He threw me a sign and I started over with Erich in tow. + +"Welcome, sweet lad. Sidney Lessingham's your host, and a fellow +Englishman. Born in King's Lynn, 1564, schooled at Cambridge, but London +was the life and death of me, though I outlasted Bessie, Jimmie, +Charlie, and Ollie almost. And what a life! By turns a clerk, a spy, a +bawd--the two trades are hand in glove--a poet of no account, a beggar, +and a peddler of resurrection tracts. Beau Lassiter, our throats are +tinder!" + +At the word "poet," the New Boy looked up, but resentfully, as if he had +been tricked into it. + +"And to spare your throat for drinking, sweet gallant, I'll be so bold +as to guess and answer one of your questions," Sid rattled on. "Yes, I +knew Will Shakespeare--we were of an age--and he was such a modest, +mind-your-business rogue that we all wondered whether he really did +write those plays. Your pardon, 'faith, but that scratch might be looked +to." + +Then I saw that the New Girl hadn't lost her head, but gone to Surgery +(Ugh!) for a first-aid tray. She reached a swab toward the New Boy's +sticky cheek, saying rather shrilly, "If I might ..." + +Her timing was bad. Sid's last words and Erich's approach had darkened +the look in the young Soldier's face and he angrily swept her arm aside +without even glancing at her. Erich squeezed my arm. The tray clattered +to the floor--and one of the drinks that Beau was bringing almost +followed it. Ever since the New Girl's arrival, Beau had been figuring +that she was his responsibility, though I don't think the two of them +had reached an agreement yet. Beau was especially set on it because I +was thick with Sid at the time and Maud with Doc, she loving tough +cases. + +"Easy now, lad, and you love me!" Sid thundered, again shooting Beau the +"Hold it" look. "She's just a poor pagan trying to comfort you. Swallow +your bile, you black villain, and perchance it will turn to poetry. Ah, +did I touch you there? Confess, you are a poet." + + * * * * * + +There isn't much gets by Sid, though for a second I forgot my psychology +and wondered if he knew what he was doing with his insights. + +"Yes, I'm a poet, all right," the New Boy roared. "I'm Bruce Marchant, +you bloody Zombies. I'm a poet in a world where even the lines of the +King James and your precious Will whom you use for laughs aren't safe +from Snakes' slime and the Spiders' dirty legs. Changing our history, +stealing our certainties, claiming to be so blasted all-knowing and best +intentioned and efficient, and what does it lead to? This bloody SI +glove!" + +He held up his black-gloved left hand which still held the mate and he +shook it. + +"What's wrong with the Spider Issue gauntlet, heart of gold?" Sid +demanded. "And you love us, tell us." While Erich laughed, "Consider +yourself lucky, _Kamerad_. Mark and I didn't draw any gloves at all." + +"What's wrong with it?" Bruce yelled. "The bloody things are both +lefts!" He slammed it down on the floor. + +We all howled, we couldn't help it. He turned his back on us and stamped +off, though I guessed he would keep out of the Void. Erich squeezed my +arm and said between gasps, "_Mein Gott, Liebchen_, what have I always +told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It +is infallible!" + +One of us didn't laugh. Ever since the New Girl heard the name Bruce +Marchant, she'd had a look in her eyes like she'd been given the +sacrament. I was glad she'd got interested in something, because she'd +been pretty much of a snoot and a wet blanket up until now, although +she'd come to the Place with the recommendation of having been a real +whoopee girl in London and New York in the Twenties. She looked +disapprovingly at us as she gathered up the tray and stuff, not +forgetting the glove, which she placed on the center of the tray like a +holy relic. + + * * * * * + +Beau cut over and tried to talk to her, but she ghosted past him and +once again he couldn't do anything because of the tray in his hands. He +came over and got rid of the drinks quick. I took a big gulp right away +because I saw the New Girl stepping through the screen into Surgery and +I hate to be reminded we have it and I'm glad Doc is too drunk to use +it, some of the Arachnoid surgical techniques being very sickening as I +know only too well from a personal experience that is number one on my +list of things to be forgotten. + +By that time, Bruce had come back to us, saying in a carefully hard +voice, "Look here, it's not the dashed glove itself, as you very well +know, you howling Demons." + +"What is it then, noble heart?" Sid asked, his grizzled gold beard +heightening the effect of innocent receptivity. + +"It's the principle of the thing," Bruce said, looking around sharply, +but none of us cracked a smile. "It's this mucking inefficiency and +death of the cosmos--and don't tell me that isn't in the +cards!--masquerading as benign omniscient authority. The Spiders--and we +don't know who they are ultimately; it's just a name; we see only agents +like ourselves--the Spiders pluck us from the quiet graves of our +lifelines--" + +"Is that bad, lad?" Sid murmured, innocently straight-faced. + +"--and Resurrect us if they can and then tell us we must fight another +time-traveling power called the Snakes--just a name, too--which is bent +on perverting and enslaving the whole cosmos, past, present and future." + +"And isn't it, lad?" + +"Before we're properly awake, we're Recruited into the Big Time and +hustled into tunnels and burrows outside our space-time, these miserable +closets, gray sacks, puss pockets--no offense to this Place--that the +Spiders have created, maybe by gigantic implosions, but no one knows for +certain, and then we're sent off on all sorts of missions into the past +and future to change history in ways that are supposed to thwart the +Snakes." + +"True, lad." + +"And from then on, the pace is so flaming hot and heavy, the shocks come +so fast, our emotions are wrenched in so many directions, our public and +private metaphysics distorted so insanely, the deepest thread of reality +we cling to tied in such bloody knots, that we never can get things +straight." + +"We've all felt that way, lad," Sid said soberly; Beau nodded his sleek +death's head; "You should have seen me, _Kamerad_, my first fifty +sleeps," Erich put in; while I added, "Us girls, too, Bruce." + +"Oh, I know I'll get hardened to it, and don't think I can't. It's not +that," Bruce said harshly. "And I wouldn't mind the personal confusion, +the mess it's made of my spirit, I wouldn't even mind remaking history +and destroying priceless, once-called imperishable beauties of the past, +if I felt it were for the best. The Spiders assure us that, to thwart +the Snakes, it is all-important that the West ultimately defeat the +East. But what have they done to achieve this? I'll give you some +beautiful examples. To stabilize power in the early Mediterranean world, +they have built up Crete at the expense of Greece, making Athens a ghost +city, Plato a trivial fabulist, and putting all Greek culture in a minor +key." + + * * * * * + +"You got time for culture?" I heard myself say and I clapped my hand +over my mouth in gentle reproof. + +"But _you_ remember the dialogues, lad," Sid observed. "And rail not at +Crete--I have a sweet Keftian friend." + +"For how long will I remember Plato's dialogues? And who after me?" +Bruce challenged. "Here's another. The Spiders want Rome powerful and, +to date, they've helped Rome so much that she collapses in a blaze of +German and Parthian invasions a few years after the death of Julius +Caesar." + +This time it was Beau who butted in. Most everybody in the Place loves +these bull sessions. "You omit to mention, sir, that Rome's newest +downfall is directly due to the Unholy Triple Alliance the Snakes have +fomented between the Eastern Classical World, Mohammedanized +Christianity, and Marxist Communism, trying to pass the torch of power +futurewards by way of Byzantium and the Eastern Church, without ever +letting it pass into the hands of the Spider West. That, sir, is the +Snakes' Three-Thousand-Year Plan which we are fighting against, striving +to revive Rome's glories." + +"Striving is the word for it," Bruce snapped. "Here's yet another +example. To beat Russia, the Spiders kept England and America out of +World War Two, thereby ensuring a German invasion of the New World and +creating a Nazi empire stretching from the salt mines of Siberia to the +plantations of Iowa, from Nizhni Novgorod to Kansas City!" + +He stopped and my short hairs prickled. Behind me, someone was chanting +in a weird spiritless voice, like footsteps in hard snow. + +"_Salz, Salz, bringe Salz. Kein' Peitsch', gnädige Herren. Salz, Salz, +Salz._" + +I turned and there was Doc waltzing toward us with little tiny steps, +bent over so low that the ends of his shawl touched the floor, his head +crooked up sideways and looking through us. + +I knew then, but Erich translated softly. "'Salt, salt, I bring salt. No +whip, merciful sirs.' He is speaking to my countrymen in their +language." Doc had spent his last months in a Nazi-operated salt mine. + + * * * * * + +He saw us and got up, straightening his top hat very carefully. He +frowned hard while my heart thumped half a dozen times. Then his face +slackened, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "_Nichevo_." + +"And it does not matter, sir," Beau translated, but directing his remark +at Bruce. "True, great civilizations have been dwarfed or broken by the +Change War. But others, once crushed in the bud, have bloomed. In the +1870s, I traveled a Mississippi that had never known Grant's gunboats. I +studied piano, languages, and the laws of chance under the greatest +European masters at the University of Vicksburg." + +"And you think your pipsqueak steamboat culture is compensation for--" +Bruce began but, "Prithee none of that, lad," Sid interrupted smartly. +"Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards, and I'll drink +dead drunk the man who disputes me. Hear reason: nations are not so puny +as to shrivel and vanish at the first tampering with their past, no, +nor with the tenth. Nations are monsters, boy, with guts of iron and +nerves of brass. Waste not your pity on them." + +"True indeed, sir," Beau pressed, cooler and keener for the attack on +his Greater South. "Most of us enter the Change World with the false +metaphysic that the slightest change in the past--a grain of dust +misplaced--will transform the whole future. It is a long while before we +accept with our minds as well as our intellects the law of the +Conservation of Reality: that when the past is changed, the future +changes barely enough to adjust, barely enough to admit the new data. +The Change Winds meet maximum resistance always. Otherwise the first +operation in Babylonia would have wiped out New Orleans, Sheffield, +Stuttgart, and Maud Davies' birthplace on Ganymede! + +"Note how the gap left by Rome's collapse was filled by the +imperialistic and Christianized Germans. Only an expert Demon historian +can tell the difference in most ages between the former Latin and the +present Gothic Catholic Church. As you yourself, sir, said of Greece, it +is as if an old melody were shifted into a slightly different key. In +the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it's +true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the +usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless +accidents." + +"All right, you bloody savants--maybe I pushed my point too far," Bruce +growled. "But if you want variety, give a thought to the rotten methods +we use in our wonderful Change War. Poisoning Churchill and Cleopatra. +Kidnapping Einstein when he's a baby." + +"The Snakes did it first," I reminded him. + +"Yes, and we copied them. How resourceful does that make us?" he +retorted, arguing like a woman. "If we need Einstein, why don't we +Resurrect him, deal with him as a man?" + + * * * * * + +Beau said, serving his culture in slightly thicker slices, +"_Pardonnez-moi_, but when you have enjoyed your status as Doubleganger +a _soupcon_ longer, you will understand that great men can rarely be +Resurrected. Their beings are too crystallized, sir, their lifelines too +tough." + +"Pardon me, but I think that's rot. I believe that most great men refuse +to make the bargain with the Snakes, or with us Spiders either. They +scorn Resurrection at the price demanded." + +"Brother, they ain't that great," I whispered, while Beau glided on +with, "However that may be, you have accepted Resurrection, sir, and so +incurred an obligation which you as a gentleman must honor." + +"I accepted Resurrection all right," Bruce said, a glare coming into his +eyes. "When they pulled me out of my line at Passchendaele in '17 ten +minutes before I died, I grabbed at the offer of life like a drunkard +grabs at a drink the morning after. But even then I thought I was also +seizing a chance to undo historic wrongs, work for peace." His voice was +getting wilder all the time. Just beyond our circle, I noticed the New +Girl watching him worshipfully. "But what did I find the Spiders wanted +me for? Only to fight more wars, over and over again, make them crueler +and stinkinger, cut the swath of death a little wider with each Big +Change, work our way a little closer to the death of the cosmos." + +Sid touched my wrist and, as Bruce raved on, he whispered to me, "What +kind of ball, think you, will please and so quench this fire-brained +rogue? And you love me, discover it." + +I whispered back without taking my eyes off Bruce either, "I know +somebody who'll be happy to put on any kind of ball he wants, if he'll +just notice her." + +"The New Girl, sweetling? 'Tis well. This rogue speaks like an angry +angel. It touches my heart and I like it not." + +Bruce was saying hoarsely but loudly, "And so we're sent on operations +in the past and from each of those operations the Change Winds blow +futurewards, swiftly or slowly according to the opposition they breast, +sometimes rippling into each other, and any one of those Winds may shift +the date of our own death ahead of the date of our Resurrection, so that +in an instant--even here, outside the cosmos--we may molder and rot or +crumble to dust and vanish away. The wind with our name in it may leak +through the Door." + + * * * * * + +Faces hardened at that, because it's bad form to mention Change Death, +and Erich flared out with, "_Halt's Maul, Kamerad!_ There's always +another Resurrection." + +But Bruce didn't keep his mouth shut. He said, "Is there? I know the +Spiders promise it, but even if they do go back and cut another +Doubleganger from my lifeline, is he me?" He slapped his chest with his +bare hand. "I don't think so. And even if he is me, with unbroken +consciousness, why's he been Resurrected again? Just to refight more +wars and face more Change Death for the sake of an almighty power--" his +voice was rising to a climax--"an almighty power so bloody ineffectual, +it can't furnish one poor Soldier pulled out of the mud of +Passchendaele, one miserable Change Commando, one Godforsaken Recuperee +a proper issue of equipment!" + +And he held out his bare right hand toward us, fingers spread a little, +as if it were the most amazing object and most deserving of outraged +sympathy in the whole world. + +The New Girl's timing was perfect. She whisked through us, and before he +could so much as wiggle the fingers, she whipped a black gauntleted +glove on it and anyone could see that it fitted his hand perfectly. + +This time our laughing beat the other. We collapsed and slopped our +drinks and pounded each other on the back and then started all over. + +"_Ach, der Handschuh, Liebchen!_ Where'd she get it?" Erich gasped in my +ear. + +"Probably just turned the other one inside out--that turns a left into a +right--I've done it myself," I wheezed, collapsing again at the idea. + +"That would put the lining outside," he objected. + +"Then I don't know," I said. "We got all sorts of junk in Stores." + +"It doesn't matter, _Liebchen_," he assured me. "_Ach, der Handschuh!_" + +All through it, Bruce just stood there admiring the glove, moving the +fingers a little now and then, and the New Girl stood watching him as if +he were eating a cake she'd baked. + + * * * * * + +When the hysteria quieted down, he looked up at her with a big smile. +"What did you say your name was?" + +"Lili," she said, and believe you me, she was Lili to me even in my +thoughts from then on, for the way she'd handled that lunatic. + +"Lilian Foster," she explained. "I'm English also. Mr. Marchant, I've +read _A Young Man's Fancy_ I don't know how many times." + +"You have? It's wretched stuff. From the Dark Ages--I mean my Cambridge +days. In the trenches, I was working up some poems that were rather +better." + +"I won't hear you say that. But I'd be terribly thrilled to hear the new +ones. Oh, Mr. Marchant, it was so strange to hear you call it +Passiondale." + +"Why, if I may ask?" + +"Because that's the way I pronounce it to myself. But I looked it up and +it's more like Pas-ken-DA-luh." + +"Bless you! All the Tommies called it Passiondale, just as they called +Ypres Wipers." + +"How interesting. You know, Mr. Marchant, I'll wager we were Recruited +in the same operation, summer of 1917. I'd got to France as a Red Cross +nurse, but they found out my age and were going to send me back." + +"How old were you--are you? Same thing, I mean to say." + +"Seventeen." + +"Seventeen in '17," Bruce murmured, his blue eyes glassy. + +It was real corny dialogue and I couldn't resent the humorous leer Erich +gave me as we listened to them, as if to say, "Ain't it nice, +_Liebchen_, Bruce has a silly little English schoolgirl to occupy him +between operations?" + +Just the same, as I watched Lili in her dark bangs and pearl necklace +and tight little gray dress that reached barely to her knees, and Bruce +hulking over her tenderly in his snazzy hussar's rig, I knew that I was +seeing the start of something that hadn't been part of me since Dave +died fighting Franco years before I got on the Big Time, the sort of +thing that almost made me wish there could be children in the Change +World. I wondered why I'd never thought of trying to work things so that +Dave got Resurrected and I told myself: no, it's all changed, I've +changed, better the Change Winds don't disturb Dave or I know about it. + +"No, I didn't die in 1917--I was merely Recruited then," Lili was +telling Bruce. "I lived all through the Twenties, as you can see from +the way I dress. But let's not talk about that, shall we? Oh, Mr. +Marchant, do you think you can possibly remember any of those poems you +started in the trenches? I can't fancy them bettering your sonnet that +concludes with, 'The bough swings in the wind, the night is deep; Look +at the stars, poor little ape, and sleep.'" + +That one almost made me whoop--what monkeys we are, I thought--though +I'd be the first to admit that the best line to use on a poet is one of +his own--in fact, as many as possible. I decided I could safely forget +our little Britons and devote myself to Erich or whatever needed me. + + + + +CHAPTER 3 + + Hell is the place for me. For to Hell go the fine churchmen, and the + fine knights, killed in the tourney or in some grand war, the brave + soldiers and the gallant gentlemen. With them will I go. There go + also the fair gracious ladies who have lovers two or three beside + their lord. There go the gold and the silver, the sables and ermine. + There go the harpers and the minstrels and the kings of the earth. + + --Aucassin + +NINE FOR A PARTY + + +I exchanged my drink for a new one from another tray Beau was bringing +around. The gray of the Void was beginning to look real pleasant, like +warm thick mist with millions of tiny diamonds floating in it. Doc was +sitting grandly at the bar with a steaming tumbler of tea--a chaser, I +guess, since he was just putting down a shot glass. Sid was talking to +Erich and laughing at the same time and I said to myself it begins to +feel like a party, but something's lacking. + +It wasn't anything to do with the Major Maintainer; its telltale was +glowing a steady red like a nice little home fire amid the tight cluster +of dials that included all the controls except the lonely and +frightening Introversion switch that was never touched. Then Maud's +couch curtains winked out and there were she and the Roman sitting +quietly side by side. + +He looked down at his shiny boots and the rest of his black duds like he +was just waking up and couldn't believe it all, and he said, "_Omnia +mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis_," and I raised my eyebrows at Beau, +who was taking the tray back, and he did proud by old Vicksburg by +translating: "All things change and we change with them." + +Then Mark slowly looked around at us, and I can testify that a Roman +smile is just as warm as any other nationality, and he finally said, "We +are nine, the proper number for a party. The couches, too. It is good." + +Maud chuckled proudly and Erich shouted, "Welcome back from the Void, +_Kamerad_," and then, because he's German and thinks all parties have to +be noisy and satirically pompous, he jumped on a couch and announced, +"_Herren und Damen_, permit me to introduce the noblest Roman of them +all, Marcus Vipsaius Niger, legate to Nero Claudius (called Germanicus +in a former time stream) and who in 763 A.U.C. (Correct, Mark? It means +10 A.D., you meatheads!) died bravely fighting the Parthians and the +Snakes in the Battle of Alexandria. _Hoch, hoch, hoch!_" + + * * * * * + +We all swung our glasses and cheered with him and Sid yelled at Erich, +"Keep your feet off the furniture, you unschooled rogue," and grinned +and boomed at all three hussars, "Take your ease, Recuperees," and Maud +and Mark got their drinks, the Roman paining Beau by refusing Falernian +wine in favor of scotch and soda, and right away everyone was talking a +mile a minute. + +We had a lot to catch up on. There was the usual yak about the war--"The +Snakes are laying mine fields in the Void," "I don't believe it, how can +you mine nothing?"--and the shortages--bourbon, bobby pins, and the +stabilitin that would have brought Mark out of it faster--and what had +become of people--"Marcia? Oh, she's not around any more," (She'd been +caught in a Change Gale and green and stinking in five seconds, but I +wasn't going to say that)--and Mark had to be told about Bruce's glove, +which convulsed us all over again, and the Roman remembered a legionary +who had carried a gripe all the way to Octavius because he'd +accidentally been issued the unbelievable luxury item sugar instead of +the usual salt, and Erich asked Sid if he had any new Ghostgirls in +stock and Sid sucked his beard like the old goat he is. "Dost thou ask +me, lusty Allemand? Nay, there are several great beauties, amongst them +an Austrian countess from Strauss's Vienna, and if it were not for +sweetling here ... Mnnnn." + +I poked a finger in Erich's chest between two of the bright buttons with +their tiny death's heads. "You, my little von Hohenwald, are a menace to +us real girls. You have too much of a thing about the unawakened, ghost +kind." + +He called me his little Demon and hugged me a bit too hard to prove it +wasn't so, and then he suggested we show Bruce the Art Gallery. I +thought this was a real brilliant idea, but when I tried to argue him +out of it, he got stubborn. Bruce and Lili were willing to do anything +anyone wanted them to, though not so willing to pay any attention while +doing it. The saber cut was just a thin red line on his cheek; she'd +washed away all the dried blood. + +The Gallery gets you, though. It's a bunch of paintings and sculptures +and especially odd knick-knacks, all made by Soldiers recuperating here, +and a lot of them telling about the Change War from the stuff they're +made of--brass cartridges, flaked flint, bits of ancient pottery glued +into futuristic shapes, mashed-up Incan gold rebeaten by a Martian, +whorls of beady Lunan wire, a picture in tempera on a crinkle-cracked +thick round of quartz that had filled a starship porthole, a Sumerian +inscription chiseled into a brick from an atomic oven. + + * * * * * + +There are a lot of things in the Gallery and I can always find some I +haven't ever seen before. It gets you, as I say, thinking about the guys +that made them and their thoughts and the far times and places they came +from, and sometimes, when I'm feeling low, I'll come and look at them so +I'll feel still lower and get inspired to kick myself back into a good +temper. It's the only history of the Place there is and it doesn't +change a great deal, because the things in it and the feelings that went +into them resist the Change Winds better than anything else. + +Right now, Erich's witty lecture was bouncing off the big ears I hide +under my pageboy bob and I was thinking how awful it is that for us that +there's not only change but Change. You don't know from one minute to +the next whether a mood or idea you've got is really new or just welling +up into you because the past has been altered by the Spiders or Snakes. + +Change Winds can blow not only death but anything short of it, down to +the featheriest fancy. They blow thousands of times faster than time +moves, but no one can say how much faster or how far one of them will +travel or what damage it'll do or how soon it'll damp out. The Big Time +isn't the little time. + +And then, for the Demons, there's the fear that our personality will +just fade and someone else climb into the driver's seat and us not even +know. Of course, we Demons are supposed to be able to remember through +Change and in spite of it; that's why we are Demons and not Ghosts like +the other Doublegangers, or merely Zombies or Unborn and nothing more, +and as Beau truly said, there aren't any great men among us--and blamed +few of the masses, either--we're a rare sort of people and that's why +the Spiders have to Recruit us where they find us without caring about +our previous knowledge and background, a Foreign Legion of time, a +strange kind of folk, bright but always in the background, with built-in +nostalgia and cynicism, as adaptable as Centaurian shape-changers but +with memories as long as a Lunan's six arms, a kind of Change People, +you might say, the cream of the damned. + +But sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are +and if the whole past wasn't once entirely different from anything we +remember, and we've forgotten that we forgot. + +As I say, the Gallery gets you feeling real low, and so now I said to +myself, "Back to your lousy little commandant, kid," and gave myself a +stiff boot. + +Erich was holding up a green bowl with gold dolphins or spaceships on it +and saying, "And, to my mind, this proves that Etruscan art is derived +from Egyptian. Don't you agree, Bruce?" + +Bruce looked up, all smiles from Lili, and said, "What was that, dear +chap?" + + * * * * * + +Erich's forehead got dark as the Door and I was glad the hussars had +parked their sabers along with their shakos, but before he could even +get out a Jerry cussword, Doc breezed up in that plateau-state of +drunkenness so like hypnotized sobriety, moving as if he were on a +dolly, ghosted the bowl out of Erich's hand, said, "A beautiful specimen +of Middle Systemic Venusian. When Eightaitch finished it, he told me you +couldn't look at it and not feel the waves of the Northern Venusian +Shallows rippling around your hoofs. But it might look better inverted. +I wonder. Who are you, young officer? _Nichevo_," and he carefully put +the bowl back on its shelf and rolled on. + +It's a fact that Doc knows the Art Gallery better than any of us, really +by heart, he being the oldest inhabitant, though he maybe picked a bad +time to show off his knowledge. Erich was going to take out after him, +but I said, "Nix, _Kamerad_, remember gloves and sugar," and he +contented himself with complaining, "That _nichevo_--it's so gloomy and +hopeless, _ungeheuerlich_. I tell you, _Liebchen_, they shouldn't have +Russians working for the Spiders, not even as Entertainers." + +I grinned at him and squeezed his hand. "Not much entertainment in Doc +these days, is there?" I agreed. + +He grinned back at me a shade sheepishly and his face smoothed and his +blue eyes looked sweet again for a second and he said, "I shouldn't want +to claw out at people that way, Greta, but at times I am just a jealous +old man," which is not entirely true, as he isn't a day over +thirty-three, although his hair is nearly white. + +Our lovers had drifted on a few steps until they were almost fading into +the Surgery screen. It was the last spot I would have picked for the +formal preliminaries to a little British smooching, but Lili probably +didn't share my prejudices, though I remembered she'd told me she'd +served a brief hitch in an Arachnoid Field Hospital before being +transferred to the Place. + +But she couldn't have had anything like the experience I'd had during my +short and sour career as a Spider nurse, when I'd acquired my best-hated +nightmare and flopped completely (jobwise, but on the floor, too) at +seeing a doctor flick a switch and a being, badly injured but human, +turn into a long cluster of glistening strange fruit--ugh, it always +makes me want to toss my cookies and my buttons. And to think that dear +old Daddy Anton wanted his Greta chile to be a doctor. + + * * * * * + +Well, I could see this wasn't getting me anywhere I wanted to go, and +after all there was a party going on. + +Doc was babbling something at a great rate to Sid--I just hoped Doc +wouldn't get inspired to go into his animal imitations, which sound +pretty fierce and once seriously offended some recuperating ETs. + +Maud was demonstrating to Mark a 23rd Century two-step and Beau sat down +at the piano and improvised softly on her rhythm. + +As the deep-thrumming relaxing notes hit us, Erich's face brightened and +he dragged me over. Pleasantly soon I had my feet off the diamond-rough +floor, which we don't carpet because most of the ETs, the dear boys, +like it hard, and I was shouldering back deep into the couch nearest the +piano, with cushions all around me and a fresh drink in my hand, while +my Nazi boy friend was getting ready to discharge his _Weltschmerz_ as +song, which didn't alarm me too much, as his baritone is passable. + +Things felt real good, like the Maintainer was just idling to keep the +Place in existence and moored to the cosmos, not exerting itself at all +or at most taking an occasional lazy paddle stroke. At times the Place's +loneliness can be happy and comfortable. + +Then Beau raised an eyebrow at Erich, who nodded, and next thing they +were launched into a song we all know, though I've never found out where +it originally came from. This time it made me think of Lili, and I +wondered why--and why it's a tradition at Recuperation Stations to call +the new girl Lili, though in this case it happened to be her real name. + + _Standing in the Doorway just outside of space, + Winds of Change blow 'round you but don't touch your face; + You smile as you whisper tenderly, + "Please cross to me, Recuperee; + The operation's over, come in and close the Door."_ + + + + +CHAPTER 4 + + De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled + Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear + In fractured atoms. + + --Eliot + +SOS FROM NOWHERE + + +I realized the piano had deserted Erich and I cranked my head up and saw +Beau, Maud and Sid streaking for the control divan. The Major Maintainer +was blinking emergency-green and fast, but the code was plain enough for +even me to recognize the Spider distress call and for a second I felt +just sick. Then Erich blew out his reserve breath in the middle of +"Door" and I gave myself another of those helpful mental boots at the +base of the spine and we hurried after them toward the center of the +Place along with Mark. + +The blinks faded as we got there and Sid told us not to move because we +were making shadows. He glued an eye to the telltale and we held still +as statues as he caressed the dials like he was making love. + +One sensitive hand flicked out past the Introversion switch over to the +Minor Maintainer and right away the Place was dark as your soul and +there was nothing for me but Erich's arm and the knowledge that Sid was +nursing a green light I couldn't even see, although my eyes had plenty +time to accommodate. + +Then the green light finally came back very slowly and I could see the +dear reliable old face--the green-gold beard making him look like a +merman--and then the telltale flared bright and Sid flicked on the Place +lights and I leaned back. + +"That nails them, lads, whoever and whenever they may be. Get ready for +a pick-up." + +Beau, who was closest of course, looked at him sharply. Sid shrugged +uneasily. "Meseemed at first it was from our own globe a thousand years +before our Lord, but that indication flickered and faded like witchfire. +As it is, the call comes from something smaller than the Place and +certes adrift from the cosmos. Meseemed too at one point I knew the fist +of the caller--an antipodean atomicist named Benson-Carter--but that +likewise changed." + +Beau said, "We're not in the right phase of the cosmos-Places rhythm for +a pick-up, are we, sir?" + +Sid answered, "Ordinarily not, boy." + +Beau continued, "I didn't think we had any pick-ups scheduled. Or +stand-by orders." + +Sid said, "We haven't." + +Mark's eyes glowed. He tapped Erich on the shoulder. "An octavian +denarius against ten Reichsmarks it is a Snake trap." + +Erich's grin showed his teeth. "Make it first through the Door next +operation and I'm on." + + * * * * * + +It didn't take that to tell me things were serious, or the thought that +there's always a first time for bumping into something from really +outside the cosmos. The Snakes have broken our code more than once. Maud +was quietly serving out weapons and Doc was helping her. Only Bruce and +Lili stood off. But they were watching. + +The telltale brightened. Sid reached toward the Maintainer, saying, "All +right, my hearties. Remember, through this Doorway pass the fishiest +finaglers in and out of the cosmos." + +The Door appeared to the left and above where it should be and darkened +much too fast. There was a gust of stale salt seawind, if that makes +sense, but no stepped-up Change Winds I could tell--and I had been +bracing myself against them. The Door got inky and there was a flicker +of gray fur whips and a flash of copper flesh and gilt and something +dark and a clump of hoofs and Erich was sighting a stun gun across his +left forearm, and then the Door had vanished like that and a tentacled +silvery Lunan and a Venusian satyr were coming straight toward us. + +The Lunan was hugging a pile of clothes and weapons. The satyr was +helping a wasp-waisted woman carry a heavy-looking bronze chest. The +woman was wearing a short skirt and high-collared bolero jacket of +leather so dark brown it was almost black. She had a two-horned +_petsofa_ hairdress and she was boldly gilded here and there and wore +sandals and copper anklets and wristlets--one of them a copper-plated +Caller--and from her wide copper belt hung a short-handled double-headed +ax. She was dark-complexioned and her forehead and chin receded, but the +effect was anything but weak; she had a face like a beautiful +arrowhead--and a familiar one, by golly! + +But before I could say, "Kabysia Labrys," Maud shrilly beat me to it +with, "It's Kaby with two friends. Break out a couple of Ghostgirls." + +And then I saw it really was old-home week because I recognized my Lunan +boy friend Ilhilihis, and in the midst of all the confusion I got a nice +kick out of knowing I was getting so I could tell the personality of one +silver-furred muzzle from another. + +They reached the control divan and Illy dumped his load and the others +let down the chest, and Kaby staggered but shook off the two ETs when +they started to support her, and she looked daggers at Sid when he tried +to do the same, although she's his "sweet Keftian friend" he'd mentioned +to Bruce. + + * * * * * + +She leaned straight-armed on the divan and took two gasping breaths so +deep that the ridges of her spine showed through her brown-skinned +waist, and then she threw up her head and commanded, "Wine!" + +While Beau was rushing it, Sid tried to take her hand again, saying, +"Sweetling, I'd never heard you call before and knew not this pretty +little fist," but she ripped out, "Save your comfort for the Lunan," and +I looked and saw--Hey, Zeus!--that one of Ilhilihis' six tentacles was +lopped off halfway. + +That was for me, and, going to him, I fast briefed myself: "Remember, he +only weighs fifty pounds for all he's seven feet high; he doesn't like +low sounds or to be grabbed; the two legs aren't tentacles and don't act +the same; uses them for long walks, tentacles for leaps; uses tentacles +for close vision too and for manipulation, of course; extended, they +mean he's at ease; retracted, on guard or nervous; sharply retracted, +disgusted; greeting--" + +Just then, one of them swept across my face like a sweet-smelling +feather duster and I said, "Illy, man, it's been a lot of sleeps," and +brushed my fingers across his muzzle. It still took a little +self-control not to hug him, and I did reach a little cluckingly for +his lopped tentacle, but he wafted it away from me and the little +voice-box belted to his side squeaked, "Naughty, naughty. Papa will fix +his little old self. Greta girl, ever bandaged even a Terra octopus?" + +I had, an intelligent one from around a quarter billion A.D., but I +didn't tell him so. I stood and let him talk to the palm of my hand with +one of his tentacles--I don't savvy feather-talk but it feels good, +though I've often wondered who taught him English--and watched him use a +couple others to whisk a sort of Lunan band-aid out of his pouch and cap +his wound with it. + +Meanwhile, the satyr knelt over the bronze chest, which was decorated +with little death's heads and crosses with hoops at the top and +swastikas, but looking much older than Nazi, and the satyr said to Sid, +"Quick thinkin, Gov, when ya saw the Door comin in high n soffened up +gravty unner it, but cud I hav sum hep now?" + +Sid touched the Minor Maintainer and we all got very light and my +stomach did a flip-flop while the satyr piled on the chest the clothes +and weapons that Illy had been carrying and pranced off with it all and +carefully put it down at the end of the bar. I decided the satyr's +English instructor must have been quite a character, too. Wish I'd met +him--her--it. + +Sid thought to ask Illy if he wanted Moon-normal gravity in one sector, +but my boy likes to mix, and being such a lightweight, Earth-normal +gravity doesn't bother him. As he said to me once, "Would Jovian gravity +bother a beetle, Greta girl?" + + * * * * * + +I asked Illy about the satyr and he squeaked that his name was Sevensee +and that he'd never met him before this operation. I knew the satyrs +were from a billion years in the future, just as the Loonies were from a +billion in the past, and I thought--Kreesed us!--but it must have been +a real big or emergency-like operation to have the Spiders using those +two for it, with two billion years between them--a time-difference that +gives you a feeling of awe for a second, you know. + +[Illustration] + +I started to ask Illy about it, but just then Beau came scampering back +from the bar with a big red-and-black earthenware goblet of wine--we try +to keep a variety of drinking tools in stock so folks will feel more at +home. Kaby grabbed it from him and drained most of it in one swallow and +then smashed it on the floor. She does things like that, though Sid's +tried to teach her better. Then she stared at what she was thinking +about until the whites showed all around her eyes and her lips pulled +way back from her teeth and she looked a lot less human than the two +ETs, just like a fury. Only a time traveler knows how like the wild +murals and engravings of them some of the ancients can look. + +My hair stood up at the screech she let out. She smashed a fist into the +divan and cried, "Goddess! Must I see Crete destroyed, revived, and now +destroyed again? It is too much for your servant." + +Personally, I thought she could stand anything. + +There was a rush of questions at what she said about Crete--I asked one +of them, for the news certainly frightened me--but she shot up her arm +straight for silence and took a deep breath and began. + +"In the balance hung the battle. Rowing like black centipedes, the +Dorian hulls bore down on our outnumbered ships. On the bright beach, +masked by rocks, Sevensee and I stood by the needle gun, ready to give +the black hulls silent wounds. Beside us was Ilhilihis, suited as a sea +monster. But then ... then ..." + +Then I saw she wasn't altogether the iron babe, for her voice broke and +she started to shake and to sob rackingly, although her face was still a +mask of rage, and she threw up the wine. Sid stepped in and made her +stop, which I think he'd been wanting to do all along. + + + + +CHAPTER 5 + + Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts + creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. + They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to + me. + + --Ibsen + +SID INSISTS ON GHOSTGIRLS + + +My Elizabethan boy friend put his fists on his hips and laid down the +law to us as if we were a lot of nervous children who'd been playing too +hard. + +"Look you, masters, this is a Recuperation Station and I am running it +as such. A plague of all operations! I care not if the frame of things +disjoints and the whole Change World goes to ruin, but you, warrior +maid, are going to rest and drink more wine slowly before you tell your +tale and your colleagues are going to be properly companioned. No +questions, anyone. Beau, and you love us, give us a lively tune." + +Kaby relaxed a little and let him put his hand carefully against her +back in token of support and she said grudgingly, "All right, Fat +Belly." + +Then, so help me, to the tune of the Muskrat Ramble, which I'd taught +Beau, we got girls for those two ETs and everybody properly paired up. + +Right here I want to point out that a lot of the things they say in the +Change World about Recuperation Stations simply aren't so--and anyway +they always leave out nine-tenths of it. The Soldiers that come through +the Door are looking for a good time, sure, but they're hurt real bad +too, every one of them, deep down in their minds and hearts, if not +always in their bodies or so you can see it right away. + +Believe me, a temporal operation is no joke, and to start with, there +isn't one person in a hundred who can endure to be cut from his lifeline +and become a really wide-awake Doubleganger--a Demon, that is--let alone +a Soldier. What does a badly hurt and mixed-up creature need who's been +fighting hard? _One individual_ to look out for him and feel for him and +patch him up, and it helps if the one is of the opposite sex--that's +something that goes beyond species. + +There's your basis for the Place and the wild way it goes about its +work, and also for most other Recuperation Stations or Entertainment +Spots. The name Entertainer can be misleading, but I like it. She's got +to be a lot more than a good party girl--or boy--though she's got to be +that too. She's got to be a nurse and a psychologist and an actress and +a mother and a practical ethnologist and a lot of things with longer +names--and a reliable friend. + + * * * * * + +None of us are all those things perfectly or even near it. We just try. +But when the call comes, Entertainers have to forget grudges and gripes +and envies and jealousies--and remember, they're lively people with +sharp emotions--because there isn't any time then for anything but _help +and don't ask who_! + +And, deep inside her, a good Entertainer doesn't care who. Take the way +it shaped up this time. It was pretty clear to me I ought to shift to +Illy, although I wasn't quite easy in my mind about leaving Erich, +because the Lunan was a long time from home and, after all, Erich was +among anthropoids. Ilhilihis needed someone who was _simpatico_. + +I like Illy and not just because he is a sort of tall cross between a +spider monkey and a persian cat--though that is a handsome combo when +you come to think of it. I like him for himself. So when he came in all +lopped and shaky after a mean operation, I was the right person to look +out for him. Now I've made my little speech and know-nothings in the +Change World can go on making their bum jokes. But I ask you, how could +an arrangement between Illy and me be anything but Platonic? + +We might have had some octopoid girls and nymphs in stock--Sid couldn't +be sure until he checked--but Ilhilihis and Sevensee voted for real +people and I knew Sid saw it their way. Maud squeezed Mark's hand and +tripped over to Sevensee ("Those are sharp hoofs you got, man"--she's +picked up some of my language, like she has everything else), though +Beau did frown over his shoulder at Lili from the piano, maybe to argue +that she ought to take on the ET, as Mark had been a real casualty and +could use live nursing. But it was plain as day to anybody but Beau that +Bruce and Lili were a big thing and the last to be disturbed. + +Erich acted stiffly hurt at losing me, but I knew he wasn't. He thinks +he has a great technique with Ghostgirls and he likes to show it off, +and he really is pretty slick at it, if you go for that sort of thing +and--yang my yin!--who doesn't at times? + +And when Sid formally wafted the Countess out of Stores--a real blonde +stunner in a white satin hobble skirt with a white egret swaying up from +her tiny hat, way ahead of Maud and Lili and me when it came to looks, +though transparent as cigarette smoke--and when Erich clicked his heels +and bowed over her hand and proudly conducted her to a couch, black +Svengali to her Trilby, and started to German-talk some life into her +with much head cocking and toothy smiling and a flow of witty flattery, +and when she began to flirt back and the dream look in her eyes +sharpened hungrily and focused on him--well, then I knew that Erich was +happy and felt he was doing proud by the _Reichswehr_. No, my little +commandant wasn't worrying me on that score. + + * * * * * + +Mark had drawn a Greek hetaera, name of Phryne; I suppose not the one +who maybe still does the famous courtroom striptease back in Athens, and +he was waking her up with little sips of his scotch and soda, though, +from some looks he'd flashed, I got the idea Kaby was the kid he really +went for. Sid was coaxing the fighting gal to take some high-energy +bread and olives along with the wine, and, for a wonder, Doc seemed to +be carrying on an animated and rational conversation with Sevensee and +Maud, maybe comparing notes on the Northern Venusian Shallows, and Beau +had got on to Panther Rag, and Bruce and Lili were leaning on the piano, +smiling very appreciatively, but talking to each other a mile a minute. + +Illy turned back from inspecting them all and squeaked, "Animals with +clothes are so refreshing, dahling! Like you're all carrying banners!" + +Maybe he had something there, though my banners were kind of Ash +Wednesday, a charcoal gray sweater and skirt. He looked at my mouth with +a tentacle to see how I was smiling and he squeaked softly, "Do I seem +dull and commonplace to you, Greta girl, because I haven't got banners? +Just another Zombie from a billion years in your past, as gray and +lifeless as Luna is today, not as when she was a real dreamy sister +planet simply bursting with air and water and feather forests. Or am I +as strangely interesting to you as you are to me, girl from a billion +years in my future?" + +"Illy, you're sweet," I told him, giving him a little pat. I noticed his +fur was still vibrating nervously and I decided the heck with Sid's +orders, I'm going to pump him about what he was doing with Kaby and the +satyr. Couldn't have him a billion years from home and bottled up, too. +Besides, I was curious. + + + + +CHAPTER 6 + + Maiden, Nymph, and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity of the + island, and the Goddess, who is worshipped there in each of these + aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign + Deity. + + --Graves + +CRETE CIRCA 1300 B.C. + + +Kaby pushed back at Sid some seconds of bread and olives, and, when he +raised his bushy eyebrows, gave him a curt nod that meant she knew what +she was doing. She stood up and sort of took a position. All the talk +quieted down fast, even Bruce's and Lili's. Kaby's face and voice +weren't strained now, but they weren't relaxed either. + +"Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it +bravely, like strong women. When we got the gun unlimbered, I heard +seaweed fry and crackle. We three leaped behind the rock wall, saw our +gun grow white as sunlight in a heat-ray of the Serpents! Natch, we +feared we were outnumbered and I called upon my Caller." + +[Illustration] + +I don't know how she does it, but she does--in English too. That is, +when she figures she's got something important to report, and maybe she +needs a little time to get ready. + +Beau claims that all the ancients fit their thoughts into measured lines +as naturally as we pick a word that will do, but I'm not sure how good +the Vicksburg language department is. Though why I should wonder about +things like that when I've got Kaby spouting the stuff right in front of +me, I don't know. + +"But I didn't die there, kiddos. I still hoped to hurt the Greek ships, +maybe with the Snake's own heat gun. So I quick tried to outflank them. +My two comrades crawled beside me--they are males, but they have +courage. Soon we spied the ambush-setters. They were Snakes and they +were many, filthily disguised as Cretans." + +There was an indignant murmur at this, for our cutthroat Change War has +its code, the Soldiers tell me. Being an Entertainer, I don't have to +say what I think. + +"They had seen us when we saw them," Kaby swept on, "and they loosed a +killing volley. Heat- and knife-rays struck about us in a storm of wind +and fire, and the Lunan lost a feeler, fighting for Crete's Triple +Goddess. So we dodged behind a sand hill, steered our flight back toward +the water. It was awful, what we saw there: Crete's brave ships all sunk +or sinking, blue sky sullied by their death-smoke. Once again the Greeks +had licked us!--aided by the filthy Serpents. + +"Round our wrecks, their black ships scurried, like black beetles, filth +their diet, yet this day they dine on heroes. On the quiet sunlit beach +there, I could feel a Change Gale blowing, working changes deep inside +me, aches and pains that were a stranger's. Half my memories were +doubled, half my lifeline crooked and twisted, three new moles upon my +sword-hand. Goddess, Goddess, Triple Goddess--" + + * * * * * + +Her voice wavered and Sid reached out a hand, but she straightened her +back. + +"Triple Goddess, give me courage to tell everything that happened. We +ran down into the water, hoping to escape by diving. We had hardly +gotten under when the heat-rays hit above us, turning all the cool green +surface to a roaring white inferno. But as I believe I told you, I was +calling on my Caller, and a Door now opened to us, deep below the deadly +steam-clouds. We dived in like frightened minnows and a lot of water +with us." + +Off Chicago's Gold Coast, Dave once gave me a lesson in skin-diving and, +remembering it, I got a flash of Kaby's Door in the dark depths. + +"For a moment, all was chaos. Then the Door slammed shut behind us. We'd +been picked up in time's nick by--an Express Room of our +Spiders!--sloshing two feet deep in water, much more cramped for space +than this Place. It was manned by a magician, an old coot named +Benson-Carter. He dispelled the water quickly and reported on his +Caller. We'd got dry, were feeling human, Illy here had shed his +swimsuit, when we looked at the Maintainer. It was glowing, changing, +melting! And when Benson-Carter touched it, he fell backward--death was +in him. Then the Void began to darken, narrow, shrink and close around +us, so I called upon my Caller--without wasting time, let me tell you! + +"We can't say for sure what was it slowly squeezed that sweet Express +Room, but we fear the dirty Snakes have found a way to find our Places +and attack outside the cosmos!--found the Spiderweb that links us in the +Void's gray less-than-nothing." + +No murmur this time. This reaction was genuine; we'd been hit where we +lived and I could see everybody was scared as sick as I was. Except +maybe Bruce and Lili, who were still holding hands and beaming gently. I +decided they were the kind that love makes brave, which it doesn't do to +me. It just gives me two people to worry about. + +"I can see you dig our feelings," Kaby continued. "This thing scared the +pants off of us. If we could have, we'd have even Introverted the +Maintainer, broken all the ties that bind us, chanced it incommunicado. +But the little old Maintainer was a seething red-hot puddle filled with +bubbles big as handballs. We sat tight and watched the Void close. I +kept calling on my Caller." + + * * * * * + +I squeezed my eyes shut, but that made it easier to see the three of +them with the Void shutting down on them. (Was ours still behaving? Yes, +Bibi Miriam.) Poetry or no poetry, it got me. + +"Benson-Carter, lying dying, also thought the Snakes had done it. And he +knew that death was in him, so he whispered me his mission, giving me +precise instructions: how to press the seven death's hands, starting +lockside counterclockwise, one, three, five, six, two, four, seven, then +you have a half an hour; after you have pressed the seven, do not monkey +with the buttons--get out fast and don't stop moving." + +I wasn't getting this part and I couldn't see that anyone else was, +though Bruce was whispering to Lili. I remembered seeing skulls engraved +on the bronze chest. I looked at Illy and he nodded a tentacle and +spread two to say, I guessed, that yes, Benson-Carter had said something +like that, but no, Illy didn't know much about it. + +"All these things and more he whispered," Kaby went on, "with the last +gasps of his life-force, telling all his secret orders--for he'd not +been sent to get us, he was on a separate mission, when he heard my +SOSs. Sid, it's you he was to contact, as the first leg of his mission, +pick up from you three black hussars, death's-head Demons, daring +Soldiers, then to wait until the Places next match rhythm with the +cosmos--matter of two mealtimes, barely--and to tune in northern Egypt +in the age of the last Caesar, in the year of Rome's swift downfall, +there to start an operation in a battle near a city named for Thrace's +Alexander, there to change the course of battle, blow sky-high the +stinking Serpents, all their agents, all their Zombies! + +"Goddess, pardon, now I savvy how you've guided my least footstep, when +I thought you'd gone and left me--for I flubbed your three-mole signal. +We've found Sid's Place, that's the first leg, and I see the three black +hussars, and we've brought with us the weapon and the Parthian +disguises, salvaged from the doomed Express Room when your Door appeared +in time's nick, and the Room around us closing spewed us through before +it vanished with the corpse of Benson-Carter. Triple Goddess, draw the +milk now from the womanhood I flaunt here and inject the blackest +hatred! Vengeance now upon the Serpents, vengeance sweet in northern +Egypt, for your island, Crete, Goddess!--and a victory for the Spiders! +Goddess, Goddess, we can swing it!" + +The roar that made me try to stop my ears with my shoulders didn't come +from Kaby--she'd spoken her piece--but from Sid. The dear boy was purple +enough to make me want to remind him you can die of high blood pressure +just as easy in the Change World. + +"Dump me with ops! 'Sblood, I'll not endure it! Is this a battle post? +They'll be mounting operations from field hospitals next. Kabysia +Labrys, thou art mad to suggest it. And what's this prattle of locks, +clocks, and death's heads, buttons and monkeys? This brabble, this +farrago, this hocus-pocus! And where's the weapon you prate of? In that +whoreson bronze casket, I suppose." + +She nodded, looking blank and almost a little shy as poetic possession +faded from her. Her answer came like its faltering last echo. + +"It is nothing but a tiny tactical atomic bomb." + + + + +CHAPTER 7 + + After about 0.1 millisecond (one ten-thousandth part of a second) + has elapsed, the radius of the ball of fire is some 45 feet, and the + temperature is then in the vicinity of 300,000 degrees Centigrade. + At this instant, the luminosity, as observed at a distance of + 100,000 yards (5.7 miles), is approximately 100 times that of the + sun as seen at the earth's surface ... the ball of fire expands very + rapidly to its maximum radius of 450 feet within less than a second + from the explosion. + + --Los Alamos + +TIME TO THINK + + +Brother, that was all we needed to make everybody but Kaby and the two +ETs start yelping at once, me included. It may seem strange that Change +People, able to whiz through time and space and roust around outside the +cosmos and knowing at least by hearsay of weapons a billion years in the +future, like the Mindbomb, should panic at being shut in with a little +primitive mid-20th Century gadget. Well, they feel the same as atomic +scientists would feel if a Bengal tiger were brought into their +laboratory, neither more nor less scared. + +I'm a moron at physics, but I do know the Fireball is bigger than the +Place. Remember that, besides the bomb, we'd recently been presented +with a lot of other fears we hadn't had time to cope with, especially +the business of the Snakes having learned how to get at our Places and +melt the Maintainers and collapse them. Not to mention the general +impression--first Saint Petersburg, then Crete--that the whole Change +War was going against the Spiders. + +Yet, in a free corner of my mind, I was shocked at how badly we were all +panicking. It made me admit what I didn't like to: that we were all in +pretty much the same state as Doc, except that the bottle didn't happen +to be our out. + +And had the rest of us been controlling our drinking so well lately? + +Maud yelled, "Jettison it!" and pulled away from the satyr and ran from +the bronze chest. Beau, harking back to what they'd thought of doing in +the Express Room when it was too late, hissed, "Sirs, we must +Introvert," and vaulted over the piano bench and legged it for the +control divan. Erich seconded him with a white-faced "_Gott in Himmel, +ja!_" from beside the surly, forgotten Countess, holding, by its slim +stem, an empty, rose-stained wine glass. + +I felt my mind flinch, because Introverting a Place is several degrees +worse than foxholing. It's supposed not only to keep the Door tight +shut, but also to lock it so even the Change Winds can't get +through--cut the Place loose from the cosmos altogether. + +I'd never talked with anyone from a Place that had been Introverted. + + * * * * * + +Mark dumped Phryne off his lap and ran after Maud. The Greek Ghostgirl, +quite solid now, looked around with sleepy fear and fumbled her +apple-green chiton together at the throat. She wrenched my attention +away from everyone else for a moment, and I couldn't help wondering +whether the person or Zombie back in the cosmos, from whose lifeline the +Ghost has been taken, doesn't at least have strange dreams or thoughts +when something like this happens. + +Sid stopped Beau, though he almost got bowled over doing it, and he held +the gambler away from the Maintainer in a bear hug and bellowed over his +shoulders, "Masters, are you mad? Have you lost your wits? Maud! Mark! +Marcus! Magdalene! On your lives, unhand that casket!" + +Maud had swept the clothes and bows and quivers and stuff off it and was +dragging it out from the bar toward the Door sector, so as to dump it +through fast when we got one, I guess, while Mark acted as if he were +trying to help her and wrestle it away from her at the same time. + +They kept on as if they hadn't heard a word Sid said, with Mark yelling, +"Let go, _meretrix_! This holds Rome's answer to Parthia on the Nile." + +Kaby watched them as if she wanted to help Mark but scorned to scuffle +with a mere--well, Mark had said it in Latin, I guess--call girl. + +Then, on the top of the bronze chest, I saw those seven lousy skulls +starting at the lock as plain as if they'd been under a magnifying +glass, though ordinarily they'd have been a vague circle to my eyes at +the distance, and I lost my mind and started to run in the opposite +direction, but Illy whipped three tentacles around me, gentle-like, and +squeaked, "Easy now, Greta girl, don't you be doing it, too. Hold still +or Papa spank. My, my, but you two-leggers can whirl about when you have +a mind to." + +My stampede had carried his featherweight body a couple of yards, but it +stopped me and I got my mind back, partly. + +"Unhand it, I say!" Sid repeated without accomplishing anything, and he +released Beau, though he kept a hand near the gambler's shoulder. + +Then my fat friend from Lynn Regis looked real distraught at the Void +and blustered at no one in particular, "'Sdeath, think you I'd mutiny +against my masters, desert the Spiders, go to ground like a spent fox +and pull my hole in after me? A plague of such cowardice! Who suggests +it? Introversion's no mere last-ditch device. Unless ordered, supervised +and sanctioned, it means the end. And what if I'd Introverted ere we got +Kaby's call for succor, hey?" + + * * * * * + +His warrior maid nodded with harsh approval and he noticed it and shook +his free hand at her and scolded her, "Not that I say yea to your mad +plan for that Devil's casket, you half-clad lackwit. And yet to +jettison.... Oh, ye gods, ye gods--" he wiped his hand across his +face--"grant me a minute in which I may think!" + +Thinking time wasn't an item even on the strictly limited list at the +moment, although Sevensee, squatting dourly on his hairy haunches where +Maud had left him, threw in a dead-pan "Thas tellin em, Gov." + +Then Doc at the bar stood up tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat and +shawl and 19th Century duds and raised an unwavering arm for silence and +said something that sounded like: "Introversh, inversh, glovsh," and +then his enunciation switched to better than perfect as he continued, "I +know to an absolute certainty what we must do." + +It showed me how rabbity we were that the Place got quiet as a church +while we all stopped whatever we were doing and waited breathless for a +poor drunk to tell us how to save ourselves. + +He said something like, "Inversh ... bosh ..." and held our eyes for a +moment longer. Then the light went out of his and he slobbered out a +"_Nichevo_" and slid an arm far along the bar for a bottle and started +to pour it down his throat without stopping sliding. + +Before he completed his collapse to the floor, in the split second while +our attention was still focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted up on top of +it, so fast it was almost like he'd popped up from nowhere, though I'd +seen him start from behind the piano. + +"I've a question. Has anyone here triggered that bomb?" he said in a +voice that was very clear and just loud enough. "So it can't go off," he +went on after just the right pause, his easy grin and brisk manner +putting more heart into me all the time. "What's more, if it were to be +triggered, we'd still have half an hour. I believe you said it had that +long a fuse?" + +He stabbed a finger at Kaby. She nodded. + +"Right," he said. "It'd have to be that long for whoever plants it in +the Parthian camp to get away. There's another safety margin. + +"Second question. Is there a locksmith in the house?" + + * * * * * + +For all Bruce's easiness, he was watching us like a golden eagle and he +caught Beau's and Maud's affirmatives before they had a chance to +explain or hedge them and said, "That's very good. Under certain +circumstances, you two'd be the ones to go to work on the chest. But +before we consider that, there's Question Three: Is anyone here an +atomics technician?" + +That one took a little conversation to straighten out, Illy having to +explain that, yes, the Early Lunans had atomic power--hadn't they +blasted the life off their planet with it and made all those ghastly +craters?--but no, he wasn't a technician exactly, he was a "thinger" (I +thought at first his squeakbox was lisping); what was a thinger?--well, +a thinger was someone who manipulated things in a way that was truly +impossible to describe, but no, you couldn't possibly thing atomics; the +idea was quite ridiculous, so he couldn't be an atomics thinger; the +term was worse than a contradiction, well, really!--while Sevensee, from +his two-thousand-millennia advantage of the Lunan, grunted to the effect +that his culture didn't rightly use any kind of power, but just sort of +moved satyrs and stuff by wrastling space-time around, "or think em roun +ef we hafta. Can't think em in the Void, tho, wus luck. Hafta have--I +dunno wut. Dun havvit anyhow." + +"So we don't have an A-tech," Bruce summed up, "which makes it worse +than useless, downright dangerous, to tamper with the chest. We wouldn't +know what to do if we did get inside safely. One more question." He +directed it toward Sid. "How long before we can jettison anything?" + +Sid, looking a shade jealous, yet mostly grateful for the way Bruce had +calmed his chickens, started to explain, but Bruce didn't seem to be +taking any chance of losing his audience, and as soon as Sid got to the +word "rhythm," he pulled the answer away from him. + +"In brief, not until we can effectively tune in on the cosmos again. +Thank you, Master Lessingham. That's at least five hours--two mealtimes, +as the Cretan officer put it," and he threw Kaby a quick soldierly +smile. "So, whether the bomb goes to Egypt or elsewhere, there's not a +thing we can do about it for five hours. All right then!" + +His smile blinked out like a light and he took a couple of steps up and +down the bar, as if measuring the space he had. Two or three cocktail +glasses sailed off and popped, but he didn't seem to notice them and we +hardly did either. It was creepy the way he kept staring from one to +another of us. We had to look up. Behind his face, with the straight +golden hair flirting around it, was only the Void. + +"All right then," he repeated suddenly. "We're twelve Spiders and two +Ghosts, and we've time for a bit of a talk, and we're all in the same +bloody boat, fighting the same bloody war, so we'll all know what we're +talking about. I raised the subject a while back, but I was steamed up +about a glove, and it was a big jest. All right! But now the gloves are +off!" + + * * * * * + +Bruce ripped them out of his belt where they'd been tucked and slammed +them down on the bar, to be kicked off the next time he paced back and +forth, and it wasn't funny. + +"Because," he went right on, "I've been getting a completely new picture +of what this Spiders' war has been doing to each one of us. Oh, it's +jolly good sport to slam around in space and time and then have a rugged +little party outside both of them when the operation's over. It's sweet +to know there's no cranny of reality so narrow, no privacy so intimate +or sacred, no wall of was or will be strong enough, that we can't +shoulder in. Knowledge is a glamorous thing, sweeter than lust or +gluttony or the passion of fighting and including all three, the +ultimate insatiable hunger, and it's great to be Faust, even in a pack +of other Fausts. + +"It's sweet to jigger reality, to twist the whole course of a man's life +or a culture's, to ink out his or its past and scribble in a new one, +and be the only one to know and gloat over the changes--hah! killing men +or carrying off women isn't in it for glutting the sense of power. It's +sweet to feel the Change Winds blowing through you and know the pasts +that were and the past that is and the pasts that may be. It's sweet to +wield the Atropos and cut a Zombie or Unborn out of his lifeline and +look the Doubleganger in the face and see the Resurrection-glow in it +and Recruit a brother, welcome a newborn fellow Demon into our ranks and +decide whether he'll best fit as Soldier, Entertainer, or what. + +"Or he can't stand Resurrection, it fries or freezes him, and you've got +to decide whether to return him to his lifeline and his Zombie dreams, +only they'll be a little grayer and horrider than they were before, or +whether, if she's got that tantalizing something, to bring her shell +along for a Ghostgirl--that's sweet, too. It's even sweet to have Change +Death poised over your neck, to know that the past isn't the precious +indestructible thing you've been taught it was, to know that there's no +certainty about the future either, whether there'll even be one, to know +that no part of reality is holy, that the cosmos itself may wink out +like a flicked switch and God be not and nothing left but nothing!" + +He threw out his arms against the Void. "And knowing all that, it's +doubly sweet to come through the Door into the Place and be out of the +worst of the Change Winds and enjoy a well-earned Recuperation and share +the memories of all these sweetnesses I've been talking about, and work +out all the fascinating feelings you've been accumulating back in the +cosmos, layer by black layer, in the company of and with the help of the +best bloody little band of fellow Fausts and Faustines going! + +"Oh, it's a sweet life, all right, but I'm asking you--" and here his +eyes stabbed us again, one by one, fast--"I'm asking you what it's done +to us. I've been getting a completely new picture, as I said, of what my +life was and what it could have been if there'd been changes of the sort +that even we Demons can't make, and what my life is. I've been watching +how we've all been responding to things just now, to the news of Saint +Petersburg and to what the Cretan officer told beautifully--only it +wasn't beautiful what she had to tell--and mostly to that bloody box of +bomb. And I'm simply asking each one of you, what's happened to you?" + + * * * * * + +He stopped his pacing and stuck his thumbs in his belt and seemed to be +listening to the wheels turning in at least eleven other heads--only I +stopped mine pretty quick, with Dave and Father and the Rape of Chicago +coming up out of the dark on the turn and Mother and the Indiana Dunes +and Jazz Limited just behind them, followed by the unthinkable thing +the Spider doctor had flicked into existence when I flopped as a nurse, +because I can't stand that to be done to my mind by anybody but myself. + +I stopped them by using the old infallible Entertainers' gimmick, a fast +survey of the most interesting topic there is--other people's troubles. + + * * * * * + +Offhand, Beau looked as if he had most troubles, shamed by his boss and +his girl given her heart to a Soldier; he was hugging them to himself +very quiet. + +I didn't stop for the two ETs--they're too hard to figure--or for Doc; +nobody can tell whether a fallen-down drunk's at the black or bright end +of his cycle; you just know it's cycling. + +Maud ought to be suffering as much as Beau, called names and caught out +in a panic, which always hurts her because she's plus three hundred +years more future than the rest of us and figures she ought to be that +much wiser, which she isn't always--not to mention she's over fifty +years old, though her home-century cosmetic science keeps her looking +and acting teenage most of the time. She'd backed away from the bronze +chest so as not to stand out, and now Lili came from behind the piano +and stood beside her. + +Lili had the opposite of troubles, a great big glow for Bruce, proud as +a promised princess watching her betrothed. Erich frowned when he saw +her, for he seemed proud too, proud of the way his _Kamerad_ had taken +command of us panicky whacks _Führer_-fashion. Sid still looked mostly +grateful and inclined to let Bruce keep on talking. + +Even Kaby and Mark, those two dragons hot for battle, standing a little +in front and to one side of us by the bronze chest, like its guardians, +seemed willing to listen. They made me realize one reason Sid had for +letting Bruce run on, although the path his talk was leading us down was +flashing with danger signals: When it was over, there'd still be the +problem of what to do with the bomb, and a real opposition shaping up +between Soldiers and Entertainers, and Sid was hoping a solution would +turn up in the meantime or at least was willing to put off the evil day. + +But beyond all that, and like the rest of us, I could tell from the way +Sid was squinting his browy eyes and chewing his beardy lip that he was +shaken and moved by what Bruce had said. This New Boy had dipped into +our hearts and counted our kicks so beautifully, better than most of us +could have done, and then somehow turned them around so that we had to +think of what messes and heels and black sheep and lost lambs we +were--well, we wanted to keep on listening. + + + + +CHAPTER 8 + + Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. + + --Archimedes + +A PLACE TO STAND + + +Bruce's voice had a faraway touch and he was looking up left at the Void +as he said, "Have you ever really wondered why the two sides of this war +are called the Snakes and the Spiders? Snakes may be clear enough--you +always call the enemy something dirty. But Spiders--our name for +ourselves? Bear with me, Ilhilihis; I know that no being is created +dirty or malignant by Nature, but this is a matter of anthropoid +feelings and folkways. Yes, Mark, I know that some of your legions have +nicknames like the Drunken Lions and the Snails, and that's about as +insulting as calling the British Expeditionary Force the Old +Contemptibles. + +"No, you'd have to go to bands of vicious youths in cities slated for +ruin to find a habit of naming like ours, and even they would try to +brighten up the black a bit. But simply--Spiders. And Snakes, for that's +their name for themselves too, you know. Spiders and Snakes. What are +our masters, that we give them names like that?" + +It gave me the shivers and set my mind working in a dozen directions and +I couldn't stop it, although it made the shivers worse. + +Illy beside me now--I'd never given it a thought before, but he did have +eight legs of a sort, and I remembered thinking of him as a spider +monkey, and hadn't the Lunans had wisdom and atomic power and a billion +years in which to get the Change War rolling? + +Or suppose, in the far future, Terra's own spiders evolved intelligence +and a cruel cannibal culture. They'd be able to keep their existence +secret. I had no idea of who or what would be on Earth in Sevensee's +day, and wouldn't it be perfect black hairy poisoned spider-mentality to +spin webs secretly through the world of thought and all of space and +time? + +And Beau--wasn't there something real Snaky about him, the way he moved +and all? + +Spiders and Snakes. _Spinne und Schlange_, as Erich called them. S & S. +But SS stood for the Nazi _Schutzstaffel_, the Black Shirts, and what if +some of those cruel, crazy Jerries had discovered time travel and--I +brought myself up with a jerk and asked myself, "Greta, how nuts can you +get?" + + * * * * * + +From where he was on the floor, the front of the bar his sounding board, +Doc shrieked up at Bruce like one of the damned from the pit, "Don't +speak against the Spiders! Don't blaspheme! They can hear the Unborn +whisper. Others whip only the skin, but they whip the naked brain and +heart," and Erich called out, "That's enough, Bruce!" + +But Bruce didn't spare him a look and said, "But whatever the Spiders +are and no matter how much whip they use, it's plain as the telltale on +the Maintainer that the Change War is not only going against them, but +getting away from them. Dwell for a bit on the current flurry of stupid +slugging and panicky anachronism, when we all know that anachronism is +what gets the Change Winds out of control. This punch-drunk pounding on +the Cretan-Dorian fracas as if it were the only battle going and the +only way to work things. Whisking Constantine from Britain to the +Bosporus by rocket, sending a pocket submarine back to sail with the +Armada against Drake's woodensides--I'll wager you hadn't heard those! +And now, to save Rome, an atomic bomb. + +"Ye gods, they could have used Greek fire or even dynamite, but a +fission weapon.... I leave you to imagine what gaps and scars that will +make in what's left of history--the smothering of Greece and the +vanishment of Provence and the troubadours and the Papacy's Irish +Captivity won't be in it!" + +The cut on his cheek had opened again and was oozing a little, but he +didn't pay any attention to it, and neither did we, as his lips thinned +in irony and he said, "But I'm forgetting that this is a cosmic war and +that the Spiders are conducting operations on billions, trillions of +planets and inhabited gas clouds through millions of ages and that we're +just one little world--one little solar system, Sevensee--and we can +hardly expect our inscrutable masters, with all their pressing +preoccupations and far-flung responsibilities, to be especially +understanding or tender in their treatment of our pet books and +centuries, our favorite prophets and periods, or unduly concerned about +preserving any of the trifles that we just happen to hold dear. + +"Perhaps there are some sentimentalists who would rather die forever +than go on living in a world without the _Summa_, the Field Equations, +_Process and Reality_, _Hamlet_, Matthew, Keats, and the _Odyssey_, but +our masters are practical creatures, ministering to the needs of those +rugged souls who want to go on living no matter what." + + * * * * * + +Erich's "Bruce, I'm telling you that's enough," was lost in the +quickening flow of the New Boy's words. "I won't spend much time on the +minor signs of our major crack-up--the canceling of leaves, the sharper +shortages, the loss of the Express Room, the use of Recuperation +Stations for ops and all the other frantic patchwork--last operation +but one, we were saddled with three Soldiers from outside the Galaxy +and, no fault of theirs, they were no earthly use. Such little things +might happen at a bad spot in any war and are perhaps only local. But +there's a big thing." + +He paused again, to let us wonder, I guess. Maud must have worked her +way over to me, for I felt her dry little hand on my arm and she +whispered out of the side of her mouth, "What do we do now?" + +"We listen," I told her the same way. I felt a little impatient with her +need to be doing something about things. + +She cocked a gold-dusted eyebrow at me and murmured, "You, too?" + +I didn't get to ask her me, too, what? Crush on Bruce? Nuts!--because +just then Bruce's voice took up again in the faraway range. + +"Have you ever asked yourselves how many operations the fabric of +history can stand before it's all stitches, whether too much Change +won't one day wear out the past? And the present and the future, too, +the whole bleeding business. Is the law of the Conservation of Reality +any more than a thin hope given a long name, a prayer of theoreticians? +Change Death is as certain as Heat Death, and far faster. Every +operation leaves reality a bit cruder, a bit uglier, a bit more +makeshift, and a whole lot less rich in those details and feelings that +are our heritage, like the crude penciled sketch on canvas when you've +stripped off the paint. + +"If that goes on, won't the cosmos collapse into an outline of itself, +then nothing? How much thinning can reality stand, having more and more +Doublegangers cut out of it? And there's another thing about every +operation--it wakes up the Zombies a little more, and as its Change +Winds die, it leaves them a little more disturbed and nightmare-ridden +and frazzled. Those of you who have been on operations in heavily +worked-over temporal areas will know what I mean--that look they give +you out of the sides of their eyes as if to say, 'You again? For +Christ's sake, go away. We're the dead. We're the ones who don't want to +wake up, who don't want to be Demons and hate to be Ghosts. Stop +torturing us.'" + + * * * * * + +I looked around at the Ghostgirls; I couldn't help it. They'd somehow +got together on the control divan, facing us, their backs to the +Maintainers. The Countess had dragged along the bottle of wine Erich had +fetched her earlier and they were passing it back and forth. The +Countess had a big rose splotch across the ruffled white lace of her +blouse. + +Bruce said, "There'll come a day when all the Zombies and all the Unborn +wake up and go crazy together and figuratively come marching at us in +their numberless hordes, saying, 'We've had enough.'" + +But I didn't turn back to Bruce right away. Phryne's chiton had slipped +off one shoulder and she and the Countess were sitting sagged forward, +elbows on knees, legs spread--at least, as far as the Countess's hobble +skirt would let her--and swayed toward each other a little. They were +still surprisingly solid, although they hadn't had any personal +attention for a half hour, and they were looking up over my head with +half-shut eyes and they seemed, so help me, to be listening to what +Bruce was saying and maybe hearing some of it. + +"We make a careful distinction between Zombies and Unborn, between those +troubled by our operations whose lifelines lie in the past and those +whose lifelines lie in the future. But is there any distinction any +longer? Can we tell the difference between the past and the future? Can +we any longer locate the now, the real now of the cosmos? The Places +have their own nows, the now of the Big Time we're on, but that's +different and it's not made for real living. + +"The Spiders tell us that the real now is somewhere in the last half of +the 20th Century, which means that several of us here are also alive in +the cosmos, have lifelines along which the now is traveling. But do you +swallow that story quite so easily, Ilhilihis, Sevensee? How does it +strike the servants of the Triple Goddess? The Spiders of Octavian Rome? +The Demons of Good Queen Bess? The gentlemen Zombies of the Greater +South? Do the Unborn man the starships, Maud? + +"The Spiders also tell us that, although the fog of battle makes the now +hard to pin down precisely, it will return with the unconditional +surrender of the Snakes and the establishment of cosmic peace, and roll +on as majestically toward the future as before, quickening the continuum +with its passage. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe, as I +do, that we've used up all the future as well as the past, wasted it in +premature experience, and that we've had the real now smudged out of +existence, stolen from us forever, the precious now of true growth, the +child-moment in which all life lies, the moment like a newborn baby that +is the only home for hope there is?" + + * * * * * + +He let that start to sink in, then took a couple of quick steps and went +on, his voice rising over Erich's "Bruce, for the last time--" and +seeming to pick up a note of hope from the very word he had used, "But +although things look terrifyingly black, there remains a chance--the +slimmest chance, but still a chance--of saving the cosmos from Change +Death and restoring reality's richness and giving the Ghosts good sleep +and perhaps even regaining the real now. We have the means right at +hand. What if the power of time traveling were used not for war and +destruction, but for healing, for the mutual enrichment of the ages, for +quiet communication and growth, in brief, to bring a peace message--" + +But my little commandant is quite an actor himself and knows a wee bit +about the principles of scene-stealing, and he was not going to let +Bruce drown him out as if he were just another extra playing a Voice +from the Mob. He darted across our front, between us and the bar, took a +running leap, and landed bang on the bloody box of bomb. + +A bit later, Maud was silently showing me the white ring above her elbow +where I'd grabbed her and Illy was teasing a clutch of his tentacles out +of my other hand and squeaking reproachfully, "Greta girl, don't ever do +that." + +Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefully +straddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you could +hardly push them in the right order by jumping on them, and he was +pointing at Bruce and saying, "--and that means mutiny, my young sir. +_Um Gottes willen_, Bruce, listen to me and step down before you say +anything worse. I'm older than you, Bruce. Mark's older. Trust in your +_Kameraden_. Guide yourself by their knowledge." + +He had got my attention, but I had much rather have him black my eye. + +"You older than me?" Bruce was grinning. "When your twelve-years' +advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdom of a race of sadistic +dreamers gone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already been +muddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas and +loyalties are those of a wolf pack of unimaginative sluggers two +thousand years younger than I am? Either of you older because you have +more of the killing cynicism that is all the wisdom the Change World +ever gives you? Don't make me laugh! + +"I'm an Englishman, and I come from an epoch when total war was still a +desecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off or +blighted. I'm a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they're the +only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time. Right, +Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace message, I want you to +think about it concretely in terms of using the Places to bring help +across the mountains of time when help is really needed, not to bring +help that's undeserved or knowledge that's premature or contaminating, +sometimes not to bring anything at all, but just to check with infinite +tenderness and concern that everything's safe and the glories of the +universe unfolding as they were intended to--" + +"Yes, you are a poet, Bruce," Erich broke in. "You can tootle soulfully +on the flute and make us drip tears. You can let out the stops on the +big organ pipes and make us tremble as if at Jehovah's footsteps. For +the last twenty minutes, you have been giving us some very _charmante_ +poetry. But what are you? An Entertainer? Or are you a Soldier?" + + * * * * * + +Right then--I don't know what it was, maybe Sid clearing his throat--I +could sense our feelings beginning to turn against Bruce. I got the +strangest feeling of reality clamping down and bright colors going dull +and dreams vanishing. Yet it was only then I also realized how much +Bruce had moved us, maybe some of us to the verge of mutiny, even. I was +mad at Erich for what he was doing, but I couldn't help admiring his +cockiness. + +I was still under the spell of Bruce's words and the more-than-words +behind them, but then Erich would shift around a bit and one of his +heels would kick near the death's-head pushbuttons and I wanted to stamp +with spike heels on every death's-head button on his uniform. I didn't +know exactly what I felt yet. + +"Yes, I'm a Soldier," Bruce told him, "and I hope you won't ever have to +worry about my courage, because it's going to take more courage than any +operation we've ever planned, ever dreamed of, to carry the peace +message to the other Places and to the wound-spots of the cosmos. +Perhaps it will be a fast wicket and we'll be bowled down before we +score a single run, but who cares? We may at least see our real masters +when they come to smash us, and for me that will be a deep satisfaction. +And we may do some smashing of our own." + +"So you're a Soldier," Erich said, his smile showing his teeth. "Bruce, +I'll admit that the half-dozen operations you've been on were rougher +than anything I drew in my first hundred sleeps. For that, I am all +honest sympathy. But that you should let them get you into such a state +that love and a girl can turn you upside down and start you babbling +about peace messages--" + +"Yes, by God, love and a girl have changed me!" Bruce shouted at him, +and I looked around at Lili and I remembered Dave saying, "I'm going to +Spain," and I wondered if anything would ever again make my face flame +like that. "Or, rather, they've made me stand up for what I've believed +in all along. They've made me--" + +"_Wunderbar_," Erich called and began to do a little sissy dance on the +bomb that set my teeth on edge. He bent his wrists and elbows at arty +angles and stuck out a hip and ducked his head simperingly and blinked +his eyes very fast. "Will you invite me to the wedding, Bruce? You'll +have to get another best man, but I will be the flower girl and throw +pretty little posies to all the distinguished guests. Here, Mark. Catch, +Kaby. One for you, Greta. _Danke schön. Ach, zwei Herzen in +dreivierteltakt ... ta-ta ... ta-ta ... ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ..._" + +"What the hell do you think a woman is?" Bruce raged. "Something to mess +around with in your spare time?" + + * * * * * + +Erich kept on humming "Two Hearts in Waltz Time"--and jigging around to +it, damn him--but he slipped in a nod to Bruce and a "Precisely." So I +knew where I stood, but it was no news to me. + +"Very well," Bruce said, "let's leave this Brown Shirt _maricón_ to +amuse himself and get down to business. I made all of you a proposal and +I don't have to tell you how serious it is or how serious Lili and I are +about it. We not only must infiltrate and subvert other Places, which +luckily for us are made for infiltration, we also must make contact with +the Snakes and establish working relationships with their Demons at our +level as one of our first steps." + +That stopped Erich's jig and got enough of a gasp from some of us to +make it seem to come from practically everybody. Erich used it to work a +change of pace. + +"Bruce! We've let you carry this foolery further than we should. You +seem to have the idea that because anything goes in the Place--dueling, +drunkenness, _und so weiter_--you can say what you have and it will all +be forgotten with the hangover. Not so. It is true that among such a set +of monsters and free spirits as ourselves, and working as secret agents +to boot, there cannot be the obvious military discipline that would +obtain in a Terran army. + +"But let me tell you, Bruce, let me grind it home into you--Sid and Kaby +and Mark will bear me out in this, as officers of equivalent rank--that +the Spider line of command stretches into and through this Place just as +surely as the word of _der Führer_ rules Chicago. And as I shouldn't +have to emphasize to you, Bruce, the Spiders have punishments that +would make my countrymen in Belsen and Buchenwald--well, pale a little. +So while there is still a shadow of justification for our interpreting +your remarks as utterly tasteless clowning--" + +"Babble on," Bruce said, giving him a loose downward wave of his hand +without looking. "I made you people a proposal." He paused. "How do you +stand, Sidney Lessingham?" + +Then I felt my legs getting weak, because Sid didn't answer right away. +The old boy swallowed and started to look around at the rest of us. Then +the feeling of reality clamping down got something awful, because he +didn't look around, but straightened his back a little. Just then, Mark +cut in fast. + +"It grieves me, Bruce, but I think you are possessed. Erich, he must be +confined." + + * * * * * + +Kaby nodded, almost absently. "Confine or kill the coward, whichever is +easier, whip the woman, and let's get on to the Egyptian battle." + +"Indeed, yes," Mark said. "I died in it. But now perhaps no longer." + +Kaby said to him, "I like you, Roman." + +Bruce was smiling, barely, and his eyes were moving and fixing. "You, +Ilhilihis?" + +Illy's squeak box had never sounded mechanical to me before, but it did +as he answered, "I'm a lot deeper into borrowed time than the rest of +you, tra-la-la, but Papa still loves living. Include me very much out, +Brucie." + +"Miss Davies?" + +Beside me, Maud said flatly, "Do you think I'm a fool?" Beyond her, I +saw Lili and I thought, "My God, I might look as proud if I were in her +shoes, but I sure as hell wouldn't look as confident." + +Bruce's eyes hadn't quite come to Beau when the gambler spoke up. "I +have no cause to like you, sir, rather the opposite. But this Place has +come to bore me more than Boston and I have always found it difficult to +resist a long shot. A very long one, I fear. I am with you, sir." + +There was a pain in my chest and a roaring in my ears and through it I +heard Sevensee grunting, "--sicka these lousy Spiders. Deal me in." + +And then Doc reared up in front of the bar and he'd lost his hat and his +hair was wild and he grabbed an empty fifth by the neck and broke the +bottom of it all jagged against the bar and he waved it and screeched, +"_Ubivaytye Pauki--i Nyemetzi!_" + +And right behind his words, Beau sang out fast the English of it, "Kill +the Spiders--and the Germans!" + +And Doc didn't collapse then, though I could see he was hanging onto +the bar tight with his other hand, and the Place got stiller, inside and +out, than I've ever known it, and Bruce's eyes were finally moving back +toward Sid. + + * * * * * + +But the eyes stopped short of Sid and I heard Bruce say, "Miss Forzane?" +and I thought, "That's funny," and I started to look around at the +Countess, and felt all the eyes and I realized, "Hey, that's me! But +this can't happen to me. To the others, yes, but not to me. I just work +here. Not to Greta, no, no, no!" + +But it had, and the eyes didn't let go, and the silence and the feeling +of reality were Godawful, and I said to myself, "Greta, you've got to +say something, if only a suitable four-letter word," and then suddenly I +knew what the silence was like. It was like that of a big city if there +were some way of shutting off all the noise in one second. It was like +Erich's singing when the piano had deserted him. It was as if the Change +Winds should ever die completely ... and I knew beforehand what had +happened when I turned my back on them all. + +The Ghostgirls were gone. The Major Maintainer hadn't merely been +switched to Introvert. It was gone, too. + + + + +[Illustration] + + +CHAPTER 9 + + "We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed." + + "You looked among D----'s papers, of course, and into the books of + the library?" + + "Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened + every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume...." + + --Poe + +A LOCKED ROOM + + +Three hours later, Sid and I plumped down on the couch nearest the +kitchen, though too tired to want to eat for a while yet. A tighter +search than I could ever have cooked up had shown that the Maintainer +was not in the Place. + +Of course it had to be in the Place, as we kept telling each other for +the first two hours. It had to be, if circumstances and the theories we +lived by in the Change World meant anything. A Maintainer is what +maintains a Place. The Minor Maintainer takes care of oxygen, +temperature, humidity, gravity, and other little life-cycle and +matter-cycle things generally, but it's the Major Maintainer that keeps +the walls from buckling and the ceiling from falling in. It is little, +but oh my, it does so much. + +It doesn't work by wires or radio or anything complicated like that. It +just hooks into local space-time. + +I have been told that its inside working part is made up of vastly +tough, vastly hard giant molecules, each one of which is practically a +vest-pocket cosmos in itself. Outside, it looks like a portable radio +with a few more dials and some telltales and switches and plug-ins for +earphones and a lot of other sensory thingumajigs. + +But the Maintainer was gone and the Void hadn't closed in, yet. By this +time, I was so fagged, I didn't care much whether it did or not. + +One thing for sure, the Maintainer had been switched to Introvert before +it was spirited away or else its disappearance automatically produced +Introversion, take your choice, because we sure were Introverted--real +nasty martinet-schoolmaster grip of reality on my thoughts that I knew, +without trying, liquor wouldn't soften, not a breath of Change Wind, +absolutely stifling, and the gray of the Void seeming so much inside my +head that I think I got a glimmering of what the science boys mean when +they explain to me that the Place is a kind of interweaving of the +material and the mental--a Giant Monad, one of them called it. + +Anyway, I said to myself, "Greta, if this is Introversion, I want no +part of it. It is not nice to be cut adrift from the cosmos and know it. +A lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific and a starship between galaxies +are not in it for loneliness." + + * * * * * + +I asked myself why the Spiders had ever equipped Maintainers with +Introversion switches anyway, when we couldn't drill with them and +weren't supposed to use them except in an emergency so tight that it was +either Introvert or surrender to the Snakes, and for the first time the +obvious explanation came to me: + +Introversion must be the same as scuttling, its main purpose to withhold +secrets and materiel from the enemy. It put a place into a situation +from which even the Spider high command couldn't rescue it, and there +was nothing left but to sink down, down (out? up?), down into the Void. + +If that was the case, our chances of getting back were about those of my +being a kid again playing in the Dunes on the Small Time. + +I edged a little closer to Sid and sort of squunched under his shoulder +and rubbed my cheek against the smudged, gold-worked gray velvet. He +looked down and I said, "A long way to Lynn Regis, eh, Siddy?" + +"Sweetling, thou spokest a mouthful," he said. He knows very well what +he is doing when he mixes his language that way, the wicked old +darling. + +"Siddy," I said, "why this gold-work? It'd be a lot smoother without +it." + +"Marry, men must prick themselves out and, 'faith I know not, but it +helps if there's metal in it." + +"And girls get scratched." I took a little sniff. "But don't put this +doublet through the cleaner yet. Until we get out of the woods, I want +as much you around as possible." + +"Marry, and why should I?" he asked blankly, and I think he wasn't +fooling me. The last thing time travelers find out is how they do or +don't smell. Then his face clouded and he looked as though he wanted to +squunch under my shoulder. "But 'faith, sweetling, your forest has a few +more trees than Sherwood." + +"Thou saidst it," I agreed, and wondered about the look. He oughtn't to +be interested in my girlishness now. I knew I was a mess, but he had +stuck pretty close to me during the hunt and you never can tell. Then I +remembered that he was the other one who hadn't declared himself when +Bruce was putting it to us, and it probably troubled his male vanity. +Not me, though--I was still grateful to the Maintainer for getting me +out of that spot, whatever other it had got us all into. It seemed ages +ago. + + * * * * * + +We'd all jumped to the conclusion that the two Ghostgirls had run away +with the Maintainer, I don't know where or why, but it looked so much +that way. Maud had started yipping about how she'd never trusted Ghosts +and always known that some day they'd start doing things on their own, +and Kaby had got it firmly fixed in her head, right between the horns, +that Phryne, being a Greek, was the ringleader and was going to wreak +havoc on us all. + +But when we were checking Stores the first time, I had noticed that the +Ghostgirl envelopes looked flat. Ectoplasm doesn't take up much space +when it's folded, but I had opened one anyway, then another, and then +called for help. + +Every last envelope was empty. We had lost over a thousand Ghostgirls, +Sid's whole stock. + +Well, at least it proved what none of us had ever seen or heard of being +demonstrated: that there is a spooky link--a sort of Change Wind +contact--between a Ghost and its lifeline; and when that umbilicus, I've +heard it called, is cut, the part away from the lifeline dies. + +Interesting, but what had bothered me was whether we Demons were going +to evaporate too, because we are as much Doublegangers as the Ghosts and +our apron strings had been cut just as surely. We're more solid, of +course, but that would only mean we'd take a little longer. Very +logical. + +I remember I had looked up at Lili and Maud--us girls had been checking +the envelopes; it's one of the proprieties we frequently maintain and +anyway, if men check them, they're apt to trot out that old wheeze about +"instant women" which I'm sick to death of hearing, thank you. + +Anyway, I had looked up and said, "It's been nice knowing you," and Lili +had said, "Twenty-three, skiddoo," and Maud had said, "Here goes +nothing," and we had shook hands all around. + +We figured that Phryne and the Countess had faded at the same time as +the other Ghostgirls, but an idea had been nibbling at me and I said, +"Siddy, do you suppose it's just barely possible that, while we were all +looking at Bruce, those two Ghostgirls would have been able to work the +Maintainer and get a Door and lam out of here with the thing?" + +"Thou speakst my thoughts, sweetling. All weighs against it: Imprimis, +'tis well known that Ghosts cannot lay plots or act on them. Secundo, +the time forbade getting a Door. Tercio--and here's the real meat of +it--the Place folds without the Maintainer. Quadro, 'twere folly to +depend on not one of--how many of us? ten, elf--not looking around in +all the time it would have taken them--" + +"I looked around once, Siddy. They were drinking and they had got to the +control divan under their own power. Now when was that? Oh, yes, when +Bruce was talking about Zombies." + +"Yes, sweetling. And as I was about to cap my argument with quinquo when +you 'gan prattle, I could have sworn none could touch the Maintainer, +much less work it and purloin it, without my certain knowledge. Yet ..." + +"Eftsoons yet," I seconded him. + + * * * * * + +Somebody must have got a door and walked out with the thing. It +certainly wasn't in the Place. The hunt had been a lulu. Something the +size of a portable typewriter is not easy to hide and we had been inside +everything from Beau's piano to the renewer link of the Refresher. + +We had even fluoroscoped everybody, though it had made Illy writhe like +a box of worms, as he'd warned us; he said it tickled terribly and I +insisted on smoothing his fur for five minutes afterward, although he +was a little standoffish toward me. + +Some areas, like the bar, kitchen and Stores, took a long while, but we +were thorough. Kaby helped Doc check Surgery: since she last made the +Place, she has been stationed in a Field Hospital (it turns out the +Spiders actually are mounting operations from them) and learned a few +nice new wrinkles. + +However, Doc put in some honest work on his own, though, of course, +every check was observed by at least three people, not including Bruce +or Lili. When the Maintainer vanished, Doc had pulled out of his +glassy-eyed drunk in a way that would have surprised me if I hadn't seen +it happen to him before, but when we finished Surgery and got on to the +Art Gallery, he had started to putter and I noticed him hold out his +coat and duck his head and whip out a flask and take a swig and by now +he was well on his way toward another peak. + +The Art Gallery had taken time too, because there's such a jumble of +strange stuff, and it broke my heart but Kaby took her ax and split a +beautiful blue woodcarving of a Venusian medusa because, although there +wasn't a mark in the paw-polished surface, she claimed it was just big +enough. Doc cried a little and we left him fitting the pieces together +and mooning over the other stuff. + +After we'd finished everything else, Mark had insisted on tackling the +floor. Beau and Sid both tried to explain to him how this is a one-sided +Place, that there is nothing, but nothing, under the floor; it just gets +a lot harder than the diamonds crusting it as soon as you get a quarter +inch down--that being the solid equivalent of the Void. But Mark was +knuckle-headed (like all Romans, Sid assured me on the q.t.) and broke +four diamond-plus drills before he was satisfied. + +Except for some trick hiding places, that left the Void, and things +don't vanish if you throw them at the Void--they half melt and freeze +forever unless you can fish them out. Back of the Refresher, at about +eye-level, are three Venusian coconuts that a Hittite strongman threw +there during a major brawl. I try not to look at them because they are +so much like witch heads they give me the woolies. The parts of the +Place right up against the Void have strange spatial properties which +one of the gadgets in Surgery makes use of in a way that gives me the +worse woolies, but that's beside the point. + + * * * * * + +During the hunt, Kaby and Erich had used their Callers as direction +finders to point out the Maintainer, just as they're used in the cosmos +to locate the Door--and sometimes in the Big Places, people tell me. But +the Callers only went wild--like a compass needle whirling around +without stopping--and nobody knew what that meant. + +The trick hiding places were the Minor Maintainer, a cute idea, but it +is no bigger than the Major and has its own mysterious insides and had +obviously kept on doing its own work, so that was out for several +reasons, and the bomb chest, though it seemed impossible for anyone to +have opened it, granting they knew the secret of its lock, even before +Erich jumped on it and put it in the limelight double. But when you've +ruled out everything else, the word impossible changes meaning. + +Since time travel is our business, a person might think of all sorts of +tricks for sending the Maintainer into the past or future, permanently +or temporarily. But the Place is strictly on the Big Time and everybody +that should know tells me that time traveling _through_ the Big Time is +out. It's this way: the Big Time is a train, and the Little Time is the +countryside and we're on the train, unless we go out a Door, and as +Gertie Stein might put it, you can't time travel through the time you +time travel in when you time travel. + +I'd also played around with the idea of some fantastically obvious +hiding place, maybe something that several people could pass back and +forth between them, which would mean a conspiracy, and, of course, if +you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including +the cosmos itself. Still, I'd got a sort of shell-game idea about the +Soldiers' three big black shakos and I hadn't been satisfied until I'd +got the three together and looked in them all at the same time. + +"Wake up, Greta, and take something. I can't stand here forever." Maud +had brought us a tray of hearty snacks from then and yon, and I must say +they were tempting; she whips up a mean hors d'oeuvre. + +I looked them over and said, "Siddy, I want a hot dog." + +"And I want a venison pasty! Out upon you, you finical jill, you +o'erscrupulous jade, you whimsic and tyrannous poppet!" + +I grabbed a handful and snuggled back against him. + +"Go on, call me some more, Siddy," I told him. "Real juicy ones." + + + + +CHAPTER 10 + + My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, + Shakes so my single state of man that function + Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is + But what is not. + + --Macbeth + +MOTIVES AND OPPORTUNITIES + + +My big bad waif from King's Lynn had set the tray on his knees and +started to wolf the food down. The others were finishing up. Erich, Mark +and Kaby were having a quietly furious argument I couldn't overhear at +the end of the bar nearest the bronze chest, and Illy was draped over +the piano like a real octopus, listening in. + +Beau and Sevensee were pacing up and down near the control divan and +throwing each other a word now and then. Beyond them, Bruce and Lili +were sitting on the opposite couch from us, talking earnestly about +something. Maud had sat down at the other end of the bar and was +knitting--it's one of the habits like chess and quiet drinking, or +learning to talk by squeak box, that we pick up to pass the time in the +Place in the long stretches between parties. Doc was fiddling around the +Gallery, picking things up and setting them down, still managing to stay +on his feet at any rate. + + * * * * * + +Lili and Bruce stood up, still gabbing intensely at each other, and Illy +began to pick out with one tentacle a little tune in the high keys that +didn't sound like anything on God's earth. "Where do they get all the +energy?" I wondered. + +As soon as I asked myself that, I knew the answer and I began to feel +the same way myself. It wasn't energy; it was nerves, pure and simple. + +Change is like a drug, I realized--you get used to the facts never +staying the same, and one picture of the past and future dissolving into +another maybe not very different but still different, and your mind +being constantly goosed by strange moods and notions, like nightclub +lights of shifting color with weird shadows between shining right on +your brain. + +The endless swaying and jogging is restful, like riding on a train. + +You soon get to like the movement and to need it without knowing, and +when it suddenly stops and you're just you and the facts you think from +and feel from are exactly the same when you go back to them--boy, that's +rough, as I found out now. + +The instant we got Introverted, everything that ordinarily leaks into +the Place, wake or sleep, had stopped coming, and we were nothing but +ourselves and what we meant to each other and what we could make of +that, an awfully lonely, scratchy situation. + +I decided I felt like I'd been dropped into a swimming pool full of +cement and held under until it hardened. + +I could understand the others bouncing around a bit. It was a wonder +they didn't hit the Void. Maud seemed to be standing it the best; maybe +she'd got a little preparation from the long watches between stars; and +then she is older than all of us, even Sid, though with a small "o" in +"older." + + * * * * * + +The restless work of the search for the Maintainer had masked the +feeling, but now it was beginning to come full force. Before the search, +Bruce's speech and Erich's interruptions had done a passable masking job +too. I tried to remember when I'd first got the feeling and decided it +was after Erich had jumped on the bomb, about the time he mentioned +poetry. Though I couldn't be sure. Maybe the Maintainer had been +Introverted even earlier, when I'd turned to look at the Ghostgirls. I +wouldn't have known. Nuts! + +Believe me, I could feel that hardened cement on every inch of me. I +remembered Bruce's beautiful picture of a universe without Big Change +and decided it was about the worst idea going. I went on eating, though +I wasn't so sure now it was a good idea to keep myself strong. + +"Does the Maintainer have an Introversion telltale? Siddy!" + +"'Sdeath, chit, and you love me, speak lower. Of a sudden, I feel not +well, as if I'd drunk a butt of Rhenish and slept inside it. Marry yes, +blue. In short flashes, saith the manual. Why ask'st thou?" + +"No reason. God, Siddy, what I'd give for a breath of Change Wind." + +"Thou can'st say that eftsoons," he groaned. I must have looked pretty +miserable myself, for he put his arm around my shoulders and whispered +gruffly, "Comfort thyself, sweetling, that while we suffer thus sorely, +we yet cannot die the Change Death." + +"What's that?" I asked him. + +I didn't want to bounce around like the others. I had a suspicion I'd +carry it too far. So, to keep myself from going batty, I started to +rework the business of who had done what to the Maintainer. + +During the hunt, there had been some pretty wild suggestions tossed +around as to its disappearance or at least its Introversion: a feat of +Snake science amounting to sorcery; the Spider high command bunkering +the Places from above, perhaps in reaction to the loss of the Express +Room, in such a hurry that they hadn't even time to transmit warnings; +the hand of the Late Cosmicians, those mysterious hypothetical beings +who are supposed to have successfully resisted the extension of the +Change War into the future much beyond Sevensee's epoch--unless the Late +Cosmicians are the ones fighting the Change War. + +One thing these suggestions had steered very clear of was naming any one +of us as a suspect, whether acting as Snake spy, Spider political +police, agent of--who knows, after Bruce?--a secret Change World +Committee of Public Safety or Spider revolutionary underground, or +strictly on our own. Just as no one had piped a word, since the +Maintainer had been palmed, about the split between Erich's and Bruce's +factions. + +Good group thinking probably, to sink differences in the emergency, but +that didn't apply to what I did with my own thoughts. + + * * * * * + +Who wanted to escape so bad they'd Introvert the Place, cutting off all +possible contact and communication either way with the cosmos and +running the very big risk of not getting back to the cosmos at all? + +Leaving out what had happened since Bruce had arrived and stirred things +up, Doc seemed to me to have the strongest motive. He knew that Sid +couldn't keep covering up for him forever and that Spider punishments +for derelictions of duty are not just the clink of a firing squad, as +Erich had reminded us. But Doc had been flat on the floor in front of +the bar from the time Bruce had jumped on top of it, though I certainly +hadn't had my eye on him every second. + +Beau? Beau had said he was bored with the Place at a time when what he +said counted, so he'd hardly lock himself in it maybe forever, not to +mention locking Bruce in with himself and the babe he had a yen for. + +Sid loves reality, Changing or not, and every least thing in it, people +especially, more than any man or woman I've ever known--he's like a +big-eyed baby who wants to grab every object and put it in his +mouth--and it was hard to imagine him ever cutting himself off from the +cosmos. + +Maud, Kaby, Mark and the two ETs? None of them had any motive I knew of, +though Sevensee's being from the very far future did tie in with that +idea about the Late Cosmicians, and there did seem to be something +developing between the Cretan and the Roman that could make them want to +be Introverted together. + +"Stick to the facts, Greta," I reminded myself with a private groan. + +That left Erich, Bruce, Lili and myself. + +Erich, I thought--now we're getting somewhere. The little commandant has +the nervous system of a coyote and the courage of a crazy tomcat, and if +he thought it would help him settle his battle with Bruce better to be +locked in with him, he'd do it in a second. + +But even before Erich had danced on the bomb, he'd been heckling Bruce +from the crowd. Still, there would have been time between heckles for +him to step quietly back from us, Introvert the Maintainer and ... well, +that was nine-tenths of the problem. + +If I was the guilty party, I was nuts and that was the best explanation +of all. Gr-r-r! + +Bruce's motives seemed so obvious, especially the mortal (or was it +immortal?) danger he'd put himself in by inciting mutiny, that it seemed +a shame he'd been in full view on the bar so long. Surely, if the +Maintainer had been Introverted before he jumped on the bar, we'd all +have noticed the flashing blue telltale. For that matter, I'd have +noticed it when I looked back at the Ghostgirls--if it worked as Sid +claimed, and he said he had never seen it in operation, just read in the +manual--oh, 'sdeath! + + * * * * * + +But Bruce didn't need opportunity, as I'm sure all the males in +the Place would have told me right off, because he had Lili to +pull the job for him and she had as much opportunity as any of +the rest of us. Myself, I have large reservations to this +woman-putty-in-the-hands-of-the-man-she-loves-madly theory, but I had to +admit there was something to be said for it in this case, and it had +seemed quite natural to me when the rest of us had decided, by unspoken +agreement, that neither Lili's nor Bruce's checks counted when we were +hunting for the Maintainer. + +That took care of all of us and left only the mysterious stranger, +intruding somehow through a Door (how'd he get it without using our +Maintainer?) or from an unimaginable hiding place or straight out of the +Void itself. I know that last is impossible--nothing can step out of +nothing--but if anything ever looked like it was specially built for +something not at all nice to come looming out of, it's the Void--misty, +foggily churning, slimy gray.... + +"Wait a second," I told myself, "and hang onto this, Greta. It should +have smacked you in the face at the start." + +Whatever came out of the Void, or, more to the point, whoever slipped +back from our crowd to the Maintainer, Bruce would have seen them. He +was looking at the Maintainer past our heads the whole time, and +whatever happened to it, he saw it. + +Erich wouldn't have, even after he was on the bomb, because he'd been +stagewise enough to face Bruce most of the time to build up his role as +tribune of the people. + +But Bruce would have--unless he got so caught up in what he was +saying.... + +No, kid, a Demon is always an actor, no matter how much he believes in +what he's saying, and there never was an actor yet who wouldn't +instantly notice a member of the audience starting to walk out on his +big scene. + +So Bruce knew, which made him a better actor than I'd have been willing +to grant, since it didn't look as if anyone else had thought of what had +just occurred to me, or they'd have gone over and put it to him. + +Not me, though--I don't work that way. Besides, I didn't feel up to +it--Nervy Anna enfold me, I felt like pure hell. + +"Maybe," I told myself encouragingly, "the Place is Hell," but added, +"Be your age, Greta--be a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless +twenty-nine." + + + + +CHAPTER 11 + + The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed + With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, + Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. + Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear, + They leave their trenches, going over the top, + While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists + + --Sassoon + +THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917 + + +"Please don't, Lili." + +"I shall, my love." + +"Sweetling, wake up! Hast the shakes?" + +I opened my eyes a little and lied to Siddy with a smile and locked my +hands together tight and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel nobly near the +control divan and wished I had a great love to blur my misery and +provide me with a passable substitute for Change Winds. + +Lili won the argument, judging from the way she threw her head back and +stepped away from Bruce's arms while giving him a proud, tender smile. +He walked off a few steps; praise be, he didn't shrug his shoulders at +us like an old husband, though his nerves were showing and he didn't +seem to be standing Introversion well at all, as who of us were? + +Lili rested a hand on the head of the control divan and pressed her lips +together and looked around at us, mostly with her eyes. She'd wound a +gray silk bandeau around her bangs. Her short gray silk dress without a +waistline made her look, not so much like a flapper, though she looked +like that all right, as like a little girl, except the neckline was +scooped low enough to show she wasn't. + +Her gaze hesitated and then stopped at me and I got a sunk feeling of +what was coming, because women are always picking on me for an audience. +Besides, Sid and I were the centrist party of two in our +fresh-out-of-the-shell Place politics. + +She took a deep breath and stuck out her chin and said in a voice that +was even a little higher and Britisher than she usually uses, "We girls +have often cried, 'Shut the Door!' But now the Door is jolly well shut +for keeps!" + +I knew I'd guessed right and I felt crawly with embarrassment, because I +know about this love business of thinking you're the other person and +trying to live their life--and grab their glory, though you don't know +that--and carry their message for them, and how it can foul things up. +Still, I couldn't help admitting what she said wasn't too bad a +start--unpleasantly apt to be true, at any rate. + +"My fiance believes we may yet be able to open the Door. I do not. He +thinks it is a bit premature to discuss the peculiar pickle in which we +all find ourselves. I do not." + +There was a rasp of laughter from the bar. The militarists were +reacting. Erich stepped out, looking very happy. "So now we have to +listen to women making speeches," he called. "What is this Place, +anyhow? Sidney Lessingham's Saturday Evening Sewing Circle?" + + * * * * * + +Beau and Sevensee, who'd stopped their pacing halfway between the bar +and the control divan, turned toward Erich, and Sevensee looked a little +burlier, a little more like half a horse, than satyrs in mythology book +illustrations. He stamped--medium hard, I'd say--and said, "Ahh, go flya +kite." I'd found out he'd learned English from a Demon who'd been a +longshoreman with syndicalist-anarchist sympathies. Erich shut up for a +moment and stood there grinning, his hands on his hips. + +Lili nodded to the satyr and cleared her throat, looking scared. But she +didn't speak; I could see she was thinking and feeling something, and +her face got ugly and haggard, as if she were in a Change Wind that +hadn't reached me yet, and her mouth went into a snarl to fight tears, +but some spurted out, and when she did speak her voice was an octave +lower and it wasn't just London talking but New York too. + +"I don't know how Resurrection felt to you people, because I'm new and I +loathe asking questions, but to me it was pure torture and I wished only +I'd had the courage to tell Suzaku, 'I wish to remain a Zombie, if you +don't mind. I'd rather the nightmares.' But I accepted Resurrection +because I've been taught to be polite and because there is the Demon in +me I don't understand that always wishes to live, and I found that I +still felt like a Zombie, although I could flit about, and that I still +had the nightmares, except they'd grown a deal vivider. + +"I was a young girl again, seventeen, and I suppose every woman wishes +to be seventeen, but I wasn't seventeen inside my head--I was a woman +who had died of Bright's disease in New York in 1929 and also, because a +Big Change blew my lifeline into a new drift, a woman who had died of +the same disease in Nazi-occupied London in 1955, but rather more slowly +because, as you can fancy, the liquor was in far shorter supply. I had +to live with both those sets of memories and the Change World didn't +blot them out any more than I'm told it does those of any Demon, and it +didn't even push them into the background as I'd hoped it would. + +"When some Change Fellow would say to me, 'Hallo, beautiful, how about a +smile?' or 'That's a posh frock, kiddo,' I'd be back at Bellevue looking +down at my swollen figure and the light getting like spokes of ice, or +in that dreadful gin-steeped Stepney bedroom with Phyllis coughing +herself to death beside me, or at best, for a moment, a little girl in +Glamorgan looking at the Roman road and wondering about the wonderful +life that lay ahead." + + * * * * * + +I looked at Erich, remembering he had a long nasty future back in the +cosmos himself, and at any rate he wasn't smiling, and I thought maybe +he's getting a little humility, knowing someone else has two of those +futures, but I doubted it. + +"Because, you see," Lili kept forcing it out, "all my three lives I'd +been a girl who fell in love with a great young poet she'd never met, +the voice of the new youth and all youth, and she'd told her first big +lie to get in the Red Cross and across to France to be nearer him, and +it was all danger and dark magics and a knight in armor, and she +pictured how she'd find him wounded but not seriously, with a little +bandage around his head, and she'd light a fag for him and smile +lightly, never letting him guess what she felt, but only being her best +self and watching to see if that made something happen to him.... + +"And then the Boche machine guns cut him down at Passchendaele and there +couldn't ever have been bandages big enough and the girl stayed +seventeen inside and messed about and tried to be wicked, though she +wasn't very good at that, and to drink, and she had a bit more talent +there, though drinking yourself to death is not nearly as easy as it +sounds, even with a kidney weakness to help. But she turned the trick. + +"Then a cock crows. She wakes with a tearing start from the gray dreams +of death that fill her lifeline. It's cold daybreak. There's the smell +of a French farm. She feels her ankles and they're not at all like huge +rubber boots filled with water. They're not swollen the least bit. +They're young legs. + +"There's a little window and the tops of a row of trees that may be +poplars when there's more light, and what there is shows cots like her +own and heads under blankets, and hanging uniforms make large shadows +and a girl is snoring. There's a very distant rumble and it moves the +window a bit. Then she remembers they're Red Cross girls many, many +kilometers from Passchendaele and that Bruce Marchant is going to die at +dawn today. + +"In a few more minutes, he's going over the top where there's a +crop-headed machine-gunner in field gray already looking down the sights +and swinging the gun a bit. But she isn't going to die today. She's +going to die in 1929 and 1955. + +"And just as she's going mad, there's a creaking and out of the shadows +tiptoes a Jap with a woman's hairdo and the whitest face and the +blackest eyebrows. He's wearing a rose robe and a black sash which belts +to his sides two samurai swords, but in his right hand he has a strange +silver pistol. And he smiles at her as if they were brother and sister +and lovers at the same time and he says, '_Voulez-vous vivre, +mademoiselle?_' and she stares and he bobs his head and says, 'Missy +wish live, yes, no?'" + +[Illustration] + + * * * * * + +Sid's paw closed quietly around my shaking hands. It always gets me to +hear about anyone's Resurrection, and although mine was crazier, it also +had the Krauts in it. I hoped she wouldn't go through the rest of the +formula and she didn't. + +"Five minutes later, he's gone down a stairs more like a ladder to wait +below and she's dressing in a rush. Her clothes resist a little, as if +they were lightly gummed to the hook and the stained wall, and she hates +to touch them. It's getting lighter and her cot looks as if someone were +still sleeping there, although it's empty, and she couldn't bring +herself to put her hand on the place if her new life depended on it. + +"She climbs down and her long skirt doesn't bother her because she knows +how to swing it. Suzaku conducts her past a sentry who doesn't see them +and a puffy-faced farmer in a smock coughing and spitting the night out +of his throat. They cross the farmyard and it's filled with rose light +and she sees the sun is up and she knows that Bruce Marchant has just +bled to death. + +"There's an empty open touring car chugging loudly, waiting for someone; +it has huge muddy wheels with wooden spokes and a brass radiator that +says 'Simplex.' But Suzaku leads her past it to a dunghill and bows +apologetically and she steps through a Door." + +I heard Erich say to the others at the bar, "How touching! Now shall I +tell everyone about my operation?" But he didn't get much of a laugh. + +"That's how Lilian Foster came into the Change World with its +steel-engraved nightmares and its deadly pace and deadlier lassitudes. I +was more alive than I ever had been before, but it was the kind of life +a corpse might get from unending electrical shocks and I couldn't summon +any purpose or hope and Bruce Marchant seemed farther away than ever. + +"Then, not six hours ago, a Soldier in a black uniform came through the +Door and I thought, 'It can't be, but it does look like his +photographs,' and then I thought I heard someone say the name Bruce, and +then he shouted as if to all the world that he was Bruce Marchant, and I +knew there was a Resurrection beyond Resurrection, a true resurrection. +Oh, Bruce--" + +She looked at him and he was crying and smiling and all the young beauty +flooded back into her face, and I thought, "It has to be Change Winds, +but it can't be. Face it without slobbering, Greta--there's something +that works bigger miracles than Change." + +And she went on, "And then the Change Winds died when the Snakes +vaporized the Maintainer or the Ghostgirls Introverted it and all three +of them vanished so swiftly and silently that even Bruce didn't +notice--those are the best explanations I can summon and I fancy one of +them is true. At all events, the Change Winds died and my past and even +my futures became something I could bear lightly, because I have someone +to bear them with me, and because at last I have a true future +stretching out ahead of me, an unknown future which I shall create by +living. Oh, don't you see that all of us have it now, this big +opportunity?" + +"_Hussa_ for Sidney's suffragettes and the W.C.T.U.!" Erich cheered. +"Beau, will you play us a medley of 'Hearts and Flowers' and 'Onward, +Christian Soldiers'? I'm deeply moved, Lili. Where do the rest of us +queue up for the Great Love Affair of the Century?" + + + + +CHAPTER 12 + + Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight + of the past's mistakes and the future's fears. + + I had to learn to close the front door to tomorrow and the back door + to yesterday and settle down to here and now. + + --Anonymous + +A BIG OPPORTUNITY + + +Nobody laughed at Erich's screwball sarcasms and still I thought, "Yes, +perish his hysterical little gray head, but he's half right--Lili's got +the big thing now and she wants to serve it up to the rest of us on a +platter, only love doesn't cook and cut that way." + +Those weren't bad ideas she had about the Maintainer, though, especially +the one about the Ghostgirls doing the Introverting--it would explain +why there couldn't be Introversion drill, the manual stuff about blue +flashes being window-dressing, and something disappearing without +movement or transition is the sort of thing that might not catch the +attention--and I guess they gave the others something to think about +too, for there wasn't any follow-up to Erich's frantic sniping. + +But I honestly didn't see where there was this big opportunity being +stuck away in a gray sack in the Void and I began to wonder and I got +the strangest feeling and I said to myself, "Hang onto your hat, Greta. +It's hope." + +"The dreadful thing about being a Demon is that you have all time to +range through," Lili was saying with a smile. "You can never shut the +back door to yesterday or the front door to tomorrow and simply live in +the present. But now that's been done for us: the Door is shut, we need +never again rehash the past or the future. The Spiders and Snakes can +never find us, for who ever heard of a Place that was truly lost being +rescued? And as those in the know have told me, Introversion is the end +as far as those outside are concerned. So we're safe from the Spiders +and Snakes, we need never be slaves or enemies again, and we have a +Place in which to live our new lives, the Place prepared for us from the +beginning." + +She paused. "Surely you understand what I mean? Sidney and Beauregard +and Dr. Pyeshkov are the ones who explained it to me. The Place is a +balanced aquarium, just like the cosmos. No one knows how many ages of +Big Time it has been in use, without a bit of new material being brought +in--only luxuries and people--and not a bit of waste cast off. No one +knows how many more ages it may not sustain life. I never heard of Minor +Maintainers wearing out. We have all the future, all the security, +anyone can hope for. We have a Place to live together." + + * * * * * + +You know, she was dead right and I realized that all the time I'd had +the conviction in the back of my mind that we were going to suffocate or +something if we didn't get a Door open pretty quick. I should have known +differently, if anybody should, because I'd once been in the Place +without a Door for as long as a hundred sleeps during a foxhole stretch +of the Change War and we'd had to start cycling our food and it had been +okay. + +And then, because it is also the way my mind works, I started to picture +in a flash the consequences of our living together all by ourselves like +Lili said. + +I began to pair people off; I couldn't help it. Let's see, four women, +six men, two ETs. + +"Greta," I said, "you're going to be Miss Polly Andry for sure. We'll +have a daily newspaper and folk-dancing classes, we'll shut the bar +except evenings, Bruce'll keep a rhymed history of the Place." + +I even thought, though I knew this part was strictly silly, about +schools and children. I wondered what Siddy's would look like, or my +little commandant's. "Don't go near the Void, dears." Of course that +would be specially hard on the two ETs, but Sevensee at least wasn't so +different and the genetics boys had made some wonderful advances and +Maud ought to know about them and there were some amazing gadgets in +Surgery when Doc sobered up. The patter of little hoofs ... + +"My fiance spoke to you about carrying a peace message to the rest of +the cosmos," Lili added, "and bringing an end to the Big Change, and +healing all the wounds that have been made in the Little Time." + +I looked at Bruce. His face was set and strained, as will happen to the +best of them when a girl starts talking about her man's business, and I +don't know why, but I said to myself, "She's crucifying him, she's +nailing him to his purpose as a woman will, even when there's not much +point to it, as now." + +And Lili went on, "It was a wonderful thought, but now we cannot carry +or send any message and I believe it is too late in any event for a +peace message to do any good. The cosmos is too raveled by change, too +far gone. It will dissolve, fade, 'leave not a rack behind.' We're the +survivors. The torch of existence has been put in our hands. + +"We may already be all that's left in the cosmos, for have you thought +that the Change Winds may have died at their source? We may never reach +another cosmos, we may drift forever in the Void, but who of us has been +Introverted before and who knows what we can or cannot do? We're a seed +for a new future to grow from. Perhaps all doomed universes cast off +seeds like this Place. It's a seed, it's an embryo, let it grow." + +She looked swiftly at Bruce and then at Sid and she quoted, "'Come, my +friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world'." + + * * * * * + +I squeezed Sid's hand and I started to say something to him, but he +didn't know I was there; he was listening to Lili quote Tennyson with +his eyes entranced and his mouth open, as if he were imagining new +things to put into it--oh, Siddy! + +And then I saw the others were looking at her the same way. Ilhilihis +was seeing finer feather forests than long-dead Luna's grow. The +greenhouse child Maud ap-Ares Davies was stowing away on a starship +bound for another galaxy, or thinking how different her life might have +been, the children she might have had, if she'd stayed on the planets +and out of the Change World. Even Erich looked as though he might be +blitzing new universes, and Mark subduing them, for an eight-legged +_Führer-imperator_. Beau was throbbing up a wider Mississippi in a +bigger-than-life sidewheeler. + +Even I--well, I wasn't dreaming of a Greater Chicago. "Let's not go +hog-wild on this sort of thing," I told myself, but I did look up at the +Void and I got a shiver because I imagined it drawing away and the whole +Place starting to grow. + +"I truly meant what I said about a seed," Lili went on slowly. "I know, +as you all do, that there are no children in the Change World, that +there cannot be, that we all become instantly sterile, that what they +call a curse is lifted from us girls and we are no longer in bondage to +the moon." + +She was right, all right--if there's one thing that's been proved a +million times in the Change World, it's that. + +"But we are no longer in the Change World," Lili said softly, "and its +limitations should no longer apply to us, including that one. I feel +deeply certain of it, but--" she looked around slowly--"we are four +women here and I thought one of us might have a surer indication." + +My eyes followed hers around like anybody's would. In fact, everybody +was looking around except Maud, and she had the silliest look of +surprise on her face and it stayed there, and then, very carefully, she +got down from the bar stool with her knitting. She looked at the +half-finished pink bra with the long white needles stuck in it and her +eyes bugged bigger yet, as if she were expecting it to turn into a baby +sweater right then and there. Then she walked across the Place to Lili +and stood beside her. While she was walking, the look of surprise +changed to a quiet smile. The only other thing she did was throw her +shoulders back a little. + +I was jealous of her for a second, but it was a double miracle for her, +considering her age, and I couldn't grudge her that. And to tell the +truth, I was a little frightened, too. Even with Dave, I'd been bothered +about this business of having babies. + + * * * * * + +Yet I stood up with Siddy--I couldn't stop myself and I guess he +couldn't either--and hand in hand we walked to the control divan. Beau +and Sevensee were there and Bruce, of course, and then, so help me, +those Soldiers to the death, Kaby and Mark, started over from the bar +and I couldn't see anything in their eyes about the greater glory of +Crete and Rome, but something, I think, about each other, and after a +moment Illy slowly detached himself from the piano and followed, lightly +trailing his tentacles on the floor. + +I couldn't exactly see him hoping for little Illies in this company, +unless it was true what the jokes said about Lunans, but maybe he was +being really disinterested and maybe he wasn't; maybe he was simply +figuring that Illy ought to be on the side with the biggest battalions. + +I heard dragging footsteps behind us and here came Doc from the Gallery, +carrying in his folded arms an abstract sculpture as big as a newborn +baby. It was an agglomeration of perfect shiny gray spheres the size of +golf balls, shaping up to something like a large brain, but with holes +showing through here and there. He held it out to us like an infant to +be admired and worked his lips and tongue as if he were trying very hard +to say something, though not a word came out that you could understand, +and I thought, "Maxey Aleksevich may be speechless drunk and have all +sorts of holes in his head, but he's got the right instincts, bless his +soulful little Russian heart." + +We were all crowded around the control divan like a football team +huddling. The Peace Packers, it came to me. Sevensee would be fullback +or center and Illy left end--what a receiver! The right number, too. +Erich was alone at the bar, but now even he--"Oh, no, this can't be," I +thought--even he came toward us. Then I saw that his face was working +the worst ever. He stopped halfway and managed to force a smile, but it +was the worst, too. "That's my little commandant," I thought, "no team +spirit." + +"So now Lili and Bruce--yes, and _Grossmutterchen_ Maud--have their +little nest," he said, and he wouldn't have had to push his voice very +hard to get a screech. "But what are the rest of us supposed to +be--cowbirds?" + + * * * * * + +He crooked his neck and flapped his hands and croaked, "Cuc-koo! +Cuc-koo!" And I said to myself, "I often thought you were crazy, boy, +but now I know." + +"_Teufelsdreck!_--yes, Devil's dirt!--but you all seem to be infected +with this dream of children. Can't you see that the Change World is the +natural and proper end of evolution?--a period of enjoyment and +measuring, an ultimate working out of things, which women call +destruction--'Help, I'm being raped!' 'Oh, what are they doing to my +children?'--but which men know as fulfillment. + +"You're given good parts in _Götterdämmerung_ and you go up to the +author and tap him on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, Herr Wagner, but +this Twilight of the Gods is just a bit morbid. Why don't you write an +opera for me about the little ones, the dear little blue-eyed +curly-tops? A plot? Oh, boy meets girl and they settle down to breed, +something like that.' + +"Devil's dirt doubled and damned! Have you thought what life will +be like without a Door to go out of to find freedom and adventure, +to measure your courage and keenness? Do you want to grow long gray +beards hobbling around this asteroid turned inside out? Putter around +indoors to the end of your days, mooning about little baby +cosmoses?--incidentally, with a live bomb for company. The cave, the +womb, the little gray home in the nest--is that what you want? It'll +grow? Oh, yes, like the city engulfing the wild wood, a proliferation +of _Kinder_, _Kirche_, _Küche_--I should live so long! + +"Women!--how I hate their bright eyes as they look at me from the +fireside, bent-shouldered, rocking, deeply happy to be old, and say, +'He's getting weak, he's giving out, soon I'll have to put him to bed +and do the simplest things for him.' Your filthy Triple Goddess, Kaby, +the birther, bride, and burier of man! Woman, the enfeebler, the +fetterer, the crippler! Woman!--and the curly-headed little cancers she +wants!" + +He lurched toward us, pointing at Lili. "I never knew one who didn't +want to cripple a man if you gave her the chance. Cripple him, swaddle +him, clip his wings, grind him to sausage to mold another man, hers, a +doll man. You hid the Maintainer, you little smother-hen, so you could +have your nest and your Brucie!" + +He stopped, gasping, and I expected someone to bop him one on the +schnozzle, and I think he did, too. I turned to Bruce and he was +looking, I don't know how, sorry, guilty, anxious, angry, shaken, +inspired, all at once, and I wished people sometimes had simple suburban +reactions like magazine stories. + +Then Erich made the mistake, if it was one, of turning toward Bruce and +slowly staggering toward him, pawing the air with his hands as if he +were going to collapse into his arms, and saying, "Don't let them get +you, Bruce. Don't let them tie you down. Don't let them clip you--your +words or your deeds. You're a Soldier. Even when you talked about a +peace message, you talked about doing some smashing of your own. No +matter what you think and feel, Bruce, no matter how much lying you do +and how much you hide, you're really not on their side." + +That did it. + + * * * * * + +It didn't come soon enough or, I think, in the right spirit to please +me, but I will say it for Bruce that he didn't muck it up by tipping or +softening his punch. He took one step forward and his shoulders spun and +his fist connected sweet and clean. + +As he did it, he said only one word, "Loki!" and darn if that didn't +switch me back to a campfire in the Indiana Dunes and my mother telling +me out of the Elder Saga about the malicious, sneering, all-spoiling +Norse god and how, when the other gods came to trap him in his hideaway +by the river, he was on the point of finishing knotting a mysterious net +big enough, I had imagined, to snare the whole universe, and that if +they'd come a minute later, he would have. + +Erich was stretched on the floor, his head hitched up, rubbing his jaw +and glaring at Bruce. Mark, who was standing beside me, moved a little +and I thought he was going to do something, maybe even clobber Bruce in +the old spirit of you can't do that to my buddy, but he just shook his +head and said, "_Omnia vincit amor._" I nudged him and said, "Meaning?" +and he said, "Love licks everything." + +I'd never have expected it from a Roman, but he was half right at any +rate. Lili had her victory: Bruce clearing the field for the marriage by +laying out the woman-hating boy friend who would be trying to get him to +go out nights. At that moment, I think Bruce wanted Lili and a life with +her more than he wanted to reform the Change World. Sure, us women have +our little victories--until the legions come or the Little Corporal +draws up his artillery or the Panzers roar down the road. + +Erich scrambled to his feet and stood there in a half-slump, +half-crouch, still rubbing his jaw and glaring at Bruce over his hand, +but making no move to continue the fight, and I studied his face and +said to myself, "If he can get a gun, he's going to shoot himself, I +know." + +Bruce started to say something and hesitated, like I would have in his +shoes, and just then Doc got one of his unpredictable inspirations and +went weaving out toward Erich, holding out the sculpture and making +deaf-and-dumb noises like he had to us. Erich looked at him as if he +were going to kill him, and then grabbed the sculpture and swung it up +over his head and smashed it down on the floor, and for a wonder, it +didn't shatter. It just skidded along in one piece and stopped inches +from my feet. + +That thing not breaking must have been the last straw for Erich. I swear +I could see the red surge up through his eyes toward his brain. He swung +around into the Stores sector and ran the few steps between him and the +bronze bomb chest. + +Everything got very slow motion for me, though I didn't do any moving. +Almost every man started out after Erich. Bruce didn't, though, and +Siddy turned back after the first surge forward, while Illy squunched +down for a leap, and it was between Sevensee's hairy shanks and Beau's +scissoring white pants that I saw that under-the-microscope circle of +death's heads and watched Erich's finger go down on them in the order +Kaby had given: one, three, five, six, two, four, seven. I was able to +pray seven distinct times that he'd make a mistake. + +He straightened up. Illy landed by the box like a huge silver spider and +his tentacles whipped futilely across its top. The others surged to a +frightened halt around them. + +Erich's chest was heaving, but his voice was cool and collected as he +said, "You mentioned something about our having a future, Miss Foster. +Now you can make that more specific. Unless we get back to the cosmos +and dump this box, or find a Spider A-tech, or manage to call +headquarters for guidance on disarming the bomb, we have a future +exactly thirty minutes long." + + + + +CHAPTER 13 + + But whence he was, or of what wombe ybore, + Of beasts, or of the earth, I have not red: + But certes was with milke of wolves and tygres fed. + + --Spenser + +THE TIGER IS LOOSE + + +I guess when they really push the button or throw the switch or spring +the trap or focus the beam or what have you, you don't faint or go crazy +or anything else convenient. I didn't. Everything, everybody, every move +that was made, every word that was spoken, was painfully real to me, +like a hand twisting and squeezing things deep inside me, and I saw +every least detail spotlighted and magnified like I had the seven +skulls. + +Erich was standing beyond the bomb chest; little smiles were ruffling +his lips. I'd never seen him look so sharp. Illy was beside him, but not +on his side, you understand. Mark, Sevensee and Beau were around the +chest to the nearer side. Beau had dropped to a knee and was scanning +the chest minutely, terror-under-control making him bend his head a +little closer than he needed to for clear vision, but with his hands +locked together behind his back, I guess to restrain the impulse to push +any and everything that looked like a disarming button. + +Doc was sprawled face down on the nearest couch, out like a light, I +suppose. + +Us four girls were still by the control divan. With Kaby, that surprised +me, because she didn't look scared or frozen, but almost as intensely +alive as Erich. + +Sid had turned back, as I'd said, and had one hand stretched out toward +but not touching the Minor Maintainer, and a look on his beardy face as +if he were calling down death and destruction on every boozy rogue who +had ever gone up from King's Lynn to Cambridge and London, and I +realized why: if he'd thought of the Minor Maintainer a second sooner, +he could have pinned Erich down with heavy gravity before he could touch +the buttons. + +Bruce was resting one hand on the head of the control divan and was +looking toward the group around the chest, toward Erich, I think, as if +Erich had done something rather wonderful for him, though I can't +imagine myself being tickled at being included in anybody's suicide +surprise party. Bruce looked altogether too dreamy, Brahma blast him, +for someone who must have the same steel-spiked thought in his head that +I know darn well the rest of us had: that in twenty-nine minutes or so, +the Place would be a sun in a bag. + + * * * * * + +Erich was the first to get down to business, as I'd have laid any odds +he would be. He had the jump on us and he wasn't going to lose it. + +"Well, when are you going to start getting Lili to tell us where she hid +the Maintainer? It has to be her--she was too certain it was gone +forever when she talked. And Bruce must have seen from the bar who took +the Maintainer, and who would he cover up for but his girl?" + +There he was plagiarizing my ideas, but I guess I was willing to sign +them over to him in full if he got us the right pail of water for that +time-bomb. + +He glanced at his wrist. "According to my Caller, you have twenty-nine +and a half minutes, including the time it will take to get a Door or +contact headquarters. When are you going to get busy on the girl?" + +Bruce laughed a little--deprecatingly, so help me--and started toward +him. "Look here, old man," he said, "there's no need to trouble Lili, or +to fuss with headquarters, even if you could. Really not at all. Not to +mention that your surmises are quite unfounded, old chap, and I'm a bit +surprised at your advancing them. But that's quite all right because, as +it happens, I'm an atomics technician and I even worked on that very +bomb. To disarm it, you just have to fiddle a bit with some of the +ankhs, those hoopy little crosses. Here, let me--" + +Allah il allah, but it must have struck everybody as it did me as being +just too incredible an assertion, too bloody British a bare-faced bluff, +for Erich didn't have to say a word; Mark and Sevensee grabbed Bruce by +the arms, one on each side, as he stooped toward the bronze chest, and +they weren't gentle about it. Then Erich spoke. + +"Oh, no, Bruce. Very sporting of you to try to cover up for your girl +friend, but we aren't going to let ourselves be blown to stripped atoms +twenty-eight minutes too soon while you monkey with the buttons, the +very thing Benson-Carter warned against, and pray for a guesswork +miracle. It's too thin, Bruce, when you come from 1917 and haven't been +on the Big Time for a hundred sleeps and were calling for an A-tech +yourself a few hours ago. Much too thin. Bruce, something is going to +happen that I'm afraid you won't like, but you're going to have to put +up with it. That is, unless Miss Foster decides to be cooperative." + +"I say, you fellows, let me go," Bruce demanded, struggling +experimentally. "I know it's a bit thick to swallow and I did give you +the wrong impression calling for an A-tech, but I just wanted to capture +your attention then; I didn't want to have to work on the bomb. Really, +Erich, would they have ordered Benson-Carter to pick us up unless one of +us were an A-tech? They'd be sure to include one in the bally +operation." + +"When they're using patchwork tactics?" Erich grinningly quoted back at +him. + + * * * * * + +Kaby spoke up beside me and said, "Benson-Carter was a magician of +matter and he was going on the operation disguised as an old woman. We +have the cloak and hood with the other garments," and I wondered how +this cold fish of a she-officer could be the same girl who was giving +Mark slurpy looks not ten minutes ago. + +"Well?" Erich asked, glancing at his Caller and then swinging his eyes +around at us as if there must be some of the old _Wehrmacht_ iron +somewhere. We all found ourselves looking at Lili and she was looking so +sharp herself, so ready to jump and so at bay, that it was all _I_ +needed, at any rate, to make Erich's theory about the Maintainer a +rock-bottom certainty. + +Bruce must have realized the way our minds were working, for he started +to struggle in earnest and at the same time called, "For God's sake, +don't do anything to Lili! Let me loose, you idiots! Everything's true I +told you--I can save you from that bomb. Sevensee, you took my side +against the Spiders; you've nothing to lose. Sid, you're an Englishman. +Beau, you're a gentleman and you love her, too--for God's sake, stop +them!" + +Beau glanced up over his shoulder at Bruce and the others surging around +close to his ankles and he had on his poker face. Sid I could tell was +once more going through the purgatory of decision. Beau reached his own +decision first and I'll say it for him that he acted on it fast and +intelligently. Right from his kneeling position and before he'd even +turned his head quite back, he jumped Erich. + +But other things in this cosmos besides Man can pick sides and act fast. +Illy landed on Beau midway and whipped his tentacles around him tight +and they went wobbling around like a drunken white-and-silver barber +pole. Beau got his hands each around a tentacle, and at the same time +his face began to get purple, and I winced at what they were both going +through. + +Maybe Sevensee had a hoof in Sid's purgatory, because Bruce shook loose +from the satyr and tried to knock out Mark, but the Roman twisted his +arm and kept him from getting in a good punch. + +Erich didn't make a move to mix into either fight, which is my little +commandant all over. Using his fists on anybody but me is beneath him. + + * * * * * + +Then Sid made his choice, but there was no way for me to tell what it +was, for, as he reached for the Minor Maintainer, Kaby contemptuously +snatched it away from his hands and gave him a knee in the belly that +doubled me up in sympathy and sent him sprawling on his knees toward the +fighters. On the return, Kaby gave Lili, who'd started to grab too, an +effortless backhand smash that set her down on the divan. + +Erich's face lit up like an electric sign and he kept his eyes fixed on +Kaby. + +She crouched a little, carrying her weight on the balls of her feet and +firmly cradling the Minor Maintainer in her left arm, like a basketball +captain planning an offensive. Then she waved her free hand decisively +to the right. I didn't get it, but Erich did and Mark too, for Erich +jumped for the Refresher sector and Mark let go of Bruce and followed +him, ducking around Sevensee's arms, who was coming back into the fight +on which side I don't know. Illy un-whipped from Beau and copied Erich +and Mark with one big spring. + +Then Kaby twisted a dial as far as it would go and Bruce, Beau, Sevensee +and poor Siddy were slammed down and pinned to the floor by about eight +gravities. + +It should have been lighter near us--I hoped it was, but you couldn't +tell from watching Siddy; he went flat on his face, spread-eagled, one +hand stretched toward me so close, I could have touched it (but not let +go!), and his mouth was open against the floor and he was gasping +through a corner of it and I could see his spine trying to sink through +his belly. Bruce just managed to get his head and one shoulder up a bit, +and they all made me think of a Dore illustration of the _Inferno_ where +the cream of the damned are frozen up to their necks in ice in the +innermost circle of Hell. + +The gravity didn't catch me, although I could feel it in my left arm. I +was mostly in the Refresher sector, but I dropped down flat too, partly +out of a crazy compassion I have, but mostly because I didn't want to +take a chance of having Kaby knock me down. + +Erich, Mark and Illy had got clear and they headed toward us. Maud +picked the moment to make her play; she hadn't much choice of times, if +she wanted to make one. The Old Girl was looking it for once, but I +guess the thought of her miracle must have survived alongside the fear +of sacked sun and must have meant a lot to her, for she launched out +fast, all set to straight-arm Kaby into the heavy gravity and grab the +Minor Maintainer with the other hand. + + + + +CHAPTER 14 + + Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust. + + --Webster + +"NOW WILL YOU TALK?" + + +Cretans have eyes under their back hair, or let's face it, Entertainers +aren't Soldiers. Kaby weaved to one side and flicked a helpful hand and +poor old Maud went where she'd been going to send Kaby. It sickened me +to see the gravity take hold and yank her down. + +I could have jumped up and made it four in a row for Kaby, but I'm not a +bit brave when things like my life are at stake. + +Lili was starting to get up, acting a little dazed. Kaby gently pushed +her down again and quietly said, "Where is it?" and then hauled off and +slapped her across the face. What got me was the matter-of-fact way Kaby +did it. I can understand somebody getting mad and socking someone, or +even deliberately working up a rage so as to be able to do something +nasty, but this cold-blooded way turns my stomach. + +Lili looked as if half her face were about to start bleeding, but she +didn't look dazed any more and her jaw set. Kaby grabbed Lili's pearl +necklace and twisted it around her neck and it broke and the pearls went +bouncing around like ping-pong balls, so Kaby yanked down Lili's gray +silk bandeau until it was around the neck and tightened that. Lili +started to choke through her tight-pressed lips. Erich, Mark and Illy +had come up and crowded around, but they seemed to be content with the +job Kaby was doing. + +"Listen, slut," she said, "we have no time. You have a healing room in +this place. I can work the things." + +"Here it comes," I thought, wishing I could faint. On top of everything, +on top of death even, they had to drag in the nightmare personally +stylized for me, the horror with my name on it. I wasn't going to be +allowed to blow up peacefully. They weren't satisfied with an A-bomb. +They had to write my private hell into the script. + +"There is a thing called an Invertor," Kaby said exactly as I'd known +she would, but as I didn't really hear it just then--a mental split I'll +explain in a moment. "It opens you up so they can cure your insides +without cutting your skin or making you bleed anywhere. It turns the big +parts of you inside out, but not the blood tubes. All your skin--your +eyes, ears, nose, toes, all of it--becoming the lining of a little hole +that's half-filled with your hair. + +"Meantime, your insides are exposed for whatever the healer wants to do +to them. You live for a while on the air inside the hole. First the +healer gives you an air that makes you sleep, or you go mad in about +fifty heartbeats. We'll see what ten heartbeats do to you without the +sleepy air. Now will you talk?" + + * * * * * + +I hadn't been listening to her, though, not the real me, or I'd have +gone mad without getting the treatment. I once heard Doc say your liver +is more mysterious and farther away from you than the stars, because +although you live with your liver all your life, you never see it or +learn to point to it instinctively, and the thought of someone messing +around with that intimate yet unknown part of you is just too awful. + +I knew I had to do something quick. Hell, at the first hint of +Introversion, before Kaby had even named it, Illy had winced so that his +tentacles were all drawn up like fat feather-sausages. Erich had looked +at him questioningly, but that lousy Looney had un-endeared himself to +me by squeaking, "Don't mind me, I'm just sensitive. Get on with the +girl. Make her tell." + +Yes, I knew I had to do something, and here on the floor that meant +thinking hard and in high gear about something else. The screwball +sculpture Erich had tried to smash was a foot from my nose and I saw a +faint trail of white stuff where it had skidded. I reached out and +touched the trail; it was finely gritty, like powdered glass. I tipped +up the sculpture and the part on which it had skidded wasn't marred at +all, not even dulled; the gray spheres were as glisteningly bright as +ever. So I knew the trail was diamond dust rubbed off the diamonds in +the floor by something even harder. + +That told me the sculpture was something special and maybe Doc had had a +real idea in his pickled brain when he'd been pushing the thing at all +of us and trying to tell us something. He hadn't managed to say anything +then, but he had earlier when he'd been going to tell us what to do +about the bomb, and maybe there was a connection. + +I twisted my memory hard and let it spring back and I got "Inversh ... +bosh ..." Bosh, indeed! Bosh and inverse bosh to all boozers, Russki or +otherwise. + +So I quick tried the memory trick again and this time I got "glovsh" and +then I grasped and almost sneezed on diamond dust as I watched the +pieces fit themselves together in my mind like a speeded-up movie reel. + +It all hung on that black right-hand hussar's glove Lili had produced +for Bruce. Only she couldn't have found it in Stores, because we'd +searched every fractional pigeonhole later on and there hadn't been any +gloves there, not even the left-hand mate there would have been. Also, +Bruce had had two left-hand gloves to start with, and we had been +through the whole Place with a fine-tooth comb, and there had been only +the two black gloves on the floor where Bruce had kicked them off the +bar--those two and those two only, the left-hand glove he'd brought from +outside and the right-hand glove Lili had produced for him. + + * * * * * + +So a left-hand glove had disappeared--the last I'd seen of it, Lili had +been putting it on her tray--and a right-hand glove had appeared. Which +could only add up to one thing: Lili had turned the left-hand glove into +an identical right. She couldn't have done it by turning it inside out +the ordinary way, because the lining was different. + +But as I knew only too sickeningly well, there was an extraordinary way +to turn things inside out, things like human beings. You merely had to +put them on the Invertor in Surgery and flick the switch for full +Inversion. + +Or you could flick it for partial Inversion and turn something into a +perfect three-dimensional mirror image of itself, just what a right-hand +glove is of a left. Rotation through the fourth dimension, the science +boys call it; I've heard of it being used in surgery on the highly +asymmetric Martians, and even to give a socially impeccable right hand +to a man who'd lost one, by turning an amputated right arm into an +amputated left. + +Ordinarily, nothing but live things are ever Inverted in Surgery and you +wouldn't think of doing it to an inanimate object, especially in a Place +where the Doc's a drunk and the Surgery hasn't been used for hundreds of +sleeps. + +But when you've just fallen in love, you think of wonderful crazy things +to do for people. Drunk with love, Lili had taken Bruce's extra +left-hand glove into Surgery, partially Inverted it, and got a +right-hand glove to give him. + +What Doc had been trying to say with his "Inversh ... bosh ..." was +"Invert the box," meaning we should put the bronze chest through full +Inversion to get at the bomb inside to disarm it. Doc too had got the +idea from Lili's trick with the glove. What an inside-out tactical +atomic bomb would look like, I could not imagine and did not +particularly care to see. I might have to, though, I realized. + +But the fast-motion film was still running in my head. Later on, Lili +had decided like I had that her lover was going to lose out in his plea +for mutiny unless she could give him a really captive audience--and +maybe, even then, she had been figuring on creating the nest for Bruce's +chicks and ... all those other things we'd believed in for a while. So +she'd taken the Major Maintainer and remembered the glove, and not many +seconds later, she had set down on a shelf of the Art Gallery an object +that no one would think of questioning--except someone who knew the +Gallery by heart. + + * * * * * + +I looked at the abstract sculpture a foot from my nose, at the clustered +gray spheres the size of golf balls. I had known that the inside of the +Maintainer was made up of vastly tough, vastly hard giant molecules, but +I hadn't realized they were quite _that_ big. + +I said to myself, "Greta, this is going to give you a major psychosis, +but you're the one who has to do it, because no one is going to listen +to your deductions when they're all practically living on negative time +already." + +I got up as quietly as if I were getting out of a bed I shouldn't have +been in--there are some things Entertainers are good at--and Kaby was +just saying "you go mad in about fifty heartbeats." Everybody on their +feet was looking at Lili. Sid seemed to have moved, but I had no time +for him except to hope he hadn't done anything that might attract +attention to me. + +I stepped out of my shoes and walked rapidly to Surgery--there's one +good thing about this hardest floor anywhere, it doesn't creak. I walked +through the Surgery screen that is like a wall of opaque, odorless +cigarette smoke and I concentrated on remembering my snafued nurse's +training, and before I had time to panic, I had the sculpture positioned +on the gleaming table of the Invertor. + +I froze for a moment when I reached for the Inversion switch, thinking +of the other time and trying to remember what it had been that bothered +me so much about an inside-out brain being bigger and not having eyes, +but then I either thumbed my nose at my nightmare or kissed my sanity +good-by, I don't know which, and twisted the switch all the way over, +and there was the Major Maintainer winking blue about three times a +second as nice as you could want it. + +It must have been working as sweet and steady as ever, all the time it +was Inverted, except that, being inside out, it had hocused the +direction finders. + + + + +CHAPTER 15 + + black legged spiders + with red hearts of hell + + --marquis + +LORD SPIDER + + +"Jesu!" I turned and Sid's face was sticking through the screen like a +tinted bas-relief hanging on a gray wall and I got the impression he had +peered unexpectedly through a slit in an arras into Queen Elizabeth's +bedroom. + +He didn't have any time to linger on the sensation, even if he'd wanted +to, for an elbow with a copper band thrust through the screen and dug +his ribs and Kaby marched Lili in by the neck. Erich, Mark and Illy were +right behind. They caught the blue flashes and stopped dead, staring at +the long-lost. Erich spared me one look which seemed to say, so you did +it, not that it matters. Then he stepped forward and picked it up and +held it solidly to his left side in the double right-angle made by +fingers, forearm and chest, and reached for the Introversion switch with +a look on his face as if he were opening a fifth of whisky. + +The blue light died and Change Winds hit me like a stiff drink that had +been a long, long time in coming, like a hot trumpet note out of +nowhere. + +I felt the changing pasts blowing through me, and the uncertainties +whistling past, and ice-stiff reality softening with all its duties and +necessities, and the little memories shredding away and dancing off like +autumn leaves, leaving maybe not even ghosts behind, and all the crazy +moods like Mardi Gras dancers pouring down an evening street, and +something inside me had the nerve to say it didn't care whether Greta +Forzane's death was riding in those Winds because they felt so good. + +I could tell it was hitting the others the same way. Even battered, +tight-lipped Lili seemed to be saying, you're making me drink the stuff +and I hate you for it, but I do love it. I guess we'd all had the worry +that even finding and Extroverting the Maintainer wouldn't put us back +in touch with the cosmos and give us those Winds we hate and love. + +The thing that cut through to us as we stood there glowing was not the +thought of the bomb, though that would have come in a few seconds more, +but Sid's voice. He was still standing in the screen, except that now +his face was out the other side and we could just see parts of his +gray-doubleted back, but, of course, his "Jesu!" came through the screen +as if it weren't there. + +At first I couldn't figure out who he could be talking to, but I swear I +never heard his voice so courtly obsequious before, so strong and yet so +filled with awe and an under-note of, yes, sheer terror. + +"Lord, I am filled from top to toe with confusion that you should so +honor my poor Place," he said. "Poor say I and mine, when I mean that I +have ever busked it faithfully for you, not dreaming that you would ever +condescend ... yet knowing that your eye was certes ever upon me ... +though I am but as a poor pinch of dust adrift between the suns ... I +abase myself. Prithee, how may I serve thee, sir? I know not e'en how +most suitably to address thee, Lord ... King ... Emperor Spider!" + + * * * * * + +I felt like I was getting very small, but not a bit less visible, worse +luck, and even with the Change Winds inside me to give me courage, I +thought this was really too much, coming on top of everything else; it +was simply unfair. + +At the same time, I realized it was to be expected that the big bosses +would have been watching us with their unblinking beady black eyes ever +since we had Introverted waiting to pounce if we should ever come out of +it. I tried to picture what was on the other side of the screen and I +didn't like the assignment. + +But in spite of being petrified, I had a hard time not giggling, like +the zany at graduation exercises, at the way the other ones in Surgery +were taking it. + +I mean the Soldiers. They each stiffened up like they had the old ramrod +inside them, and their faces got that important look, and they glanced +at each other and the floor without lowering their heads, as if they +were measuring the distance between their feet and mentally chalking +alternate sets of footprints to step into. The way Erich and Kaby held +the Major and Minor Maintainers became formal; the way they checked +their Callers and nodded reassuringly was positively esoteric. Even Illy +somehow managed to look as if he were on parade. + +Then from beyond the screen came what was, under the circumstances, the +worst noise I've ever heard, a seemingly wordless distant-sounding +howling and wailing, with a note of menace that made me shake, although +it also had a nasty familiarity about it I couldn't place. Sid's voice +broke into it, loud, fast and frightened. + +"Your pardon, Lord, I did not think ... certes, the gravity ... I'll +attend to it on the instant." He whipped a hand and half a head back +through the screen, but without looking back and snapped his fingers, +and before I could blink, Kaby had put the Minor Maintainer in his hand. + +Sid went completely out of sight then and the howling stopped, and I +thought that if that was the way a Lord Spider expressed his annoyance +at being subjected to incorrect gravity, I hoped the bosses wouldn't +start any conversations with me. + +Erich pursed his lips and threw the other Soldiers a nod and the four of +them marched through the screen as if they'd drilled a lifetime for this +moment. I had the wild idea that Erich might give me his arm, but he +strode past me as if I were ... an Entertainer. + +I hesitated a moment then, but I had to see what was happening outside, +even if I got eaten up for it. Besides, I had a bit of the thought that +if these formalities went on much longer, even a Lord Spider was going +to discover just how immune he was to confined atomic blast. + +I walked through the screen with Lili beside me. + + * * * * * + +The Soldiers had stopped a few feet in front of it. I looked around +ahead for whatever it was going to turn out to be, prepared to drop a +curtsy or whatever else, bar nothing, that seemed expected of me. + +I had a hard time spotting the beast. Some of the others seemed to be +having trouble too. I saw Doc weaving around foolishly by the control +divan, and Bruce and Beau and Sevensee and Maud on their feet beyond it, +and I wondered whether we were dealing with an invisible monster; ought +to be easy enough for the bosses to turn a simple trick like +invisibility. + +Then I looked sharply left where everyone else, even glassy-eyed Doc, +was coming to look, into the Door sector, only there wasn't any monster +there or even a Door, but just Siddy holding the Minor Maintainer and +grinning like when he is threatening to tickle me, only more fiendishly. + +"Not a move, masters," he cried, his eyes dancing, "or I'll pin the pack +of you down, marry and amen I will. It is my firm purpose to see the +Place blasted before I let this instrument out of my hands again." + +My first thought was, "'Sblood but Siddy is a real actor! I don't care +if he didn't study under anyone later than Burbage, that just proves how +good Burbage is." + +Sid had convinced us not only that the real Spiders had arrived, but +earlier that the gravity in the edge of Stores had been a lot heavier +than it actually was. He completely fooled all those Soldiers, including +my swelled-headed victorious little commandant, and I kind of filed away +the timing of that business of reaching out the hand and snapping the +fingers without looking, it was so good. + +"Beauregard!" Sid called. "Get to the Major Maintainer and call +headquarters. But don't come through Door, marry go by Refresher. I'll +not trust a single Demon of you in this sector with me until much more +has been shown and settled." + +"Siddy, you're wonderful," I said, starting toward him. "As soon as I +got the Maintainer unsnarled and looked around and saw your sweet old +face--" + +"Back, tricksy trull! Not the breadth of one scarlet toenail nearer me, +you Queen of Sleights and High Priestess of Deception!" he bellowed. +"You least of all do I trust. Why you hid the Maintainer, I know not, +'faith, but later you'll discover the truth to me or I'll have your +gizzard." + +I could see there was going to have to be a little explaining. + + * * * * * + +Doc, touched off, I guess, by Sid waving his hand at me, threw back his +head and let off one of those shuddery Siberian wolf-howls he does so +blamed well. Sid waved toward him sharply and he shut up, beaming +toothily, but at least I knew who was responsible for the Spider wail of +displeasure that Sid had either called for or more likely got as a gift +of the gods and used in his act. + +Beau came circling around fast and Erich shoved the Major Maintainer +into his hands without making any fuss. The four Soldiers were looking +pretty glum after losing their grand review. + +Beau dumped some junk off one of the Art Gallery's sturdy taborets and +set the Major Maintainer on it carefully but fast, and quickly knelt in +front of it and whipped on some earphones and started to tune. The way +he did it snatched away from me my inward glory at my big Inversion +brainwave so fast, I might never have had it, and there was nothing in +my mind again but the bronze bomb chest. + +I wondered if I should suggest Inverting the thing, but I said to +myself, "Uh-uh, Greta, you got no diploma to show them and there +probably isn't time to try two things, anyway." + +Then Erich for once did something I wanted him to, though I didn't care +for its effect on my nerves, by looking at his Caller and saying +quietly, "Nine minutes to go, if Place time and cosmic time are +synching." + +Beau was steady as a rock and working adjustments so fine that I +couldn't even see his fingers move. + +Then, at the other end of the Place, Bruce took a few steps toward us. +Sevensee and Maud followed a bit behind him. I remembered Bruce was +another of our nuts with a private program for blowing up the place. + +"Sidney," he called, and then, when he'd got Sid's attention, "Remember, +Sidney, you and I both came down to London from Peterhouse." + +I didn't get it. Then Bruce looked toward Erich with a devil-may-care +challenge and toward Lili as if he were asking her forgiveness for +something. I couldn't read her expression; the bruises were blue on her +throat and her cheek was puffy. + +Then Bruce once more shot Erich that look of challenge and he spun and +grabbed Sevensee by a wrist and stuck out a foot--even half-horses +aren't too sharp about infighting, I guess, and the satyr had every +right to feel at least as confused as I felt--and sent him stumbling +into Maud, and the two of them tumbled to the floor in a jumble of hairy +legs and pearl-gray frock. Bruce raced to the bomb chest. + + * * * * * + +Most of us yelled, "Stop him, Sid, pin him down," or something like +that--I know I did because I was suddenly sure that he'd been asking +Lili's pardon for blowing the two of them up--and all the rest of us +too, the love-blinded stinker. + +Sid had been watching him all the time and now he lifted his hand to the +Minor Maintainer, but then he didn't touch any of the dials, just +watched and waited, and I thought, "Shaitan shave us! Does Siddy want in +on death, too? Ain't he satisfied with all he knows about life?" + +Bruce had knelt and was twisting some things on the front of the chest, +and it was all as bright as if he were under a bank of Klieg lights, and +I was telling myself I wouldn't know anything when the fireball fired, +and not believing it, and Sevensee and Maud had got unscrambled and were +starting for Bruce, and the rest of us were yelling at Sid, except that +Erich was just looking at Bruce very happily, and Sid was still not +doing anything, and it was unbearable except just then I felt the little +arteries start to burst in my brain like a string of fire-crackers and +the old aorta pop, and for good measure, a couple of valves come +unhinged in my ticker, and I was thinking, "Well, now I know what it's +like to die of heart failure and high blood pressure," and having a last +quiet smile at having cheated the bomb, when Bruce jumped up and back +from the chest. + +"That does it!" he announced cheerily. "She's as safe as the Bank of +England." + +Sevensee and Maud stopped themselves just short of knocking him down and +I said to myself, "Hey, let's get a move on! I thought heart attacks +were fast." + +Before anyone else could speak, Beau did. He had turned around from the +Major Maintainer and pulled aside one of the earphones. + +"I got headquarters," he said crisply. "They told me how to disarm the +bomb--I merely said I thought we ought to know. What did you do, sir?" +he called to Bruce. + +"There's a row of four ankhs just below the lock. The first to your left +you give a quarter turn to the right, the second a quarter turn to the +left, same for the fourth, and you don't touch the third." + +"That is it, sir," Beau confirmed. + +The long silence was too much for me; I guess I must have the shortest +span for unspoken relief going. I drew some nourishment out of my +restored arteries into my brain cells and yelled, "Siddy, I know I'm a +tricksy trull and the High Vixen of all Foxes, but what the Hell is +Peterhouse?" + +"The oldest college at Cambridge," he told me rather coolly. + + + + +CHAPTER 16 + + "Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate + systems?--the notion that everything is possible--and I mean + everything--and everything has happened. _Everything._" + + --Heinlein + +THE POSSIBILITY-BINDERS + + +An hour later, I was nursing a weak highball and a black eye in the +sleepy-time darkness on the couch farthest from the piano, half watching +the highlighted party going on around it and the bar, while the Place +waited for rendezvous with Egypt and the Battle of Alexandria. + +Sid had swept all our outstanding problems into one big bundle and, +since his hand held the joker of the Minor Maintainer, he had settled +them all as high-handedly as if they'd been those of a bunch of +schoolkids. + +It amounted to this: + +We'd been Introverted when most of the damning things had happened, so +presumably only we knew about them, and we were all in so deep one way +or another that we'd all have to keep quiet to protect our delicate +complexions. + +Well, Erich's triggering the bomb did balance rather neatly Bruce's +incitement to mutiny, and there was Doc's drinking, while everybody who +had declared for the peace message had something to hide. Mark and Kaby +I felt inclined to trust anywhere, Maud for sure, and Erich in this +particular matter, damn him. Illy I didn't feel at all easy about, but I +told myself there always has to be a fly in the ointment--a darn big +one this time, and furry. + +Sid didn't mention his own dirty linen, but he knew we knew he'd flopped +badly as boss of the Place and only recouped himself by that last-minute +flimflam. + +Remembering Sid's trick made me think for a moment about the real +Spiders. Just before I snuck out of Surgery, I'd had a vivid picture of +what they must look like, but now I couldn't get it again. It depressed +me, not being able to remember--oh, I probably just imagined I'd had a +picture, like a hophead on a secret-of-the-universe kick. Me ever find +out anything about the Spiders?--except for nervous notions like I'd had +during the recent fracas?--what a laugh! + +The funniest thing (ha-ha!) was that I had ended up the least-trusted +person. Sid wouldn't give me time to explain how I'd deduced what had +happened to the Maintainer, and even when Lili spoke up and admitted +hiding it, she acted so bored I don't think everybody believed +her--although she did spill the realistic detail that she hadn't used +partial Inversion on the glove; she'd just turned it inside out to make +it a right and then done a full Inversion to get the lining back inside. + + * * * * * + +I tried to get Doc to confirm that he'd reasoned the thing out the same +way I had, but he said he had been blacked out the whole time, except +during the first part of the hunt, and he didn't remember having any +bright ideas at all. Right now, he was having Maud explain to him twice, +in detail, everything that had happened. I decided that it was going to +take a little more work before my reputation as a great detective was +established. + +I looked over the edge of the couch and just made out in the gloom one +of Bruce's black gloves. It must have been kicked there. I fished it up. +It was the right-hand one. My big clue, and was I sick of it! Got +mittens, God forbid! I slung it away and, like a lurking octopus, Illy +shot up a tentacle from the next couch, where I hadn't known he was +resting, and snatched the glove like it was a morsel of underwater +garbage. These ETs can seem pretty shuddery non-human at times. + +I thought of what a cold-blooded, skin-saving louse Illy had been, and +about Sid and his easy suspicions, and Erich and my black eye, and how, +as usual, I'd got left alone in the end. My men! + +Bruce had explained about being an A-tech. Like a lot of us, he'd had +several widely different jobs during his first weeks in the Change World +and one of them had been as secretary to a group of the minor atomics +boys from the Manhattan-Project-Earth-Satellite days. I gathered he'd +also absorbed some of his bothersome ideas from them. I hadn't quite +decided yet what species of heroic heel he belonged to, but he was thick +with Mark and Erich again. Everybody's men! + +Sid didn't have to argue with anybody; all the wild compulsions and +mighty resolves were dead now, anyway until they'd had a good long rest. +I sure could use one myself, I knew. + +The party at the piano was getting wilder. Lili had been dancing the +black bottom on top of it and now she jumped down into Sid's and +Sevensee's arms, taking a long time about it. She'd been drinking a lot +and her little gray dress looked about as innocent on her as diapers +would on Nell Gwyn. She continued her dance, distributing her marks of +favor equally between Sid, Erich and the satyr. Beau didn't mind a bit, +but serenely pounded out "Tonight's the Night"--which she'd practically +shouted to him not two minutes ago. + +I was glad to be out of the party. Who can compete with a highly +experienced, utterly disillusioned seventeen-year-old really throwing +herself away for the first time? + + * * * * * + +Something touched my hand. Illy had stretched a tentacle into a furry +wire to return me the black glove, although he ought to have known I +didn't want it. I pushed it away, privately calling Illy a washed-out +moronic tarantula, and right away I felt a little guilty. What right had +I to be critical of Illy? Would my own character have shown to advantage +if I'd been locked in with eleven octopoids a billion years away? For +that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone? + +Still, I was glad to be out of the party, though I kept on watching it. +Bruce was drinking alone at the bar. Once Sid had gone over to him and +they'd had one together and I'd heard Bruce reciting from Rupert Brooke +those deliberately corny lines, "For England's the one land, I know, +Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; and Cambridgeshire, of all +England, The Shire for Men who Understand;" and I'd remembered that +Brooke too had died young in World War One and my ideas had got fuzzy. +But mostly Bruce was just calmly drinking by himself. Every once in a +while Lili would look at him and stop dead in her dancing and laugh. + +I'd figured out this Bruce-Lili-Erich business as well as I cared to. +Lili had wanted the nest with all her heart and nothing else would ever +satisfy her, and now she'd go to hell her own way and probably die of +Bright's disease for a third time in the Change World. Bruce hadn't +wanted the nest or Lili as much as he wanted the Change World and the +chances it gave for Soldierly cavorting and poetic drunks; Lili's seed +wasn't his idea of healing the cosmos; maybe he'd make a real mutiny +some day, but more likely he'd stick to bar-room epics. + +His and Lili's infatuation wouldn't die completely, no matter how rancid +it looked right now. The real-love angle might go, but Change would +magnify the romance angle and it might seem to them like a big thing of +a sort if they met again. + +Erich had his _Kamerad_, shaped to suit him, who'd had the guts and +cleverness to disarm the bomb he'd had the guts to trigger. You have to +hand it to Erich for having the nerve to put us all in a situation where +we'd have to find the Maintainer or fry, but I don't know anything +disgusting enough to hand to him. + +I had tried a while back. I had gone up behind him and said, "Hey, how's +my wicked little commandant? Forgotten your _und so weiter_?" and as he +turned, I clawed my nails and slammed him across the cheek. That's how I +got the black eye. Maud wanted to put an electronic leech on it, but I +took the old handkerchief in ice water. Well, at any rate Erich had his +scratches to match Bruce's, not as deep, but four of them, and I told +myself maybe they'd get infected--I hadn't washed my hands since the +hunt. Not that Erich doesn't love scars. + + * * * * * + +Mark was the one who helped me up after Erich knocked me down. + +"You got any omnias for that?" I snapped at him. + +"For what?" Mark asked. + +"Oh, for everything that's been happening to us," I told him +disgustedly. + +He seemed to actually think for a moment and then he said, "_Omnia +mutantur, nihil interit._" + +"Meaning?" I asked him. + +He said, "All things change, but nothing is really lost." + +It would be a wonderful philosophy to stand with against the Change +Winds. Also damn silly. I wondered if Mark really believed it. I wished +I could. Sometimes I come close to thinking it's a lot of baloney trying +to be any decent kind of Demon, even a good Entertainer. Then I tell +myself, "That's life, Greta. You've got to love through it somehow." But +there are times when some of these cookies are not too easy to love. + +Something brushed the palm of my hand again. It was Illy's tentacle, +with the tendrils of the tip spread out like a little bush. I started to +pull my hand away, but then I realized the Loon was simply lonely. I +surrendered my hand to the patterned gossamer pressures of +feather-talk. + +[Illustration] + +Right away I got the words, "Feeling lonely, Greta girl?" + +It almost floored me, I tell you. Here I was understanding feather-talk, +which I just didn't, and I was understanding it in English, which didn't +make sense at all. + +For a second, I thought Illy must have spoken, but I knew he hadn't, and +for a couple more seconds I thought he was working telepathy on me, +using the feather-talk as cues. Then I tumbled to what was happening: he +was playing English on my palm like on the keyboard of his squeakbox, +and since I could play English on a squeakbox myself, my mind translated +automatically. + +Realizing this almost gave my mind stage fright, but I was too fagged to +be hocused by self-consciousness. I just lay back and let the thoughts +come through. It's good to have someone talk to you, even an underweight +octopus, and without the squeaks Illy didn't sound so silly; his +phrasing was soberer. + + * * * * * + +"Feeling sad, Greta girl, because you'll never understand what's +happening to us all," Illy asked me, "because you'll never be anything +but a shadow fighting shadows--and trying to love shadows in between the +battles? It's time you understood we're not really fighting a war at +all, although it looks that way, but going through a kind of evolution, +though not exactly the kind Erich had in mind. + +"Your Terran thought has a word for it and a theory for it--a theory +that recurs on many worlds. It's about the four orders of life: Plants, +Animals, Men and Demons. Plants are energy-binders--they can't move +through space or time, but they can clutch energy and transform it. +Animals are space-binders--they can move through space. Man (Terran or +ET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a time-binder--he has memory. + +"Demons are the fourth order of evolution, possibility-binders--they can +make all of what might be part of what is, and that is their +evolutionary function. Resurrection is like the metamorphosis of a +caterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of the +chrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life. The leap from the +ripped cocoon of an unchanging reality is like the first animal's leap +when he ceases to be a plant, and the Change World is the core of +meaning behind the many myths of immortality. + +"All evolution looks like a war at first--octopoids against monopoids, +mammals against reptiles. And it has a necessary dialectic: there must +be the thesis--we call it Snake--and the antithesis--Spider--before +there can be the ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities are fully +realized in one ultimate universe. The Change War isn't the blind +destruction it seems. + +"Remember that the Serpent is your symbol of wisdom and the Spider your +sign for patience. The two names are rightly frightening to you, for all +high existence is a mixture of horror and delight. And don't be +surprised, Greta girl, at the range of my words and thoughts; in a way, +I've had a billion years to study Terra and learn her languages and +myths. + +"Who are the real Spiders and Snakes, meaning who were the first +possibility-binders? Who was Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? Who were +Eve and Lilith? + +"In binding all possibility, the Demons also bind the mental with the +material. All fourth-order beings live inside and outside all minds, +throughout the whole cosmos. Even this Place is, after its fashion, a +giant brain: its floor is the brainpan, the boundary of the Void is the +cortex of gray matter--yes, even the Major and Minor Maintainers are +analogues of the pineal and pituitary glands, which in some form sustain +all nervous systems. + +"There's the real picture, Greta girl." + +The feather-talk faded out and Illy's tendril tips merged into a soft +pad on which I fingered, "Thanks, Daddy Longlegs." + + * * * * * + +Chewing over in my mind what Illy had just told me, I looked back at the +gang around the piano. The party seemed to be breaking up; at least some +of them were chopping away at it. Sid had gone to the control divan and +was getting set to tune in Egypt. Mark and Kaby were there with him, all +bursting with eagerness and the vision of ranks on ranks of mounted +Zombie bowmen going up in a mushroom cloud; I thought of what Illy had +told me and I managed a smile--seems we've got to win and lose all the +battles, every which way. + +Mark had just put on his Parthian costume, groaning cheerfully, +"Trousers again!" and was striding around under a hat like a fur-lined +ice-cream cone and with the sleeves of his metal-stuffed candys flapping +over his hands. He waved a short sword with a heart-shaped guard at +Bruce and Erich and told them to get a move on. + +Kaby was going along on the operation wearing the old-woman disguise +intended for Benson-Carter. I got a half-hearted kick out of knowing she +was going to have to cover that chest and hobble. + +Bruce and Erich weren't taking orders from Mark just yet. Erich went +over and said something to Bruce at the bar, and Bruce got down and +went over with Erich to the piano, and Erich tapped Beau on the shoulder +and leaned over and said something to him, and Beau nodded and yanked +"Limehouse Blues" to a fast close and started another piece, something +slow and nostalgic. + +Erich and Bruce waved to Mark and smiled, as if to show him that whether +he came over and stood with them or not, the legate and the lieutenant +and the commandant were very much together. And while Sevensee hugged +Lili with a simple enthusiasm that made me wonder why I've wasted so +much imagination on genetic treatments for him, Erich and Bruce sang: + + "_To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, + To our brothers in the tunnels outside time, + Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and + robot-crammed, + And Commandos of the Spiders-- + Here's to crime! + We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track, + Hush--hush--hush! + We've lost our now and will never get back, + Hush--hush--hush! + Change Commandos out on the spree, + Damned through all possibility, + Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we, + Hush--hush--hush!_" + +While they were singing, I looked down at my charcoal skirt and over at +Maud and Lili and I thought, "Three gray hustlers for three black +hussars, that's our speed." Well, I'd never thought of myself as a +high-speed job, winning all the races--I wouldn't feel comfortable that +way. Come to think of it, we've got to lose and win all the races in the +long run, the way the course is laid out. + +I fingered to Illy, "That's the picture, all right, Spider boy." + + --FRITZ LEIBER + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ March and + April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the + U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and + typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Time, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + +***** This file should be named 32256-8.txt or 32256-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/5/32256/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Big Time + +Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber + +Illustrator: Virgil Finlay + +Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32256] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="bk1"><div class="bk2"> +<h2><small>By FRITZ LEIBER</small></h2> +<h1><big>THE<br /> +BIG<br /> +TIME</big></h1> +</div></div> + +<div class="bk3"> +<div class="rgt"><b><small>Illustrated by FINLAY</small></b></div> +<div class="bk4"><p><i><big><b>You can't know there's a war on—for the Snakes +coil and Spiders weave to keep you from knowing +it's being fought over your live and dead body!</b></big></i></p></div></div> + +<h2>CHAPTER 1</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 14em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When shall we three meet again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In thunder, lightning, or in rain?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the hurlyburly's done.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the battle's lost and won.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="rgt">—Macbeth</div></div> + +<h3>ENTER THREE HUSSARS</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">My</span> name is Greta Forzane. +Twenty-nine and a party +girl would describe +me. I was born in Chicago, of +Scandinavian parents, but now I +operate chiefly outside space and +time—not in Heaven or Hell, if +there are such places, but not in +the cosmos or universe you know +either.</p> + +<p>I am not as romantically entrancing +as the immortal film star +who also bears my first name, but +I have a rough-and-ready charm of +my own. I need it, for my job is +to nurse back to health and kid +back to sanity Soldiers badly +roughed up in the biggest war going. +This war is the Change War, +a war of time travelers—in fact, our +private name for being in this war +is being on the Big Time. Our +Soldiers fight by going back to +change the past, or even ahead to +change the future, in ways to help +our side win the final victory a +billion or more years from now. +A long killing business, believe +me.</p> + +<p>You don't know about the +Change War, but it's influencing +your lives all the time and maybe +you've had hints of it without +realizing.</p> + +<p>Have you ever worried about +your memory, because it doesn't +seem to be bringing you exactly +the same picture of the past from +one day to the next? Have you +ever been afraid that your personality +was changing because of +forces beyond your knowledge or +control? Have you ever felt sure +that sudden death was about to +jump you from nowhere? Have +you ever been scared of Ghosts—not +the story-book kind, but the +billions of beings who were once +so real and strong it's hard to believe +they'll just sleep harmlessly +forever? Have you ever wondered +about those things you may call +devils or Demons—spirits able to +range through all time and space, +through the hot hearts of stars +and the cold skeleton of space between +the galaxies? Have you ever +thought that the whole universe +might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? +If you have, you've had hints of +the Change War.</p> + +<p>How I got recruited into the +Change War, how it's conducted, +what the two sides are, why you +don't consciously know about it, +what I really think about it—you'll +learn in due course.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> place outside the cosmos +where I and my pals do our +nursing job I simply call the Place. +A lot of my nursing consists of +amusing and humanizing Soldiers +fresh back from raids into time. +In fact, my formal title is Entertainer +and I've got my silly +side, as you'll find out.</p> + +<p>My pals are two other gals and +three guys from quite an assortment +of times and places. We're +a pretty good team, and with Sid +bossing, we run a pretty good Recuperation +Station, though we have +our family troubles. But most of +our troubles come slamming into +the Place with the beat-up Soldiers, +who've generally just been +going through hell and want to +raise some of their own. As a matter +of fact, it was three newly arrived +Soldiers who started this +thing I'm going to tell you about, +this thing that showed me so much +about myself and everything.</p> + +<p>When it started, I had been on +the Big Time for a thousand sleeps +and two thousand nightmares, and +working in the Place for five hundred-one +thousand. This two-nightmares +routine every time you lay +down your dizzy little head is +rough, but you pretend to get used +to it because being on the Big +Time is supposed to be worth it.</p> + +<p>The Place is midway in size +and atmosphere between a large +nightclub where the Entertainers +sleep in and a small Zeppelin hangar +decorated for a party, though +a Zeppelin is one thing we haven't +had yet. You go out of the Place, +but not often if you have any sense +and if you are an Entertainer like +me, into the cold light of a morning +filled with anything from the +earlier dinosaurs to the later spacemen, +who look strangely similar +except for size.</p> + +<p>Solely on doctor's orders, I have +been on cosmic leave six times +since coming to work at the Place, +meaning I have had six brief vacations, +if you care to call them +that, for believe me they are busman's +holidays, considering what +goes on in the Place all the time. +The last one I spent in Renaissance +Rome, where I got a crush +on Cesare Borgia, but I got over +it. Vacations are for the birds, anyway, +because they have to be fitted +by the Spiders into serious operations +of the Change War, and you +can imagine how restful that +makes them.</p> + +<p>"See those Soldiers changing the +past? You stick along with them. +Don't go too far up front, though, +but don't wander off either. Relax +and enjoy yourself."</p> + +<p>Ha! Now the kind of recuperation +Soldiers get when they come +to the Place is a horse of a far +brighter color, simply dazzling by +comparison. Entertainment is our +business and we give them a bang-up +time and send them staggering +happily back into action, though +once in a great while something +may happen to throw a wee +shadow on the party.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I am</span> dead in some ways, but +don't let that bother you—I +am lively enough in others. If you +met me in the cosmos, you would +be more apt to yak with me or try +to pick me up than to ask a cop +to do same or a father to douse +me with holy water, unless you +are one of those hard-boiled reformer +types. But you are not likely +to meet me in the cosmos, because +(bar Basin Street and the +Prater) 15th Century Italy and +Augustan Rome—until they spoiled +it—are my favorite (Ha!) vacation +spots and, as I have said, I +stick as close to the Place as I can. +It is really the nicest Place in the +whole Change World. (Crisis! I +even <i>think</i> of it capitalized!)</p> + +<p>Anyhoo, when this thing started, +I was twiddling my thumbs on +the couch nearest the piano and +thinking it was too late to do my +fingernails and whoever came in +probably wouldn't notice them anyway.</p> + +<p>The Place was jumpy like it +always is on an approach and the +gray velvet of the Void around +us was curdled with the uneasy +lights you see when you close your +eyes in the dark.</p> + +<p>Sid was tuning the Maintainers +for the pick-up and the right shoulder +of his gold-worked gray doublet +was streaked where he'd been wiping +his face on it with quick ducks +of his head.</p> + +<p>Beauregard was leaning as close +as he could over Sid's other shoulder, +one white-trousered knee +neatly indenting the rose plush of +the control divan, and he wasn't +missing a single flicker of Sid's old +fingers on the dials; Beau's co-pilot +besides piano player. Beau's face +had that dead blank look it must +have had when every double eagle +he owned and more he didn't were +riding on the next card to be +turned in the gambling saloon on +one of those wedding-cake Mississippi +steamboats.</p> + +<p>Doc was soused as usual, sitting +at the bar with his top hat pushed +back and his knitted shawl pulled +around him, his wide eyes seeing +whatever horrors a life in Nazi-occupied +Czarist Russia can add +to being a drunk Demon in the +Change World.</p> + +<p>Maud, who is the Old Girl, and +Lili—the New Girl, of course—were +telling the big beads of their +identical pearl necklaces.</p> + +<p>You might say that all us Entertainers +were a bit edgy; being +Demons doesn't automatically +make us brave.</p> + +<p>Then the red telltale on the +Major Maintainer went out and +the Door began to darken in the +Void facing Sid and Beau, and +I felt Change Winds blowing hard +and my heart missed a couple of +beats, and the next thing three +Soldiers had stepped out of the +cosmos and into the Place, their +first three steps hitting the floor +hard as they changed times and +weights.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">They</span> were dressed as officers +of hussars, as we'd been advised, +and—praise the Bonny Dew!—I +saw that the first of them was +Erich, my own dear little commandant, +the pride of the von Hohenwalds +and the Terror of the +Snakes. Behind him was some +hard-faced Roman or other, and +beside Erich and shouldering into +him as they stamped forward was +a new boy, blond, with a face like +a Greek god who's just been touring +a Christian hell.</p> + +<p>They were uniformed exactly +alike in black—shakos, fur-edged +pelisses, boots, and so forth—with +white skull emblems on the shakos. +The only difference between them +was that Erich had a Caller on his +wrist and the New Boy had a +black-gauntleted glove on his left +hand and was clenching the mate +in it, his right hand being bare like +both of Erich's and the Roman's.</p> + +<p>"You've made it, lads, hearts of +gold," Sid boomed at them, and +Beau twitched a smile and murmured +something courtly and +Maud began to chant, "Shut the +Door!" and the New Girl copied +her and I joined in because the +Change Winds do blow like crazy +when the Door is open, even +though it can't ever be shut tight +enough to keep them from leaking +through.</p> + +<p>"Shut it before it blows wrinkles +in our faces," Maud called in her +gamin voice to break the ice, looking +like a skinny teen-ager in the +tight, knee-length frock she'd +copied from the New Girl.</p> + +<p>But the three Soldiers weren't +paying attention. The Roman—I +remembered his name was Mark—was +blundering forward stiffly +as if there were something wrong +with his eyes, while Erich and the +New Boy were yelling at each +other about a kid and Einstein and +a summer palace and a bloody +glove and the Snakes having +booby-trapped Saint Petersburg. +Erich had that taut sadistic smile +he gets when he wants to hit me.</p> + +<p>The New Boy was in a tearing +rage. "Why'd you pull us out so +bloody fast? We fair chewed the +Nevsky Prospekt to pieces galloping +away."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you feel their stun guns, +<i>Dummkopf</i>, when they sprung the +trap—too soon, <i>Gott sei Dank</i>?" +Erich demanded.</p> + +<p>"I did," the New Boy told him. +"Not enough to numb a cat. Why +didn't you show us action?"</p> + +<p>"Shut up. I'm your leader. I'll +show you action enough."</p> + +<p>"You won't. You're a filthy Nazi +coward."</p> + +<p>"<i>Weibischer Engländer!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Bloody Hun!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Schlange!</i>"</p> + +<p>The blond lad knew enough +German to understand that last +crack. He threw back his sable-edged +pelisse to clear his sword +arm and he swung away from +Erich, which bumped him into +Beau. At the first sign of the quarrel, +Beau had raised himself from +the divan as quickly and silently +as a—no, I won't use that word—and +slithered over to them.</p> + +<p>"Sirs, you forget yourselves," he +said sharply, off balance, supporting +himself on the New Boy's upraised +arm. "This is Sidney Lessingham's +Place of Entertainment +and Recuperation. There are +ladies—"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">With</span> a contemptuous snarl, +the New Boy shoved him +off and snatched with his bare +hand for his saber. Beau reeled +against the divan, it caught him +in the shins and he fell toward +the Maintainers. Sid whisked them +out of the way as if they were a +couple of beach radios—simply +nothing in the Place is nailed down—and +had them back on the coffee +table before Beau hit the floor. +Meanwhile, Erich had his saber +out and had parried the New +Boy's first wild slash and lunged +in return, and I heard the scream +of steel and the rutch of his boot +on the diamond-studded pavement.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Beau</span> rolled over and came up +pulling from the ruffles of his +shirt bosom a derringer I knew +was some other weapon in disguise—a +stun gun or even an Atropos. +Besides scaring me damp for Erich +and everybody, that brought me +up short: us Entertainers' nerves +must be getting as naked as the +Soldiers', probably starting when +the Spiders canceled all cosmic +leaves twenty sleeps back.</p> + +<p>Sid shot Beau his look of command, +rapped out, "I'll handle this, +you whoreson firebrand," and +turned to the Minor Maintainer. I +noticed that the telltale on the +Major was glowing a reassuring +red again, and I found a moment +to thank Mamma Devi that the +Door was shut.</p> + +<p>Maud was jumping up and +down, cheering I don't know which—nor +did she, I bet—and the New +Girl was white and I saw that the +sabers were working more businesslike. +Erich's flicked, flicked, +flicked again and came away from +the blond lad's cheek spilling a +couple of red drops. The blond lad +lunged fiercely, Erich jumped back, +and the next moment they were +both floating helplessly in the air, +twisting like they had cramps.</p> + +<p>I realized quick enough that +Sid had shut off gravity in the +Door and Stores sectors of the +Place, leaving the rest of us firm +on our feet in the Refresher and +Surgery sectors. The Place has +sectional gravity to suit our Extraterrestrial +buddies—those crazy +ETs sometimes come whooping in +for recuperation in very mixed +batches.</p> + +<p>From his central position, Sid +called out, kindly enough but taking +no nonsense, "All right, lads, +you've had your fun. Now sheathe +those swords."</p> + +<p>For a second or so, the two +black hussars drifted and contorted. +Erich laughed harshly and neatly +obeyed—the commandant is used +to free fall. The blond lad stopped +writhing, hesitated while he glared +upside down at Erich and managed +to get his saber into its scabbard, +although he turned a slow +somersault doing it. Then Sid +switched on their gravity, slow +enough so they wouldn't get +sprained landing.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Erich</span> laughed, lightly this +time, and stepped out briskly +toward us. He stopped to clap the +New Boy firmly on the shoulder +and look him in the face.</p> + +<p>"So, now you get a good scar," +he said.</p> + +<p>The other didn't pull away, +but he didn't look up and Erich +came on. Sid was hurrying toward +the New Boy, and as he passed +Erich, he wagged a finger at him +and gayly said, "You rogue." Next +thing I was giving Erich my "Man, +you're home" hug and he was kissing +me and cracking my ribs and +saying, "<i>Liebchen! Doppchen!</i>"—which +was fine with me because +I do love him and I'm a good lover +and as much a Doubleganger as +he is.</p> + +<p>We had just pulled back from +each other to get a breath—his +blue eyes looked so sweet in his +worn face—when there was a +thud behind us. With the snapping +of the tension, Doc had fallen off +his bar stool and his top hat was +over his eyes. As we turned to +chuckle at him, Maud squeaked +and we saw that the Roman had +walked straight up against the +Void and was marching along there +steadily without gaining a foot, like +it does happen, his black uniform +melting into that inside-your-head +gray.</p> + +<p>Maud and Beau rushed over to +fish him back, which can be tricky. +The thin gambler was all courtly +efficiency again. Sid supervised +from a distance.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong with him?" I +asked Erich.</p> + +<p>He shrugged. "Overdue for +Change Shock. And he was nearest +the stun guns. His horse almost +threw him. <i>Mein Gott</i>, you should +have seen Saint Petersburg, <i>Liebchen</i>: +the Nevsky Prospekt, the +canals flying by like reception carpets +of blue sky, a cavalry troop +in blue and gold that blundered +across our escape, fine women in +furs and ostrich plumes, a monk +with a big tripod and his head under +a hood—it gave me the horrors +seeing all those Zombies flashing +past and staring at me in that +sick unawakened way they have, +and knowing that some of them, +say the photographer, might be +Snakes."</p> + +<p>Our side in the Change War is +the Spiders, the other side is the +Snakes, though all of us—Spiders +and Snakes alike—are Doublegangers +and Demons too, because +we're cut out of our lifelines in +the cosmos. Your lifeline is all of +you from birth to death. We're +Doublegangers because we can +operate both in the cosmos and +outside of it, and Demons because +we act reasonably alive while doing +so—which the Ghosts don't. +Entertainers and Soldiers are all +Demon-Doublegangers, whichever +side they're on—though they say +the Snake Places are simply ghastly. +Zombies are dead people whose +lifelines lie in the so-called past.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">"What</span> were you doing in +Saint Petersburg before the +ambush?" I asked Erich. "That is, +if you can talk about it."</p> + +<p>"Why not? We were kidnapping +the infant Einstein back from the +Snakes in 1883. Yes, the Snakes +got him, <i>Liebchen</i>, only a few +sleeps back, endangering the West's +whole victory over Russia—"</p> + +<p>"—which gave your dear little +Hitler the world on a platter for +fifty years and got me loved to +death by your sterling troops in +the Liberation of Chicago—"</p> + +<p>"—but which leads to the ultimate +victory of the Spiders and +the West over the Snakes and +Communism, <i>Liebchen</i>, remember +that. Anyway, our counter-snatch +didn't work. The Snakes had +guards posted—most unusual and +we weren't warned. The whole +thing was a great mess. No wonder +Bruce lost his head—not that +it excuses him."</p> + +<p>"The New Boy?" I asked. Sid +hadn't got to him and he was still +standing with hooded eyes where +Erich had left him, a dark pillar +of shame and rage.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ja</i>, a lieutenant from World +War One. An Englishman."</p> + +<p>"I gathered that," I told Erich. +"Is he really effeminate?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Weibischer?</i>" He smiled. "I had +to call him something when he +said I was a coward. He'll make +a fine Soldier—only needs a little +more shaping."</p> + +<p>"You men are so original when +you spat." I lowered my voice. +"But you shouldn't have gone on +and called him a Snake, Erich +mine."</p> + +<p>"<i>Schlange?</i>" The smile got +crooked. "Who knows—about any +of us? As Saint Petersburg showed +me, the Snakes' spies are getting +cleverer than ours." The blue eyes +didn't look sweet now. "Are you, +<i>Liebchen</i>, really nothing more than +a good loyal Spider?"</p> + +<p>"Erich!"</p> + +<p>"All right, I went too far—with +Bruce and with you too. We're +all hacked these days, riding with +one leg over the breaking edge."</p> + +<p>Maud and Beau were supporting +the Roman to a couch, Maud +taking most of his weight, with Sid +still supervising and the New Boy +still sulking by himself. The New +Girl should have been with him, +of course, but I couldn't see her +anywhere and I decided she was +probably having a nervous breakdown +in the Refresher, the little +jerk.</p> + +<p>"The Roman looks pretty bad, +Erich," I said.</p> + +<p>"Ah, Mark's tough. Got virtue, +as his people say. And our little +starship girl will bring him back +to life if anybody can and if ..."</p> + +<p>"... you call this living," I filled +in dutifully.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> was right. Maud had fifty-odd +years of psychomedical +experience, 23rd Century at that. +It should have been Doc's job, but +that was fifty drunks back.</p> + +<p>"Maud and Mark, that will be +an interesting experiment," Erich +said. "Reminiscent of Goering's +with the frozen men and the naked +gypsy girls."</p> + +<p>"You are a filthy Nazi. She'll be +using electrophoresis and deep suggestion, +if I know anything."</p> + +<p>"How will you be able to know +anything, <i>Liebchen</i>, if she switches +on the couch curtains, as I perceive +she is preparing to do?"</p> + +<p>"Filthy Nazi I said and meant."</p> + +<p>"Precisely." He clicked his heels +and bowed a millimeter. "Erich +Friederich von Hohenwald, <i>Oberleutnant</i> +in the army of the Third +Reich. Fell at Narvik, where he +was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline +lengthened by a Big Change +after his first death and at latest +report Commandant of Toronto, +where he maintains extensive baby +farms to provide him with breakfast +meat, if you believe the handbills +of the <i>voyageurs</i> underground. +At your service."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Erich, it's all so lousy," I +said, touching his hand, reminded +that he was one of the unfortunates +Resurrected from a point in their +lifelines well before their deaths—in +his case, because the date of +his death had been shifted forward +by a Big Change after his Resurrection. +And as every Demon finds +out, if he can't imagine it beforehand, +it is pure hell to remember +your future, and the shorter the +time between your Resurrection +and your death back in the cosmos, +the better. Mine, bless Bab-ed-Din, +was only an action-packed ten +minutes on North Clark Street.</p> + +<p>Erich put his other hand lightly +over mine. "Fortunes of the Change +War, <i>Liebchen</i>. At least I'm a +Soldier and sometimes assigned +to future operations—though why +we should have this monomania +about our future personalities back +there, I don't know. Mine is a +stupid <i>Oberst</i>, thin as paper—and +frightfully indignant at the <i>voyageurs</i>! +But it helps me a little if I +see him in perspective and at least +I get back to the cosmos pretty +regularly, <i>Gott sei Dank</i>, so I'm +better off than you Entertainers."</p> + +<p>I didn't say aloud that a Changing +cosmos is worse than none, but +I found myself sending a prayer to +the Bonny Dew for my father's +repose, that the Change Winds +would blow lightly across the lifeline +of Anton A. Forzane, professor +of physiology, born in Norway +and buried in Chicago. Woodlawn +Cemetery is a nice gray spot.</p> + +<p>"That's all right, Erich," I said. +"We Entertainers Got Mittens too."</p> + +<p>He scowled around at me suspiciously, +as if he were wondering +whether I had all my buttons on.</p> + +<p>"Mittens?" he said. "What do +you mean? I'm not wearing any. +Are you trying to say something +about Bruce's gloves—which incidentally +seem to annoy him for +some reason. No, seriously, Greta, +why do you Entertainers need +mittens?"</p> + +<p>"Because we get cold feet sometimes. +At least I do. Got Mittens, +as I say."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">A sickly</span> light dawned in his +Prussian puss. He muttered, +"Got mittens ... <i>Gott mit uns</i> ... +God with us," and roared softly, +"Greta, I don't know how I put up +with you, the way you murder +a great language for cheap laughs."</p> + +<p>"You've got to take me as I am," +I told him, "mittens and all, thank +the Bonny Dew—" and hastily explained, +"That's French—<i>le bon +Dieu</i>—the good God—don't hit +me. I'm not going to tell you any +more of my secrets."</p> + +<p>He laughed feebly, like he was +dying.</p> + +<p>"Cheer up," I said. "I won't be +here forever, and there are worse +places than the Place."</p> + +<p>He nodded grudgingly, looking +around. "You know what, Greta, +if you'll promise not to make some +dreadful joke out of it: on operations, +I pretend I'll soon be going +backstage to court the world-famous +ballerina Greta Forzane."</p> + +<p>He was right about the backstage +part. The Place is a regular +theater-in-the-round with the Void +for an audience, the Void's gray +hardly disturbed by the screens +masking Surgery (Ugh!), Refresher +and Stores. Between the +last two are the bar and kitchen +and Beau's piano. Between Surgery +and the sector where the +Door usually appears are the +shelves and taborets of the Art +Gallery. The control divan is stage +center. Spaced around at a fair +distance are six big low couches—one +with its curtains now shooting +up into the gray—and a few small +tables. It is like a ballet set and +the crazy costumes and characters +that turn up don't ruin the illusion. +By no means. Diaghilev would +have hired most of them for the +Ballet Russe on first sight, without +even asking them whether they +could keep time to music.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 2</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 11em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Last week in Babylon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Last night in Rome,<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="rgt">—Hodgson</div></div> + +<h3>A RIGHT-HAND GLOVE</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Beau</span> had gone behind the bar +and was talking quietly at +Doc, but with his eyes elsewhere, +looking very sallow and professional +in his white, and I thought—Damballa!—I'm +in the French +Quarter. I couldn't see the New +Girl. Sid was at last getting to +the New Boy after the fuss about +Mark. He threw me a sign and I +started over with Erich in tow.</p> + +<p>"Welcome, sweet lad. Sidney +Lessingham's your host, and a fellow +Englishman. Born in King's +Lynn, 1564, schooled at Cambridge, +but London was the life and death +of me, though I outlasted Bessie, +Jimmie, Charlie, and Ollie almost. +And what a life! By turns a clerk, +a spy, a bawd—the two trades +are hand in glove—a poet of no +account, a beggar, and a peddler of +resurrection tracts. Beau Lassiter, +our throats are tinder!"</p> + +<p>At the word "poet," the New +Boy looked up, but resentfully, +as if he had been tricked into it.</p> + +<p>"And to spare your throat for +drinking, sweet gallant, I'll be so +bold as to guess and answer one of +your questions," Sid rattled on. +"Yes, I knew Will Shakespeare—we +were of an age—and he was +such a modest, mind-your-business +rogue that we all wondered +whether he really did write those +plays. Your pardon, 'faith, but that +scratch might be looked to."</p> + +<p>Then I saw that the New Girl +hadn't lost her head, but gone to +Surgery (Ugh!) for a first-aid +tray. She reached a swab toward +the New Boy's sticky cheek, saying +rather shrilly, "If I might ..."</p> + +<p>Her timing was bad. Sid's last +words and Erich's approach had +darkened the look in the young +Soldier's face and he angrily swept +her arm aside without even glancing +at her. Erich squeezed my +arm. The tray clattered to the floor—and +one of the drinks that Beau +was bringing almost followed it. +Ever since the New Girl's arrival, +Beau had been figuring that she +was his responsibility, though I +don't think the two of them had +reached an agreement yet. Beau +was especially set on it because +I was thick with Sid at the time +and Maud with Doc, she loving +tough cases.</p> + +<p>"Easy now, lad, and you love +me!" Sid thundered, again shooting +Beau the "Hold it" look. "She's +just a poor pagan trying to comfort +you. Swallow your bile, you +black villain, and perchance it will +turn to poetry. Ah, did I touch +you there? Confess, you are a +poet."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">There</span> isn't much gets by Sid, +though for a second I forgot +my psychology and wondered if +he knew what he was doing with +his insights.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm a poet, all right," the +New Boy roared. "I'm Bruce Marchant, +you bloody Zombies. I'm +a poet in a world where even the +lines of the King James and your +precious Will whom you use for +laughs aren't safe from Snakes' +slime and the Spiders' dirty legs. +Changing our history, stealing our +certainties, claiming to be so blasted +all-knowing and best intentioned +and efficient, and what does it lead +to? This bloody SI glove!"</p> + +<p>He held up his black-gloved left +hand which still held the mate and +he shook it.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong with the Spider +Issue gauntlet, heart of gold?" Sid +demanded. "And you love us, tell +us." While Erich laughed, "Consider +yourself lucky, <i>Kamerad</i>. +Mark and I didn't draw any gloves +at all."</p> + +<p>"What's wrong with it?" Bruce +yelled. "The bloody things are +both lefts!" He slammed it down +on the floor.</p> + +<p>We all howled, we couldn't help +it. He turned his back on us and +stamped off, though I guessed he +would keep out of the Void. Erich +squeezed my arm and said between +gasps, "<i>Mein Gott, Liebchen</i>, +what have I always told you about +Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the +smaller the cause! It is infallible!"</p> + +<p>One of us didn't laugh. Ever +since the New Girl heard the name +Bruce Marchant, she'd had a look +in her eyes like she'd been given +the sacrament. I was glad she'd +got interested in something, because +she'd been pretty much of +a snoot and a wet blanket up until +now, although she'd come to +the Place with the recommendation +of having been a real whoopee +girl in London and New York in +the Twenties. She looked disapprovingly +at us as she gathered +up the tray and stuff, not forgetting +the glove, which she placed on +the center of the tray like a holy +relic.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Beau</span> cut over and tried to talk +to her, but she ghosted past him +and once again he couldn't do +anything because of the tray in his +hands. He came over and got rid +of the drinks quick. I took a big +gulp right away because I saw +the New Girl stepping through the +screen into Surgery and I hate +to be reminded we have it and +I'm glad Doc is too drunk to use +it, some of the Arachnoid surgical +techniques being very sickening +as I know only too well from a +personal experience that is number +one on my list of things to be +forgotten.</p> + +<p>By that time, Bruce had come +back to us, saying in a carefully +hard voice, "Look here, it's not +the dashed glove itself, as you very +well know, you howling Demons."</p> + +<p>"What is it then, noble heart?" +Sid asked, his grizzled gold beard +heightening the effect of innocent +receptivity.</p> + +<p>"It's the principle of the thing," +Bruce said, looking around sharply, +but none of us cracked a smile. +"It's this mucking inefficiency and +death of the cosmos—and don't tell +me that isn't in the cards!—masquerading +as benign omniscient authority. +The Spiders—and we don't +know who they are ultimately; it's +just a name; we see only agents +like ourselves—the Spiders pluck +us from the quiet graves of our +lifelines—"</p> + +<p>"Is that bad, lad?" Sid murmured, +innocently straight-faced.</p> + +<p>"—and Resurrect us if they can +and then tell us we must fight another +time-traveling power called +the Snakes—just a name, too—which +is bent on perverting and +enslaving the whole cosmos, past, +present and future."</p> + +<p>"And isn't it, lad?"</p> + +<p>"Before we're properly awake, +we're Recruited into the Big Time +and hustled into tunnels and burrows +outside our space-time, these +miserable closets, gray sacks, puss +pockets—no offense to this Place—that +the Spiders have created, maybe +by gigantic implosions, but no +one knows for certain, and then +we're sent off on all sorts of missions +into the past and future to +change history in ways that are +supposed to thwart the Snakes."</p> + +<p>"True, lad."</p> + +<p>"And from then on, the pace is +so flaming hot and heavy, the +shocks come so fast, our emotions +are wrenched in so many directions, +our public and private metaphysics +distorted so insanely, the +deepest thread of reality we cling +to tied in such bloody knots, that +we never can get things straight."</p> + +<p>"We've all felt that way, lad," +Sid said soberly; Beau nodded his +sleek death's head; "You should +have seen me, <i>Kamerad</i>, my first +fifty sleeps," Erich put in; while +I added, "Us girls, too, Bruce."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know I'll get hardened +to it, and don't think I can't. It's +not that," Bruce said harshly. "And +I wouldn't mind the personal confusion, +the mess it's made of my +spirit, I wouldn't even mind remaking +history and destroying +priceless, once-called imperishable +beauties of the past, if I felt it +were for the best. The Spiders +assure us that, to thwart the +Snakes, it is all-important that the +West ultimately defeat the East. +But what have they done to achieve +this? I'll give you some beautiful +examples. To stabilize power in +the early Mediterranean world, +they have built up Crete at the +expense of Greece, making Athens +a ghost city, Plato a trivial fabulist, +and putting all Greek culture +in a minor key."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">"You</span> got time for culture?" +I heard myself say and I +clapped my hand over my mouth +in gentle reproof.</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> remember the dialogues, +lad," Sid observed. "And +rail not at Crete—I have a sweet +Keftian friend."</p> + +<p>"For how long will I remember +Plato's dialogues? And who +after me?" Bruce challenged. +"Here's another. The Spiders want +Rome powerful and, to date, +they've helped Rome so much that +she collapses in a blaze of German +and Parthian invasions a few +years after the death of Julius +Caesar."</p> + +<p>This time it was Beau who +butted in. Most everybody in the +Place loves these bull sessions. +"You omit to mention, sir, that +Rome's newest downfall is directly +due to the Unholy Triple Alliance +the Snakes have fomented between +the Eastern Classical World, Mohammedanized +Christianity, and +Marxist Communism, trying to +pass the torch of power futurewards +by way of Byzantium and +the Eastern Church, without ever +letting it pass into the hands of +the Spider West. That, sir, +is the Snakes' Three-Thousand-Year +Plan which we are fighting +against, striving to revive Rome's +glories."</p> + +<p>"Striving is the word for it," +Bruce snapped. "Here's yet another +example. To beat Russia, the +Spiders kept England and America +out of World War Two, thereby +ensuring a German invasion of +the New World and creating a +Nazi empire stretching from the +salt mines of Siberia to the plantations +of Iowa, from Nizhni Novgorod +to Kansas City!"</p> + +<p>He stopped and my short hairs +prickled. Behind me, someone +was chanting in a weird spiritless +voice, like footsteps in hard snow.</p> + +<p>"<i>Salz, Salz, bringe Salz. Kein' +Peitsch', gnädige Herren. Salz, +Salz, Salz.</i>"</p> + +<p>I turned and there was Doc +waltzing toward us with little tiny +steps, bent over so low that the +ends of his shawl touched the +floor, his head crooked up sideways +and looking through us.</p> + +<p>I knew then, but Erich translated +softly. "'Salt, salt, I bring +salt. No whip, merciful sirs.' He +is speaking to my countrymen in +their language." Doc had spent +his last months in a Nazi-operated +salt mine.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> saw us and got up, straightening +his top hat very carefully. +He frowned hard while my +heart thumped half a dozen times. +Then his face slackened, he +shrugged his shoulders and muttered, +"<i>Nichevo</i>."</p> + +<p>"And it does not matter, sir," +Beau translated, but directing his +remark at Bruce. "True, great civilizations +have been dwarfed or +broken by the Change War. But +others, once crushed in the bud, +have bloomed. In the 1870s, I +traveled a Mississippi that had +never known Grant's gunboats. I +studied piano, languages, and the +laws of chance under the greatest +European masters at the University +of Vicksburg."</p> + +<p>"And you think your pipsqueak +steamboat culture is compensation +for—" Bruce began but, +"Prithee none of that, lad," Sid interrupted +smartly. "Nations are as +equal as so many madmen or +drunkards, and I'll drink dead +drunk the man who disputes me. +Hear reason: nations are not so +puny as to shrivel and vanish at +the first tampering with their past, +no, nor with the tenth. Nations are +monsters, boy, with guts of iron +and nerves of brass. Waste not +your pity on them."</p> + +<p>"True indeed, sir," Beau pressed, +cooler and keener for the attack on +his Greater South. "Most of us enter +the Change World with the +false metaphysic that the slightest +change in the past—a grain of +dust misplaced—will transform the +whole future. It is a long while +before we accept with our minds +as well as our intellects the law +of the Conservation of Reality: +that when the past is changed, the +future changes barely enough to +adjust, barely enough to admit the +new data. The Change Winds +meet maximum resistance always. +Otherwise the first operation in +Babylonia would have wiped out +New Orleans, Sheffield, Stuttgart, +and Maud Davies' birthplace on +Ganymede!</p> + +<p>"Note how the gap left by +Rome's collapse was filled by the +imperialistic and Christianized Germans. +Only an expert Demon historian +can tell the difference in +most ages between the former +Latin and the present Gothic +Catholic Church. As you yourself, +sir, said of Greece, it is as if an +old melody were shifted into a +slightly different key. In the wake +of a Big Change, cultures and individuals +are transposed, it's true, +yet in the main they continue +much as they were, except for the +usual scattering of unfortunate but +statistically meaningless accidents."</p> + +<p>"All right, you bloody savants—maybe +I pushed my point too far," +Bruce growled. "But if you want +variety, give a thought to the rotten +methods we use in our wonderful +Change War. Poisoning +Churchill and Cleopatra. Kidnapping +Einstein when he's a baby."</p> + +<p>"The Snakes did it first," I reminded +him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and we copied them. How +resourceful does that make us?" +he retorted, arguing like a woman. +"If we need Einstein, why don't +we Resurrect him, deal with him +as a man?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Beau</span> said, serving his culture +in slightly thicker slices, "<i>Pardonnez-moi</i>, +but when you have +enjoyed your status as Doubleganger +a <i>soupcon</i> longer, you will +understand that great men can +rarely be Resurrected. Their beings +are too crystallized, sir, their +lifelines too tough."</p> + +<p>"Pardon me, but I think that's +rot. I believe that most great men +refuse to make the bargain with +the Snakes, or with us Spiders +either. They scorn Resurrection +at the price demanded."</p> + +<p>"Brother, they ain't that great," +I whispered, while Beau glided +on with, "However that may be, +you have accepted Resurrection, +sir, and so incurred an obligation +which you as a gentleman must +honor."</p> + +<p>"I accepted Resurrection all +right," Bruce said, a glare coming +into his eyes. "When they pulled +me out of my line at Passchendaele +in '17 ten minutes before +I died, I grabbed at the offer of life +like a drunkard grabs at a drink +the morning after. But even then +I thought I was also seizing a +chance to undo historic wrongs, +work for peace." His voice was +getting wilder all the time. Just +beyond our circle, I noticed the +New Girl watching him worshipfully. +"But what did I find the +Spiders wanted me for? Only to +fight more wars, over and over +again, make them crueler and +stinkinger, cut the swath of death +a little wider with each Big Change, +work our way a little closer to +the death of the cosmos."</p> + +<p>Sid touched my wrist and, as +Bruce raved on, he whispered to +me, "What kind of ball, think you, +will please and so quench this fire-brained +rogue? And you love me, +discover it."</p> + +<p>I whispered back without taking +my eyes off Bruce either, "I know +somebody who'll be happy to put +on any kind of ball he wants, if +he'll just notice her."</p> + +<p>"The New Girl, sweetling? 'Tis +well. This rogue speaks like an +angry angel. It touches my heart +and I like it not."</p> + +<p>Bruce was saying hoarsely but +loudly, "And so we're sent on +operations in the past and from +each of those operations the +Change Winds blow futurewards, +swiftly or slowly according to the +opposition they breast, sometimes +rippling into each other, and any +one of those Winds may shift the +date of our own death ahead of the +date of our Resurrection, so that +in an instant—even here, outside +the cosmos—we may molder and +rot or crumble to dust and vanish +away. The wind with our name +in it may leak through the Door."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Faces</span> hardened at that, because +it's bad form to mention +Change Death, and Erich flared +out with, "<i>Halt's Maul, Kamerad!</i> +There's always another Resurrection."</p> + +<p>But Bruce didn't keep his mouth +shut. He said, "Is there? I know +the Spiders promise it, but even +if they do go back and cut another +Doubleganger from my lifeline, +is he me?" He slapped his +chest with his bare hand. "I don't +think so. And even if he is me, with +unbroken consciousness, why's he +been Resurrected again? Just to +refight more wars and face more +Change Death for the sake of an +almighty power—" his voice was +rising to a climax—"an almighty +power so bloody ineffectual, it +can't furnish one poor Soldier +pulled out of the mud of Passchendaele, +one miserable Change +Commando, one Godforsaken Recuperee +a proper issue of equipment!"</p> + +<p>And he held out his bare right +hand toward us, fingers spread a +little, as if it were the most amazing +object and most deserving of +outraged sympathy in the whole +world.</p> + +<p>The New Girl's timing was perfect. +She whisked through us, and +before he could so much as wiggle +the fingers, she whipped a black +gauntleted glove on it and anyone +could see that it fitted his hand +perfectly.</p> + +<p>This time our laughing beat the +other. We collapsed and slopped +our drinks and pounded each other +on the back and then started all +over.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ach, der Handschuh, Liebchen!</i> +Where'd she get it?" Erich gasped +in my ear.</p> + +<p>"Probably just turned the other +one inside out—that turns a left +into a right—I've done it myself," +I wheezed, collapsing again at the +idea.</p> + +<p>"That would put the lining outside," +he objected.</p> + +<p>"Then I don't know," I said. +"We got all sorts of junk in Stores."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter, <i>Liebchen</i>," +he assured me. "<i>Ach, der Handschuh!</i>"</p> + +<p>All through it, Bruce just stood +there admiring the glove, moving +the fingers a little now and then, +and the New Girl stood watching +him as if he were eating a cake +she'd baked.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">When</span> the hysteria quieted +down, he looked up at her +with a big smile. "What did you +say your name was?"</p> + +<p>"Lili," she said, and believe you +me, she was Lili to me even in +my thoughts from then on, for the +way she'd handled that lunatic.</p> + +<p>"Lilian Foster," she explained. +"I'm English also. Mr. Marchant, +I've read <i>A Young Man's Fancy</i> +I don't know how many times."</p> + +<p>"You have? It's wretched stuff. +From the Dark Ages—I mean my +Cambridge days. In the trenches, +I was working up some poems +that were rather better."</p> + +<p>"I won't hear you say that. But +I'd be terribly thrilled to hear the +new ones. Oh, Mr. Marchant, it +was so strange to hear you call it +Passiondale."</p> + +<p>"Why, if I may ask?"</p> + +<p>"Because that's the way I pronounce +it to myself. But I looked +it up and it's more like Pas-ken-DA-luh."</p> + +<p>"Bless you! All the Tommies +called it Passiondale, just as they +called Ypres Wipers."</p> + +<p>"How interesting. You know, +Mr. Marchant, I'll wager we were +Recruited in the same operation, +summer of 1917. I'd got to France +as a Red Cross nurse, but they +found out my age and were going +to send me back."</p> + +<p>"How old were you—are you? +Same thing, I mean to say."</p> + +<p>"Seventeen."</p> + +<p>"Seventeen in '17," Bruce murmured, +his blue eyes glassy.</p> + +<p>It was real corny dialogue and +I couldn't resent the humorous +leer Erich gave me as we listened +to them, as if to say, "Ain't it nice, +<i>Liebchen</i>, Bruce has a silly little +English schoolgirl to occupy him +between operations?"</p> + +<p>Just the same, as I watched Lili +in her dark bangs and pearl necklace +and tight little gray dress that +reached barely to her knees, and +Bruce hulking over her tenderly +in his snazzy hussar's rig, I knew +that I was seeing the start of something +that hadn't been part of me +since Dave died fighting Franco +years before I got on the Big Time, +the sort of thing that almost made +me wish there could be children +in the Change World. I wondered +why I'd never thought of trying +to work things so that Dave got +Resurrected and I told myself: +no, it's all changed, I've changed, +better the Change Winds don't disturb +Dave or I know about it.</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't die in 1917—I +was merely Recruited then," Lili +was telling Bruce. "I lived all +through the Twenties, as you can +see from the way I dress. But let's +not talk about that, shall we? Oh, +Mr. Marchant, do you think you +can possibly remember any of +those poems you started in the +trenches? I can't fancy them bettering +your sonnet that concludes +with, 'The bough swings in the +wind, the night is deep; Look at +the stars, poor little ape, and +sleep.'"</p> + +<p>That one almost made me +whoop—what monkeys we are, I +thought—though I'd be the first to +admit that the best line to use on +a poet is one of his own—in fact, +as many as possible. I decided I +could safely forget our little Britons +and devote myself to Erich or +whatever needed me.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 3</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Hell is the place for me. For to +Hell go the fine churchmen, and +the fine knights, killed in the +tourney or in some grand war, +the brave soldiers and the gallant +gentlemen. With them will +I go. There go also the fair +gracious ladies who have lovers +two or three beside their lord. +There go the gold and the silver, +the sables and ermine. There +go the harpers and the minstrels +and the kings of the earth.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Aucassin</div></div> + +<h3>NINE FOR A PARTY</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I exchanged</span> my drink for +a new one from another tray +Beau was bringing around. The +gray of the Void was beginning +to look real pleasant, like warm +thick mist with millions of tiny +diamonds floating in it. Doc was +sitting grandly at the bar with a +steaming tumbler of tea—a chaser, +I guess, since he was just putting +down a shot glass. Sid was talking +to Erich and laughing at the same +time and I said to myself it begins +to feel like a party, but something's +lacking.</p> + +<p>It wasn't anything to do with +the Major Maintainer; its telltale +was glowing a steady red like a +nice little home fire amid the tight +cluster of dials that included all +the controls except the lonely and +frightening Introversion switch that +was never touched. Then Maud's +couch curtains winked out and +there were she and the Roman +sitting quietly side by side.</p> + +<p>He looked down at his shiny +boots and the rest of his black +duds like he was just waking up +and couldn't believe it all, and he +said, "<i>Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur +in illis</i>," and I raised my +eyebrows at Beau, who was taking +the tray back, and he did proud +by old Vicksburg by translating: +"All things change and we change +with them."</p> + +<p>Then Mark slowly looked +around at us, and I can testify that +a Roman smile is just as warm as +any other nationality, and he finally +said, "We are nine, the proper +number for a party. The couches, +too. It is good."</p> + +<p>Maud chuckled proudly and +Erich shouted, "Welcome back +from the Void, <i>Kamerad</i>," and +then, because he's German and +thinks all parties have to be noisy +and satirically pompous, he jumped +on a couch and announced, "<i>Herren +und Damen</i>, permit me to introduce +the noblest Roman of +them all, Marcus Vipsaius Niger, +legate to Nero Claudius (called +Germanicus in a former time +stream) and who in 763 <span class="smcap">A.U.C.</span> +(Correct, Mark? It means 10 <span class="smcap">A.D.</span>, +you meatheads!) died bravely +fighting the Parthians and the +Snakes in the Battle of Alexandria. +<i>Hoch, hoch, hoch!</i>"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">We</span> all swung our glasses and +cheered with him and Sid +yelled at Erich, "Keep your feet +off the furniture, you unschooled +rogue," and grinned and boomed +at all three hussars, "Take your +ease, Recuperees," and Maud and +Mark got their drinks, the Roman +paining Beau by refusing Falernian +wine in favor of scotch and +soda, and right away everyone was +talking a mile a minute.</p> + +<p>We had a lot to catch up on. +There was the usual yak about the +war—"The Snakes are laying mine +fields in the Void," "I don't believe +it, how can you mine nothing?"—and +the shortages—bourbon, bobby +pins, and the stabilitin that would +have brought Mark out of it faster—and +what had become of people—"Marcia? +Oh, she's not around +any more," (She'd been caught in +a Change Gale and green and +stinking in five seconds, but I +wasn't going to say that)—and +Mark had to be told about Bruce's +glove, which convulsed us all over +again, and the Roman remembered +a legionary who had carried a gripe +all the way to Octavius because +he'd accidentally been issued the +unbelievable luxury item sugar instead +of the usual salt, and Erich +asked Sid if he had any new Ghostgirls +in stock and Sid sucked his +beard like the old goat he is. "Dost +thou ask me, lusty Allemand? Nay, +there are several great beauties, +amongst them an Austrian countess +from Strauss's Vienna, and if it +were not for sweetling here ... +Mnnnn."</p> + +<p>I poked a finger in Erich's chest +between two of the bright buttons +with their tiny death's heads. "You, +my little von Hohenwald, are a +menace to us real girls. You have +too much of a thing about the unawakened, +ghost kind."</p> + +<p>He called me his little Demon +and hugged me a bit too hard to +prove it wasn't so, and then he +suggested we show Bruce the Art +Gallery. I thought this was a real +brilliant idea, but when I tried to +argue him out of it, he got stubborn. +Bruce and Lili were willing +to do anything anyone wanted +them to, though not so willing to +pay any attention while doing it. +The saber cut was just a thin red +line on his cheek; she'd washed +away all the dried blood.</p> + +<p>The Gallery gets you, though. +It's a bunch of paintings and sculptures +and especially odd knick-knacks, +all made by Soldiers recuperating +here, and a lot of them +telling about the Change War from +the stuff they're made of—brass +cartridges, flaked flint, bits of ancient +pottery glued into futuristic +shapes, mashed-up Incan gold +rebeaten by a Martian, whorls of +beady Lunan wire, a picture in +tempera on a crinkle-cracked thick +round of quartz that had filled a +starship porthole, a Sumerian inscription +chiseled into a brick from +an atomic oven.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">There</span> are a lot of things in +the Gallery and I can always +find some I haven't ever seen before. +It gets you, as I say, thinking +about the guys that made them +and their thoughts and the far +times and places they came from, +and sometimes, when I'm feeling +low, I'll come and look at them so +I'll feel still lower and get inspired +to kick myself back into a good +temper. It's the only history of the +Place there is and it doesn't change +a great deal, because the things +in it and the feelings that went into +them resist the Change Winds better +than anything else.</p> + +<p>Right now, Erich's witty lecture +was bouncing off the big ears +I hide under my pageboy bob and +I was thinking how awful it is that +for us that there's not only change +but Change. You don't know from +one minute to the next whether a +mood or idea you've got is really +new or just welling up into you +because the past has been altered +by the Spiders or Snakes.</p> + +<p>Change Winds can blow not +only death but anything short of +it, down to the featheriest fancy. +They blow thousands of times +faster than time moves, but no +one can say how much faster or +how far one of them will travel +or what damage it'll do or how +soon it'll damp out. The Big Time +isn't the little time.</p> + +<p>And then, for the Demons, +there's the fear that our personality +will just fade and someone else +climb into the driver's seat and us +not even know. Of course, we Demons +are supposed to be able to +remember through Change and +in spite of it; that's why we are +Demons and not Ghosts like the +other Doublegangers, or merely +Zombies or Unborn and nothing +more, and as Beau truly said, there +aren't any great men among us—and +blamed few of the masses, +either—we're a rare sort of people +and that's why the Spiders have +to Recruit us where they find us +without caring about our previous +knowledge and background, a Foreign +Legion of time, a strange kind +of folk, bright but always in the +background, with built-in nostalgia +and cynicism, as adaptable as +Centaurian shape-changers but +with memories as long as a Lunan's +six arms, a kind of Change People, +you might say, the cream of the +damned.</p> + +<p>But sometimes I wonder if our +memories are as good as we think +they are and if the whole past +wasn't once entirely different from +anything we remember, and we've +forgotten that we forgot.</p> + +<p>As I say, the Gallery gets you +feeling real low, and so now I +said to myself, "Back to your lousy +little commandant, kid," and gave +myself a stiff boot.</p> + +<p>Erich was holding up a green +bowl with gold dolphins or spaceships +on it and saying, "And, to +my mind, this proves that Etruscan +art is derived from Egyptian. Don't +you agree, Bruce?"</p> + +<p>Bruce looked up, all smiles from +Lili, and said, "What was that, +dear chap?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Erich's</span> forehead got dark as +the Door and I was glad the +hussars had parked their sabers +along with their shakos, but before +he could even get out a Jerry cussword, +Doc breezed up in that +plateau-state of drunkenness so +like hypnotized sobriety, moving +as if he were on a dolly, ghosted +the bowl out of Erich's hand, said, +"A beautiful specimen of Middle +Systemic Venusian. When Eightaitch +finished it, he told me you +couldn't look at it and not feel +the waves of the Northern Venusian +Shallows rippling around your +hoofs. But it might look better inverted. +I wonder. Who are you, +young officer? <i>Nichevo</i>," and he +carefully put the bowl back on its +shelf and rolled on.</p> + +<p>It's a fact that Doc knows the +Art Gallery better than any of us, +really by heart, he being the oldest +inhabitant, though he maybe picked +a bad time to show off his knowledge. +Erich was going to take out +after him, but I said, "Nix, <i>Kamerad</i>, +remember gloves and +sugar," and he contented himself +with complaining, "That <i>nichevo</i>—it's +so gloomy and hopeless, <i>ungeheuerlich</i>. +I tell you, <i>Liebchen</i>, +they shouldn't have Russians working +for the Spiders, not even as +Entertainers."</p> + +<p>I grinned at him and squeezed +his hand. "Not much entertainment +in Doc these days, is there?" I +agreed.</p> + +<p>He grinned back at me a shade +sheepishly and his face smoothed +and his blue eyes looked sweet +again for a second and he said, "I +shouldn't want to claw out at people +that way, Greta, but at times +I am just a jealous old man," +which is not entirely true, as he +isn't a day over thirty-three, although +his hair is nearly white.</p> + +<p>Our lovers had drifted on a few +steps until they were almost fading +into the Surgery screen. It was +the last spot I would have picked +for the formal preliminaries to a +little British smooching, but Lili +probably didn't share my prejudices, +though I remembered she'd +told me she'd served a brief hitch +in an Arachnoid Field Hospital before +being transferred to the Place.</p> + +<p>But she couldn't have had anything +like the experience I'd had +during my short and sour career +as a Spider nurse, when I'd acquired +my best-hated nightmare +and flopped completely (jobwise, +but on the floor, too) at seeing a +doctor flick a switch and a being, +badly injured but human, turn +into a long cluster of glistening +strange fruit—ugh, it always makes +me want to toss my cookies and +my buttons. And to think that dear +old Daddy Anton wanted his Greta +chile to be a doctor.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Well</span>, I could see this wasn't +getting me anywhere I wanted +to go, and after all there was a +party going on.</p> + +<p>Doc was babbling something at +a great rate to Sid—I just hoped +Doc wouldn't get inspired to go +into his animal imitations, which +sound pretty fierce and once seriously +offended some recuperating +ETs.</p> + +<p>Maud was demonstrating to +Mark a 23rd Century two-step and +Beau sat down at the piano and +improvised softly on her rhythm.</p> + +<p>As the deep-thrumming relaxing +notes hit us, Erich's face brightened +and he dragged me over. +Pleasantly soon I had my feet off +the diamond-rough floor, which we +don't carpet because most of the +ETs, the dear boys, like it hard, +and I was shouldering back deep +into the couch nearest the piano, +with cushions all around me and a +fresh drink in my hand, while my +Nazi boy friend was getting ready +to discharge his <i>Weltschmerz</i> as +song, which didn't alarm me too +much, as his baritone is passable.</p> + +<p>Things felt real good, like the +Maintainer was just idling to keep +the Place in existence and moored +to the cosmos, not exerting itself +at all or at most taking an occasional +lazy paddle stroke. At times +the Place's loneliness can be happy +and comfortable.</p> + +<p>Then Beau raised an eyebrow +at Erich, who nodded, and next +thing they were launched into a +song we all know, though I've +never found out where it originally +came from. This time it made me +think of Lili, and I wondered why—and +why it's a tradition at Recuperation +Stations to call the new +girl Lili, though in this case it happened +to be her real name.</p> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 27em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Standing in the Doorway just outside of space,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Winds of Change blow 'round you but don't touch your face;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>You smile as you whisper tenderly,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>"Please cross to me, Recuperee;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The operation's over, come in and close the Door."</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 4</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In fractured atoms.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="rgt">—Eliot</div></div> + +<h3>SOS FROM NOWHERE</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I realized</span> the piano had deserted +Erich and I cranked my +head up and saw Beau, Maud and +Sid streaking for the control divan. +The Major Maintainer was blinking +emergency-green and fast, but +the code was plain enough for even +me to recognize the Spider distress +call and for a second I felt +just sick. Then Erich blew out his +reserve breath in the middle of +"Door" and I gave myself another +of those helpful mental boots at +the base of the spine and we hurried +after them toward the center +of the Place along with Mark.</p> + +<p>The blinks faded as we got there +and Sid told us not to move because +we were making shadows. +He glued an eye to the telltale and +we held still as statues as he +caressed the dials like he was making +love.</p> + +<p>One sensitive hand flicked out +past the Introversion switch over +to the Minor Maintainer and right +away the Place was dark as your +soul and there was nothing for me +but Erich's arm and the knowledge +that Sid was nursing a green +light I couldn't even see, although +my eyes had plenty time to accommodate.</p> + +<p>Then the green light finally +came back very slowly and I could +see the dear reliable old face—the +green-gold beard making him look +like a merman—and then the telltale +flared bright and Sid flicked +on the Place lights and I leaned +back.</p> + +<p>"That nails them, lads, whoever +and whenever they may be. Get +ready for a pick-up."</p> + +<p>Beau, who was closest of course, +looked at him sharply. Sid shrugged +uneasily. "Meseemed at first it was +from our own globe a thousand +years before our Lord, but that indication +flickered and faded like +witchfire. As it is, the call comes +from something smaller than the +Place and certes adrift from the +cosmos. Meseemed too at one +point I knew the fist of the caller—an +antipodean atomicist named +Benson-Carter—but that likewise +changed."</p> + +<p>Beau said, "We're not in the +right phase of the cosmos-Places +rhythm for a pick-up, are we, sir?"</p> + +<p>Sid answered, "Ordinarily not, +boy."</p> + +<p>Beau continued, "I didn't think +we had any pick-ups scheduled. +Or stand-by orders."</p> + +<p>Sid said, "We haven't."</p> + +<p>Mark's eyes glowed. He tapped +Erich on the shoulder. "An octavian +denarius against ten Reichsmarks +it is a Snake trap."</p> + +<p>Erich's grin showed his teeth. +"Make it first through the Door +next operation and I'm on."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">It</span> didn't take that to tell me +things were serious, or the +thought that there's always a first +time for bumping into something +from really outside the cosmos. +The Snakes have broken our code +more than once. Maud was quietly +serving out weapons and Doc +was helping her. Only Bruce and +Lili stood off. But they were watching.</p> + +<p>The telltale brightened. Sid +reached toward the Maintainer, +saying, "All right, my hearties. Remember, +through this Doorway +pass the fishiest finaglers in and out +of the cosmos."</p> + +<p>The Door appeared to the left +and above where it should be and +darkened much too fast. There +was a gust of stale salt seawind, +if that makes sense, but no +stepped-up Change Winds I could +tell—and I had been bracing myself +against them. The Door got +inky and there was a flicker of gray +fur whips and a flash of copper +flesh and gilt and something dark +and a clump of hoofs and Erich +was sighting a stun gun across his +left forearm, and then the Door +had vanished like that and a tentacled +silvery Lunan and a Venusian +satyr were coming straight +toward us.</p> + +<p>The Lunan was hugging a pile +of clothes and weapons. The satyr +was helping a wasp-waisted woman +carry a heavy-looking bronze chest. +The woman was wearing a short +skirt and high-collared bolero +jacket of leather so dark brown it +was almost black. She had a two-horned +<i>petsofa</i> hairdress and she +was boldly gilded here and there +and wore sandals and copper +anklets and wristlets—one of them +a copper-plated Caller—and from +her wide copper belt hung a short-handled +double-headed ax. She +was dark-complexioned and her +forehead and chin receded, but the +effect was anything but weak; she +had a face like a beautiful arrowhead—and +a familiar one, by golly!</p> + +<p>But before I could say, "Kabysia +Labrys," Maud shrilly beat me +to it with, "It's Kaby with two +friends. Break out a couple of +Ghostgirls."</p> + +<p>And then I saw it really was +old-home week because I recognized +my Lunan boy friend Ilhilihis, +and in the midst of all the confusion +I got a nice kick out of +knowing I was getting so I could +tell the personality of one silver-furred +muzzle from another.</p> + +<p>They reached the control divan +and Illy dumped his load and +the others let down the chest, and +Kaby staggered but shook off the +two ETs when they started to support +her, and she looked daggers +at Sid when he tried to do the +same, although she's his "sweet +Keftian friend" he'd mentioned to +Bruce.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">She</span> leaned straight-armed on +the divan and took two gasping +breaths so deep that the ridges +of her spine showed through her +brown-skinned waist, and then she +threw up her head and commanded, +"Wine!"</p> + +<p>While Beau was rushing it, Sid +tried to take her hand again, saying, +"Sweetling, I'd never heard +you call before and knew not this +pretty little fist," but she ripped +out, "Save your comfort for the +Lunan," and I looked and saw—Hey, +Zeus!—that one of Ilhilihis' +six tentacles was lopped off halfway.</p> + +<p>That was for me, and, going to +him, I fast briefed myself: "Remember, +he only weighs fifty +pounds for all he's seven feet high; +he doesn't like low sounds or to +be grabbed; the two legs aren't tentacles +and don't act the same; uses +them for long walks, tentacles for +leaps; uses tentacles for close vision +too and for manipulation, of +course; extended, they mean he's +at ease; retracted, on guard or +nervous; sharply retracted, disgusted; +greeting—"</p> + +<p>Just then, one of them swept +across my face like a sweet-smelling +feather duster and I said, "Illy, +man, it's been a lot of sleeps," and +brushed my fingers across his muzzle. +It still took a little self-control +not to hug him, and I did +reach a little cluckingly for his +lopped tentacle, but he wafted it +away from me and the little voice-box +belted to his side squeaked, +"Naughty, naughty. Papa will fix +his little old self. Greta girl, ever +bandaged even a Terra octopus?"</p> + +<p>I had, an intelligent one from +around a quarter billion <span class="smcap">A.D.</span>, but I +didn't tell him so. I stood and let +him talk to the palm of my hand +with one of his tentacles—I don't +savvy feather-talk but it feels good, +though I've often wondered who +taught him English—and watched +him use a couple others to whisk +a sort of Lunan band-aid out of +his pouch and cap his wound with +it.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the satyr knelt over +the bronze chest, which was decorated +with little death's heads and +crosses with hoops at the top and +swastikas, but looking much older +than Nazi, and the satyr said to +Sid, "Quick thinkin, Gov, when +ya saw the Door comin in high n +soffened up gravty unner it, but +cud I hav sum hep now?"</p> + +<p>Sid touched the Minor Maintainer +and we all got very light +and my stomach did a flip-flop +while the satyr piled on the chest +the clothes and weapons that Illy +had been carrying and pranced +off with it all and carefully put it +down at the end of the bar. I decided +the satyr's English instructor +must have been quite a character, +too. Wish I'd met him—her—it.</p> + +<p>Sid thought to ask Illy if he +wanted Moon-normal gravity in +one sector, but my boy likes to +mix, and being such a lightweight, +Earth-normal gravity doesn't +bother him. As he said to me +once, "Would Jovian gravity bother +a beetle, Greta girl?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I asked</span> Illy about the satyr +and he squeaked that his name +was Sevensee and that he'd never +met him before this operation. I +knew the satyrs were from a billion +years in the future, just as +the Loonies were from a billion in +the past, and I thought—Kreesed +us!—but it must have been a real +big or emergency-like operation to +have the Spiders using those two +for it, with two billion years between +them—a time-difference that +gives you a feeling of awe for a +second, you know.</p> + +<div class="figc" style="width: 600px;"><img src="images/002.png" width="600" height="528" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<p>I started to ask Illy about it, but +just then Beau came scampering +back from the bar with a big red-and-black +earthenware goblet of +wine—we try to keep a variety of +drinking tools in stock so folks +will feel more at home. Kaby +grabbed it from him and drained +most of it in one swallow and then +smashed it on the floor. She does +things like that, though Sid's tried +to teach her better. Then she stared +at what she was thinking about +until the whites showed all around +her eyes and her lips pulled way +back from her teeth and she looked +a lot less human than the two ETs, +just like a fury. Only a time traveler +knows how like the wild +murals and engravings of them +some of the ancients can look.</p> + +<p>My hair stood up at the screech +she let out. She smashed a fist into +the divan and cried, "Goddess! +Must I see Crete destroyed, revived, +and now destroyed again? +It is too much for your servant."</p> + +<p>Personally, I thought she could +stand anything.</p> + +<p>There was a rush of questions +at what she said about Crete—I +asked one of them, for the news +certainly frightened me—but she +shot up her arm straight for silence +and took a deep breath and began.</p> + +<p>"In the balance hung the battle. +Rowing like black centipedes, the +Dorian hulls bore down on our +outnumbered ships. On the bright +beach, masked by rocks, Sevensee +and I stood by the needle gun, +ready to give the black hulls silent +wounds. Beside us was Ilhilihis, +suited as a sea monster. But +then ... then ..."</p> + +<p>Then I saw she wasn't altogether +the iron babe, for her voice +broke and she started to shake +and to sob rackingly, although her +face was still a mask of rage, and +she threw up the wine. Sid stepped +in and made her stop, which I think +he'd been wanting to do all along.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 5</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Whenever I take up a newspaper +and read it, I fancy I see +ghosts creeping between the +lines. There must be ghosts all +over the world. They must be +as countless as the grains of the +sands, it seems to me.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Ibsen</div></div> + +<h3>SID INSISTS ON +GHOSTGIRLS</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">My</span> Elizabethan boy friend put +his fists on his hips and laid +down the law to us as if we were +a lot of nervous children who'd +been playing too hard.</p> + +<p>"Look you, masters, this is a Recuperation +Station and I am running +it as such. A plague of all +operations! I care not if the frame +of things disjoints and the whole +Change World goes to ruin, but +you, warrior maid, are going to +rest and drink more wine slowly +before you tell your tale and your +colleagues are going to be properly +companioned. No questions, anyone. +Beau, and you love us, give +us a lively tune."</p> + +<p>Kaby relaxed a little and let +him put his hand carefully against +her back in token of support and +she said grudgingly, "All right, Fat +Belly."</p> + +<p>Then, so help me, to the tune +of the Muskrat Ramble, which I'd +taught Beau, we got girls for those +two ETs and everybody properly +paired up.</p> + +<p>Right here I want to point out +that a lot of the things they say +in the Change World about Recuperation +Stations simply aren't so—and +anyway they always leave +out nine-tenths of it. The Soldiers +that come through the Door are +looking for a good time, sure, but +they're hurt real bad too, every +one of them, deep down in their +minds and hearts, if not always in +their bodies or so you can see it +right away.</p> + +<p>Believe me, a temporal operation +is no joke, and to start with, +there isn't one person in a hundred +who can endure to be cut from his +lifeline and become a really wide-awake +Doubleganger—a Demon, +that is—let alone a Soldier. What +does a badly hurt and mixed-up +creature need who's been fighting +hard? <i>One individual</i> to look out +for him and feel for him and patch +him up, and it helps if the one is +of the opposite sex—that's something +that goes beyond species.</p> + +<p>There's your basis for the Place +and the wild way it goes about its +work, and also for most other Recuperation +Stations or Entertainment +Spots. The name Entertainer +can be misleading, but I like it. +She's got to be a lot more than a +good party girl—or boy—though +she's got to be that too. She's got +to be a nurse and a psychologist +and an actress and a mother and +a practical ethnologist and a lot +of things with longer names—and a +reliable friend.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">None</span> of us are all those things +perfectly or even near it. We +just try. But when the call comes, +Entertainers have to forget grudges +and gripes and envies and jealousies—and +remember, they're lively +people with sharp emotions—because +there isn't any time then +for anything but <i>help and don't +ask who</i>!</p> + +<p>And, deep inside her, a good +Entertainer doesn't care who. Take +the way it shaped up this time. +It was pretty clear to me I ought +to shift to Illy, although I wasn't +quite easy in my mind about leaving +Erich, because the Lunan was +a long time from home and, after +all, Erich was among anthropoids. +Ilhilihis needed someone who was +<i>simpatico</i>.</p> + +<p>I like Illy and not just because +he is a sort of tall cross between +a spider monkey and a persian cat—though +that is a handsome combo +when you come to think of it. +I like him for himself. So when +he came in all lopped and shaky +after a mean operation, I was the +right person to look out for him. +Now I've made my little speech +and know-nothings in the Change +World can go on making their +bum jokes. But I ask you, how +could an arrangement between Illy +and me be anything but Platonic?</p> + +<p>We might have had some octopoid +girls and nymphs in stock—Sid +couldn't be sure until he +checked—but Ilhilihis and Sevensee +voted for real people and I +knew Sid saw it their way. Maud +squeezed Mark's hand and tripped +over to Sevensee ("Those are +sharp hoofs you got, man"—she's +picked up some of my language, +like she has everything else), +though Beau did frown over his +shoulder at Lili from the piano, +maybe to argue that she ought to +take on the ET, as Mark had been +a real casualty and could use live +nursing. But it was plain as day +to anybody but Beau that Bruce +and Lili were a big thing and the +last to be disturbed.</p> + +<p>Erich acted stiffly hurt at losing +me, but I knew he wasn't. He +thinks he has a great technique with +Ghostgirls and he likes to show +it off, and he really is pretty slick +at it, if you go for that sort of +thing and—yang my yin!—who +doesn't at times?</p> + +<p>And when Sid formally wafted +the Countess out of Stores—a real +blonde stunner in a white satin +hobble skirt with a white egret +swaying up from her tiny hat, way +ahead of Maud and Lili and me +when it came to looks, though +transparent as cigarette smoke—and +when Erich clicked his heels +and bowed over her hand and +proudly conducted her to a couch, +black Svengali to her Trilby, and +started to German-talk some life +into her with much head cocking +and toothy smiling and a flow of +witty flattery, and when she began +to flirt back and the dream +look in her eyes sharpened hungrily +and focused on him—well, +then I knew that Erich was happy +and felt he was doing proud by the +<i>Reichswehr</i>. No, my little commandant +wasn't worrying me on +that score.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Mark</span> had drawn a Greek +hetaera, name of Phryne; I +suppose not the one who maybe +still does the famous courtroom +striptease back in Athens, and he +was waking her up with little sips +of his scotch and soda, though, +from some looks he'd flashed, I +got the idea Kaby was the kid he +really went for. Sid was coaxing +the fighting gal to take some high-energy +bread and olives along with +the wine, and, for a wonder, Doc +seemed to be carrying on an animated +and rational conversation +with Sevensee and Maud, maybe +comparing notes on the Northern +Venusian Shallows, and Beau had +got on to Panther Rag, and Bruce +and Lili were leaning on the piano, +smiling very appreciatively, but +talking to each other a mile a +minute.</p> + +<p>Illy turned back from inspecting +them all and squeaked, "Animals +with clothes are so refreshing, dahling! +Like you're all carrying banners!"</p> + +<p>Maybe he had something there, +though my banners were kind of +Ash Wednesday, a charcoal gray +sweater and skirt. He looked at +my mouth with a tentacle to see +how I was smiling and he squeaked +softly, "Do I seem dull and commonplace +to you, Greta girl, because +I haven't got banners? Just +another Zombie from a billion +years in your past, as gray and +lifeless as Luna is today, not as +when she was a real dreamy sister +planet simply bursting with air +and water and feather forests. Or +am I as strangely interesting to +you as you are to me, girl from a +billion years in my future?"</p> + +<p>"Illy, you're sweet," I told him, +giving him a little pat. I noticed +his fur was still vibrating nervously +and I decided the heck with +Sid's orders, I'm going to pump +him about what he was doing with +Kaby and the satyr. Couldn't have +him a billion years from home and +bottled up, too. Besides, I was +curious.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 6</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Maiden, Nymph, and Mother +are the eternal royal Trinity of +the island, and the Goddess, who +is worshipped there in each of +these aspects, as New Moon, +Full Moon, and Old Moon, is +the sovereign Deity.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Graves</div></div> + +<h3>CRETE CIRCA 1300 B.C.</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Kaby</span> pushed back at Sid some +seconds of bread and olives, +and, when he raised his bushy eyebrows, +gave him a curt nod that +meant she knew what she was doing. +She stood up and sort of took +a position. All the talk quieted +down fast, even Bruce's and Lili's. +Kaby's face and voice weren't +strained now, but they weren't relaxed +either.</p> + +<p>"Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! +Heavy is the news I bring you. +Bear it bravely, like strong women. +When we got the gun unlimbered, +I heard seaweed fry and +crackle. We three leaped behind +the rock wall, saw our gun grow +white as sunlight in a heat-ray of +the Serpents! Natch, we feared we +were outnumbered and I called +upon my Caller."</p> + +<div class="figc" style="width: 600px;"><img src="images/003.png" width="600" height="393" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<p>I don't know how she does it, +but she does—in English too. +That is, when she figures she's got +something important to report, and +maybe she needs a little time to +get ready.</p> + +<p>Beau claims that all the ancients +fit their thoughts into measured +lines as naturally as we pick +a word that will do, but I'm not +sure how good the Vicksburg language +department is. Though why +I should wonder about things like +that when I've got Kaby spouting +the stuff right in front of me, +I don't know.</p> + +<p>"But I didn't die there, kiddos. +I still hoped to hurt the Greek +ships, maybe with the Snake's own +heat gun. So I quick tried to outflank +them. My two comrades +crawled beside me—they are males, +but they have courage. Soon we +spied the ambush-setters. They +were Snakes and they were many, +filthily disguised as Cretans."</p> + +<p>There was an indignant murmur +at this, for our cutthroat +Change War has its code, the Soldiers +tell me. Being an Entertainer, +I don't have to say what +I think.</p> + +<p>"They had seen us when we +saw them," Kaby swept on, "and +they loosed a killing volley. Heat- and +knife-rays struck about us in +a storm of wind and fire, and the +Lunan lost a feeler, fighting for +Crete's Triple Goddess. So we +dodged behind a sand hill, steered +our flight back toward the water. +It was awful, what we saw there: +Crete's brave ships all sunk or +sinking, blue sky sullied by their +death-smoke. Once again the +Greeks had licked us!—aided by +the filthy Serpents.</p> + +<p>"Round our wrecks, their black +ships scurried, like black beetles, +filth their diet, yet this day they +dine on heroes. On the quiet sunlit +beach there, I could feel a +Change Gale blowing, working +changes deep inside me, aches and +pains that were a stranger's. Half +my memories were doubled, half +my lifeline crooked and twisted, +three new moles upon my sword-hand. +Goddess, Goddess, Triple +Goddess—"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Her</span> voice wavered and Sid +reached out a hand, but she +straightened her back.</p> + +<p>"Triple Goddess, give me courage +to tell everything that happened. +We ran down into the water, hoping +to escape by diving. We had +hardly gotten under when the heat-rays +hit above us, turning all the +cool green surface to a roaring +white inferno. But as I believe I +told you, I was calling on my +Caller, and a Door now opened to +us, deep below the deadly steam-clouds. +We dived in like frightened +minnows and a lot of water with +us."</p> + +<p>Off Chicago's Gold Coast, Dave +once gave me a lesson in skin-diving +and, remembering it, I got +a flash of Kaby's Door in the dark +depths.</p> + +<p>"For a moment, all was chaos. +Then the Door slammed shut behind +us. We'd been picked up in +time's nick by—an Express Room +of our Spiders!—sloshing two feet +deep in water, much more cramped +for space than this Place. It was +manned by a magician, an old coot +named Benson-Carter. He dispelled +the water quickly and reported on +his Caller. We'd got dry, were +feeling human, Illy here had shed +his swimsuit, when we looked at +the Maintainer. It was glowing, +changing, melting! And when Benson-Carter +touched it, he fell backward—death +was in him. Then +the Void began to darken, narrow, +shrink and close around us, so I +called upon my Caller—without +wasting time, let me tell you!</p> + +<p>"We can't say for sure what was +it slowly squeezed that sweet Express +Room, but we fear the dirty +Snakes have found a way to find +our Places and attack outside the +cosmos!—found the Spiderweb that +links us in the Void's gray less-than-nothing."</p> + +<p>No murmur this time. This reaction +was genuine; we'd been hit +where we lived and I could see +everybody was scared as sick as +I was. Except maybe Bruce and +Lili, who were still holding hands +and beaming gently. I decided they +were the kind that love makes +brave, which it doesn't do to me. +It just gives me two people to +worry about.</p> + +<p>"I can see you dig our feelings," +Kaby continued. "This thing +scared the pants off of us. If we +could have, we'd have even Introverted +the Maintainer, broken all +the ties that bind us, chanced it +incommunicado. But the little old +Maintainer was a seething red-hot +puddle filled with bubbles big +as handballs. We sat tight and +watched the Void close. I kept +calling on my Caller."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I squeezed</span> my eyes shut, but +that made it easier to see the +three of them with the Void shutting +down on them. (Was ours +still behaving? Yes, Bibi Miriam.) +Poetry or no poetry, it got me.</p> + +<p>"Benson-Carter, lying dying, +also thought the Snakes had done +it. And he knew that death was +in him, so he whispered me his +mission, giving me precise instructions: +how to press the seven +death's hands, starting lockside +counterclockwise, one, three, five, +six, two, four, seven, then you have +a half an hour; after you have +pressed the seven, do not monkey +with the buttons—get out fast +and don't stop moving."</p> + +<p>I wasn't getting this part and I +couldn't see that anyone else was, +though Bruce was whispering to +Lili. I remembered seeing skulls +engraved on the bronze chest. I +looked at Illy and he nodded a +tentacle and spread two to say, I +guessed, that yes, Benson-Carter +had said something like that, but +no, Illy didn't know much about +it.</p> + +<p>"All these things and more he +whispered," Kaby went on, "with +the last gasps of his life-force, telling +all his secret orders—for he'd +not been sent to get us, he was +on a separate mission, when he +heard my SOSs. Sid, it's you he +was to contact, as the first leg of +his mission, pick up from you +three black hussars, death's-head +Demons, daring Soldiers, then to +wait until the Places next match +rhythm with the cosmos—matter of +two mealtimes, barely—and to tune +in northern Egypt in the age of the +last Caesar, in the year of Rome's +swift downfall, there to start an +operation in a battle near a city +named for Thrace's Alexander, +there to change the course of battle, +blow sky-high the stinking Serpents, +all their agents, all their +Zombies!</p> + +<p>"Goddess, pardon, now I savvy +how you've guided my least footstep, +when I thought you'd gone +and left me—for I flubbed your +three-mole signal. We've found +Sid's Place, that's the first leg, and +I see the three black hussars, and +we've brought with us the weapon +and the Parthian disguises, salvaged +from the doomed Express +Room when your Door appeared +in time's nick, and the Room around +us closing spewed us through before +it vanished with the corpse of Benson-Carter. +Triple Goddess, draw +the milk now from the womanhood +I flaunt here and inject the +blackest hatred! Vengeance now +upon the Serpents, vengeance +sweet in northern Egypt, for your +island, Crete, Goddess!—and a victory +for the Spiders! Goddess, +Goddess, we can swing it!"</p> + +<p>The roar that made me try to +stop my ears with my shoulders +didn't come from Kaby—she'd +spoken her piece—but from Sid. +The dear boy was purple enough +to make me want to remind him +you can die of high blood pressure +just as easy in the Change World.</p> + +<p>"Dump me with ops! 'Sblood, +I'll not endure it! Is this a battle +post? They'll be mounting operations +from field hospitals next. +Kabysia Labrys, thou art mad to +suggest it. And what's this prattle +of locks, clocks, and death's heads, +buttons and monkeys? This brabble, +this farrago, this hocus-pocus! +And where's the weapon you prate +of? In that whoreson bronze casket, +I suppose."</p> + +<p>She nodded, looking blank and +almost a little shy as poetic possession +faded from her. Her answer +came like its faltering last +echo.</p> + +<p>"It is nothing but a tiny tactical +atomic bomb."</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 7</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>After about 0.1 millisecond (one +ten-thousandth part of a second) +has elapsed, the radius of the +ball of fire is some 45 feet, and +the temperature is then in the +vicinity of 300,000 degrees Centigrade. +At this instant, the luminosity, +as observed at a distance +of 100,000 yards (5.7 +miles), is approximately 100 +times that of the sun as seen at +the earth's surface ... the ball +of fire expands very rapidly to +its maximum radius of 450 feet +within less than a second from +the explosion.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Los Alamos</div></div> + +<h3>TIME TO THINK</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Brother</span>, that was all we +needed to make everybody +but Kaby and the two ETs start +yelping at once, me included. It +may seem strange that Change +People, able to whiz through time +and space and roust around outside +the cosmos and knowing at +least by hearsay of weapons a billion +years in the future, like the +Mindbomb, should panic at being +shut in with a little primitive +mid-20th Century gadget. Well, +they feel the same as atomic scientists +would feel if a Bengal tiger +were brought into their laboratory, +neither more nor less scared.</p> + +<p>I'm a moron at physics, but I +do know the Fireball is bigger than +the Place. Remember that, besides +the bomb, we'd recently been presented +with a lot of other fears we +hadn't had time to cope with, especially +the business of the Snakes +having learned how to get at our +Places and melt the Maintainers +and collapse them. Not to mention +the general impression—first Saint +Petersburg, then Crete—that the +whole Change War was going +against the Spiders.</p> + +<p>Yet, in a free corner of my +mind, I was shocked at how badly +we were all panicking. It made +me admit what I didn't like to: +that we were all in pretty much +the same state as Doc, except that +the bottle didn't happen to be our +out.</p> + +<p>And had the rest of us been +controlling our drinking so well +lately?</p> + +<p>Maud yelled, "Jettison it!" and +pulled away from the satyr and +ran from the bronze chest. Beau, +harking back to what they'd +thought of doing in the Express +Room when it was too late, hissed, +"Sirs, we must Introvert," and +vaulted over the piano bench and +legged it for the control divan. +Erich seconded him with a white-faced +"<i>Gott in Himmel, ja!</i>" from +beside the surly, forgotten Countess, +holding, by its slim stem, an +empty, rose-stained wine glass.</p> + +<p>I felt my mind flinch, because +Introverting a Place is several degrees +worse than foxholing. It's +supposed not only to keep the +Door tight shut, but also to lock +it so even the Change Winds can't +get through—cut the Place loose +from the cosmos altogether.</p> + +<p>I'd never talked with anyone +from a Place that had been Introverted.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Mark</span> dumped Phryne off his +lap and ran after Maud. The +Greek Ghostgirl, quite solid now, +looked around with sleepy fear +and fumbled her apple-green +chiton together at the throat. She +wrenched my attention away from +everyone else for a moment, and +I couldn't help wondering whether +the person or Zombie back in the +cosmos, from whose lifeline the +Ghost has been taken, doesn't at +least have strange dreams or +thoughts when something like this +happens.</p> + +<p>Sid stopped Beau, though he almost +got bowled over doing it, and +he held the gambler away from +the Maintainer in a bear hug and +bellowed over his shoulders, +"Masters, are you mad? Have you +lost your wits? Maud! Mark! Marcus! +Magdalene! On your lives, unhand +that casket!"</p> + +<p>Maud had swept the clothes +and bows and quivers and stuff +off it and was dragging it out from +the bar toward the Door sector, +so as to dump it through fast when +we got one, I guess, while Mark +acted as if he were trying to help +her and wrestle it away from her +at the same time.</p> + +<p>They kept on as if they hadn't +heard a word Sid said, with Mark +yelling, "Let go, <i>meretrix</i>! This +holds Rome's answer to Parthia +on the Nile."</p> + +<p>Kaby watched them as if she +wanted to help Mark but scorned +to scuffle with a mere—well, +Mark had said it in Latin, I guess—call +girl.</p> + +<p>Then, on the top of the bronze +chest, I saw those seven lousy +skulls starting at the lock as plain +as if they'd been under a magnifying +glass, though ordinarily +they'd have been a vague circle +to my eyes at the distance, and I +lost my mind and started to run +in the opposite direction, but Illy +whipped three tentacles around +me, gentle-like, and squeaked, +"Easy now, Greta girl, don't you +be doing it, too. Hold still or Papa +spank. My, my, but you two-leggers +can whirl about when you +have a mind to."</p> + +<p>My stampede had carried his +featherweight body a couple of +yards, but it stopped me and I +got my mind back, partly.</p> + +<p>"Unhand it, I say!" Sid repeated +without accomplishing anything, +and he released Beau, though he +kept a hand near the gambler's +shoulder.</p> + +<p>Then my fat friend from Lynn +Regis looked real distraught at +the Void and blustered at no one +in particular, "'Sdeath, think you +I'd mutiny against my masters, +desert the Spiders, go to ground +like a spent fox and pull my hole +in after me? A plague of such +cowardice! Who suggests it? Introversion's +no mere last-ditch device. +Unless ordered, supervised +and sanctioned, it means the end. +And what if I'd Introverted ere +we got Kaby's call for succor, +hey?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">His</span> warrior maid nodded with +harsh approval and he noticed +it and shook his free hand at +her and scolded her, "Not that I +say yea to your mad plan for that +Devil's casket, you half-clad lackwit. +And yet to jettison.... Oh, ye +gods, ye gods—" he wiped his hand +across his face—"grant me a minute +in which I may think!"</p> + +<p>Thinking time wasn't an item +even on the strictly limited list +at the moment, although Sevensee, +squatting dourly on his hairy +haunches where Maud had left +him, threw in a dead-pan "Thas +tellin em, Gov."</p> + +<p>Then Doc at the bar stood up +tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat +and shawl and 19th Century duds +and raised an unwavering arm for +silence and said something that +sounded like: "Introversh, inversh, +glovsh," and then his enunciation +switched to better than perfect as +he continued, "I know to an absolute +certainty what we must do."</p> + +<p>It showed me how rabbity we +were that the Place got quiet as a +church while we all stopped whatever +we were doing and waited +breathless for a poor drunk to +tell us how to save ourselves.</p> + +<p>He said something like, "Inversh +... bosh ..." and held our +eyes for a moment longer. Then +the light went out of his and he +slobbered out a "<i>Nichevo</i>" and +slid an arm far along the bar for +a bottle and started to pour it +down his throat without stopping +sliding.</p> + +<p>Before he completed his collapse +to the floor, in the split second +while our attention was still +focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted +up on top of it, so fast it was almost +like he'd popped up from +nowhere, though I'd seen him start +from behind the piano.</p> + +<p>"I've a question. Has anyone +here triggered that bomb?" he said +in a voice that was very clear and +just loud enough. "So it can't go +off," he went on after just the +right pause, his easy grin and brisk +manner putting more heart into me +all the time. "What's more, if it +were to be triggered, we'd still have +half an hour. I believe you said +it had that long a fuse?"</p> + +<p>He stabbed a finger at Kaby. +She nodded.</p> + +<p>"Right," he said. "It'd have to +be that long for whoever plants it +in the Parthian camp to get away. +There's another safety margin.</p> + +<p>"Second question. Is there a +locksmith in the house?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">For</span> all Bruce's easiness, he was +watching us like a golden eagle +and he caught Beau's and Maud's +affirmatives before they had a +chance to explain or hedge them +and said, "That's very good. Under +certain circumstances, you two'd +be the ones to go to work on the +chest. But before we consider that, +there's Question Three: Is anyone +here an atomics technician?"</p> + +<p>That one took a little conversation +to straighten out, Illy having +to explain that, yes, the Early Lunans +had atomic power—hadn't +they blasted the life off their planet +with it and made all those ghastly +craters?—but no, he wasn't a technician +exactly, he was a "thinger" +(I thought at first his squeakbox +was lisping); what was a thinger?—well, +a thinger was someone who +manipulated things in a way that +was truly impossible to describe, +but no, you couldn't possibly thing +atomics; the idea was quite ridiculous, +so he couldn't be an atomics +thinger; the term was worse than +a contradiction, well, really!—while +Sevensee, from his two-thousand-millennia +advantage of the Lunan, +grunted to the effect that his culture +didn't rightly use any kind +of power, but just sort of moved +satyrs and stuff by wrastling space-time +around, "or think em roun ef +we hafta. Can't think em in the +Void, tho, wus luck. Hafta have—I +dunno wut. Dun havvit anyhow."</p> + +<p>"So we don't have an A-tech," +Bruce summed up, "which makes it +worse than useless, downright dangerous, +to tamper with the chest. +We wouldn't know what to do if +we did get inside safely. One more +question." He directed it toward +Sid. "How long before we can jettison +anything?"</p> + +<p>Sid, looking a shade jealous, yet +mostly grateful for the way Bruce +had calmed his chickens, started to +explain, but Bruce didn't seem to +be taking any chance of losing his +audience, and as soon as Sid got +to the word "rhythm," he pulled +the answer away from him.</p> + +<p>"In brief, not until we can effectively +tune in on the cosmos +again. Thank you, Master Lessingham. +That's at least five hours—two +mealtimes, as the Cretan officer +put it," and he threw Kaby a +quick soldierly smile. "So, whether +the bomb goes to Egypt or elsewhere, +there's not a thing we can +do about it for five hours. All right +then!"</p> + +<p>His smile blinked out like a +light and he took a couple of steps +up and down the bar, as if measuring +the space he had. Two or three +cocktail glasses sailed off and +popped, but he didn't seem to notice +them and we hardly did either. +It was creepy the way he kept +staring from one to another of us. +We had to look up. Behind his +face, with the straight golden hair +flirting around it, was only the +Void.</p> + +<p>"All right then," he repeated suddenly. +"We're twelve Spiders and +two Ghosts, and we've time for a +bit of a talk, and we're all in the +same bloody boat, fighting the +same bloody war, so we'll all know +what we're talking about. I raised +the subject a while back, but I +was steamed up about a glove, and +it was a big jest. All right! But +now the gloves are off!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Bruce</span> ripped them out of his +belt where they'd been tucked +and slammed them down on the +bar, to be kicked off the next time +he paced back and forth, and it +wasn't funny.</p> + +<p>"Because," he went right on, +"I've been getting a completely +new picture of what this Spiders' +war has been doing to each one +of us. Oh, it's jolly good sport to +slam around in space and time and +then have a rugged little party +outside both of them when the +operation's over. It's sweet to know +there's no cranny of reality so narrow, +no privacy so intimate or +sacred, no wall of was or will be +strong enough, that we can't shoulder +in. Knowledge is a glamorous +thing, sweeter than lust or gluttony +or the passion of fighting and +including all three, the ultimate +insatiable hunger, and it's great +to be Faust, even in a pack of +other Fausts.</p> + +<p>"It's sweet to jigger reality, to +twist the whole course of a man's +life or a culture's, to ink out his +or its past and scribble in a new +one, and be the only one to know +and gloat over the changes—hah! +killing men or carrying off women +isn't in it for glutting the sense of +power. It's sweet to feel the Change +Winds blowing through you and +know the pasts that were and the +past that is and the pasts that may +be. It's sweet to wield the Atropos +and cut a Zombie or Unborn out +of his lifeline and look the Doubleganger +in the face and see the +Resurrection-glow in it and Recruit +a brother, welcome a newborn fellow +Demon into our ranks and decide +whether he'll best fit as Soldier, +Entertainer, or what.</p> + +<p>"Or he can't stand Resurrection, +it fries or freezes him, and you've +got to decide whether to return +him to his lifeline and his Zombie +dreams, only they'll be a little +grayer and horrider than they were +before, or whether, if she's got that +tantalizing something, to bring her +shell along for a Ghostgirl—that's +sweet, too. It's even sweet to have +Change Death poised over your +neck, to know that the past isn't +the precious indestructible thing +you've been taught it was, to know +that there's no certainty about the +future either, whether there'll even +be one, to know that no part of +reality is holy, that the cosmos itself +may wink out like a flicked switch +and God be not and nothing left +but nothing!"</p> + +<p>He threw out his arms against +the Void. "And knowing all that, +it's doubly sweet to come through +the Door into the Place and be +out of the worst of the Change +Winds and enjoy a well-earned +Recuperation and share the memories +of all these sweetnesses I've +been talking about, and work out +all the fascinating feelings you've +been accumulating back in the cosmos, +layer by black layer, in the +company of and with the help of +the best bloody little band of fellow +Fausts and Faustines going!</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's a sweet life, all right, but +I'm asking you—" and here his eyes +stabbed us again, one by one, fast—"I'm +asking you what it's done +to us. I've been getting a completely +new picture, as I said, of what +my life was and what it could have +been if there'd been changes of the +sort that even we Demons can't +make, and what my life is. I've +been watching how we've all been +responding to things just now, to +the news of Saint Petersburg and +to what the Cretan officer told +beautifully—only it wasn't beautiful +what she had to tell—and mostly +to that bloody box of bomb. +And I'm simply asking each one +of you, what's happened to you?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> stopped his pacing and +stuck his thumbs in his belt +and seemed to be listening to the +wheels turning in at least eleven +other heads—only I stopped mine +pretty quick, with Dave and +Father and the Rape of Chicago +coming up out of the dark on the +turn and Mother and the Indiana +Dunes and Jazz Limited just behind +them, followed by the unthinkable +thing the Spider doctor +had flicked into existence when I +flopped as a nurse, because I can't +stand that to be done to my mind +by anybody but myself.</p> + +<p>I stopped them by using the old +infallible Entertainers' gimmick, a +fast survey of the most interesting +topic there is—other people's +troubles.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Offhand</span>, Beau looked as if he +had most troubles, shamed +by his boss and his girl given her +heart to a Soldier; he was hugging +them to himself very quiet.</p> + +<p>I didn't stop for the two ETs—they're +too hard to figure—or for +Doc; nobody can tell whether a +fallen-down drunk's at the black +or bright end of his cycle; you +just know it's cycling.</p> + +<p>Maud ought to be suffering as +much as Beau, called names and +caught out in a panic, which always +hurts her because she's plus +three hundred years more future +than the rest of us and figures she +ought to be that much wiser, which +she isn't always—not to mention +she's over fifty years old, though +her home-century cosmetic science +keeps her looking and acting teenage +most of the time. She'd backed +away from the bronze chest so as +not to stand out, and now Lili came +from behind the piano and stood +beside her.</p> + +<p>Lili had the opposite of troubles, +a great big glow for Bruce, proud +as a promised princess watching +her betrothed. Erich frowned when +he saw her, for he seemed proud +too, proud of the way his <i>Kamerad</i> +had taken command of us panicky +whacks <i>Führer</i>-fashion. Sid still +looked mostly grateful and inclined +to let Bruce keep on talking.</p> + +<p>Even Kaby and Mark, those +two dragons hot for battle, standing +a little in front and to one side +of us by the bronze chest, like its +guardians, seemed willing to listen. +They made me realize one reason +Sid had for letting Bruce run on, +although the path his talk was leading +us down was flashing with danger +signals: When it was over, +there'd still be the problem of what +to do with the bomb, and a real +opposition shaping up between Soldiers +and Entertainers, and Sid +was hoping a solution would turn +up in the meantime or at least was +willing to put off the evil day.</p> + +<p>But beyond all that, and like the +rest of us, I could tell from the +way Sid was squinting his browy +eyes and chewing his beardy lip +that he was shaken and moved by +what Bruce had said. This New +Boy had dipped into our hearts +and counted our kicks so beautifully, +better than most of us could +have done, and then somehow +turned them around so that we had +to think of what messes and heels +and black sheep and lost lambs +we were—well, we wanted to keep +on listening.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 8</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Give me a place to stand, +and I will move the world.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Archimedes</div></div> + +<h3>A PLACE TO STAND</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Bruce's</span> voice had a faraway +touch and he was looking up +left at the Void as he said, "Have +you ever really wondered why the +two sides of this war are called +the Snakes and the Spiders? +Snakes may be clear enough—you +always call the enemy something +dirty. But Spiders—our name for +ourselves? Bear with me, Ilhilihis; +I know that no being is created +dirty or malignant by Nature, but +this is a matter of anthropoid feelings +and folkways. Yes, Mark, I +know that some of your legions +have nicknames like the Drunken +Lions and the Snails, and that's +about as insulting as calling the +British Expeditionary Force the +Old Contemptibles.</p> + +<p>"No, you'd have to go to bands +of vicious youths in cities slated +for ruin to find a habit of naming +like ours, and even they would try +to brighten up the black a bit. +But simply—Spiders. And Snakes, +for that's their name for themselves +too, you know. Spiders and Snakes. +What are our masters, that we give +them names like that?"</p> + +<p>It gave me the shivers and set +my mind working in a dozen directions +and I couldn't stop it, although +it made the shivers worse.</p> + +<p>Illy beside me now—I'd never +given it a thought before, but he +did have eight legs of a sort, and +I remembered thinking of him as +a spider monkey, and hadn't the +Lunans had wisdom and atomic +power and a billion years in which +to get the Change War rolling?</p> + +<p>Or suppose, in the far future, +Terra's own spiders evolved intelligence +and a cruel cannibal culture. +They'd be able to keep their +existence secret. I had no idea of +who or what would be on Earth +in Sevensee's day, and wouldn't +it be perfect black hairy poisoned +spider-mentality to spin webs secretly +through the world of thought +and all of space and time?</p> + +<p>And Beau—wasn't there something +real Snaky about him, the +way he moved and all?</p> + +<p>Spiders and Snakes. <i>Spinne und +Schlange</i>, as Erich called them. +S & S. But SS stood for the Nazi +<i>Schutzstaffel</i>, the Black Shirts, and +what if some of those cruel, crazy +Jerries had discovered time travel +and—I brought myself up with +a jerk and asked myself, "Greta, +how nuts can you get?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">From</span> where he was on the +floor, the front of the bar his +sounding board, Doc shrieked up +at Bruce like one of the damned +from the pit, "Don't speak against +the Spiders! Don't blaspheme! +They can hear the Unborn whisper. +Others whip only the skin, but +they whip the naked brain and +heart," and Erich called out, +"That's enough, Bruce!"</p> + +<p>But Bruce didn't spare him a +look and said, "But whatever the +Spiders are and no matter how +much whip they use, it's plain as +the telltale on the Maintainer that +the Change War is not only going +against them, but getting away +from them. Dwell for a bit on the +current flurry of stupid slugging +and panicky anachronism, when +we all know that anachronism is +what gets the Change Winds out +of control. This punch-drunk +pounding on the Cretan-Dorian +fracas as if it were the only battle +going and the only way to work +things. Whisking Constantine from +Britain to the Bosporus by rocket, +sending a pocket submarine back +to sail with the Armada against +Drake's woodensides—I'll wager +you hadn't heard those! And now, +to save Rome, an atomic bomb.</p> + +<p>"Ye gods, they could have used +Greek fire or even dynamite, but +a fission weapon.... I leave you +to imagine what gaps and scars +that will make in what's left of history—the +smothering of Greece +and the vanishment of Provence +and the troubadours and the Papacy's +Irish Captivity won't be in it!"</p> + +<p>The cut on his cheek had +opened again and was oozing a +little, but he didn't pay any attention +to it, and neither did we, as +his lips thinned in irony and he +said, "But I'm forgetting that this +is a cosmic war and that the +Spiders are conducting operations +on billions, trillions of planets and +inhabited gas clouds through millions +of ages and that we're just +one little world—one little solar +system, Sevensee—and we can hardly +expect our inscrutable masters, +with all their pressing preoccupations +and far-flung responsibilities, +to be especially understanding or +tender in their treatment of our pet +books and centuries, our favorite +prophets and periods, or unduly +concerned about preserving any of +the trifles that we just happen to +hold dear.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps there are some sentimentalists +who would rather die +forever than go on living in a +world without the <i>Summa</i>, the +Field Equations, <i>Process and +Reality</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, Matthew, Keats, +and the <i>Odyssey</i>, but our masters +are practical creatures, ministering +to the needs of those rugged +souls who want to go on living +no matter what."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Erich's</span> "Bruce, I'm telling +you that's enough," was lost +in the quickening flow of the New +Boy's words. "I won't spend much +time on the minor signs of our +major crack-up—the canceling of +leaves, the sharper shortages, the +loss of the Express Room, the use +of Recuperation Stations for ops +and all the other frantic patchwork—last +operation but one, we were +saddled with three Soldiers from +outside the Galaxy and, no fault +of theirs, they were no earthly +use. Such little things might happen +at a bad spot in any war and +are perhaps only local. But there's +a big thing."</p> + +<p>He paused again, to let us wonder, +I guess. Maud must have +worked her way over to me, for I +felt her dry little hand on my +arm and she whispered out of the +side of her mouth, "What do we +do now?"</p> + +<p>"We listen," I told her the same +way. I felt a little impatient with +her need to be doing something +about things.</p> + +<p>She cocked a gold-dusted eyebrow +at me and murmured, "You, +too?"</p> + +<p>I didn't get to ask her me, too, +what? Crush on Bruce? Nuts!—because +just then Bruce's voice +took up again in the faraway range.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever asked yourselves +how many operations the +fabric of history can stand before +it's all stitches, whether too much +Change won't one day wear out +the past? And the present and the +future, too, the whole bleeding +business. Is the law of the Conservation +of Reality any more than +a thin hope given a long name, a +prayer of theoreticians? Change +Death is as certain as Heat Death, +and far faster. Every operation +leaves reality a bit cruder, a bit +uglier, a bit more makeshift, and +a whole lot less rich in those details +and feelings that are our +heritage, like the crude penciled +sketch on canvas when you've +stripped off the paint.</p> + +<p>"If that goes on, won't the cosmos +collapse into an outline of +itself, then nothing? How much +thinning can reality stand, having +more and more Doublegangers cut +out of it? And there's another +thing about every operation—it +wakes up the Zombies a little more, +and as its Change Winds die, it +leaves them a little more disturbed +and nightmare-ridden and frazzled. +Those of you who have been on +operations in heavily worked-over +temporal areas will know what I +mean—that look they give you out +of the sides of their eyes as if to +say, 'You again? For Christ's sake, +go away. We're the dead. We're the +ones who don't want to wake up, +who don't want to be Demons and +hate to be Ghosts. Stop torturing +us.'"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I looked</span> around at the Ghostgirls; +I couldn't help it. They'd +somehow got together on the control +divan, facing us, their backs +to the Maintainers. The Countess +had dragged along the bottle of +wine Erich had fetched her earlier +and they were passing it back and +forth. The Countess had a big +rose splotch across the ruffled +white lace of her blouse.</p> + +<p>Bruce said, "There'll come a day +when all the Zombies and all the +Unborn wake up and go crazy together +and figuratively come +marching at us in their numberless +hordes, saying, 'We've had +enough.'"</p> + +<p>But I didn't turn back to Bruce +right away. Phryne's chiton had +slipped off one shoulder and she +and the Countess were sitting +sagged forward, elbows on knees, +legs spread—at least, as far as the +Countess's hobble skirt would let +her—and swayed toward each other +a little. They were still surprisingly +solid, although they hadn't +had any personal attention for a +half hour, and they were looking +up over my head with half-shut +eyes and they seemed, so help me, +to be listening to what Bruce was +saying and maybe hearing some of +it.</p> + +<p>"We make a careful distinction +between Zombies and Unborn, between +those troubled by our operations +whose lifelines lie in the past +and those whose lifelines lie in the +future. But is there any distinction +any longer? Can we tell the +difference between the past and +the future? Can we any longer +locate the now, the real now of the +cosmos? The Places have their +own nows, the now of the Big +Time we're on, but that's different +and it's not made for real living.</p> + +<p>"The Spiders tell us that the +real now is somewhere in the last +half of the 20th Century, which +means that several of us here are +also alive in the cosmos, have lifelines +along which the now is traveling. +But do you swallow that story +quite so easily, Ilhilihis, Sevensee? +How does it strike the servants of +the Triple Goddess? The Spiders +of Octavian Rome? The Demons +of Good Queen Bess? The gentlemen +Zombies of the Greater +South? Do the Unborn man the +starships, Maud?</p> + +<p>"The Spiders also tell us that, +although the fog of battle makes +the now hard to pin down precisely, +it will return with the unconditional +surrender of the Snakes +and the establishment of cosmic +peace, and roll on as majestically +toward the future as before, quickening +the continuum with its passage. +Do you really believe that? +Or do you believe, as I do, that +we've used up all the future as +well as the past, wasted it in premature +experience, and that we've +had the real now smudged out of +existence, stolen from us forever, +the precious now of true growth, +the child-moment in which all life +lies, the moment like a newborn +baby that is the only home for +hope there is?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> let that start to sink in, +then took a couple of quick +steps and went on, his voice rising +over Erich's "Bruce, for the last +time—" and seeming to pick up a +note of hope from the very word +he had used, "But although things +look terrifyingly black, there remains +a chance—the slimmest +chance, but still a chance—of +saving the cosmos from Change +Death and restoring reality's richness +and giving the Ghosts good +sleep and perhaps even regaining +the real now. We have the means +right at hand. What if the power +of time traveling were used not +for war and destruction, but for +healing, for the mutual enrichment +of the ages, for quiet communication +and growth, in brief, to bring +a peace message—"</p> + +<p>But my little commandant is +quite an actor himself and knows +a wee bit about the principles of +scene-stealing, and he was not going +to let Bruce drown him out +as if he were just another extra +playing a Voice from the Mob. +He darted across our front, between +us and the bar, took a running +leap, and landed bang on the +bloody box of bomb.</p> + +<p>A bit later, Maud was silently +showing me the white ring above +her elbow where I'd grabbed her +and Illy was teasing a clutch of his +tentacles out of my other hand +and squeaking reproachfully, +"Greta girl, don't ever do that."</p> + +<p>Erich was standing on the chest +and I noticed that his boots carefully +straddled the circle of skulls, +and I should have known anyway +you could hardly push them in +the right order by jumping on +them, and he was pointing at +Bruce and saying, "—and that +means mutiny, my young sir. <i>Um +Gottes willen</i>, Bruce, listen to me +and step down before you say +anything worse. I'm older than +you, Bruce. Mark's older. Trust +in your <i>Kameraden</i>. Guide yourself +by their knowledge."</p> + +<p>He had got my attention, but I +had much rather have him black +my eye.</p> + +<p>"You older than me?" Bruce +was grinning. "When your twelve-years' +advantage was spent in +soaking up the wisdom of a race +of sadistic dreamers gone paranoid, +in a world whose thought-stream +had already been muddied +by one total war? Mark older than +me? When all his ideas and loyalties +are those of a wolf pack of +unimaginative sluggers two thousand +years younger than I am? +Either of you older because you +have more of the killing cynicism +that is all the wisdom the Change +World ever gives you? Don't make +me laugh!</p> + +<p>"I'm an Englishman, and I come +from an epoch when total war was +still a desecration and the flowers +and buds of thoughts not yet +whacked off or blighted. I'm a +poet and poets are wiser than anyone +because they're the only people +who have the guts to think and +feel at the same time. Right, Sid? +When I talk to all of you about a +peace message, I want you to think +about it concretely in terms of +using the Places to bring help +across the mountains of time when +help is really needed, not to bring +help that's undeserved or knowledge +that's premature or contaminating, +sometimes not to bring anything +at all, but just to check with +infinite tenderness and concern +that everything's safe and the +glories of the universe unfolding +as they were intended to—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are a poet, Bruce," +Erich broke in. "You can tootle +soulfully on the flute and make +us drip tears. You can let out the +stops on the big organ pipes and +make us tremble as if at Jehovah's +footsteps. For the last twenty +minutes, you have been giving us +some very <i>charmante</i> poetry. But +what are you? An Entertainer? +Or are you a Soldier?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Right</span> then—I don't know +what it was, maybe Sid clearing +his throat—I could sense our +feelings beginning to turn against +Bruce. I got the strangest feeling +of reality clamping down and +bright colors going dull and dreams +vanishing. Yet it was only then I +also realized how much Bruce had +moved us, maybe some of us to +the verge of mutiny, even. I was +mad at Erich for what he was +doing, but I couldn't help admiring +his cockiness.</p> + +<p>I was still under the spell of +Bruce's words and the more-than-words +behind them, but then +Erich would shift around a bit and +one of his heels would kick near +the death's-head pushbuttons and +I wanted to stamp with spike heels +on every death's-head button on +his uniform. I didn't know exactly +what I felt yet.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm a Soldier," Bruce told +him, "and I hope you won't ever +have to worry about my courage, +because it's going to take more +courage than any operation we've +ever planned, ever dreamed of, to +carry the peace message to the +other Places and to the wound-spots +of the cosmos. Perhaps it will +be a fast wicket and we'll be +bowled down before we score a +single run, but who cares? We may +at least see our real masters when +they come to smash us, and for +me that will be a deep satisfaction. +And we may do some smashing +of our own."</p> + +<p>"So you're a Soldier," Erich +said, his smile showing his teeth. +"Bruce, I'll admit that the half-dozen +operations you've been on +were rougher than anything I drew +in my first hundred sleeps. For +that, I am all honest sympathy. +But that you should let them get +you into such a state that love and +a girl can turn you upside down +and start you babbling about peace +messages—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, by God, love and a girl +have changed me!" Bruce shouted +at him, and I looked around at Lili +and I remembered Dave saying, +"I'm going to Spain," and I wondered +if anything would ever again +make my face flame like that. "Or, +rather, they've made me stand up +for what I've believed in all along. +They've made me—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Wunderbar</i>," Erich called and +began to do a little sissy dance on +the bomb that set my teeth on +edge. He bent his wrists and elbows +at arty angles and stuck out +a hip and ducked his head simperingly +and blinked his eyes very +fast. "Will you invite me to the +wedding, Bruce? You'll have to +get another best man, but I will +be the flower girl and throw pretty +little posies to all the distinguished +guests. Here, Mark. Catch, Kaby. +One for you, Greta. <i>Danke schön. +Ach, zwei Herzen in dreivierteltakt +... ta-ta ... ta-ta ... ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ...</i>"</p> + +<p>"What the hell do you think a +woman is?" Bruce raged. "Something +to mess around with in your +spare time?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Erich</span> kept on humming "Two +Hearts in Waltz Time"—and +jigging around to it, damn him—but +he slipped in a nod to Bruce +and a "Precisely." So I knew +where I stood, but it was no news +to me.</p> + +<p>"Very well," Bruce said, "let's +leave this Brown Shirt <i>maricón</i> to +amuse himself and get down to +business. I made all of you a proposal +and I don't have to tell you +how serious it is or how serious +Lili and I are about it. We not only +must infiltrate and subvert other +Places, which luckily for us are +made for infiltration, we also must +make contact with the Snakes and +establish working relationships with +their Demons at our level as one +of our first steps."</p> + +<p>That stopped Erich's jig and got +enough of a gasp from some of us +to make it seem to come from +practically everybody. Erich used +it to work a change of pace.</p> + +<p>"Bruce! We've let you carry +this foolery further than we should. +You seem to have the idea that +because anything goes in the Place—dueling, +drunkenness, <i>und so +weiter</i>—you can say what you +have and it will all be forgotten +with the hangover. Not so. It is +true that among such a set of +monsters and free spirits as ourselves, +and working as secret agents +to boot, there cannot be the obvious +military discipline that would +obtain in a Terran army.</p> + +<p>"But let me tell you, Bruce, let +me grind it home into you—Sid +and Kaby and Mark will bear me +out in this, as officers of equivalent +rank—that the Spider line of +command stretches into and +through this Place just as surely +as the word of <i>der Führer</i> rules +Chicago. And as I shouldn't have +to emphasize to you, Bruce, the +Spiders have punishments that +would make my countrymen in +Belsen and Buchenwald—well, +pale a little. So while there is still +a shadow of justification for our +interpreting your remarks as utterly +tasteless clowning—"</p> + +<p>"Babble on," Bruce said, giving +him a loose downward wave of his +hand without looking. "I made you +people a proposal." He paused. +"How do you stand, Sidney Lessingham?"</p> + +<p>Then I felt my legs getting weak, +because Sid didn't answer right +away. The old boy swallowed and +started to look around at the rest +of us. Then the feeling of reality +clamping down got something awful, +because he didn't look around, +but straightened his back a little. +Just then, Mark cut in fast.</p> + +<p>"It grieves me, Bruce, but I +think you are possessed. Erich, he +must be confined."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Kaby</span> nodded, almost absently. +"Confine or kill the coward, +whichever is easier, whip the woman, +and let's get on to the Egyptian +battle."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, yes," Mark said. "I +died in it. But now perhaps no +longer."</p> + +<p>Kaby said to him, "I like you, +Roman."</p> + +<p>Bruce was smiling, barely, and +his eyes were moving and fixing. +"You, Ilhilihis?"</p> + +<p>Illy's squeak box had never +sounded mechanical to me before, +but it did as he answered, "I'm a +lot deeper into borrowed time +than the rest of you, tra-la-la, but +Papa still loves living. Include me +very much out, Brucie."</p> + +<p>"Miss Davies?"</p> + +<p>Beside me, Maud said flatly, +"Do you think I'm a fool?" Beyond +her, I saw Lili and I thought, +"My God, I might look as proud +if I were in her shoes, but I sure +as hell wouldn't look as confident."</p> + +<p>Bruce's eyes hadn't quite come +to Beau when the gambler spoke +up. "I have no cause to like you, +sir, rather the opposite. But this +Place has come to bore me more +than Boston and I have always +found it difficult to resist a long +shot. A very long one, I fear. I am +with you, sir."</p> + +<p>There was a pain in my chest +and a roaring in my ears and +through it I heard Sevensee grunting, +"—sicka these lousy Spiders. +Deal me in."</p> + +<p>And then Doc reared up in front +of the bar and he'd lost his hat and +his hair was wild and he grabbed +an empty fifth by the neck and +broke the bottom of it all jagged +against the bar and he waved it +and screeched, "<i>Ubivaytye Pauki—i +Nyemetzi!</i>"</p> + +<p>And right behind his words, Beau +sang out fast the English of it, +"Kill the Spiders—and the Germans!"</p> + +<p>And Doc didn't collapse then, +though I could see he was hanging +onto the bar tight with his other +hand, and the Place got stiller, +inside and out, than I've ever +known it, and Bruce's eyes were +finally moving back toward Sid.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">But</span> the eyes stopped short of +Sid and I heard Bruce say, +"Miss Forzane?" and I thought, +"That's funny," and I started to +look around at the Countess, and +felt all the eyes and I realized, +"Hey, that's me! But this can't +happen to me. To the others, yes, +but not to me. I just work here. +Not to Greta, no, no, no!"</p> + +<p>But it had, and the eyes didn't +let go, and the silence and the feeling +of reality were Godawful, and +I said to myself, "Greta, you've +got to say something, if only a +suitable four-letter word," and then +suddenly I knew what the silence +was like. It was like that of a big +city if there were some way of +shutting off all the noise in one +second. It was like Erich's singing +when the piano had deserted him. +It was as if the Change Winds +should ever die completely ... +and I knew beforehand what had +happened when I turned my back +on them all.</p> + +<p>The Ghostgirls were gone. The +Major Maintainer hadn't merely +been switched to Introvert. It was +gone, too.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> + +<div class="figc"><img src="images/004.png" width="650" height="313" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<h2>CHAPTER 9</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"We examined the moss between +the bricks, and found it undisturbed."</p> + +<p>"You looked among D——'s +papers, of course, and into the +books of the library?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly; we opened every +package and parcel; we not only +opened every book, but we turned +over every leaf in each volume...."</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Poe</div></div> + +<h3>A LOCKED ROOM</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Three</span> hours later, Sid and +I plumped down on the +couch nearest the kitchen, though +too tired to want to eat for a while +yet. A tighter search than I could +ever have cooked up had shown +that the Maintainer was not in the +Place.</p> + +<p>Of course it had to be in the +Place, as we kept telling each +other for the first two hours. It +had to be, if circumstances and the +theories we lived by in the Change +World meant anything. A Maintainer +is what maintains a Place. +The Minor Maintainer takes care +of oxygen, temperature, humidity, +gravity, and other little life-cycle +and matter-cycle things generally, +but it's the Major Maintainer that +keeps the walls from buckling and +the ceiling from falling in. It is +little, but oh my, it does so much.</p> + +<p>It doesn't work by wires or radio +or anything complicated like that. +It just hooks into local space-time.</p> + +<p>I have been told that its inside +working part is made up of +vastly tough, vastly hard giant +molecules, each one of which is +practically a vest-pocket cosmos +in itself. Outside, it looks like a +portable radio with a few more +dials and some telltales and +switches and plug-ins for earphones +and a lot of other sensory thingumajigs.</p> + +<p>But the Maintainer was gone +and the Void hadn't closed in, yet. +By this time, I was so fagged, I +didn't care much whether it did +or not.</p> + +<p>One thing for sure, the Maintainer +had been switched to Introvert +before it was spirited away +or else its disappearance automatically +produced Introversion, take +your choice, because we sure were +Introverted—real nasty martinet-schoolmaster +grip of reality on my +thoughts that I knew, without trying, +liquor wouldn't soften, not a +breath of Change Wind, absolutely +stifling, and the gray of the Void +seeming so much inside my head +that I think I got a glimmering +of what the science boys mean +when they explain to me that the +Place is a kind of interweaving of +the material and the mental—a +Giant Monad, one of them called +it.</p> + +<p>Anyway, I said to myself, +"Greta, if this is Introversion, I +want no part of it. It is not nice +to be cut adrift from the cosmos +and know it. A lifeboat in the +middle of the Pacific and a starship +between galaxies are not in it for +loneliness."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I asked</span> myself why the Spiders +had ever equipped Maintainers +with Introversion switches +anyway, when we couldn't drill +with them and weren't supposed to +use them except in an emergency +so tight that it was either Introvert +or surrender to the Snakes, +and for the first time the obvious +explanation came to me:</p> + +<p>Introversion must be the same +as scuttling, its main purpose to +withhold secrets and materiel from +the enemy. It put a place into a +situation from which even the +Spider high command couldn't +rescue it, and there was nothing +left but to sink down, down (out? +up?), down into the Void.</p> + +<p>If that was the case, our chances +of getting back were about those +of my being a kid again playing in +the Dunes on the Small Time.</p> + +<p>I edged a little closer to Sid +and sort of squunched under his +shoulder and rubbed my cheek +against the smudged, gold-worked +gray velvet. He looked down and +I said, "A long way to Lynn Regis, +eh, Siddy?"</p> + +<p>"Sweetling, thou spokest a +mouthful," he said. He knows very +well what he is doing when he +mixes his language that way, the +wicked old darling.</p> + +<p>"Siddy," I said, "why this gold-work? +It'd be a lot smoother without +it."</p> + +<p>"Marry, men must prick themselves +out and, 'faith I know not, +but it helps if there's metal in it."</p> + +<p>"And girls get scratched." I took +a little sniff. "But don't put this +doublet through the cleaner yet. +Until we get out of the woods, I +want as much you around as +possible."</p> + +<p>"Marry, and why should I?" he +asked blankly, and I think he +wasn't fooling me. The last thing +time travelers find out is how they +do or don't smell. Then his face +clouded and he looked as though +he wanted to squunch under my +shoulder. "But 'faith, sweetling, +your forest has a few more trees +than Sherwood."</p> + +<p>"Thou saidst it," I agreed, and +wondered about the look. He +oughtn't to be interested in my +girlishness now. I knew I was a +mess, but he had stuck pretty close +to me during the hunt and you +never can tell. Then I remembered +that he was the other one who +hadn't declared himself when +Bruce was putting it to us, and it +probably troubled his male vanity. +Not me, though—I was still grateful +to the Maintainer for getting +me out of that spot, whatever other +it had got us all into. It seemed +ages ago.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">We'd</span> all jumped to the conclusion +that the two Ghostgirls +had run away with the Maintainer, +I don't know where or why, +but it looked so much that way. +Maud had started yipping about +how she'd never trusted Ghosts +and always known that some day +they'd start doing things on their +own, and Kaby had got it firmly +fixed in her head, right between the +horns, that Phryne, being a Greek, +was the ringleader and was going +to wreak havoc on us all.</p> + +<p>But when we were checking +Stores the first time, I had noticed +that the Ghostgirl envelopes looked +flat. Ectoplasm doesn't take up +much space when it's folded, but I +had opened one anyway, then another, +and then called for help.</p> + +<p>Every last envelope was empty. +We had lost over a thousand Ghostgirls, +Sid's whole stock.</p> + +<p>Well, at least it proved what +none of us had ever seen or heard +of being demonstrated: that there +is a spooky link—a sort of Change +Wind contact—between a Ghost +and its lifeline; and when that +umbilicus, I've heard it called, is +cut, the part away from the lifeline +dies.</p> + +<p>Interesting, but what had bothered +me was whether we Demons +were going to evaporate too, because +we are as much Doublegangers +as the Ghosts and our apron +strings had been cut just as surely. +We're more solid, of course, but +that would only mean we'd take a +little longer. Very logical.</p> + +<p>I remember I had looked up at +Lili and Maud—us girls had been +checking the envelopes; it's one of +the proprieties we frequently maintain +and anyway, if men check +them, they're apt to trot out that +old wheeze about "instant women" +which I'm sick to death of hearing, +thank you.</p> + +<p>Anyway, I had looked up and +said, "It's been nice knowing you," +and Lili had said, "Twenty-three, +skiddoo," and Maud had said, +"Here goes nothing," and we had +shook hands all around.</p> + +<p>We figured that Phryne and the +Countess had faded at the same +time as the other Ghostgirls, but +an idea had been nibbling at me +and I said, "Siddy, do you suppose +it's just barely possible that, +while we were all looking at Bruce, +those two Ghostgirls would have +been able to work the Maintainer +and get a Door and lam out of +here with the thing?"</p> + +<p>"Thou speakst my thoughts, +sweetling. All weighs against it: +Imprimis, 'tis well known that +Ghosts cannot lay plots or act on +them. Secundo, the time forbade +getting a Door. Tercio—and here's +the real meat of it—the Place +folds without the Maintainer. +Quadro, 'twere folly to depend on +not one of—how many of us? ten, +elf—not looking around in all the +time it would have taken them—"</p> + +<p>"I looked around once, Siddy. +They were drinking and they had +got to the control divan under their +own power. Now when was that? +Oh, yes, when Bruce was talking +about Zombies."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sweetling. And as I was +about to cap my argument with +quinquo when you 'gan prattle, I +could have sworn none could touch +the Maintainer, much less work it +and purloin it, without my certain +knowledge. Yet ..."</p> + +<p>"Eftsoons yet," I seconded him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Somebody</span> must have got a +door and walked out with the +thing. It certainly wasn't in the +Place. The hunt had been a lulu. +Something the size of a portable +typewriter is not easy to hide and +we had been inside everything +from Beau's piano to the renewer +link of the Refresher.</p> + +<p>We had even fluoroscoped +everybody, though it had made +Illy writhe like a box of worms, as +he'd warned us; he said it tickled +terribly and I insisted on smoothing +his fur for five minutes afterward, +although he was a little +standoffish toward me.</p> + +<p>Some areas, like the bar, kitchen +and Stores, took a long while, but +we were thorough. Kaby helped +Doc check Surgery: since she last +made the Place, she has been stationed +in a Field Hospital (it turns +out the Spiders actually are mounting +operations from them) and +learned a few nice new wrinkles.</p> + +<p>However, Doc put in some +honest work on his own, though, +of course, every check was observed +by at least three people, not +including Bruce or Lili. When the +Maintainer vanished, Doc had +pulled out of his glassy-eyed drunk +in a way that would have surprised +me if I hadn't seen it happen +to him before, but when we +finished Surgery and got on to the +Art Gallery, he had started to putter +and I noticed him hold out +his coat and duck his head and +whip out a flask and take a swig +and by now he was well on his +way toward another peak.</p> + +<p>The Art Gallery had taken time +too, because there's such a jumble +of strange stuff, and it broke my +heart but Kaby took her ax and +split a beautiful blue woodcarving +of a Venusian medusa because, although +there wasn't a mark in the +paw-polished surface, she claimed +it was just big enough. Doc cried +a little and we left him fitting the +pieces together and mooning over +the other stuff.</p> + +<p>After we'd finished everything +else, Mark had insisted on tackling +the floor. Beau and Sid both tried +to explain to him how this is a one-sided +Place, that there is nothing, +but nothing, under the floor; it +just gets a lot harder than the +diamonds crusting it as soon as +you get a quarter inch down—that +being the solid equivalent of +the Void. But Mark was knuckle-headed +(like all Romans, Sid assured +me on the q.t.) and broke +four diamond-plus drills before he +was satisfied.</p> + +<p>Except for some trick hiding +places, that left the Void, and +things don't vanish if you throw +them at the Void—they half +melt and freeze forever unless you +can fish them out. Back of the Refresher, +at about eye-level, are +three Venusian coconuts that a +Hittite strongman threw there during +a major brawl. I try not to look +at them because they are so much +like witch heads they give me the +woolies. The parts of the Place +right up against the Void have +strange spatial properties which +one of the gadgets in Surgery +makes use of in a way that gives +me the worse woolies, but that's +beside the point.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">During</span> the hunt, Kaby and +Erich had used their Callers +as direction finders to point out the +Maintainer, just as they're used in +the cosmos to locate the Door—and +sometimes in the Big Places, +people tell me. But the Callers +only went wild—like a compass +needle whirling around without +stopping—and nobody knew what +that meant.</p> + +<p>The trick hiding places were the +Minor Maintainer, a cute idea, but +it is no bigger than the Major and +has its own mysterious insides and +had obviously kept on doing its +own work, so that was out for +several reasons, and the bomb +chest, though it seemed impossible +for anyone to have opened it, +granting they knew the secret of +its lock, even before Erich jumped +on it and put it in the limelight +double. But when you've ruled out +everything else, the word impossible +changes meaning.</p> + +<p>Since time travel is our business, +a person might think of all sorts +of tricks for sending the Maintainer +into the past or future, permanently +or temporarily. But the +Place is strictly on the Big Time +and everybody that should know +tells me that time traveling +<i>through</i> the Big Time is out. It's +this way: the Big Time is a train, +and the Little Time is the countryside +and we're on the train, unless +we go out a Door, and as Gertie +Stein might put it, you can't time +travel through the time you time +travel in when you time travel.</p> + +<p>I'd also played around with the +idea of some fantastically obvious +hiding place, maybe something that +several people could pass back and +forth between them, which would +mean a conspiracy, and, of course, +if you assume a big enough conspiracy, +you can explain anything, +including the cosmos itself. Still, +I'd got a sort of shell-game idea +about the Soldiers' three big black +shakos and I hadn't been satisfied +until I'd got the three together +and looked in them all at +the same time.</p> + +<p>"Wake up, Greta, and take +something. I can't stand here forever." +Maud had brought us a +tray of hearty snacks from then +and yon, and I must say they were +tempting; she whips up a mean +hors d'oeuvre.</p> + +<p>I looked them over and said, +"Siddy, I want a hot dog."</p> + +<p>"And I want a venison pasty! +Out upon you, you finical jill, you +o'erscrupulous jade, you whimsic +and tyrannous poppet!"</p> + +<p>I grabbed a handful and snuggled +back against him.</p> + +<p>"Go on, call me some more, Siddy," +I told him. "Real juicy ones."</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 10</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shakes so my single state of man that function<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But what is not.<br /></span> +</div><div class="rgt">—Macbeth</div></div> + +<h3>MOTIVES AND +OPPORTUNITIES</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">My</span> big bad waif from King's +Lynn had set the tray on +his knees and started to wolf the +food down. The others were finishing +up. Erich, Mark and Kaby +were having a quietly furious argument +I couldn't overhear at the +end of the bar nearest the bronze +chest, and Illy was draped over +the piano like a real octopus, listening +in.</p> + +<p>Beau and Sevensee were pacing +up and down near the control divan +and throwing each other a +word now and then. Beyond them, +Bruce and Lili were sitting on the +opposite couch from us, talking +earnestly about something. Maud +had sat down at the other end of +the bar and was knitting—it's one +of the habits like chess and quiet +drinking, or learning to talk by +squeak box, that we pick up to +pass the time in the Place in the +long stretches between parties. Doc +was fiddling around the Gallery, +picking things up and setting them +down, still managing to stay on his +feet at any rate.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Lili</span> and Bruce stood up, still +gabbing intensely at each other, +and Illy began to pick out with +one tentacle a little tune in the +high keys that didn't sound like +anything on God's earth. "Where +do they get all the energy?" I +wondered.</p> + +<p>As soon as I asked myself that, +I knew the answer and I began to +feel the same way myself. It wasn't +energy; it was nerves, pure and +simple.</p> + +<p>Change is like a drug, I realized—you +get used to the facts never +staying the same, and one picture +of the past and future dissolving +into another maybe not very different +but still different, and your +mind being constantly goosed by +strange moods and notions, like +nightclub lights of shifting color +with weird shadows between shining +right on your brain.</p> + +<p>The endless swaying and jogging +is restful, like riding on a +train.</p> + +<p>You soon get to like the movement +and to need it without knowing, +and when it suddenly stops +and you're just you and the facts +you think from and feel from are +exactly the same when you go +back to them—boy, that's rough, +as I found out now.</p> + +<p>The instant we got Introverted, +everything that ordinarily leaks +into the Place, wake or sleep, had +stopped coming, and we were +nothing but ourselves and what we +meant to each other and what we +could make of that, an awfully +lonely, scratchy situation.</p> + +<p>I decided I felt like I'd been +dropped into a swimming pool full +of cement and held under until it +hardened.</p> + +<p>I could understand the others +bouncing around a bit. It was a +wonder they didn't hit the Void. +Maud seemed to be standing it the +best; maybe she'd got a little preparation +from the long watches +between stars; and then she is +older than all of us, even Sid, +though with a small "o" in "older."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> restless work of the search +for the Maintainer had masked +the feeling, but now it was beginning +to come full force. Before the +search, Bruce's speech and Erich's +interruptions had done a passable +masking job too. I tried to remember +when I'd first got the feeling +and decided it was after Erich +had jumped on the bomb, about +the time he mentioned poetry. +Though I couldn't be sure. Maybe +the Maintainer had been Introverted +even earlier, when I'd +turned to look at the Ghostgirls. +I wouldn't have known. Nuts!</p> + +<p>Believe me, I could feel that +hardened cement on every inch +of me. I remembered Bruce's +beautiful picture of a universe +without Big Change and decided +it was about the worst idea going. +I went on eating, though I wasn't +so sure now it was a good idea to +keep myself strong.</p> + +<p>"Does the Maintainer have an +Introversion telltale? Siddy!"</p> + +<p>"'Sdeath, chit, and you love me, +speak lower. Of a sudden, I feel +not well, as if I'd drunk a butt of +Rhenish and slept inside it. Marry +yes, blue. In short flashes, saith +the manual. Why ask'st thou?"</p> + +<p>"No reason. God, Siddy, what +I'd give for a breath of Change +Wind."</p> + +<p>"Thou can'st say that eftsoons," +he groaned. I must have looked +pretty miserable myself, for he +put his arm around my shoulders +and whispered gruffly, "Comfort +thyself, sweetling, that while we +suffer thus sorely, we yet cannot +die the Change Death."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>I didn't want to bounce around +like the others. I had a suspicion +I'd carry it too far. So, to keep +myself from going batty, I started +to rework the business of who had +done what to the Maintainer.</p> + +<p>During the hunt, there had been +some pretty wild suggestions +tossed around as to its disappearance +or at least its Introversion: a +feat of Snake science amounting +to sorcery; the Spider high command +bunkering the Places from +above, perhaps in reaction to the +loss of the Express Room, in such +a hurry that they hadn't even time +to transmit warnings; the hand of +the Late Cosmicians, those mysterious +hypothetical beings who are +supposed to have successfully resisted +the extension of the Change +War into the future much beyond +Sevensee's epoch—unless the Late +Cosmicians are the ones fighting +the Change War.</p> + +<p>One thing these suggestions had +steered very clear of was naming +any one of us as a suspect, whether +acting as Snake spy, Spider political +police, agent of—who knows, +after Bruce?—a secret Change +World Committee of Public Safety +or Spider revolutionary underground, +or strictly on our own. +Just as no one had piped a word, +since the Maintainer had been +palmed, about the split between +Erich's and Bruce's factions.</p> + +<p>Good group thinking probably, +to sink differences in the emergency, +but that didn't apply to +what I did with my own thoughts.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Who</span> wanted to escape so bad +they'd Introvert the Place, +cutting off all possible contact and +communication either way with +the cosmos and running the very +big risk of not getting back to the +cosmos at all?</p> + +<p>Leaving out what had happened +since Bruce had arrived and stirred +things up, Doc seemed to me to +have the strongest motive. He knew +that Sid couldn't keep covering up +for him forever and that Spider +punishments for derelictions of +duty are not just the clink of a +firing squad, as Erich had reminded +us. But Doc had been flat on the +floor in front of the bar from the +time Bruce had jumped on top +of it, though I certainly hadn't had +my eye on him every second.</p> + +<p>Beau? Beau had said he was +bored with the Place at a time +when what he said counted, so +he'd hardly lock himself in it maybe +forever, not to mention locking +Bruce in with himself and the babe +he had a yen for.</p> + +<p>Sid loves reality, Changing or +not, and every least thing in it, +people especially, more than any +man or woman I've ever known—he's +like a big-eyed baby who +wants to grab every object and +put it in his mouth—and it was +hard to imagine him ever cutting +himself off from the cosmos.</p> + +<p>Maud, Kaby, Mark and the +two ETs? None of them had any +motive I knew of, though Sevensee's +being from the very far future +did tie in with that idea about +the Late Cosmicians, and there +did seem to be something developing +between the Cretan and the +Roman that could make them want +to be Introverted together.</p> + +<p>"Stick to the facts, Greta," I reminded +myself with a private +groan.</p> + +<p>That left Erich, Bruce, Lili and +myself.</p> + +<p>Erich, I thought—now we're +getting somewhere. The little commandant +has the nervous system +of a coyote and the courage of a +crazy tomcat, and if he thought +it would help him settle his battle +with Bruce better to be locked in +with him, he'd do it in a second.</p> + +<p>But even before Erich had +danced on the bomb, he'd been +heckling Bruce from the crowd. +Still, there would have been time +between heckles for him to step +quietly back from us, Introvert the +Maintainer and ... well, that was +nine-tenths of the problem.</p> + +<p>If I was the guilty party, I was +nuts and that was the best explanation +of all. Gr-r-r!</p> + +<p>Bruce's motives seemed so obvious, +especially the mortal (or +was it immortal?) danger he'd put +himself in by inciting mutiny, that +it seemed a shame he'd been in +full view on the bar so long. Surely, +if the Maintainer had been Introverted +before he jumped on the +bar, we'd all have noticed the +flashing blue telltale. For that matter, +I'd have noticed it when I +looked back at the Ghostgirls—if +it worked as Sid claimed, and he +said he had never seen it in operation, +just read in the manual—oh, +'sdeath!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">But</span> Bruce didn't need opportunity, +as I'm sure all the +males in the Place would have told +me right off, because he had Lili +to pull the job for him and she +had as much opportunity as any +of the rest of us. Myself, I have +large reservations to this woman-putty-in-the-hands-of-the-man-she-loves-madly +theory, but I +had to admit there was something +to be said for it in this case, and +it had seemed quite natural to me +when the rest of us had decided, by +unspoken agreement, that neither +Lili's nor Bruce's checks counted +when we were hunting for the +Maintainer.</p> + +<p>That took care of all of us and +left only the mysterious stranger, +intruding somehow through a Door +(how'd he get it without using our +Maintainer?) or from an unimaginable +hiding place or straight out +of the Void itself. I know that last +is impossible—nothing can step +out of nothing—but if anything +ever looked like it was specially +built for something not at all nice +to come looming out of, it's the +Void—misty, foggily churning, +slimy gray....</p> + +<p>"Wait a second," I told myself, +"and hang onto this, Greta. It +should have smacked you in the +face at the start."</p> + +<p>Whatever came out of the Void, +or, more to the point, whoever +slipped back from our crowd to +the Maintainer, Bruce would have +seen them. He was looking at the +Maintainer past our heads the +whole time, and whatever happened +to it, he saw it.</p> + +<p>Erich wouldn't have, even after +he was on the bomb, because he'd +been stagewise enough to face +Bruce most of the time to build +up his role as tribune of the people.</p> + +<p>But Bruce would have—unless +he got so caught up in what he +was saying....</p> + +<p>No, kid, a Demon is always an +actor, no matter how much he +believes in what he's saying, and +there never was an actor yet who +wouldn't instantly notice a member +of the audience starting to walk out +on his big scene.</p> + +<p>So Bruce knew, which made him +a better actor than I'd have been +willing to grant, since it didn't look +as if anyone else had thought of +what had just occurred to me, +or they'd have gone over and put +it to him.</p> + +<p>Not me, though—I don't work +that way. Besides, I didn't feel up +to it—Nervy Anna enfold me, I +felt like pure hell.</p> + +<p>"Maybe," I told myself encouragingly, +"the Place is Hell," but +added, "Be your age, Greta—be +a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless +twenty-nine."</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 11</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 21em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They leave their trenches, going over the top,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists<br /></span> +</div><div class="rgt">—Sassoon</div></div> + +<h3>THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">"Please</span> don't, Lili."</p> + +<p>"I shall, my love."</p> + +<p>"Sweetling, wake up! Hast the +shakes?"</p> + +<p>I opened my eyes a little and +lied to Siddy with a smile and +locked my hands together tight +and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel +nobly near the control divan +and wished I had a great love to +blur my misery and provide me +with a passable substitute for +Change Winds.</p> + +<p>Lili won the argument, judging +from the way she threw her +head back and stepped away from +Bruce's arms while giving him a +proud, tender smile. He walked +off a few steps; praise be, he didn't +shrug his shoulders at us like an +old husband, though his nerves +were showing and he didn't seem +to be standing Introversion well +at all, as who of us were?</p> + +<p>Lili rested a hand on the head +of the control divan and pressed +her lips together and looked around +at us, mostly with her eyes. She'd +wound a gray silk bandeau around +her bangs. Her short gray silk +dress without a waistline made her +look, not so much like a flapper, +though she looked like that all +right, as like a little girl, except +the neckline was scooped low +enough to show she wasn't.</p> + +<p>Her gaze hesitated and then +stopped at me and I got a sunk +feeling of what was coming, because +women are always picking +on me for an audience. Besides, +Sid and I were the centrist party +of two in our fresh-out-of-the-shell +Place politics.</p> + +<p>She took a deep breath and +stuck out her chin and said in a +voice that was even a little higher +and Britisher than she usually +uses, "We girls have often cried, +'Shut the Door!' But now the Door +is jolly well shut for keeps!"</p> + +<p>I knew I'd guessed right and I +felt crawly with embarrassment, +because I know about this love +business of thinking you're the +other person and trying to live +their life—and grab their glory, +though you don't know that—and +carry their message for them, and +how it can foul things up. Still, +I couldn't help admitting what she +said wasn't too bad a start—unpleasantly +apt to be true, at any +rate.</p> + +<p>"My fiance believes we may yet +be able to open the Door. I do +not. He thinks it is a bit premature +to discuss the peculiar pickle in +which we all find ourselves. I do +not."</p> + +<p>There was a rasp of laughter +from the bar. The militarists were +reacting. Erich stepped out, looking +very happy. "So now we have +to listen to women making +speeches," he called. "What is this +Place, anyhow? Sidney Lessingham's +Saturday Evening Sewing +Circle?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Beau</span> and Sevensee, who'd +stopped their pacing halfway +between the bar and the control +divan, turned toward Erich, and +Sevensee looked a little burlier, +a little more like half a horse, than +satyrs in mythology book illustrations. +He stamped—medium +hard, I'd say—and said, "Ahh, +go flya kite." I'd found out he'd +learned English from a Demon +who'd been a longshoreman with +syndicalist-anarchist sympathies. +Erich shut up for a moment and +stood there grinning, his hands on +his hips.</p> + +<p>Lili nodded to the satyr and +cleared her throat, looking scared. +But she didn't speak; I could see +she was thinking and feeling something, +and her face got ugly and +haggard, as if she were in a Change +Wind that hadn't reached me yet, +and her mouth went into a snarl +to fight tears, but some spurted out, +and when she did speak her voice +was an octave lower and it wasn't +just London talking but New York +too.</p> + +<p>"I don't know how Resurrection +felt to you people, because I'm new +and I loathe asking questions, but +to me it was pure torture and I +wished only I'd had the courage to +tell Suzaku, 'I wish to remain a +Zombie, if you don't mind. I'd +rather the nightmares.' But I accepted +Resurrection because I've +been taught to be polite and because +there is the Demon in me I +don't understand that always +wishes to live, and I found that I +still felt like a Zombie, although +I could flit about, and that I still +had the nightmares, except they'd +grown a deal vivider.</p> + +<p>"I was a young girl again, seventeen, +and I suppose every woman +wishes to be seventeen, but I wasn't +seventeen inside my head—I was +a woman who had died of Bright's +disease in New York in 1929 and +also, because a Big Change blew +my lifeline into a new drift, a woman +who had died of the same +disease in Nazi-occupied London +in 1955, but rather more slowly +because, as you can fancy, the +liquor was in far shorter supply. I +had to live with both those sets of +memories and the Change World +didn't blot them out any more than +I'm told it does those of any +Demon, and it didn't even push +them into the background as I'd +hoped it would.</p> + +<p>"When some Change Fellow +would say to me, 'Hallo, beautiful, +how about a smile?' or 'That's a +posh frock, kiddo,' I'd be back at +Bellevue looking down at my +swollen figure and the light getting +like spokes of ice, or in that dreadful +gin-steeped Stepney bedroom +with Phyllis coughing herself to +death beside me, or at best, for a +moment, a little girl in Glamorgan +looking at the Roman road and +wondering about the wonderful life +that lay ahead."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I looked</span> at Erich, remembering +he had a long nasty +future back in the cosmos himself, +and at any rate he wasn't smiling, +and I thought maybe he's getting +a little humility, knowing someone +else has two of those futures, +but I doubted it.</p> + +<p>"Because, you see," Lili kept +forcing it out, "all my three lives +I'd been a girl who fell in love +with a great young poet she'd +never met, the voice of the new +youth and all youth, and she'd told +her first big lie to get in the Red +Cross and across to France to be +nearer him, and it was all danger +and dark magics and a knight in +armor, and she pictured how she'd +find him wounded but not seriously, +with a little bandage around his +head, and she'd light a fag for him +and smile lightly, never letting him +guess what she felt, but only being +her best self and watching to +see if that made something happen +to him....</p> + +<p>"And then the Boche machine +guns cut him down at Passchendaele +and there couldn't ever have +been bandages big enough and the +girl stayed seventeen inside and +messed about and tried to be +wicked, though she wasn't very +good at that, and to drink, and she +had a bit more talent there, though +drinking yourself to death is not +nearly as easy as it sounds, even +with a kidney weakness to help. +But she turned the trick.</p> + +<p>"Then a cock crows. She wakes +with a tearing start from the gray +dreams of death that fill her lifeline. +It's cold daybreak. There's the +smell of a French farm. She feels +her ankles and they're not at all +like huge rubber boots filled with +water. They're not swollen the least +bit. They're young legs.</p> + +<p>"There's a little window and the +tops of a row of trees that may be +poplars when there's more light, +and what there is shows cots like +her own and heads under blankets, +and hanging uniforms make large +shadows and a girl is snoring. +There's a very distant rumble and +it moves the window a bit. Then +she remembers they're Red Cross +girls many, many kilometers from +Passchendaele and that Bruce +Marchant is going to die at dawn +today.</p> + +<p>"In a few more minutes, he's going +over the top where there's a +crop-headed machine-gunner in +field gray already looking down +the sights and swinging the gun a +bit. But she isn't going to die today. +She's going to die in 1929 and +1955.</p> + +<p>"And just as she's going mad, +there's a creaking and out of the +shadows tiptoes a Jap with a woman's +hairdo and the whitest face +and the blackest eyebrows. He's +wearing a rose robe and a black +sash which belts to his sides two +samurai swords, but in his right +hand he has a strange silver pistol. +And he smiles at her as if they +were brother and sister and lovers +at the same time and he says, +'<i>Voulez-vous vivre, mademoiselle?</i>' +and she stares and he bobs his +head and says, 'Missy wish live, +yes, no?'"</p> + +<div class="figc"><img src="images/005.png" width="650" height="429" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Sid's</span> paw closed quietly around +my shaking hands. It always +gets me to hear about anyone's +Resurrection, and although mine +was crazier, it also had the Krauts +in it. I hoped she wouldn't go +through the rest of the formula and +she didn't.</p> + +<p>"Five minutes later, he's gone +down a stairs more like a ladder +to wait below and she's dressing +in a rush. Her clothes resist a +little, as if they were lightly +gummed to the hook and the +stained wall, and she hates to +touch them. It's getting lighter and +her cot looks as if someone were +still sleeping there, although it's +empty, and she couldn't bring herself +to put her hand on the place +if her new life depended on it.</p> + +<p>"She climbs down and her long +skirt doesn't bother her because +she knows how to swing it. Suzaku +conducts her past a sentry who +doesn't see them and a puffy-faced +farmer in a smock coughing and +spitting the night out of his throat. +They cross the farmyard and it's +filled with rose light and she sees +the sun is up and she knows that +Bruce Marchant has just bled to +death.</p> + +<p>"There's an empty open touring +car chugging loudly, waiting for +someone; it has huge muddy wheels +with wooden spokes and a brass +radiator that says 'Simplex.' But +Suzaku leads her past it to a dunghill +and bows apologetically and +she steps through a Door."</p> + +<p>I heard Erich say to the others +at the bar, "How touching! Now +shall I tell everyone about my +operation?" But he didn't get much +of a laugh.</p> + +<p>"That's how Lilian Foster came +into the Change World with its +steel-engraved nightmares and its +deadly pace and deadlier lassitudes. +I was more alive than I ever +had been before, but it was the +kind of life a corpse might get +from unending electrical shocks +and I couldn't summon any purpose +or hope and Bruce Marchant +seemed farther away than ever.</p> + +<p>"Then, not six hours ago, a Soldier +in a black uniform came +through the Door and I thought, +'It can't be, but it does look like +his photographs,' and then I +thought I heard someone say the +name Bruce, and then he shouted +as if to all the world that he was +Bruce Marchant, and I knew there +was a Resurrection beyond Resurrection, +a true resurrection. Oh, +Bruce—"</p> + +<p>She looked at him and he was +crying and smiling and all the +young beauty flooded back into +her face, and I thought, "It has to +be Change Winds, but it can't be. +Face it without slobbering, Greta—there's +something that works bigger +miracles than Change."</p> + +<p>And she went on, "And then the +Change Winds died when the +Snakes vaporized the Maintainer +or the Ghostgirls Introverted it +and all three of them vanished so +swiftly and silently that even Bruce +didn't notice—those are the best +explanations I can summon and I +fancy one of them is true. At all +events, the Change Winds died and +my past and even my futures became +something I could bear lightly, +because I have someone to bear +them with me, and because at +last I have a true future stretching +out ahead of me, an unknown +future which I shall create by living. +Oh, don't you see that all of us +have it now, this big opportunity?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Hussa</i> for Sidney's suffragettes +and the W.C.T.U.!" Erich cheered. +"Beau, will you play us a medley +of 'Hearts and Flowers' and 'Onward, +Christian Soldiers'? I'm +deeply moved, Lili. Where do the +rest of us queue up for the Great +Love Affair of the Century?"</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 12</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Now is a bearable burden. What +buckles the back is the added +weight of the past's mistakes and +the future's fears.</p> + +<p>I had to learn to close the front +door to tomorrow and the back +door to yesterday and settle down +to here and now.</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Anonymous</div></div> + +<h3>A BIG OPPORTUNITY</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Nobody</span> laughed at Erich's +screwball sarcasms and still +I thought, "Yes, perish his hysterical +little gray head, but he's +half right—Lili's got the big thing +now and she wants to serve it up +to the rest of us on a platter, only +love doesn't cook and cut that +way."</p> + +<p>Those weren't bad ideas she had +about the Maintainer, though, especially +the one about the Ghostgirls +doing the Introverting—it +would explain why there couldn't +be Introversion drill, the manual +stuff about blue flashes being window-dressing, +and something disappearing +without movement or +transition is the sort of thing that +might not catch the attention—and +I guess they gave the others +something to think about too, for +there wasn't any follow-up to +Erich's frantic sniping.</p> + +<p>But I honestly didn't see where +there was this big opportunity being +stuck away in a gray sack in +the Void and I began to wonder +and I got the strangest feeling and +I said to myself, "Hang onto your +hat, Greta. It's hope."</p> + +<p>"The dreadful thing about being +a Demon is that you have all +time to range through," Lili was +saying with a smile. "You can +never shut the back door to yesterday +or the front door to tomorrow +and simply live in the present. +But now that's been done for us: +the Door is shut, we need never +again rehash the past or the future. +The Spiders and Snakes can never +find us, for who ever heard of a +Place that was truly lost being +rescued? And as those in the know +have told me, Introversion is the +end as far as those outside are +concerned. So we're safe from the +Spiders and Snakes, we need never +be slaves or enemies again, and +we have a Place in which to live +our new lives, the Place prepared +for us from the beginning."</p> + +<p>She paused. "Surely you understand +what I mean? Sidney and +Beauregard and Dr. Pyeshkov are +the ones who explained it to me. +The Place is a balanced aquarium, +just like the cosmos. No one knows +how many ages of Big Time it +has been in use, without a bit of +new material being brought in—only +luxuries and people—and +not a bit of waste cast off. No one +knows how many more ages it may +not sustain life. I never heard of +Minor Maintainers wearing out. +We have all the future, all the +security, anyone can hope for. We +have a Place to live together."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">You</span> know, she was dead right +and I realized that all the time +I'd had the conviction in the back +of my mind that we were going to +suffocate or something if we didn't +get a Door open pretty quick. I +should have known differently, if +anybody should, because I'd once +been in the Place without a Door +for as long as a hundred sleeps +during a foxhole stretch of the +Change War and we'd had to start +cycling our food and it had been +okay.</p> + +<p>And then, because it is also +the way my mind works, I started +to picture in a flash the consequences +of our living together all +by ourselves like Lili said.</p> + +<p>I began to pair people off; I +couldn't help it. Let's see, four +women, six men, two ETs.</p> + +<p>"Greta," I said, "you're going to +be Miss Polly Andry for sure. +We'll have a daily newspaper and +folk-dancing classes, we'll shut the +bar except evenings, Bruce'll keep +a rhymed history of the Place."</p> + +<p>I even thought, though I knew +this part was strictly silly, about +schools and children. I wondered +what Siddy's would look like, or +my little commandant's. "Don't go +near the Void, dears." Of course +that would be specially hard on +the two ETs, but Sevensee at least +wasn't so different and the genetics +boys had made some wonderful +advances and Maud ought to know +about them and there were some +amazing gadgets in Surgery when +Doc sobered up. The patter of +little hoofs ...</p> + +<p>"My fiance spoke to you about +carrying a peace message to the +rest of the cosmos," Lili added, +"and bringing an end to the Big +Change, and healing all the wounds +that have been made in the Little +Time."</p> + +<p>I looked at Bruce. His face was +set and strained, as will happen to +the best of them when a girl starts +talking about her man's business, +and I don't know why, but I said +to myself, "She's crucifying him, +she's nailing him to his purpose as +a woman will, even when there's +not much point to it, as now."</p> + +<p>And Lili went on, "It was a wonderful +thought, but now we cannot +carry or send any message and +I believe it is too late in any event +for a peace message to do any +good. The cosmos is too raveled by +change, too far gone. It will dissolve, +fade, 'leave not a rack behind.' +We're the survivors. The +torch of existence has been put in +our hands.</p> + +<p>"We may already be all that's +left in the cosmos, for have you +thought that the Change Winds +may have died at their source? We +may never reach another cosmos, +we may drift forever in the Void, +but who of us has been Introverted +before and who knows what +we can or cannot do? We're a seed +for a new future to grow from. +Perhaps all doomed universes cast +off seeds like this Place. It's a seed, +it's an embryo, let it grow."</p> + +<p>She looked swiftly at Bruce and +then at Sid and she quoted, +"'Come, my friends, 'tis not too +late to seek a newer world'."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I squeezed</span> Sid's hand and +I started to say something to +him, but he didn't know I was +there; he was listening to Lili quote +Tennyson with his eyes entranced +and his mouth open, as if he were +imagining new things to put into +it—oh, Siddy!</p> + +<p>And then I saw the others were +looking at her the same way. Ilhilihis +was seeing finer feather forests +than long-dead Luna's grow. The +greenhouse child Maud ap-Ares +Davies was stowing away on a +starship bound for another galaxy, +or thinking how different her life +might have been, the children she +might have had, if she'd stayed on +the planets and out of the Change +World. Even Erich looked as +though he might be blitzing new +universes, and Mark subduing +them, for an eight-legged <i>Führer-imperator</i>. +Beau was throbbing up +a wider Mississippi in a bigger-than-life +sidewheeler.</p> + +<p>Even I—well, I wasn't dreaming +of a Greater Chicago. "Let's not +go hog-wild on this sort of thing," +I told myself, but I did look up +at the Void and I got a shiver +because I imagined it drawing +away and the whole Place starting +to grow.</p> + +<p>"I truly meant what I said about +a seed," Lili went on slowly. "I +know, as you all do, that there are +no children in the Change World, +that there cannot be, that we all +become instantly sterile, that what +they call a curse is lifted from us +girls and we are no longer in bondage +to the moon."</p> + +<p>She was right, all right—if +there's one thing that's been proved +a million times in the Change +World, it's that.</p> + +<p>"But we are no longer in the +Change World," Lili said softly, +"and its limitations should no +longer apply to us, including that +one. I feel deeply certain of it, +but—" she looked around slowly—"we +are four women here and I +thought one of us might have a +surer indication."</p> + +<p>My eyes followed hers around +like anybody's would. In fact, +everybody was looking around except +Maud, and she had the silliest +look of surprise on her face +and it stayed there, and then, very +carefully, she got down from the +bar stool with her knitting. She +looked at the half-finished pink bra +with the long white needles stuck +in it and her eyes bugged bigger +yet, as if she were expecting it to +turn into a baby sweater right then +and there. Then she walked across +the Place to Lili and stood beside +her. While she was walking, the +look of surprise changed to a quiet +smile. The only other thing she +did was throw her shoulders back +a little.</p> + +<p>I was jealous of her for a second, +but it was a double miracle for +her, considering her age, and I +couldn't grudge her that. And to +tell the truth, I was a little frightened, +too. Even with Dave, I'd +been bothered about this business +of having babies.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Yet</span> I stood up with Siddy—I +couldn't stop myself and I +guess he couldn't either—and +hand in hand we walked to the +control divan. Beau and Sevensee +were there and Bruce, of course, +and then, so help me, those Soldiers +to the death, Kaby and Mark, +started over from the bar and I +couldn't see anything in their eyes +about the greater glory of Crete +and Rome, but something, I think, +about each other, and after a moment +Illy slowly detached himself +from the piano and followed, +lightly trailing his tentacles on the +floor.</p> + +<p>I couldn't exactly see him hoping +for little Illies in this company, +unless it was true what the jokes +said about Lunans, but maybe he +was being really disinterested and +maybe he wasn't; maybe he was +simply figuring that Illy ought to +be on the side with the biggest battalions.</p> + +<p>I heard dragging footsteps behind +us and here came Doc from +the Gallery, carrying in his folded +arms an abstract sculpture as big +as a newborn baby. It was an agglomeration +of perfect shiny gray +spheres the size of golf balls, shaping +up to something like a large +brain, but with holes showing +through here and there. He held +it out to us like an infant to be +admired and worked his lips and +tongue as if he were trying very +hard to say something, though not +a word came out that you could +understand, and I thought, "Maxey +Aleksevich may be speechless +drunk and have all sorts of holes +in his head, but he's got the right +instincts, bless his soulful little +Russian heart."</p> + +<p>We were all crowded around the +control divan like a football team +huddling. The Peace Packers, it +came to me. Sevensee would be +fullback or center and Illy left end—what +a receiver! The right number, +too. Erich was alone at the +bar, but now even he—"Oh, no, this +can't be," I thought—even he came +toward us. Then I saw that his face +was working the worst ever. He +stopped halfway and managed to +force a smile, but it was the worst, +too. "That's my little commandant," +I thought, "no team +spirit."</p> + +<p>"So now Lili and Bruce—yes, +and <i>Grossmutterchen</i> Maud—have +their little nest," he said, and he +wouldn't have had to push his +voice very hard to get a screech. +"But what are the rest of us supposed +to be—cowbirds?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> crooked his neck and flapped +his hands and croaked, "Cuc-koo! +Cuc-koo!" And I said to myself, +"I often thought you were +crazy, boy, but now I know."</p> + +<p>"<i>Teufelsdreck!</i>—yes, Devil's +dirt!—but you all seem to be infected +with this dream of children. +Can't you see that the +Change World is the natural and +proper end of evolution?—a period +of enjoyment and measuring, an +ultimate working out of things, +which women call destruction—'Help, +I'm being raped!' 'Oh, what +are they doing to my children?'—but +which men know as fulfillment.</p> + +<p>"You're given good parts in +<i>Götterdämmerung</i> and you go up +to the author and tap him on the +shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, Herr +Wagner, but this Twilight of the +Gods is just a bit morbid. Why +don't you write an opera for me +about the little ones, the dear +little blue-eyed curly-tops? A plot? +Oh, boy meets girl and they settle +down to breed, something like that.'</p> + +<p>"Devil's dirt doubled and +damned! Have you thought what +life will be like without a Door +to go out of to find freedom and +adventure, to measure your courage +and keenness? Do you want to +grow long gray beards hobbling +around this asteroid turned inside +out? Putter around indoors to the +end of your days, mooning about +little baby cosmoses?—incidentally, +with a live bomb for company. +The cave, the womb, the little gray +home in the nest—is that what +you want? It'll grow? Oh, yes, like +the city engulfing the wild wood, a +proliferation of <i>Kinder</i>, <i>Kirche</i>, +<i>Küche</i>—I should live so long!</p> + +<p>"Women!—how I hate their +bright eyes as they look at me +from the fireside, bent-shouldered, +rocking, deeply happy to be old, +and say, 'He's getting weak, he's +giving out, soon I'll have to put +him to bed and do the simplest +things for him.' Your filthy Triple +Goddess, Kaby, the birther, bride, +and burier of man! Woman, the +enfeebler, the fetterer, the crippler! +Woman!—and the curly-headed +little cancers she wants!"</p> + +<p>He lurched toward us, pointing +at Lili. "I never knew one who +didn't want to cripple a man if +you gave her the chance. Cripple +him, swaddle him, clip his wings, +grind him to sausage to mold another +man, hers, a doll man. You +hid the Maintainer, you little +smother-hen, so you could have +your nest and your Brucie!"</p> + +<p>He stopped, gasping, and I expected +someone to bop him one on +the schnozzle, and I think he did, +too. I turned to Bruce and he was +looking, I don't know how, sorry, +guilty, anxious, angry, shaken, +inspired, all at once, and I wished +people sometimes had simple suburban +reactions like magazine +stories.</p> + +<p>Then Erich made the mistake, +if it was one, of turning toward +Bruce and slowly staggering +toward him, pawing the air with +his hands as if he were going to +collapse into his arms, and saying, +"Don't let them get you, Bruce. +Don't let them tie you down. Don't +let them clip you—your words +or your deeds. You're a Soldier. +Even when you talked about a +peace message, you talked about +doing some smashing of your own. +No matter what you think and +feel, Bruce, no matter how much +lying you do and how much you +hide, you're really not on their +side."</p> + +<p>That did it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">It</span> didn't come soon enough or, +I think, in the right spirit to +please me, but I will say it for +Bruce that he didn't muck it up +by tipping or softening his punch. +He took one step forward and his +shoulders spun and his fist connected +sweet and clean.</p> + +<p>As he did it, he said only one +word, "Loki!" and darn if that +didn't switch me back to a campfire +in the Indiana Dunes and my +mother telling me out of the Elder +Saga about the malicious, +sneering, all-spoiling Norse god +and how, when the other gods +came to trap him in his hideaway +by the river, he was on the point +of finishing knotting a mysterious +net big enough, I had imagined, +to snare the whole universe, and +that if they'd come a minute later, +he would have.</p> + +<p>Erich was stretched on the floor, +his head hitched up, rubbing his +jaw and glaring at Bruce. Mark, +who was standing beside me, +moved a little and I thought he +was going to do something, maybe +even clobber Bruce in the old +spirit of you can't do that to my +buddy, but he just shook his head +and said, "<i>Omnia vincit amor.</i>" I +nudged him and said, "Meaning?" +and he said, "Love licks everything."</p> + +<p>I'd never have expected it from +a Roman, but he was half right at +any rate. Lili had her victory: +Bruce clearing the field for the +marriage by laying out the woman-hating +boy friend who would be +trying to get him to go out nights. +At that moment, I think Bruce +wanted Lili and a life with her +more than he wanted to reform the +Change World. Sure, us women +have our little victories—until +the legions come or the Little Corporal +draws up his artillery or the +Panzers roar down the road.</p> + +<p>Erich scrambled to his feet and +stood there in a half-slump, half-crouch, +still rubbing his jaw and +glaring at Bruce over his hand, but +making no move to continue the +fight, and I studied his face and +said to myself, "If he can get a +gun, he's going to shoot himself, I +know."</p> + +<p>Bruce started to say something +and hesitated, like I would have +in his shoes, and just then Doc +got one of his unpredictable inspirations +and went weaving out +toward Erich, holding out the sculpture +and making deaf-and-dumb +noises like he had to us. Erich +looked at him as if he were going +to kill him, and then grabbed the +sculpture and swung it up over +his head and smashed it down on +the floor, and for a wonder, it +didn't shatter. It just skidded along +in one piece and stopped inches +from my feet.</p> + +<p>That thing not breaking must +have been the last straw for Erich. +I swear I could see the red surge +up through his eyes toward his +brain. He swung around into the +Stores sector and ran the few steps +between him and the bronze bomb +chest.</p> + +<p>Everything got very slow motion +for me, though I didn't do any +moving. Almost every man started +out after Erich. Bruce didn't, +though, and Siddy turned back +after the first surge forward, while +Illy squunched down for a leap, +and it was between Sevensee's +hairy shanks and Beau's scissoring +white pants that I saw that under-the-microscope +circle of death's +heads and watched Erich's finger +go down on them in the order +Kaby had given: one, three, five, +six, two, four, seven. I was able to +pray seven distinct times that he'd +make a mistake.</p> + +<p>He straightened up. Illy landed +by the box like a huge silver spider +and his tentacles whipped futilely +across its top. The others surged +to a frightened halt around them.</p> + +<p>Erich's chest was heaving, but +his voice was cool and collected +as he said, "You mentioned something +about our having a future, +Miss Foster. Now you can make +that more specific. Unless we get +back to the cosmos and dump this +box, or find a Spider A-tech, or +manage to call headquarters for +guidance on disarming the bomb, +we have a future exactly thirty +minutes long."</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 13</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 22em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But whence he was, or of what wombe ybore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of beasts, or of the earth, I have not red:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But certes was with milke of wolves and tygres fed.<br /></span> +</div><div class="rgt">—Spenser</div></div> + +<h3>THE TIGER IS LOOSE</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I guess</span> when they really push +the button or throw the switch +or spring the trap or focus the +beam or what have you, you don't +faint or go crazy or anything else +convenient. I didn't. Everything, +everybody, every move that was +made, every word that was spoken, +was painfully real to me, like a +hand twisting and squeezing things +deep inside me, and I saw every +least detail spotlighted and magnified +like I had the seven skulls.</p> + +<p>Erich was standing beyond the +bomb chest; little smiles were +ruffling his lips. I'd never seen him +look so sharp. Illy was beside him, +but not on his side, you understand. +Mark, Sevensee and Beau +were around the chest to the nearer +side. Beau had dropped to a knee +and was scanning the chest minutely, +terror-under-control making him +bend his head a little closer than +he needed to for clear vision, but +with his hands locked together behind +his back, I guess to restrain +the impulse to push any and everything +that looked like a disarming +button.</p> + +<p>Doc was sprawled face down on +the nearest couch, out like a light, +I suppose.</p> + +<p>Us four girls were still by the +control divan. With Kaby, that +surprised me, because she didn't +look scared or frozen, but almost +as intensely alive as Erich.</p> + +<p>Sid had turned back, as I'd said, +and had one hand stretched out +toward but not touching the Minor +Maintainer, and a look on his +beardy face as if he were calling +down death and destruction on +every boozy rogue who had ever +gone up from King's Lynn to Cambridge +and London, and I realized +why: if he'd thought of the Minor +Maintainer a second sooner, he +could have pinned Erich down +with heavy gravity before he could +touch the buttons.</p> + +<p>Bruce was resting one hand on +the head of the control divan and +was looking toward the group +around the chest, toward Erich, I +think, as if Erich had done something +rather wonderful for him, +though I can't imagine myself being +tickled at being included in +anybody's suicide surprise party. +Bruce looked altogether too +dreamy, Brahma blast him, for +someone who must have the same +steel-spiked thought in his head +that I know darn well the rest of +us had: that in twenty-nine minutes +or so, the Place would be a +sun in a bag.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Erich</span> was the first to get down +to business, as I'd have laid +any odds he would be. He had the +jump on us and he wasn't going +to lose it.</p> + +<p>"Well, when are you going to +start getting Lili to tell us where +she hid the Maintainer? It has to +be her—she was too certain it +was gone forever when she talked. +And Bruce must have seen from +the bar who took the Maintainer, +and who would he cover up for +but his girl?"</p> + +<p>There he was plagiarizing my +ideas, but I guess I was willing to +sign them over to him in full if he +got us the right pail of water for +that time-bomb.</p> + +<p>He glanced at his wrist. "According +to my Caller, you have +twenty-nine and a half minutes, +including the time it will take to +get a Door or contact headquarters. +When are you going to get +busy on the girl?"</p> + +<p>Bruce laughed a little—deprecatingly, +so help me—and started +toward him. "Look here, old man," +he said, "there's no need to trouble +Lili, or to fuss with headquarters, +even if you could. Really not at +all. Not to mention that your surmises +are quite unfounded, old +chap, and I'm a bit surprised at +your advancing them. But that's +quite all right because, as it happens, +I'm an atomics technician +and I even worked on that very +bomb. To disarm it, you just have +to fiddle a bit with some of the +ankhs, those hoopy little crosses. +Here, let me—"</p> + +<p>Allah il allah, but it must have +struck everybody as it did me as +being just too incredible an assertion, +too bloody British a bare-faced +bluff, for Erich didn't have to +say a word; Mark and Sevensee +grabbed Bruce by the arms, one +on each side, as he stooped toward +the bronze chest, and they weren't +gentle about it. Then Erich spoke.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Bruce. Very sporting +of you to try to cover up for your +girl friend, but we aren't going to +let ourselves be blown to stripped +atoms twenty-eight minutes too +soon while you monkey with the +buttons, the very thing Benson-Carter +warned against, and pray +for a guesswork miracle. It's too +thin, Bruce, when you come from +1917 and haven't been on the Big +Time for a hundred sleeps and +were calling for an A-tech yourself +a few hours ago. Much too +thin. Bruce, something is going to +happen that I'm afraid you won't +like, but you're going to have to +put up with it. That is, unless Miss +Foster decides to be cooperative."</p> + +<p>"I say, you fellows, let me go," +Bruce demanded, struggling experimentally. +"I know it's a bit thick +to swallow and I did give you the +wrong impression calling for an +A-tech, but I just wanted to capture +your attention then; I didn't +want to have to work on the bomb. +Really, Erich, would they have ordered +Benson-Carter to pick us up +unless one of us were an A-tech? +They'd be sure to include one in +the bally operation."</p> + +<p>"When they're using patchwork +tactics?" Erich grinningly quoted +back at him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Kaby</span> spoke up beside me and +said, "Benson-Carter was a +magician of matter and he was going +on the operation disguised as +an old woman. We have the cloak +and hood with the other garments," +and I wondered how this cold fish +of a she-officer could be the same +girl who was giving Mark slurpy +looks not ten minutes ago.</p> + +<p>"Well?" Erich asked, glancing +at his Caller and then swinging his +eyes around at us as if there must +be some of the old <i>Wehrmacht</i> +iron somewhere. We all found ourselves +looking at Lili and she was +looking so sharp herself, so ready +to jump and so at bay, that it was +all <i>I</i> needed, at any rate, to make +Erich's theory about the Maintainer +a rock-bottom certainty.</p> + +<p>Bruce must have realized the +way our minds were working, for +he started to struggle in earnest +and at the same time called, "For +God's sake, don't do anything to +Lili! Let me loose, you idiots! +Everything's true I told you—I +can save you from that bomb. +Sevensee, you took my side against +the Spiders; you've nothing to +lose. Sid, you're an Englishman. +Beau, you're a gentleman and you +love her, too—for God's sake, +stop them!"</p> + +<p>Beau glanced up over his shoulder +at Bruce and the others surging +around close to his ankles and he +had on his poker face. Sid I could +tell was once more going through +the purgatory of decision. Beau +reached his own decision first and +I'll say it for him that he acted +on it fast and intelligently. Right +from his kneeling position and before +he'd even turned his head +quite back, he jumped Erich.</p> + +<p>But other things in this cosmos +besides Man can pick sides and +act fast. Illy landed on Beau midway +and whipped his tentacles +around him tight and they went +wobbling around like a drunken +white-and-silver barber pole. Beau +got his hands each around a tentacle, +and at the same time his +face began to get purple, and I +winced at what they were both +going through.</p> + +<p>Maybe Sevensee had a hoof in +Sid's purgatory, because Bruce +shook loose from the satyr and +tried to knock out Mark, but the +Roman twisted his arm and kept +him from getting in a good punch.</p> + +<p>Erich didn't make a move to +mix into either fight, which is my +little commandant all over. Using +his fists on anybody but me is +beneath him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Then</span> Sid made his choice, but +there was no way for me to tell +what it was, for, as he reached for +the Minor Maintainer, Kaby contemptuously +snatched it away from +his hands and gave him a knee in +the belly that doubled me up in +sympathy and sent him sprawling +on his knees toward the fighters. +On the return, Kaby gave Lili, +who'd started to grab too, an effortless +backhand smash that set her +down on the divan.</p> + +<p>Erich's face lit up like an electric +sign and he kept his eyes fixed +on Kaby.</p> + +<p>She crouched a little, carrying +her weight on the balls of her feet +and firmly cradling the Minor +Maintainer in her left arm, like a +basketball captain planning an offensive. +Then she waved her free +hand decisively to the right. I didn't +get it, but Erich did and Mark +too, for Erich jumped for the Refresher +sector and Mark let go of +Bruce and followed him, ducking +around Sevensee's arms, who was +coming back into the fight on +which side I don't know. Illy un-whipped +from Beau and copied +Erich and Mark with one +big spring.</p> + +<p>Then Kaby twisted a dial as +far as it would go and Bruce, Beau, +Sevensee and poor Siddy were +slammed down and pinned to the +floor by about eight gravities.</p> + +<p>It should have been lighter near +us—I hoped it was, but you +couldn't tell from watching Siddy; +he went flat on his face, spread-eagled, +one hand stretched toward +me so close, I could have touched +it (but not let go!), and his mouth +was open against the floor and he +was gasping through a corner of +it and I could see his spine trying +to sink through his belly. Bruce +just managed to get his head and +one shoulder up a bit, and they +all made me think of a Dore illustration +of the <i>Inferno</i> where the +cream of the damned are frozen up +to their necks in ice in the innermost +circle of Hell.</p> + +<p>The gravity didn't catch me, although +I could feel it in my left +arm. I was mostly in the Refresher +sector, but I dropped down flat too, +partly out of a crazy compassion I +have, but mostly because I didn't +want to take a chance of having +Kaby knock me down.</p> + +<p>Erich, Mark and Illy had got +clear and they headed toward us. +Maud picked the moment to make +her play; she hadn't much choice +of times, if she wanted to make +one. The Old Girl was looking it +for once, but I guess the thought +of her miracle must have survived +alongside the fear of sacked sun +and must have meant a lot to her, +for she launched out fast, all set +to straight-arm Kaby into the +heavy gravity and grab the Minor +Maintainer with the other hand.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 14</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.<br /></span> +</div><div class="rgt">—Webster</div></div> + +<h3>"NOW WILL YOU TALK?"</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Cretans</span> have eyes under +their back hair, or let's face it, +Entertainers aren't Soldiers. Kaby +weaved to one side and flicked a +helpful hand and poor old Maud +went where she'd been going to +send Kaby. It sickened me to see +the gravity take hold and yank +her down.</p> + +<p>I could have jumped up and +made it four in a row for Kaby, +but I'm not a bit brave when things +like my life are at stake.</p> + +<p>Lili was starting to get up, acting +a little dazed. Kaby gently +pushed her down again and quietly +said, "Where is it?" and then +hauled off and slapped her across +the face. What got me was the matter-of-fact +way Kaby did it. I can +understand somebody getting mad +and socking someone, or even deliberately +working up a rage so as +to be able to do something nasty, +but this cold-blooded way turns +my stomach.</p> + +<p>Lili looked as if half her face +were about to start bleeding, but +she didn't look dazed any more +and her jaw set. Kaby grabbed +Lili's pearl necklace and twisted it +around her neck and it broke and +the pearls went bouncing around +like ping-pong balls, so Kaby +yanked down Lili's gray silk bandeau +until it was around the neck +and tightened that. Lili started to +choke through her tight-pressed +lips. Erich, Mark and Illy had +come up and crowded around, but +they seemed to be content with the +job Kaby was doing.</p> + +<p>"Listen, slut," she said, "we have +no time. You have a healing room +in this place. I can work the +things."</p> + +<p>"Here it comes," I thought, wishing +I could faint. On top of everything, +on top of death even, they +had to drag in the nightmare personally +stylized for me, the horror +with my name on it. I wasn't going +to be allowed to blow up peacefully. +They weren't satisfied with +an A-bomb. They had to write my +private hell into the script.</p> + +<p>"There is a thing called an Invertor," +Kaby said exactly as I'd +known she would, but as I didn't +really hear it just then—a mental +split I'll explain in a moment. "It +opens you up so they can cure your +insides without cutting your skin +or making you bleed anywhere. It +turns the big parts of you inside +out, but not the blood tubes. All +your skin—your eyes, ears, nose, +toes, all of it—becoming the lining +of a little hole that's half-filled with +your hair.</p> + +<p>"Meantime, your insides are exposed +for whatever the healer +wants to do to them. You live for +a while on the air inside the hole. +First the healer gives you an air +that makes you sleep, or you go +mad in about fifty heartbeats. We'll +see what ten heartbeats do to you +without the sleepy air. Now will +you talk?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I hadn't</span> been listening to her, +though, not the real me, or I'd +have gone mad without getting the +treatment. I once heard Doc say +your liver is more mysterious and +farther away from you than the +stars, because although you live +with your liver all your life, you +never see it or learn to point to it +instinctively, and the thought of +someone messing around with that +intimate yet unknown part of you +is just too awful.</p> + +<p>I knew I had to do something +quick. Hell, at the first hint of Introversion, +before Kaby had even +named it, Illy had winced so that +his tentacles were all drawn up like +fat feather-sausages. Erich had +looked at him questioningly, but +that lousy Looney had un-endeared +himself to me by squeaking, "Don't +mind me, I'm just sensitive. Get on +with the girl. Make her tell."</p> + +<p>Yes, I knew I had to do something, +and here on the floor that +meant thinking hard and in high +gear about something else. The +screwball sculpture Erich had tried +to smash was a foot from my nose +and I saw a faint trail of white +stuff where it had skidded. I +reached out and touched the trail; +it was finely gritty, like powdered +glass. I tipped up the sculpture +and the part on which it had +skidded wasn't marred at all, not +even dulled; the gray spheres were +as glisteningly bright as ever. So I +knew the trail was diamond dust +rubbed off the diamonds in the +floor by something even harder.</p> + +<p>That told me the sculpture was +something special and maybe Doc +had had a real idea in his pickled +brain when he'd been pushing the +thing at all of us and trying to tell +us something. He hadn't managed +to say anything then, but he had +earlier when he'd been going to tell +us what to do about the bomb, and +maybe there was a connection.</p> + +<p>I twisted my memory hard and +let it spring back and I got "Inversh +... bosh ..." Bosh, indeed! +Bosh and inverse bosh to all boozers, +Russki or otherwise.</p> + +<p>So I quick tried the memory +trick again and this time I got +"glovsh" and then I grasped and +almost sneezed on diamond dust +as I watched the pieces fit themselves +together in my mind like a +speeded-up movie reel.</p> + +<p>It all hung on that black right-hand +hussar's glove Lili had produced +for Bruce. Only she couldn't +have found it in Stores, because +we'd searched every fractional +pigeonhole later on and there +hadn't been any gloves there, not +even the left-hand mate there +would have been. Also, Bruce had +had two left-hand gloves to start +with, and we had been through the +whole Place with a fine-tooth +comb, and there had been only the +two black gloves on the floor where +Bruce had kicked them off the +bar—those two and those two only, +the left-hand glove he'd brought +from outside and the right-hand +glove Lili had produced for him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">So</span> a left-hand glove had disappeared—the +last I'd seen of it, +Lili had been putting it on her tray—and +a right-hand glove had appeared. +Which could only add up +to one thing: Lili had turned the +left-hand glove into an identical +right. She couldn't have done it by +turning it inside out the ordinary +way, because the lining was different.</p> + +<p>But as I knew only too sickeningly +well, there was an extraordinary +way to turn things inside out, +things like human beings. You +merely had to put them on the Invertor +in Surgery and flick the +switch for full Inversion.</p> + +<p>Or you could flick it for partial +Inversion and turn something into +a perfect three-dimensional mirror +image of itself, just what a right-hand +glove is of a left. Rotation +through the fourth dimension, the +science boys call it; I've heard of +it being used in surgery on the +highly asymmetric Martians, and +even to give a socially impeccable +right hand to a man who'd lost +one, by turning an amputated right +arm into an amputated left.</p> + +<p>Ordinarily, nothing but live +things are ever Inverted in Surgery +and you wouldn't think of doing +it to an inanimate object, especially +in a Place where the Doc's +a drunk and the Surgery hasn't +been used for hundreds of sleeps.</p> + +<p>But when you've just fallen in +love, you think of wonderful crazy +things to do for people. Drunk with +love, Lili had taken Bruce's extra +left-hand glove into Surgery, partially +Inverted it, and got a right-hand +glove to give him.</p> + +<p>What Doc had been trying to +say with his "Inversh ... bosh ..." +was "Invert the box," meaning we +should put the bronze chest +through full Inversion to get at the +bomb inside to disarm it. Doc too +had got the idea from Lili's trick +with the glove. What an inside-out +tactical atomic bomb would +look like, I could not imagine and +did not particularly care to see. +I might have to, though, I realized.</p> + +<p>But the fast-motion film was still +running in my head. Later on, +Lili had decided like I had that +her lover was going to lose out +in his plea for mutiny unless she +could give him a really captive +audience—and maybe, even then, +she had been figuring on creating +the nest for Bruce's chicks and ... +all those other things we'd believed +in for a while. So she'd taken the +Major Maintainer and remembered +the glove, and not many seconds +later, she had set down on +a shelf of the Art Gallery an object +that no one would think of +questioning—except someone who +knew the Gallery by heart.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I looked</span> at the abstract sculpture +a foot from my nose, at +the clustered gray spheres the size +of golf balls. I had known that the +inside of the Maintainer was made +up of vastly tough, vastly hard +giant molecules, but I hadn't +realized they were quite <i>that</i> big.</p> + +<p>I said to myself, "Greta, this is +going to give you a major psychosis, +but you're the one who has +to do it, because no one is going +to listen to your deductions when +they're all practically living on +negative time already."</p> + +<p>I got up as quietly as if I were +getting out of a bed I shouldn't +have been in—there are some +things Entertainers are good at—and +Kaby was just saying "you go +mad in about fifty heartbeats." +Everybody on their feet was looking +at Lili. Sid seemed to have +moved, but I had no time for him +except to hope he hadn't done +anything that might attract attention +to me.</p> + +<p>I stepped out of my shoes and +walked rapidly to Surgery—there's +one good thing about this hardest +floor anywhere, it doesn't creak. +I walked through the Surgery +screen that is like a wall of opaque, +odorless cigarette smoke and I +concentrated on remembering my +snafued nurse's training, and before +I had time to panic, I had the +sculpture positioned on the gleaming +table of the Invertor.</p> + +<p>I froze for a moment when I +reached for the Inversion switch, +thinking of the other time and +trying to remember what it had +been that bothered me so much +about an inside-out brain being +bigger and not having eyes, but +then I either thumbed my nose at +my nightmare or kissed my sanity +good-by, I don't know which, and +twisted the switch all the way over, +and there was the Major Maintainer +winking blue about three +times a second as nice as you +could want it.</p> + +<p>It must have been working as +sweet and steady as ever, all the +time it was Inverted, except that, +being inside out, it had hocused +the direction finders.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 15</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 11em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">black legged spiders<br /></span> +<span class="i0">with red hearts of hell<br /></span> +</div><div class="rgt">—marquis</div></div> + +<h3>LORD SPIDER</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">"Jesu!"</span> I turned and Sid's face +was sticking through the +screen like a tinted bas-relief hanging +on a gray wall and I got the +impression he had peered unexpectedly +through a slit in an arras +into Queen Elizabeth's bedroom.</p> + +<p>He didn't have any time to linger +on the sensation, even if he'd +wanted to, for an elbow with a +copper band thrust through the +screen and dug his ribs and Kaby +marched Lili in by the neck. Erich, +Mark and Illy were right behind. +They caught the blue flashes and +stopped dead, staring at the long-lost. +Erich spared me one look +which seemed to say, so you did +it, not that it matters. Then he +stepped forward and picked it up +and held it solidly to his left side +in the double right-angle made by +fingers, forearm and chest, and +reached for the Introversion switch +with a look on his face as if he +were opening a fifth of whisky.</p> + +<p>The blue light died and Change +Winds hit me like a stiff drink +that had been a long, long time in +coming, like a hot trumpet note +out of nowhere.</p> + +<p>I felt the changing pasts blowing +through me, and the uncertainties +whistling past, and ice-stiff +reality softening with all its duties +and necessities, and the little memories +shredding away and dancing +off like autumn leaves, leaving +maybe not even ghosts behind, +and all the crazy moods like Mardi +Gras dancers pouring down an +evening street, and something inside +me had the nerve to say it +didn't care whether Greta Forzane's +death was riding in those +Winds because they felt so good.</p> + +<p>I could tell it was hitting the +others the same way. Even battered, +tight-lipped Lili seemed to +be saying, you're making me drink +the stuff and I hate you for it, +but I do love it. I guess we'd all +had the worry that even finding +and Extroverting the Maintainer +wouldn't put us back in touch with +the cosmos and give us those +Winds we hate and love.</p> + +<p>The thing that cut through to +us as we stood there glowing was +not the thought of the bomb, +though that would have come in a +few seconds more, but Sid's voice. +He was still standing in the screen, +except that now his face was out +the other side and we could just +see parts of his gray-doubleted +back, but, of course, his "Jesu!" +came through the screen as if it +weren't there.</p> + +<p>At first I couldn't figure out +who he could be talking to, but +I swear I never heard his voice +so courtly obsequious before, so +strong and yet so filled with awe +and an under-note of, yes, sheer +terror.</p> + +<p>"Lord, I am filled from top to +toe with confusion that you should +so honor my poor Place," he said. +"Poor say I and mine, when I +mean that I have ever busked it +faithfully for you, not dreaming +that you would ever condescend ... +yet knowing that your eye was +certes ever upon me ... though I +am but as a poor pinch of dust +adrift between the suns ... I +abase myself. Prithee, how may I +serve thee, sir? I know not e'en +how most suitably to address thee, +Lord ... King ... Emperor +Spider!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I felt</span> like I was getting very +small, but not a bit less visible, +worse luck, and even with the +Change Winds inside me to give +me courage, I thought this was +really too much, coming on top +of everything else; it was simply +unfair.</p> + +<p>At the same time, I realized +it was to be expected that the big +bosses would have been watching +us with their unblinking beady +black eyes ever since we had Introverted +waiting to pounce if we +should ever come out of it. I tried +to picture what was on the other +side of the screen and I didn't like +the assignment.</p> + +<p>But in spite of being petrified, +I had a hard time not giggling, +like the zany at graduation exercises, +at the way the other ones in +Surgery were taking it.</p> + +<p>I mean the Soldiers. They each +stiffened up like they had the old +ramrod inside them, and their faces +got that important look, and they +glanced at each other and the floor +without lowering their heads, as +if they were measuring the distance +between their feet and mentally +chalking alternate sets of footprints +to step into. The way Erich +and Kaby held the Major and +Minor Maintainers became formal; +the way they checked their Callers +and nodded reassuringly was positively +esoteric. Even Illy somehow +managed to look as if he were +on parade.</p> + +<p>Then from beyond the screen +came what was, under the circumstances, +the worst noise I've ever +heard, a seemingly wordless distant-sounding +howling and wailing, +with a note of menace that +made me shake, although it also +had a nasty familiarity about it I +couldn't place. Sid's voice broke +into it, loud, fast and frightened.</p> + +<p>"Your pardon, Lord, I did not +think ... certes, the gravity ... I'll +attend to it on the instant." He +whipped a hand and half a head +back through the screen, but without +looking back and snapped his +fingers, and before I could blink, +Kaby had put the Minor Maintainer +in his hand.</p> + +<p>Sid went completely out of sight +then and the howling stopped, and +I thought that if that was the way +a Lord Spider expressed his annoyance +at being subjected to incorrect +gravity, I hoped the bosses +wouldn't start any conversations +with me.</p> + +<p>Erich pursed his lips and threw +the other Soldiers a nod and the +four of them marched through the +screen as if they'd drilled a lifetime +for this moment. I had the +wild idea that Erich might give +me his arm, but he strode past me +as if I were ... an Entertainer.</p> + +<p>I hesitated a moment then, but +I had to see what was happening +outside, even if I got eaten up +for it. Besides, I had a bit of the +thought that if these formalities +went on much longer, even a Lord +Spider was going to discover just +how immune he was to confined +atomic blast.</p> + +<p>I walked through the screen with +Lili beside me.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> Soldiers had stopped a +few feet in front of it. I looked +around ahead for whatever it was +going to turn out to be, prepared +to drop a curtsy or whatever else, +bar nothing, that seemed expected +of me.</p> + +<p>I had a hard time spotting the +beast. Some of the others seemed +to be having trouble too. I saw +Doc weaving around foolishly by +the control divan, and Bruce and +Beau and Sevensee and Maud on +their feet beyond it, and I wondered +whether we were dealing +with an invisible monster; ought to +be easy enough for the bosses to +turn a simple trick like invisibility.</p> + +<p>Then I looked sharply left +where everyone else, even glassy-eyed +Doc, was coming to look, +into the Door sector, only there +wasn't any monster there or even +a Door, but just Siddy holding +the Minor Maintainer and grinning +like when he is threatening to +tickle me, only more fiendishly.</p> + +<p>"Not a move, masters," he cried, +his eyes dancing, "or I'll pin the +pack of you down, marry and +amen I will. It is my firm purpose +to see the Place blasted before +I let this instrument out of +my hands again."</p> + +<p>My first thought was, "'Sblood +but Siddy is a real actor! I don't +care if he didn't study under anyone +later than Burbage, that just +proves how good Burbage is."</p> + +<p>Sid had convinced us not only +that the real Spiders had arrived, +but earlier that the gravity in the +edge of Stores had been a lot +heavier than it actually was. He +completely fooled all those Soldiers, +including my swelled-headed +victorious little commandant, and +I kind of filed away the timing +of that business of reaching out the +hand and snapping the fingers +without looking, it was so good.</p> + +<p>"Beauregard!" Sid called. "Get +to the Major Maintainer and call +headquarters. But don't come +through Door, marry go by Refresher. +I'll not trust a single Demon +of you in this sector with me +until much more has been shown +and settled."</p> + +<p>"Siddy, you're wonderful," I said, +starting toward him. "As soon as +I got the Maintainer unsnarled +and looked around and saw your +sweet old face—"</p> + +<p>"Back, tricksy trull! Not the +breadth of one scarlet toenail +nearer me, you Queen of Sleights +and High Priestess of Deception!" +he bellowed. "You least of all do +I trust. Why you hid the Maintainer, +I know not, 'faith, but later +you'll discover the truth to me or +I'll have your gizzard."</p> + +<p>I could see there was going to +have to be a little explaining.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Doc</span>, touched off, I guess, by +Sid waving his hand at me, +threw back his head and let off +one of those shuddery Siberian +wolf-howls he does so blamed well. +Sid waved toward him sharply and +he shut up, beaming toothily, but +at least I knew who was responsible +for the Spider wail of displeasure +that Sid had either called +for or more likely got as a gift +of the gods and used in his act.</p> + +<p>Beau came circling around fast +and Erich shoved the Major Maintainer +into his hands without making +any fuss. The four Soldiers +were looking pretty glum after +losing their grand review.</p> + +<p>Beau dumped some junk off one +of the Art Gallery's sturdy taborets +and set the Major Maintainer +on it carefully but fast, and quickly +knelt in front of it and whipped +on some earphones and started to +tune. The way he did it snatched +away from me my inward glory +at my big Inversion brainwave so +fast, I might never have had it, +and there was nothing in my mind +again but the bronze bomb chest.</p> + +<p>I wondered if I should suggest +Inverting the thing, but I said to +myself, "Uh-uh, Greta, you got no +diploma to show them and there +probably isn't time to try two +things, anyway."</p> + +<p>Then Erich for once did something +I wanted him to, though I +didn't care for its effect on my +nerves, by looking at his Caller +and saying quietly, "Nine minutes +to go, if Place time and cosmic +time are synching."</p> + +<p>Beau was steady as a rock and +working adjustments so fine that +I couldn't even see his fingers +move.</p> + +<p>Then, at the other end of the +Place, Bruce took a few steps +toward us. Sevensee and Maud +followed a bit behind him. I remembered +Bruce was another of +our nuts with a private program +for blowing up the place.</p> + +<p>"Sidney," he called, and then, +when he'd got Sid's attention, "Remember, +Sidney, you and I both +came down to London from Peterhouse."</p> + +<p>I didn't get it. Then Bruce +looked toward Erich with a devil-may-care +challenge and toward +Lili as if he were asking her forgiveness +for something. I couldn't +read her expression; the bruises +were blue on her throat and her +cheek was puffy.</p> + +<p>Then Bruce once more shot +Erich that look of challenge and +he spun and grabbed Sevensee by +a wrist and stuck out a foot—even +half-horses aren't too sharp about +infighting, I guess, and the satyr +had every right to feel at least as +confused as I felt—and sent him +stumbling into Maud, and the two +of them tumbled to the floor in a +jumble of hairy legs and pearl-gray +frock. Bruce raced to the +bomb chest.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Most</span> of us yelled, "Stop him, +Sid, pin him down," or something +like that—I know I did because +I was suddenly sure that he'd +been asking Lili's pardon for blowing +the two of them up—and all +the rest of us too, the love-blinded +stinker.</p> + +<p>Sid had been watching him all +the time and now he lifted his +hand to the Minor Maintainer, but +then he didn't touch any of the +dials, just watched and waited, and +I thought, "Shaitan shave us! Does +Siddy want in on death, too? Ain't +he satisfied with all he knows about +life?"</p> + +<p>Bruce had knelt and was twisting +some things on the front of +the chest, and it was all as bright +as if he were under a bank of +Klieg lights, and I was telling myself +I wouldn't know anything +when the fireball fired, and not believing +it, and Sevensee and Maud +had got unscrambled and were +starting for Bruce, and the rest of +us were yelling at Sid, except that +Erich was just looking at Bruce +very happily, and Sid was still +not doing anything, and it was +unbearable except just then I felt +the little arteries start to burst in +my brain like a string of fire-crackers +and the old aorta pop, and +for good measure, a couple of +valves come unhinged in my ticker, +and I was thinking, "Well, now I +know what it's like to die of heart +failure and high blood pressure," +and having a last quiet smile at +having cheated the bomb, when +Bruce jumped up and back from +the chest.</p> + +<p>"That does it!" he announced +cheerily. "She's as safe as the +Bank of England."</p> + +<p>Sevensee and Maud stopped +themselves just short of knocking +him down and I said to myself, +"Hey, let's get a move on! I +thought heart attacks were fast."</p> + +<p>Before anyone else could speak, +Beau did. He had turned around +from the Major Maintainer and +pulled aside one of the earphones.</p> + +<p>"I got headquarters," he said +crisply. "They told me how to +disarm the bomb—I merely said +I thought we ought to know. What +did you do, sir?" he called to +Bruce.</p> + +<p>"There's a row of four ankhs +just below the lock. The first to +your left you give a quarter turn +to the right, the second a quarter +turn to the left, same for the +fourth, and you don't touch the +third."</p> + +<p>"That is it, sir," Beau confirmed.</p> + +<p>The long silence was too much +for me; I guess I must have the +shortest span for unspoken relief +going. I drew some nourishment +out of my restored arteries into +my brain cells and yelled, "Siddy, +I know I'm a tricksy trull and the +High Vixen of all Foxes, but what +the Hell is Peterhouse?"</p> + +<p>"The oldest college at Cambridge," +he told me rather coolly.</p> + +<hr class="chp" /> +<h2>CHAPTER 16</h2> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Familiar with infinite universe +sheafs and open-ended postulate +systems?—the notion that everything +is possible—and I mean everything—and +everything has happened. +<i>Everything.</i>"</p> + +<div class="rgt">—Heinlein</div></div> + +<h3>THE POSSIBILITY-BINDERS</h3> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">An</span> hour later, I was nursing a +weak highball and a black eye +in the sleepy-time darkness on the +couch farthest from the piano, half +watching the highlighted party going +on around it and the bar, while +the Place waited for rendezvous +with Egypt and the Battle of +Alexandria.</p> + +<p>Sid had swept all our outstanding +problems into one big bundle +and, since his hand held the joker +of the Minor Maintainer, he had +settled them all as high-handedly +as if they'd been those of a bunch +of schoolkids.</p> + +<p>It amounted to this:</p> + +<p>We'd been Introverted when +most of the damning things had +happened, so presumably only we +knew about them, and we were +all in so deep one way or another +that we'd all have to keep quiet +to protect our delicate complexions.</p> + +<p>Well, Erich's triggering the +bomb did balance rather neatly +Bruce's incitement to mutiny, and +there was Doc's drinking, while +everybody who had declared for +the peace message had something +to hide. Mark and Kaby I felt +inclined to trust anywhere, Maud +for sure, and Erich in this particular +matter, damn him. Illy I +didn't feel at all easy about, but +I told myself there always has to +be a fly in the ointment—a darn +big one this time, and furry.</p> + +<p>Sid didn't mention his own dirty +linen, but he knew we knew he'd +flopped badly as boss of the Place +and only recouped himself by that +last-minute flimflam.</p> + +<p>Remembering Sid's trick made +me think for a moment about the +real Spiders. Just before I snuck +out of Surgery, I'd had a vivid picture +of what they must look like, +but now I couldn't get it again. +It depressed me, not being able to +remember—oh, I probably just +imagined I'd had a picture, like a +hophead on a secret-of-the-universe +kick. Me ever find out anything +about the Spiders?—except +for nervous notions like I'd had +during the recent fracas?—what a +laugh!</p> + +<p>The funniest thing (ha-ha!) was +that I had ended up the least-trusted +person. Sid wouldn't give +me time to explain how I'd deduced +what had happened to the +Maintainer, and even when Lili +spoke up and admitted hiding it, +she acted so bored I don't think +everybody believed her—although +she did spill the realistic detail +that she hadn't used partial Inversion +on the glove; she'd just turned +it inside out to make it a right and +then done a full Inversion to get +the lining back inside.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I tried</span> to get Doc to confirm +that he'd reasoned the +thing out the same way I had, but +he said he had been blacked out +the whole time, except during the +first part of the hunt, and he didn't +remember having any bright ideas +at all. Right now, he was having +Maud explain to him twice, in detail, +everything that had happened. +I decided that it was going to take +a little more work before my reputation +as a great detective was established.</p> + +<p>I looked over the edge of the +couch and just made out in the +gloom one of Bruce's black gloves. +It must have been kicked there. +I fished it up. It was the right-hand +one. My big clue, and was I +sick of it! Got mittens, God forbid! +I slung it away and, like a +lurking octopus, Illy shot up a tentacle +from the next couch, where +I hadn't known he was resting, and +snatched the glove like it was a +morsel of underwater garbage. +These ETs can seem pretty shuddery +non-human at times.</p> + +<p>I thought of what a cold-blooded, +skin-saving louse Illy had been, +and about Sid and his easy suspicions, +and Erich and my black +eye, and how, as usual, I'd got +left alone in the end. My men!</p> + +<p>Bruce had explained about being +an A-tech. Like a lot of us, +he'd had several widely different +jobs during his first weeks in the +Change World and one of them +had been as secretary to a group of +the minor atomics boys from the +Manhattan-Project-Earth-Satellite +days. I gathered he'd also absorbed +some of his bothersome +ideas from them. I hadn't quite +decided yet what species of heroic +heel he belonged to, but he was +thick with Mark and Erich again. +Everybody's men!</p> + +<p>Sid didn't have to argue with +anybody; all the wild compulsions +and mighty resolves were dead +now, anyway until they'd had a +good long rest. I sure could use +one myself, I knew.</p> + +<p>The party at the piano was getting +wilder. Lili had been dancing +the black bottom on top of it +and now she jumped down into +Sid's and Sevensee's arms, taking +a long time about it. She'd been +drinking a lot and her little gray +dress looked about as innocent on +her as diapers would on Nell +Gwyn. She continued her dance, +distributing her marks of favor +equally between Sid, Erich and the +satyr. Beau didn't mind a bit, but +serenely pounded out "Tonight's +the Night"—which she'd practically +shouted to him not two minutes +ago.</p> + +<p>I was glad to be out of the party. +Who can compete with a highly +experienced, utterly disillusioned +seventeen-year-old really throwing +herself away for the first time?</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Something</span> touched my +hand. Illy had stretched a tentacle +into a furry wire to return +me the black glove, although he +ought to have known I didn't want +it. I pushed it away, privately calling +Illy a washed-out moronic +tarantula, and right away I felt a +little guilty. What right had I to +be critical of Illy? Would my own +character have shown to advantage +if I'd been locked in with +eleven octopoids a billion years +away? For that matter, where did +I get off being critical of anyone?</p> + +<p>Still, I was glad to be out of +the party, though I kept on watching +it. Bruce was drinking alone +at the bar. Once Sid had gone over +to him and they'd had one together +and I'd heard Bruce reciting +from Rupert Brooke those deliberately +corny lines, "For England's +the one land, I know, Where +men with Splendid Hearts may +go; and Cambridgeshire, of all +England, The Shire for Men who +Understand;" and I'd remembered +that Brooke too had died young +in World War One and my ideas +had got fuzzy. But mostly Bruce +was just calmly drinking by himself. +Every once in a while Lili +would look at him and stop dead +in her dancing and laugh.</p> + +<p>I'd figured out this Bruce-Lili-Erich +business as well as I cared +to. Lili had wanted the nest with +all her heart and nothing else +would ever satisfy her, and now +she'd go to hell her own way and +probably die of Bright's disease +for a third time in the Change +World. Bruce hadn't wanted the +nest or Lili as much as he wanted +the Change World and the chances +it gave for Soldierly cavorting and +poetic drunks; Lili's seed wasn't his +idea of healing the cosmos; maybe +he'd make a real mutiny some day, +but more likely he'd stick to bar-room +epics.</p> + +<p>His and Lili's infatuation +wouldn't die completely, no matter +how rancid it looked right now. +The real-love angle might go, but +Change would magnify the romance +angle and it might seem to +them like a big thing of a sort if +they met again.</p> + +<p>Erich had his <i>Kamerad</i>, shaped +to suit him, who'd had the guts +and cleverness to disarm the bomb +he'd had the guts to trigger. You +have to hand it to Erich for having +the nerve to put us all in a +situation where we'd have to find +the Maintainer or fry, but I don't +know anything disgusting enough +to hand to him.</p> + +<p>I had tried a while back. I had +gone up behind him and said, +"Hey, how's my wicked little commandant? +Forgotten your <i>und so +weiter</i>?" and as he turned, I clawed +my nails and slammed him across +the cheek. That's how I got the +black eye. Maud wanted to put +an electronic leech on it, but I +took the old handkerchief in ice +water. Well, at any rate Erich had +his scratches to match Bruce's, not +as deep, but four of them, and I +told myself maybe they'd get infected—I +hadn't washed my hands +since the hunt. Not that Erich +doesn't love scars.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Mark</span> was the one who helped +me up after Erich knocked +me down.</p> + +<p>"You got any omnias for that?" +I snapped at him.</p> + +<p>"For what?" Mark asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, for everything that's been +happening to us," I told him disgustedly.</p> + +<p>He seemed to actually think for +a moment and then he said, "<i>Omnia +mutantur, nihil interit.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Meaning?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>He said, "All things change, but +nothing is really lost."</p> + +<p>It would be a wonderful philosophy +to stand with against the +Change Winds. Also damn silly. +I wondered if Mark really believed +it. I wished I could. Sometimes +I come close to thinking it's +a lot of baloney trying to be any +decent kind of Demon, even a +good Entertainer. Then I tell myself, +"That's life, Greta. You've +got to love through it somehow." +But there are times when some of +these cookies are not too easy to +love.</p> + +<p>Something brushed the palm of +my hand again. It was Illy's tentacle, +with the tendrils of the tip +spread out like a little bush. I +started to pull my hand away, but +then I realized the Loon was +simply lonely. I surrendered my +hand to the patterned gossamer +pressures of feather-talk.</p> + +<div class="figr"><img src="images/006.png" width="388" height="550" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<p>Right away I got the words, +"Feeling lonely, Greta girl?"</p> + +<p>It almost floored me, I tell you. +Here I was understanding feather-talk, +which I just didn't, and I was +understanding it in English, which +didn't make sense at all.</p> + +<p>For a second, I thought Illy +must have spoken, but I knew he +hadn't, and for a couple more +seconds I thought he was working +telepathy on me, using the feather-talk +as cues. Then I tumbled to +what was happening: he was playing +English on my palm like on +the keyboard of his squeakbox, and +since I could play English on a +squeakbox myself, my mind translated +automatically.</p> + +<p>Realizing this almost gave my +mind stage fright, but I was too +fagged to be hocused by self-consciousness. +I just lay back and let +the thoughts come through. It's +good to have someone talk to you, +even an underweight octopus, and +without the squeaks Illy didn't +sound so silly; his phrasing was +soberer.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">"Feeling</span> sad, Greta girl, because +you'll never understand +what's happening to us all," +Illy asked me, "because you'll +never be anything but a shadow +fighting shadows—and trying to +love shadows in between the battles? +It's time you understood +we're not really fighting a war at +all, although it looks that way, +but going through a kind of evolution, +though not exactly the kind +Erich had in mind.</p> + +<p>"Your Terran thought has a +word for it and a theory for it—a +theory that recurs on many +worlds. It's about the four orders +of life: Plants, Animals, Men and +Demons. Plants are energy-binders—they +can't move through space +or time, but they can clutch energy +and transform it. Animals are +space-binders—they can move +through space. Man (Terran or +ET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a +time-binder—he has memory.</p> + +<p>"Demons are the fourth order of +evolution, possibility-binders—they +can make all of what might be part +of what is, and that is their evolutionary +function. Resurrection is +like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar +into a butterfly: a third-order +being breaks out of the chrysalis +of its lifeline into fourth-order +life. The leap from the ripped cocoon +of an unchanging reality is +like the first animal's leap when +he ceases to be a plant, and the +Change World is the core of meaning +behind the many myths of immortality.</p> + +<p>"All evolution looks like a war +at first—octopoids against monopoids, +mammals against reptiles. +And it has a necessary dialectic: +there must be the thesis—we call +it Snake—and the antithesis—Spider—before +there can be the +ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities +are fully realized in one +ultimate universe. The Change +War isn't the blind destruction it +seems.</p> + +<p>"Remember that the Serpent +is your symbol of wisdom and the +Spider your sign for patience. The +two names are rightly frightening +to you, for all high existence is a +mixture of horror and delight. And +don't be surprised, Greta girl, at +the range of my words and +thoughts; in a way, I've had a billion +years to study Terra and +learn her languages and myths.</p> + +<p>"Who are the real Spiders and +Snakes, meaning who were the +first possibility-binders? Who was +Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? +Who were Eve and Lilith?</p> + +<p>"In binding all possibility, the +Demons also bind the mental with +the material. All fourth-order beings +live inside and outside all +minds, throughout the whole cosmos. +Even this Place is, after its +fashion, a giant brain: its floor is +the brainpan, the boundary of the +Void is the cortex of gray matter—yes, +even the Major and Minor +Maintainers are analogues of the +pineal and pituitary glands, which +in some form sustain all nervous +systems.</p> + +<p>"There's the real picture, Greta +girl."</p> + +<p>The feather-talk faded out and +Illy's tendril tips merged into a +soft pad on which I fingered, +"Thanks, Daddy Longlegs."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Chewing</span> over in my mind +what Illy had just told me, I +looked back at the gang around +the piano. The party seemed to +be breaking up; at least some of +them were chopping away at it. +Sid had gone to the control divan +and was getting set to tune in +Egypt. Mark and Kaby were there +with him, all bursting with eagerness +and the vision of ranks on +ranks of mounted Zombie bowmen +going up in a mushroom +cloud; I thought of what Illy had +told me and I managed a smile—seems +we've got to win and lose +all the battles, every which way.</p> + +<p>Mark had just put on his Parthian +costume, groaning cheerfully, +"Trousers again!" and was striding +around under a hat like a fur-lined +ice-cream cone and with the +sleeves of his metal-stuffed candys +flapping over his hands. He waved +a short sword with a heart-shaped +guard at Bruce and Erich and +told them to get a move on.</p> + +<p>Kaby was going along on the +operation wearing the old-woman +disguise intended for Benson-Carter. +I got a half-hearted kick out +of knowing she was going to have +to cover that chest and hobble.</p> + +<p>Bruce and Erich weren't taking +orders from Mark just yet. Erich +went over and said something to +Bruce at the bar, and Bruce got +down and went over with Erich to +the piano, and Erich tapped Beau +on the shoulder and leaned over +and said something to him, and +Beau nodded and yanked "Limehouse +Blues" to a fast close and +started another piece, something +slow and nostalgic.</p> + +<p>Erich and Bruce waved to Mark +and smiled, as if to show him that +whether he came over and stood +with them or not, the legate and +the lieutenant and the commandant +were very much together. +And while Sevensee hugged Lili +with a simple enthusiasm that +made me wonder why I've wasted +so much imagination on genetic +treatments for him, Erich and +Bruce sang:</p> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 33em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To our brothers in the tunnels outside time,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and robot-crammed,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And Commandos of the Spiders—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Here's to crime!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Hush—hush—hush!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>We've lost our now and will never get back,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Hush—hush—hush!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Change Commandos out on the spree,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Damned through all possibility,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Hush—hush—hush!</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>While they were singing, I +looked down at my charcoal skirt +and over at Maud and Lili and I +thought, "Three gray hustlers for +three black hussars, that's our +speed." Well, I'd never thought of +myself as a high-speed job, winning +all the races—I wouldn't feel comfortable +that way. Come to think +of it, we've got to lose and win +all the races in the long run, the +way the course is laid out.</p> + +<p>I fingered to Illy, "That's the +picture, all right, Spider boy."</p> + +<div class="rgt"><b>—FRITZ LEIBER</b></div> + +<div class="trn"><div class="figtl"><a href="images/007-2.jpg"><img src="images/007-1.jpg" width="149" height="200" alt="" title="" /></a></div> +<div class="figtr"><a href="images/008-2.jpg"><img src="images/008-1.jpg" width="146" height="200" alt="" title="" /></a></div> + +<p class="center"><big><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></big></p> + +<p>This etext was produced from <i>Galaxy Science Fiction</i> March and April 1958. +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and +typographical errors have been corrected without note.</p></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Time, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + +***** This file should be named 32256-h.htm or 32256-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/5/32256/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Big Time + +Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber + +Illustrator: Virgil Finlay + +Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32256] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + + +By FRITZ LEIBER + +THE BIG TIME + + _You can't know there's a war on--for the Snakes coil and Spiders + weave to keep you from knowing it's being fought over your live and + dead body!_ + +Illustrated by FINLAY + + + + +CHAPTER 1 + + When shall we three meet again + In thunder, lightning, or in rain? + + When the hurlyburly's done. + When the battle's lost and won. + + --Macbeth + +ENTER THREE HUSSARS + + +My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe +me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate +chiefly outside space and time--not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such +places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either. + +I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also +bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I +need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity +Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the +Change War, a war of time travelers--in fact, our private name for being +in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back +to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help +our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long +killing business, believe me. + +You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all +the time and maybe you've had hints of it without realizing. + +Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be +bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the +next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing +because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt +sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever +been scared of Ghosts--not the story-book kind, but the billions of +beings who were once so real and strong it's hard to believe they'll +just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever wondered about those things +you may call devils or Demons--spirits able to range through all time +and space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of +space between the galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole +universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you've had hints +of the Change War. + +How I got recruited into the Change War, how it's conducted, what the +two sides are, why you don't consciously know about it, what I really +think about it--you'll learn in due course. + + * * * * * + +The place outside the cosmos where I and my pals do our nursing job I +simply call the Place. A lot of my nursing consists of amusing and +humanizing Soldiers fresh back from raids into time. In fact, my formal +title is Entertainer and I've got my silly side, as you'll find out. + +My pals are two other gals and three guys from quite an assortment of +times and places. We're a pretty good team, and with Sid bossing, we run +a pretty good Recuperation Station, though we have our family troubles. +But most of our troubles come slamming into the Place with the beat-up +Soldiers, who've generally just been going through hell and want to +raise some of their own. As a matter of fact, it was three newly arrived +Soldiers who started this thing I'm going to tell you about, this thing +that showed me so much about myself and everything. + +When it started, I had been on the Big Time for a thousand sleeps and +two thousand nightmares, and working in the Place for five hundred-one +thousand. This two-nightmares routine every time you lay down your dizzy +little head is rough, but you pretend to get used to it because being on +the Big Time is supposed to be worth it. + +The Place is midway in size and atmosphere between a large nightclub +where the Entertainers sleep in and a small Zeppelin hangar decorated +for a party, though a Zeppelin is one thing we haven't had yet. You go +out of the Place, but not often if you have any sense and if you are an +Entertainer like me, into the cold light of a morning filled with +anything from the earlier dinosaurs to the later spacemen, who look +strangely similar except for size. + +Solely on doctor's orders, I have been on cosmic leave six times since +coming to work at the Place, meaning I have had six brief vacations, if +you care to call them that, for believe me they are busman's holidays, +considering what goes on in the Place all the time. The last one I spent +in Renaissance Rome, where I got a crush on Cesare Borgia, but I got +over it. Vacations are for the birds, anyway, because they have to be +fitted by the Spiders into serious operations of the Change War, and you +can imagine how restful that makes them. + +"See those Soldiers changing the past? You stick along with them. Don't +go too far up front, though, but don't wander off either. Relax and +enjoy yourself." + +Ha! Now the kind of recuperation Soldiers get when they come to the +Place is a horse of a far brighter color, simply dazzling by comparison. +Entertainment is our business and we give them a bang-up time and send +them staggering happily back into action, though once in a great while +something may happen to throw a wee shadow on the party. + + * * * * * + +I am dead in some ways, but don't let that bother you--I am lively +enough in others. If you met me in the cosmos, you would be more apt to +yak with me or try to pick me up than to ask a cop to do same or a +father to douse me with holy water, unless you are one of those +hard-boiled reformer types. But you are not likely to meet me in the +cosmos, because (bar Basin Street and the Prater) 15th Century Italy and +Augustan Rome--until they spoiled it--are my favorite (Ha!) vacation +spots and, as I have said, I stick as close to the Place as I can. It is +really the nicest Place in the whole Change World. (Crisis! I even +_think_ of it capitalized!) + +Anyhoo, when this thing started, I was twiddling my thumbs on the couch +nearest the piano and thinking it was too late to do my fingernails and +whoever came in probably wouldn't notice them anyway. + +The Place was jumpy like it always is on an approach and the gray velvet +of the Void around us was curdled with the uneasy lights you see when +you close your eyes in the dark. + +Sid was tuning the Maintainers for the pick-up and the right shoulder of +his gold-worked gray doublet was streaked where he'd been wiping his +face on it with quick ducks of his head. + +Beauregard was leaning as close as he could over Sid's other shoulder, +one white-trousered knee neatly indenting the rose plush of the control +divan, and he wasn't missing a single flicker of Sid's old fingers on +the dials; Beau's co-pilot besides piano player. Beau's face had that +dead blank look it must have had when every double eagle he owned and +more he didn't were riding on the next card to be turned in the gambling +saloon on one of those wedding-cake Mississippi steamboats. + +Doc was soused as usual, sitting at the bar with his top hat pushed back +and his knitted shawl pulled around him, his wide eyes seeing whatever +horrors a life in Nazi-occupied Czarist Russia can add to being a drunk +Demon in the Change World. + +Maud, who is the Old Girl, and Lili--the New Girl, of course--were +telling the big beads of their identical pearl necklaces. + +You might say that all us Entertainers were a bit edgy; being Demons +doesn't automatically make us brave. + +Then the red telltale on the Major Maintainer went out and the Door +began to darken in the Void facing Sid and Beau, and I felt Change Winds +blowing hard and my heart missed a couple of beats, and the next thing +three Soldiers had stepped out of the cosmos and into the Place, their +first three steps hitting the floor hard as they changed times and +weights. + + * * * * * + +They were dressed as officers of hussars, as we'd been advised, +and--praise the Bonny Dew!--I saw that the first of them was Erich, my +own dear little commandant, the pride of the von Hohenwalds and the +Terror of the Snakes. Behind him was some hard-faced Roman or other, and +beside Erich and shouldering into him as they stamped forward was a new +boy, blond, with a face like a Greek god who's just been touring a +Christian hell. + +They were uniformed exactly alike in black--shakos, fur-edged pelisses, +boots, and so forth--with white skull emblems on the shakos. The only +difference between them was that Erich had a Caller on his wrist and the +New Boy had a black-gauntleted glove on his left hand and was clenching +the mate in it, his right hand being bare like both of Erich's and the +Roman's. + +"You've made it, lads, hearts of gold," Sid boomed at them, and Beau +twitched a smile and murmured something courtly and Maud began to chant, +"Shut the Door!" and the New Girl copied her and I joined in because the +Change Winds do blow like crazy when the Door is open, even though it +can't ever be shut tight enough to keep them from leaking through. + +"Shut it before it blows wrinkles in our faces," Maud called in her +gamin voice to break the ice, looking like a skinny teen-ager in the +tight, knee-length frock she'd copied from the New Girl. + +But the three Soldiers weren't paying attention. The Roman--I remembered +his name was Mark--was blundering forward stiffly as if there were +something wrong with his eyes, while Erich and the New Boy were yelling +at each other about a kid and Einstein and a summer palace and a bloody +glove and the Snakes having booby-trapped Saint Petersburg. Erich had +that taut sadistic smile he gets when he wants to hit me. + +The New Boy was in a tearing rage. "Why'd you pull us out so bloody +fast? We fair chewed the Nevsky Prospekt to pieces galloping away." + +"Didn't you feel their stun guns, _Dummkopf_, when they sprung the +trap--too soon, _Gott sei Dank_?" Erich demanded. + +"I did," the New Boy told him. "Not enough to numb a cat. Why didn't you +show us action?" + +"Shut up. I'm your leader. I'll show you action enough." + +"You won't. You're a filthy Nazi coward." + +"_Weibischer Englaender!_" + +"Bloody Hun!" + +"_Schlange!_" + +The blond lad knew enough German to understand that last crack. He threw +back his sable-edged pelisse to clear his sword arm and he swung away +from Erich, which bumped him into Beau. At the first sign of the +quarrel, Beau had raised himself from the divan as quickly and silently +as a--no, I won't use that word--and slithered over to them. + +"Sirs, you forget yourselves," he said sharply, off balance, supporting +himself on the New Boy's upraised arm. "This is Sidney Lessingham's +Place of Entertainment and Recuperation. There are ladies--" + + * * * * * + +With a contemptuous snarl, the New Boy shoved him off and snatched with +his bare hand for his saber. Beau reeled against the divan, it caught +him in the shins and he fell toward the Maintainers. Sid whisked them +out of the way as if they were a couple of beach radios--simply nothing +in the Place is nailed down--and had them back on the coffee table +before Beau hit the floor. Meanwhile, Erich had his saber out and had +parried the New Boy's first wild slash and lunged in return, and I heard +the scream of steel and the rutch of his boot on the diamond-studded +pavement. + + * * * * * + +Beau rolled over and came up pulling from the ruffles of his shirt bosom +a derringer I knew was some other weapon in disguise--a stun gun or even +an Atropos. Besides scaring me damp for Erich and everybody, that +brought me up short: us Entertainers' nerves must be getting as naked as +the Soldiers', probably starting when the Spiders canceled all cosmic +leaves twenty sleeps back. + +Sid shot Beau his look of command, rapped out, "I'll handle this, you +whoreson firebrand," and turned to the Minor Maintainer. I noticed that +the telltale on the Major was glowing a reassuring red again, and I +found a moment to thank Mamma Devi that the Door was shut. + +Maud was jumping up and down, cheering I don't know which--nor did she, +I bet--and the New Girl was white and I saw that the sabers were working +more businesslike. Erich's flicked, flicked, flicked again and came away +from the blond lad's cheek spilling a couple of red drops. The blond lad +lunged fiercely, Erich jumped back, and the next moment they were both +floating helplessly in the air, twisting like they had cramps. + +I realized quick enough that Sid had shut off gravity in the Door and +Stores sectors of the Place, leaving the rest of us firm on our feet in +the Refresher and Surgery sectors. The Place has sectional gravity to +suit our Extraterrestrial buddies--those crazy ETs sometimes come +whooping in for recuperation in very mixed batches. + +From his central position, Sid called out, kindly enough but taking no +nonsense, "All right, lads, you've had your fun. Now sheathe those +swords." + +For a second or so, the two black hussars drifted and contorted. Erich +laughed harshly and neatly obeyed--the commandant is used to free fall. +The blond lad stopped writhing, hesitated while he glared upside down at +Erich and managed to get his saber into its scabbard, although he turned +a slow somersault doing it. Then Sid switched on their gravity, slow +enough so they wouldn't get sprained landing. + + * * * * * + +Erich laughed, lightly this time, and stepped out briskly toward us. He +stopped to clap the New Boy firmly on the shoulder and look him in the +face. + +"So, now you get a good scar," he said. + +The other didn't pull away, but he didn't look up and Erich came on. Sid +was hurrying toward the New Boy, and as he passed Erich, he wagged a +finger at him and gayly said, "You rogue." Next thing I was giving Erich +my "Man, you're home" hug and he was kissing me and cracking my ribs and +saying, "_Liebchen! Doppchen!_"--which was fine with me because I do +love him and I'm a good lover and as much a Doubleganger as he is. + +We had just pulled back from each other to get a breath--his blue eyes +looked so sweet in his worn face--when there was a thud behind us. With +the snapping of the tension, Doc had fallen off his bar stool and his +top hat was over his eyes. As we turned to chuckle at him, Maud squeaked +and we saw that the Roman had walked straight up against the Void and +was marching along there steadily without gaining a foot, like it does +happen, his black uniform melting into that inside-your-head gray. + +Maud and Beau rushed over to fish him back, which can be tricky. The +thin gambler was all courtly efficiency again. Sid supervised from a +distance. + +"What's wrong with him?" I asked Erich. + +He shrugged. "Overdue for Change Shock. And he was nearest the stun +guns. His horse almost threw him. _Mein Gott_, you should have seen +Saint Petersburg, _Liebchen_: the Nevsky Prospekt, the canals flying by +like reception carpets of blue sky, a cavalry troop in blue and gold +that blundered across our escape, fine women in furs and ostrich plumes, +a monk with a big tripod and his head under a hood--it gave me the +horrors seeing all those Zombies flashing past and staring at me in that +sick unawakened way they have, and knowing that some of them, say the +photographer, might be Snakes." + +Our side in the Change War is the Spiders, the other side is the Snakes, +though all of us--Spiders and Snakes alike--are Doublegangers and Demons +too, because we're cut out of our lifelines in the cosmos. Your lifeline +is all of you from birth to death. We're Doublegangers because we can +operate both in the cosmos and outside of it, and Demons because we act +reasonably alive while doing so--which the Ghosts don't. Entertainers +and Soldiers are all Demon-Doublegangers, whichever side they're +on--though they say the Snake Places are simply ghastly. Zombies are +dead people whose lifelines lie in the so-called past. + + * * * * * + +"What were you doing in Saint Petersburg before the ambush?" I asked +Erich. "That is, if you can talk about it." + +"Why not? We were kidnapping the infant Einstein back from the Snakes in +1883. Yes, the Snakes got him, _Liebchen_, only a few sleeps back, +endangering the West's whole victory over Russia--" + +"--which gave your dear little Hitler the world on a platter for fifty +years and got me loved to death by your sterling troops in the +Liberation of Chicago--" + +"--but which leads to the ultimate victory of the Spiders and the West +over the Snakes and Communism, _Liebchen_, remember that. Anyway, our +counter-snatch didn't work. The Snakes had guards posted--most unusual +and we weren't warned. The whole thing was a great mess. No wonder Bruce +lost his head--not that it excuses him." + +"The New Boy?" I asked. Sid hadn't got to him and he was still standing +with hooded eyes where Erich had left him, a dark pillar of shame and +rage. + +"_Ja_, a lieutenant from World War One. An Englishman." + +"I gathered that," I told Erich. "Is he really effeminate?" + +"_Weibischer?_" He smiled. "I had to call him something when he said I +was a coward. He'll make a fine Soldier--only needs a little more +shaping." + +"You men are so original when you spat." I lowered my voice. "But you +shouldn't have gone on and called him a Snake, Erich mine." + +"_Schlange?_" The smile got crooked. "Who knows--about any of us? As +Saint Petersburg showed me, the Snakes' spies are getting cleverer than +ours." The blue eyes didn't look sweet now. "Are you, _Liebchen_, really +nothing more than a good loyal Spider?" + +"Erich!" + +"All right, I went too far--with Bruce and with you too. We're all +hacked these days, riding with one leg over the breaking edge." + +Maud and Beau were supporting the Roman to a couch, Maud taking most of +his weight, with Sid still supervising and the New Boy still sulking by +himself. The New Girl should have been with him, of course, but I +couldn't see her anywhere and I decided she was probably having a +nervous breakdown in the Refresher, the little jerk. + +"The Roman looks pretty bad, Erich," I said. + +"Ah, Mark's tough. Got virtue, as his people say. And our little +starship girl will bring him back to life if anybody can and if ..." + +"... you call this living," I filled in dutifully. + + * * * * * + +He was right. Maud had fifty-odd years of psychomedical experience, 23rd +Century at that. It should have been Doc's job, but that was fifty +drunks back. + +"Maud and Mark, that will be an interesting experiment," Erich said. +"Reminiscent of Goering's with the frozen men and the naked gypsy +girls." + +"You are a filthy Nazi. She'll be using electrophoresis and deep +suggestion, if I know anything." + +"How will you be able to know anything, _Liebchen_, if she switches on +the couch curtains, as I perceive she is preparing to do?" + +"Filthy Nazi I said and meant." + +"Precisely." He clicked his heels and bowed a millimeter. "Erich +Friederich von Hohenwald, _Oberleutnant_ in the army of the Third Reich. +Fell at Narvik, where he was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline +lengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report +Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to +provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the +_voyageurs_ underground. At your service." + +"Oh, Erich, it's all so lousy," I said, touching his hand, reminded that +he was one of the unfortunates Resurrected from a point in their +lifelines well before their deaths--in his case, because the date of his +death had been shifted forward by a Big Change after his Resurrection. +And as every Demon finds out, if he can't imagine it beforehand, it is +pure hell to remember your future, and the shorter the time between your +Resurrection and your death back in the cosmos, the better. Mine, bless +Bab-ed-Din, was only an action-packed ten minutes on North Clark Street. + +Erich put his other hand lightly over mine. "Fortunes of the Change War, +_Liebchen_. At least I'm a Soldier and sometimes assigned to future +operations--though why we should have this monomania about our future +personalities back there, I don't know. Mine is a stupid _Oberst_, thin +as paper--and frightfully indignant at the _voyageurs_! But it helps me +a little if I see him in perspective and at least I get back to the +cosmos pretty regularly, _Gott sei Dank_, so I'm better off than you +Entertainers." + +I didn't say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I +found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father's repose, +that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A. +Forzane, professor of physiology, born in Norway and buried in Chicago. +Woodlawn Cemetery is a nice gray spot. + +"That's all right, Erich," I said. "We Entertainers Got Mittens too." + +He scowled around at me suspiciously, as if he were wondering whether I +had all my buttons on. + +"Mittens?" he said. "What do you mean? I'm not wearing any. Are you +trying to say something about Bruce's gloves--which incidentally seem to +annoy him for some reason. No, seriously, Greta, why do you Entertainers +need mittens?" + +"Because we get cold feet sometimes. At least I do. Got Mittens, as I +say." + + * * * * * + +A sickly light dawned in his Prussian puss. He muttered, "Got mittens +... _Gott mit uns_ ... God with us," and roared softly, "Greta, I don't +know how I put up with you, the way you murder a great language for +cheap laughs." + +"You've got to take me as I am," I told him, "mittens and all, thank the +Bonny Dew--" and hastily explained, "That's French--_le bon Dieu_--the +good God--don't hit me. I'm not going to tell you any more of my +secrets." + +He laughed feebly, like he was dying. + +"Cheer up," I said. "I won't be here forever, and there are worse places +than the Place." + +He nodded grudgingly, looking around. "You know what, Greta, if you'll +promise not to make some dreadful joke out of it: on operations, I +pretend I'll soon be going backstage to court the world-famous ballerina +Greta Forzane." + +He was right about the backstage part. The Place is a regular +theater-in-the-round with the Void for an audience, the Void's gray +hardly disturbed by the screens masking Surgery (Ugh!), Refresher and +Stores. Between the last two are the bar and kitchen and Beau's piano. +Between Surgery and the sector where the Door usually appears are the +shelves and taborets of the Art Gallery. The control divan is stage +center. Spaced around at a fair distance are six big low couches--one +with its curtains now shooting up into the gray--and a few small tables. +It is like a ballet set and the crazy costumes and characters that turn +up don't ruin the illusion. By no means. Diaghilev would have hired most +of them for the Ballet Russe on first sight, without even asking them +whether they could keep time to music. + + + + +CHAPTER 2 + + Last week in Babylon, + Last night in Rome, + + --Hodgson + +A RIGHT-HAND GLOVE + + +Beau had gone behind the bar and was talking quietly at Doc, but with +his eyes elsewhere, looking very sallow and professional in his white, +and I thought--Damballa!--I'm in the French Quarter. I couldn't see the +New Girl. Sid was at last getting to the New Boy after the fuss about +Mark. He threw me a sign and I started over with Erich in tow. + +"Welcome, sweet lad. Sidney Lessingham's your host, and a fellow +Englishman. Born in King's Lynn, 1564, schooled at Cambridge, but London +was the life and death of me, though I outlasted Bessie, Jimmie, +Charlie, and Ollie almost. And what a life! By turns a clerk, a spy, a +bawd--the two trades are hand in glove--a poet of no account, a beggar, +and a peddler of resurrection tracts. Beau Lassiter, our throats are +tinder!" + +At the word "poet," the New Boy looked up, but resentfully, as if he had +been tricked into it. + +"And to spare your throat for drinking, sweet gallant, I'll be so bold +as to guess and answer one of your questions," Sid rattled on. "Yes, I +knew Will Shakespeare--we were of an age--and he was such a modest, +mind-your-business rogue that we all wondered whether he really did +write those plays. Your pardon, 'faith, but that scratch might be looked +to." + +Then I saw that the New Girl hadn't lost her head, but gone to Surgery +(Ugh!) for a first-aid tray. She reached a swab toward the New Boy's +sticky cheek, saying rather shrilly, "If I might ..." + +Her timing was bad. Sid's last words and Erich's approach had darkened +the look in the young Soldier's face and he angrily swept her arm aside +without even glancing at her. Erich squeezed my arm. The tray clattered +to the floor--and one of the drinks that Beau was bringing almost +followed it. Ever since the New Girl's arrival, Beau had been figuring +that she was his responsibility, though I don't think the two of them +had reached an agreement yet. Beau was especially set on it because I +was thick with Sid at the time and Maud with Doc, she loving tough +cases. + +"Easy now, lad, and you love me!" Sid thundered, again shooting Beau the +"Hold it" look. "She's just a poor pagan trying to comfort you. Swallow +your bile, you black villain, and perchance it will turn to poetry. Ah, +did I touch you there? Confess, you are a poet." + + * * * * * + +There isn't much gets by Sid, though for a second I forgot my psychology +and wondered if he knew what he was doing with his insights. + +"Yes, I'm a poet, all right," the New Boy roared. "I'm Bruce Marchant, +you bloody Zombies. I'm a poet in a world where even the lines of the +King James and your precious Will whom you use for laughs aren't safe +from Snakes' slime and the Spiders' dirty legs. Changing our history, +stealing our certainties, claiming to be so blasted all-knowing and best +intentioned and efficient, and what does it lead to? This bloody SI +glove!" + +He held up his black-gloved left hand which still held the mate and he +shook it. + +"What's wrong with the Spider Issue gauntlet, heart of gold?" Sid +demanded. "And you love us, tell us." While Erich laughed, "Consider +yourself lucky, _Kamerad_. Mark and I didn't draw any gloves at all." + +"What's wrong with it?" Bruce yelled. "The bloody things are both +lefts!" He slammed it down on the floor. + +We all howled, we couldn't help it. He turned his back on us and stamped +off, though I guessed he would keep out of the Void. Erich squeezed my +arm and said between gasps, "_Mein Gott, Liebchen_, what have I always +told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It +is infallible!" + +One of us didn't laugh. Ever since the New Girl heard the name Bruce +Marchant, she'd had a look in her eyes like she'd been given the +sacrament. I was glad she'd got interested in something, because she'd +been pretty much of a snoot and a wet blanket up until now, although +she'd come to the Place with the recommendation of having been a real +whoopee girl in London and New York in the Twenties. She looked +disapprovingly at us as she gathered up the tray and stuff, not +forgetting the glove, which she placed on the center of the tray like a +holy relic. + + * * * * * + +Beau cut over and tried to talk to her, but she ghosted past him and +once again he couldn't do anything because of the tray in his hands. He +came over and got rid of the drinks quick. I took a big gulp right away +because I saw the New Girl stepping through the screen into Surgery and +I hate to be reminded we have it and I'm glad Doc is too drunk to use +it, some of the Arachnoid surgical techniques being very sickening as I +know only too well from a personal experience that is number one on my +list of things to be forgotten. + +By that time, Bruce had come back to us, saying in a carefully hard +voice, "Look here, it's not the dashed glove itself, as you very well +know, you howling Demons." + +"What is it then, noble heart?" Sid asked, his grizzled gold beard +heightening the effect of innocent receptivity. + +"It's the principle of the thing," Bruce said, looking around sharply, +but none of us cracked a smile. "It's this mucking inefficiency and +death of the cosmos--and don't tell me that isn't in the +cards!--masquerading as benign omniscient authority. The Spiders--and we +don't know who they are ultimately; it's just a name; we see only agents +like ourselves--the Spiders pluck us from the quiet graves of our +lifelines--" + +"Is that bad, lad?" Sid murmured, innocently straight-faced. + +"--and Resurrect us if they can and then tell us we must fight another +time-traveling power called the Snakes--just a name, too--which is bent +on perverting and enslaving the whole cosmos, past, present and future." + +"And isn't it, lad?" + +"Before we're properly awake, we're Recruited into the Big Time and +hustled into tunnels and burrows outside our space-time, these miserable +closets, gray sacks, puss pockets--no offense to this Place--that the +Spiders have created, maybe by gigantic implosions, but no one knows for +certain, and then we're sent off on all sorts of missions into the past +and future to change history in ways that are supposed to thwart the +Snakes." + +"True, lad." + +"And from then on, the pace is so flaming hot and heavy, the shocks come +so fast, our emotions are wrenched in so many directions, our public and +private metaphysics distorted so insanely, the deepest thread of reality +we cling to tied in such bloody knots, that we never can get things +straight." + +"We've all felt that way, lad," Sid said soberly; Beau nodded his sleek +death's head; "You should have seen me, _Kamerad_, my first fifty +sleeps," Erich put in; while I added, "Us girls, too, Bruce." + +"Oh, I know I'll get hardened to it, and don't think I can't. It's not +that," Bruce said harshly. "And I wouldn't mind the personal confusion, +the mess it's made of my spirit, I wouldn't even mind remaking history +and destroying priceless, once-called imperishable beauties of the past, +if I felt it were for the best. The Spiders assure us that, to thwart +the Snakes, it is all-important that the West ultimately defeat the +East. But what have they done to achieve this? I'll give you some +beautiful examples. To stabilize power in the early Mediterranean world, +they have built up Crete at the expense of Greece, making Athens a ghost +city, Plato a trivial fabulist, and putting all Greek culture in a minor +key." + + * * * * * + +"You got time for culture?" I heard myself say and I clapped my hand +over my mouth in gentle reproof. + +"But _you_ remember the dialogues, lad," Sid observed. "And rail not at +Crete--I have a sweet Keftian friend." + +"For how long will I remember Plato's dialogues? And who after me?" +Bruce challenged. "Here's another. The Spiders want Rome powerful and, +to date, they've helped Rome so much that she collapses in a blaze of +German and Parthian invasions a few years after the death of Julius +Caesar." + +This time it was Beau who butted in. Most everybody in the Place loves +these bull sessions. "You omit to mention, sir, that Rome's newest +downfall is directly due to the Unholy Triple Alliance the Snakes have +fomented between the Eastern Classical World, Mohammedanized +Christianity, and Marxist Communism, trying to pass the torch of power +futurewards by way of Byzantium and the Eastern Church, without ever +letting it pass into the hands of the Spider West. That, sir, is the +Snakes' Three-Thousand-Year Plan which we are fighting against, striving +to revive Rome's glories." + +"Striving is the word for it," Bruce snapped. "Here's yet another +example. To beat Russia, the Spiders kept England and America out of +World War Two, thereby ensuring a German invasion of the New World and +creating a Nazi empire stretching from the salt mines of Siberia to the +plantations of Iowa, from Nizhni Novgorod to Kansas City!" + +He stopped and my short hairs prickled. Behind me, someone was chanting +in a weird spiritless voice, like footsteps in hard snow. + +"_Salz, Salz, bringe Salz. Kein' Peitsch', gnaedige Herren. Salz, Salz, +Salz._" + +I turned and there was Doc waltzing toward us with little tiny steps, +bent over so low that the ends of his shawl touched the floor, his head +crooked up sideways and looking through us. + +I knew then, but Erich translated softly. "'Salt, salt, I bring salt. No +whip, merciful sirs.' He is speaking to my countrymen in their +language." Doc had spent his last months in a Nazi-operated salt mine. + + * * * * * + +He saw us and got up, straightening his top hat very carefully. He +frowned hard while my heart thumped half a dozen times. Then his face +slackened, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "_Nichevo_." + +"And it does not matter, sir," Beau translated, but directing his remark +at Bruce. "True, great civilizations have been dwarfed or broken by the +Change War. But others, once crushed in the bud, have bloomed. In the +1870s, I traveled a Mississippi that had never known Grant's gunboats. I +studied piano, languages, and the laws of chance under the greatest +European masters at the University of Vicksburg." + +"And you think your pipsqueak steamboat culture is compensation for--" +Bruce began but, "Prithee none of that, lad," Sid interrupted smartly. +"Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards, and I'll drink +dead drunk the man who disputes me. Hear reason: nations are not so puny +as to shrivel and vanish at the first tampering with their past, no, +nor with the tenth. Nations are monsters, boy, with guts of iron and +nerves of brass. Waste not your pity on them." + +"True indeed, sir," Beau pressed, cooler and keener for the attack on +his Greater South. "Most of us enter the Change World with the false +metaphysic that the slightest change in the past--a grain of dust +misplaced--will transform the whole future. It is a long while before we +accept with our minds as well as our intellects the law of the +Conservation of Reality: that when the past is changed, the future +changes barely enough to adjust, barely enough to admit the new data. +The Change Winds meet maximum resistance always. Otherwise the first +operation in Babylonia would have wiped out New Orleans, Sheffield, +Stuttgart, and Maud Davies' birthplace on Ganymede! + +"Note how the gap left by Rome's collapse was filled by the +imperialistic and Christianized Germans. Only an expert Demon historian +can tell the difference in most ages between the former Latin and the +present Gothic Catholic Church. As you yourself, sir, said of Greece, it +is as if an old melody were shifted into a slightly different key. In +the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it's +true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the +usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless +accidents." + +"All right, you bloody savants--maybe I pushed my point too far," Bruce +growled. "But if you want variety, give a thought to the rotten methods +we use in our wonderful Change War. Poisoning Churchill and Cleopatra. +Kidnapping Einstein when he's a baby." + +"The Snakes did it first," I reminded him. + +"Yes, and we copied them. How resourceful does that make us?" he +retorted, arguing like a woman. "If we need Einstein, why don't we +Resurrect him, deal with him as a man?" + + * * * * * + +Beau said, serving his culture in slightly thicker slices, +"_Pardonnez-moi_, but when you have enjoyed your status as Doubleganger +a _soupcon_ longer, you will understand that great men can rarely be +Resurrected. Their beings are too crystallized, sir, their lifelines too +tough." + +"Pardon me, but I think that's rot. I believe that most great men refuse +to make the bargain with the Snakes, or with us Spiders either. They +scorn Resurrection at the price demanded." + +"Brother, they ain't that great," I whispered, while Beau glided on +with, "However that may be, you have accepted Resurrection, sir, and so +incurred an obligation which you as a gentleman must honor." + +"I accepted Resurrection all right," Bruce said, a glare coming into his +eyes. "When they pulled me out of my line at Passchendaele in '17 ten +minutes before I died, I grabbed at the offer of life like a drunkard +grabs at a drink the morning after. But even then I thought I was also +seizing a chance to undo historic wrongs, work for peace." His voice was +getting wilder all the time. Just beyond our circle, I noticed the New +Girl watching him worshipfully. "But what did I find the Spiders wanted +me for? Only to fight more wars, over and over again, make them crueler +and stinkinger, cut the swath of death a little wider with each Big +Change, work our way a little closer to the death of the cosmos." + +Sid touched my wrist and, as Bruce raved on, he whispered to me, "What +kind of ball, think you, will please and so quench this fire-brained +rogue? And you love me, discover it." + +I whispered back without taking my eyes off Bruce either, "I know +somebody who'll be happy to put on any kind of ball he wants, if he'll +just notice her." + +"The New Girl, sweetling? 'Tis well. This rogue speaks like an angry +angel. It touches my heart and I like it not." + +Bruce was saying hoarsely but loudly, "And so we're sent on operations +in the past and from each of those operations the Change Winds blow +futurewards, swiftly or slowly according to the opposition they breast, +sometimes rippling into each other, and any one of those Winds may shift +the date of our own death ahead of the date of our Resurrection, so that +in an instant--even here, outside the cosmos--we may molder and rot or +crumble to dust and vanish away. The wind with our name in it may leak +through the Door." + + * * * * * + +Faces hardened at that, because it's bad form to mention Change Death, +and Erich flared out with, "_Halt's Maul, Kamerad!_ There's always +another Resurrection." + +But Bruce didn't keep his mouth shut. He said, "Is there? I know the +Spiders promise it, but even if they do go back and cut another +Doubleganger from my lifeline, is he me?" He slapped his chest with his +bare hand. "I don't think so. And even if he is me, with unbroken +consciousness, why's he been Resurrected again? Just to refight more +wars and face more Change Death for the sake of an almighty power--" his +voice was rising to a climax--"an almighty power so bloody ineffectual, +it can't furnish one poor Soldier pulled out of the mud of +Passchendaele, one miserable Change Commando, one Godforsaken Recuperee +a proper issue of equipment!" + +And he held out his bare right hand toward us, fingers spread a little, +as if it were the most amazing object and most deserving of outraged +sympathy in the whole world. + +The New Girl's timing was perfect. She whisked through us, and before he +could so much as wiggle the fingers, she whipped a black gauntleted +glove on it and anyone could see that it fitted his hand perfectly. + +This time our laughing beat the other. We collapsed and slopped our +drinks and pounded each other on the back and then started all over. + +"_Ach, der Handschuh, Liebchen!_ Where'd she get it?" Erich gasped in my +ear. + +"Probably just turned the other one inside out--that turns a left into a +right--I've done it myself," I wheezed, collapsing again at the idea. + +"That would put the lining outside," he objected. + +"Then I don't know," I said. "We got all sorts of junk in Stores." + +"It doesn't matter, _Liebchen_," he assured me. "_Ach, der Handschuh!_" + +All through it, Bruce just stood there admiring the glove, moving the +fingers a little now and then, and the New Girl stood watching him as if +he were eating a cake she'd baked. + + * * * * * + +When the hysteria quieted down, he looked up at her with a big smile. +"What did you say your name was?" + +"Lili," she said, and believe you me, she was Lili to me even in my +thoughts from then on, for the way she'd handled that lunatic. + +"Lilian Foster," she explained. "I'm English also. Mr. Marchant, I've +read _A Young Man's Fancy_ I don't know how many times." + +"You have? It's wretched stuff. From the Dark Ages--I mean my Cambridge +days. In the trenches, I was working up some poems that were rather +better." + +"I won't hear you say that. But I'd be terribly thrilled to hear the new +ones. Oh, Mr. Marchant, it was so strange to hear you call it +Passiondale." + +"Why, if I may ask?" + +"Because that's the way I pronounce it to myself. But I looked it up and +it's more like Pas-ken-DA-luh." + +"Bless you! All the Tommies called it Passiondale, just as they called +Ypres Wipers." + +"How interesting. You know, Mr. Marchant, I'll wager we were Recruited +in the same operation, summer of 1917. I'd got to France as a Red Cross +nurse, but they found out my age and were going to send me back." + +"How old were you--are you? Same thing, I mean to say." + +"Seventeen." + +"Seventeen in '17," Bruce murmured, his blue eyes glassy. + +It was real corny dialogue and I couldn't resent the humorous leer Erich +gave me as we listened to them, as if to say, "Ain't it nice, +_Liebchen_, Bruce has a silly little English schoolgirl to occupy him +between operations?" + +Just the same, as I watched Lili in her dark bangs and pearl necklace +and tight little gray dress that reached barely to her knees, and Bruce +hulking over her tenderly in his snazzy hussar's rig, I knew that I was +seeing the start of something that hadn't been part of me since Dave +died fighting Franco years before I got on the Big Time, the sort of +thing that almost made me wish there could be children in the Change +World. I wondered why I'd never thought of trying to work things so that +Dave got Resurrected and I told myself: no, it's all changed, I've +changed, better the Change Winds don't disturb Dave or I know about it. + +"No, I didn't die in 1917--I was merely Recruited then," Lili was +telling Bruce. "I lived all through the Twenties, as you can see from +the way I dress. But let's not talk about that, shall we? Oh, Mr. +Marchant, do you think you can possibly remember any of those poems you +started in the trenches? I can't fancy them bettering your sonnet that +concludes with, 'The bough swings in the wind, the night is deep; Look +at the stars, poor little ape, and sleep.'" + +That one almost made me whoop--what monkeys we are, I thought--though +I'd be the first to admit that the best line to use on a poet is one of +his own--in fact, as many as possible. I decided I could safely forget +our little Britons and devote myself to Erich or whatever needed me. + + + + +CHAPTER 3 + + Hell is the place for me. For to Hell go the fine churchmen, and the + fine knights, killed in the tourney or in some grand war, the brave + soldiers and the gallant gentlemen. With them will I go. There go + also the fair gracious ladies who have lovers two or three beside + their lord. There go the gold and the silver, the sables and ermine. + There go the harpers and the minstrels and the kings of the earth. + + --Aucassin + +NINE FOR A PARTY + + +I exchanged my drink for a new one from another tray Beau was bringing +around. The gray of the Void was beginning to look real pleasant, like +warm thick mist with millions of tiny diamonds floating in it. Doc was +sitting grandly at the bar with a steaming tumbler of tea--a chaser, I +guess, since he was just putting down a shot glass. Sid was talking to +Erich and laughing at the same time and I said to myself it begins to +feel like a party, but something's lacking. + +It wasn't anything to do with the Major Maintainer; its telltale was +glowing a steady red like a nice little home fire amid the tight cluster +of dials that included all the controls except the lonely and +frightening Introversion switch that was never touched. Then Maud's +couch curtains winked out and there were she and the Roman sitting +quietly side by side. + +He looked down at his shiny boots and the rest of his black duds like he +was just waking up and couldn't believe it all, and he said, "_Omnia +mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis_," and I raised my eyebrows at Beau, +who was taking the tray back, and he did proud by old Vicksburg by +translating: "All things change and we change with them." + +Then Mark slowly looked around at us, and I can testify that a Roman +smile is just as warm as any other nationality, and he finally said, "We +are nine, the proper number for a party. The couches, too. It is good." + +Maud chuckled proudly and Erich shouted, "Welcome back from the Void, +_Kamerad_," and then, because he's German and thinks all parties have to +be noisy and satirically pompous, he jumped on a couch and announced, +"_Herren und Damen_, permit me to introduce the noblest Roman of them +all, Marcus Vipsaius Niger, legate to Nero Claudius (called Germanicus +in a former time stream) and who in 763 A.U.C. (Correct, Mark? It means +10 A.D., you meatheads!) died bravely fighting the Parthians and the +Snakes in the Battle of Alexandria. _Hoch, hoch, hoch!_" + + * * * * * + +We all swung our glasses and cheered with him and Sid yelled at Erich, +"Keep your feet off the furniture, you unschooled rogue," and grinned +and boomed at all three hussars, "Take your ease, Recuperees," and Maud +and Mark got their drinks, the Roman paining Beau by refusing Falernian +wine in favor of scotch and soda, and right away everyone was talking a +mile a minute. + +We had a lot to catch up on. There was the usual yak about the war--"The +Snakes are laying mine fields in the Void," "I don't believe it, how can +you mine nothing?"--and the shortages--bourbon, bobby pins, and the +stabilitin that would have brought Mark out of it faster--and what had +become of people--"Marcia? Oh, she's not around any more," (She'd been +caught in a Change Gale and green and stinking in five seconds, but I +wasn't going to say that)--and Mark had to be told about Bruce's glove, +which convulsed us all over again, and the Roman remembered a legionary +who had carried a gripe all the way to Octavius because he'd +accidentally been issued the unbelievable luxury item sugar instead of +the usual salt, and Erich asked Sid if he had any new Ghostgirls in +stock and Sid sucked his beard like the old goat he is. "Dost thou ask +me, lusty Allemand? Nay, there are several great beauties, amongst them +an Austrian countess from Strauss's Vienna, and if it were not for +sweetling here ... Mnnnn." + +I poked a finger in Erich's chest between two of the bright buttons with +their tiny death's heads. "You, my little von Hohenwald, are a menace to +us real girls. You have too much of a thing about the unawakened, ghost +kind." + +He called me his little Demon and hugged me a bit too hard to prove it +wasn't so, and then he suggested we show Bruce the Art Gallery. I +thought this was a real brilliant idea, but when I tried to argue him +out of it, he got stubborn. Bruce and Lili were willing to do anything +anyone wanted them to, though not so willing to pay any attention while +doing it. The saber cut was just a thin red line on his cheek; she'd +washed away all the dried blood. + +The Gallery gets you, though. It's a bunch of paintings and sculptures +and especially odd knick-knacks, all made by Soldiers recuperating here, +and a lot of them telling about the Change War from the stuff they're +made of--brass cartridges, flaked flint, bits of ancient pottery glued +into futuristic shapes, mashed-up Incan gold rebeaten by a Martian, +whorls of beady Lunan wire, a picture in tempera on a crinkle-cracked +thick round of quartz that had filled a starship porthole, a Sumerian +inscription chiseled into a brick from an atomic oven. + + * * * * * + +There are a lot of things in the Gallery and I can always find some I +haven't ever seen before. It gets you, as I say, thinking about the guys +that made them and their thoughts and the far times and places they came +from, and sometimes, when I'm feeling low, I'll come and look at them so +I'll feel still lower and get inspired to kick myself back into a good +temper. It's the only history of the Place there is and it doesn't +change a great deal, because the things in it and the feelings that went +into them resist the Change Winds better than anything else. + +Right now, Erich's witty lecture was bouncing off the big ears I hide +under my pageboy bob and I was thinking how awful it is that for us that +there's not only change but Change. You don't know from one minute to +the next whether a mood or idea you've got is really new or just welling +up into you because the past has been altered by the Spiders or Snakes. + +Change Winds can blow not only death but anything short of it, down to +the featheriest fancy. They blow thousands of times faster than time +moves, but no one can say how much faster or how far one of them will +travel or what damage it'll do or how soon it'll damp out. The Big Time +isn't the little time. + +And then, for the Demons, there's the fear that our personality will +just fade and someone else climb into the driver's seat and us not even +know. Of course, we Demons are supposed to be able to remember through +Change and in spite of it; that's why we are Demons and not Ghosts like +the other Doublegangers, or merely Zombies or Unborn and nothing more, +and as Beau truly said, there aren't any great men among us--and blamed +few of the masses, either--we're a rare sort of people and that's why +the Spiders have to Recruit us where they find us without caring about +our previous knowledge and background, a Foreign Legion of time, a +strange kind of folk, bright but always in the background, with built-in +nostalgia and cynicism, as adaptable as Centaurian shape-changers but +with memories as long as a Lunan's six arms, a kind of Change People, +you might say, the cream of the damned. + +But sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are +and if the whole past wasn't once entirely different from anything we +remember, and we've forgotten that we forgot. + +As I say, the Gallery gets you feeling real low, and so now I said to +myself, "Back to your lousy little commandant, kid," and gave myself a +stiff boot. + +Erich was holding up a green bowl with gold dolphins or spaceships on it +and saying, "And, to my mind, this proves that Etruscan art is derived +from Egyptian. Don't you agree, Bruce?" + +Bruce looked up, all smiles from Lili, and said, "What was that, dear +chap?" + + * * * * * + +Erich's forehead got dark as the Door and I was glad the hussars had +parked their sabers along with their shakos, but before he could even +get out a Jerry cussword, Doc breezed up in that plateau-state of +drunkenness so like hypnotized sobriety, moving as if he were on a +dolly, ghosted the bowl out of Erich's hand, said, "A beautiful specimen +of Middle Systemic Venusian. When Eightaitch finished it, he told me you +couldn't look at it and not feel the waves of the Northern Venusian +Shallows rippling around your hoofs. But it might look better inverted. +I wonder. Who are you, young officer? _Nichevo_," and he carefully put +the bowl back on its shelf and rolled on. + +It's a fact that Doc knows the Art Gallery better than any of us, really +by heart, he being the oldest inhabitant, though he maybe picked a bad +time to show off his knowledge. Erich was going to take out after him, +but I said, "Nix, _Kamerad_, remember gloves and sugar," and he +contented himself with complaining, "That _nichevo_--it's so gloomy and +hopeless, _ungeheuerlich_. I tell you, _Liebchen_, they shouldn't have +Russians working for the Spiders, not even as Entertainers." + +I grinned at him and squeezed his hand. "Not much entertainment in Doc +these days, is there?" I agreed. + +He grinned back at me a shade sheepishly and his face smoothed and his +blue eyes looked sweet again for a second and he said, "I shouldn't want +to claw out at people that way, Greta, but at times I am just a jealous +old man," which is not entirely true, as he isn't a day over +thirty-three, although his hair is nearly white. + +Our lovers had drifted on a few steps until they were almost fading into +the Surgery screen. It was the last spot I would have picked for the +formal preliminaries to a little British smooching, but Lili probably +didn't share my prejudices, though I remembered she'd told me she'd +served a brief hitch in an Arachnoid Field Hospital before being +transferred to the Place. + +But she couldn't have had anything like the experience I'd had during my +short and sour career as a Spider nurse, when I'd acquired my best-hated +nightmare and flopped completely (jobwise, but on the floor, too) at +seeing a doctor flick a switch and a being, badly injured but human, +turn into a long cluster of glistening strange fruit--ugh, it always +makes me want to toss my cookies and my buttons. And to think that dear +old Daddy Anton wanted his Greta chile to be a doctor. + + * * * * * + +Well, I could see this wasn't getting me anywhere I wanted to go, and +after all there was a party going on. + +Doc was babbling something at a great rate to Sid--I just hoped Doc +wouldn't get inspired to go into his animal imitations, which sound +pretty fierce and once seriously offended some recuperating ETs. + +Maud was demonstrating to Mark a 23rd Century two-step and Beau sat down +at the piano and improvised softly on her rhythm. + +As the deep-thrumming relaxing notes hit us, Erich's face brightened and +he dragged me over. Pleasantly soon I had my feet off the diamond-rough +floor, which we don't carpet because most of the ETs, the dear boys, +like it hard, and I was shouldering back deep into the couch nearest the +piano, with cushions all around me and a fresh drink in my hand, while +my Nazi boy friend was getting ready to discharge his _Weltschmerz_ as +song, which didn't alarm me too much, as his baritone is passable. + +Things felt real good, like the Maintainer was just idling to keep the +Place in existence and moored to the cosmos, not exerting itself at all +or at most taking an occasional lazy paddle stroke. At times the Place's +loneliness can be happy and comfortable. + +Then Beau raised an eyebrow at Erich, who nodded, and next thing they +were launched into a song we all know, though I've never found out where +it originally came from. This time it made me think of Lili, and I +wondered why--and why it's a tradition at Recuperation Stations to call +the new girl Lili, though in this case it happened to be her real name. + + _Standing in the Doorway just outside of space, + Winds of Change blow 'round you but don't touch your face; + You smile as you whisper tenderly, + "Please cross to me, Recuperee; + The operation's over, come in and close the Door."_ + + + + +CHAPTER 4 + + De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled + Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear + In fractured atoms. + + --Eliot + +SOS FROM NOWHERE + + +I realized the piano had deserted Erich and I cranked my head up and saw +Beau, Maud and Sid streaking for the control divan. The Major Maintainer +was blinking emergency-green and fast, but the code was plain enough for +even me to recognize the Spider distress call and for a second I felt +just sick. Then Erich blew out his reserve breath in the middle of +"Door" and I gave myself another of those helpful mental boots at the +base of the spine and we hurried after them toward the center of the +Place along with Mark. + +The blinks faded as we got there and Sid told us not to move because we +were making shadows. He glued an eye to the telltale and we held still +as statues as he caressed the dials like he was making love. + +One sensitive hand flicked out past the Introversion switch over to the +Minor Maintainer and right away the Place was dark as your soul and +there was nothing for me but Erich's arm and the knowledge that Sid was +nursing a green light I couldn't even see, although my eyes had plenty +time to accommodate. + +Then the green light finally came back very slowly and I could see the +dear reliable old face--the green-gold beard making him look like a +merman--and then the telltale flared bright and Sid flicked on the Place +lights and I leaned back. + +"That nails them, lads, whoever and whenever they may be. Get ready for +a pick-up." + +Beau, who was closest of course, looked at him sharply. Sid shrugged +uneasily. "Meseemed at first it was from our own globe a thousand years +before our Lord, but that indication flickered and faded like witchfire. +As it is, the call comes from something smaller than the Place and +certes adrift from the cosmos. Meseemed too at one point I knew the fist +of the caller--an antipodean atomicist named Benson-Carter--but that +likewise changed." + +Beau said, "We're not in the right phase of the cosmos-Places rhythm for +a pick-up, are we, sir?" + +Sid answered, "Ordinarily not, boy." + +Beau continued, "I didn't think we had any pick-ups scheduled. Or +stand-by orders." + +Sid said, "We haven't." + +Mark's eyes glowed. He tapped Erich on the shoulder. "An octavian +denarius against ten Reichsmarks it is a Snake trap." + +Erich's grin showed his teeth. "Make it first through the Door next +operation and I'm on." + + * * * * * + +It didn't take that to tell me things were serious, or the thought that +there's always a first time for bumping into something from really +outside the cosmos. The Snakes have broken our code more than once. Maud +was quietly serving out weapons and Doc was helping her. Only Bruce and +Lili stood off. But they were watching. + +The telltale brightened. Sid reached toward the Maintainer, saying, "All +right, my hearties. Remember, through this Doorway pass the fishiest +finaglers in and out of the cosmos." + +The Door appeared to the left and above where it should be and darkened +much too fast. There was a gust of stale salt seawind, if that makes +sense, but no stepped-up Change Winds I could tell--and I had been +bracing myself against them. The Door got inky and there was a flicker +of gray fur whips and a flash of copper flesh and gilt and something +dark and a clump of hoofs and Erich was sighting a stun gun across his +left forearm, and then the Door had vanished like that and a tentacled +silvery Lunan and a Venusian satyr were coming straight toward us. + +The Lunan was hugging a pile of clothes and weapons. The satyr was +helping a wasp-waisted woman carry a heavy-looking bronze chest. The +woman was wearing a short skirt and high-collared bolero jacket of +leather so dark brown it was almost black. She had a two-horned +_petsofa_ hairdress and she was boldly gilded here and there and wore +sandals and copper anklets and wristlets--one of them a copper-plated +Caller--and from her wide copper belt hung a short-handled double-headed +ax. She was dark-complexioned and her forehead and chin receded, but the +effect was anything but weak; she had a face like a beautiful +arrowhead--and a familiar one, by golly! + +But before I could say, "Kabysia Labrys," Maud shrilly beat me to it +with, "It's Kaby with two friends. Break out a couple of Ghostgirls." + +And then I saw it really was old-home week because I recognized my Lunan +boy friend Ilhilihis, and in the midst of all the confusion I got a nice +kick out of knowing I was getting so I could tell the personality of one +silver-furred muzzle from another. + +They reached the control divan and Illy dumped his load and the others +let down the chest, and Kaby staggered but shook off the two ETs when +they started to support her, and she looked daggers at Sid when he tried +to do the same, although she's his "sweet Keftian friend" he'd mentioned +to Bruce. + + * * * * * + +She leaned straight-armed on the divan and took two gasping breaths so +deep that the ridges of her spine showed through her brown-skinned +waist, and then she threw up her head and commanded, "Wine!" + +While Beau was rushing it, Sid tried to take her hand again, saying, +"Sweetling, I'd never heard you call before and knew not this pretty +little fist," but she ripped out, "Save your comfort for the Lunan," and +I looked and saw--Hey, Zeus!--that one of Ilhilihis' six tentacles was +lopped off halfway. + +That was for me, and, going to him, I fast briefed myself: "Remember, he +only weighs fifty pounds for all he's seven feet high; he doesn't like +low sounds or to be grabbed; the two legs aren't tentacles and don't act +the same; uses them for long walks, tentacles for leaps; uses tentacles +for close vision too and for manipulation, of course; extended, they +mean he's at ease; retracted, on guard or nervous; sharply retracted, +disgusted; greeting--" + +Just then, one of them swept across my face like a sweet-smelling +feather duster and I said, "Illy, man, it's been a lot of sleeps," and +brushed my fingers across his muzzle. It still took a little +self-control not to hug him, and I did reach a little cluckingly for +his lopped tentacle, but he wafted it away from me and the little +voice-box belted to his side squeaked, "Naughty, naughty. Papa will fix +his little old self. Greta girl, ever bandaged even a Terra octopus?" + +I had, an intelligent one from around a quarter billion A.D., but I +didn't tell him so. I stood and let him talk to the palm of my hand with +one of his tentacles--I don't savvy feather-talk but it feels good, +though I've often wondered who taught him English--and watched him use a +couple others to whisk a sort of Lunan band-aid out of his pouch and cap +his wound with it. + +Meanwhile, the satyr knelt over the bronze chest, which was decorated +with little death's heads and crosses with hoops at the top and +swastikas, but looking much older than Nazi, and the satyr said to Sid, +"Quick thinkin, Gov, when ya saw the Door comin in high n soffened up +gravty unner it, but cud I hav sum hep now?" + +Sid touched the Minor Maintainer and we all got very light and my +stomach did a flip-flop while the satyr piled on the chest the clothes +and weapons that Illy had been carrying and pranced off with it all and +carefully put it down at the end of the bar. I decided the satyr's +English instructor must have been quite a character, too. Wish I'd met +him--her--it. + +Sid thought to ask Illy if he wanted Moon-normal gravity in one sector, +but my boy likes to mix, and being such a lightweight, Earth-normal +gravity doesn't bother him. As he said to me once, "Would Jovian gravity +bother a beetle, Greta girl?" + + * * * * * + +I asked Illy about the satyr and he squeaked that his name was Sevensee +and that he'd never met him before this operation. I knew the satyrs +were from a billion years in the future, just as the Loonies were from a +billion in the past, and I thought--Kreesed us!--but it must have been +a real big or emergency-like operation to have the Spiders using those +two for it, with two billion years between them--a time-difference that +gives you a feeling of awe for a second, you know. + +[Illustration] + +I started to ask Illy about it, but just then Beau came scampering back +from the bar with a big red-and-black earthenware goblet of wine--we try +to keep a variety of drinking tools in stock so folks will feel more at +home. Kaby grabbed it from him and drained most of it in one swallow and +then smashed it on the floor. She does things like that, though Sid's +tried to teach her better. Then she stared at what she was thinking +about until the whites showed all around her eyes and her lips pulled +way back from her teeth and she looked a lot less human than the two +ETs, just like a fury. Only a time traveler knows how like the wild +murals and engravings of them some of the ancients can look. + +My hair stood up at the screech she let out. She smashed a fist into the +divan and cried, "Goddess! Must I see Crete destroyed, revived, and now +destroyed again? It is too much for your servant." + +Personally, I thought she could stand anything. + +There was a rush of questions at what she said about Crete--I asked one +of them, for the news certainly frightened me--but she shot up her arm +straight for silence and took a deep breath and began. + +"In the balance hung the battle. Rowing like black centipedes, the +Dorian hulls bore down on our outnumbered ships. On the bright beach, +masked by rocks, Sevensee and I stood by the needle gun, ready to give +the black hulls silent wounds. Beside us was Ilhilihis, suited as a sea +monster. But then ... then ..." + +Then I saw she wasn't altogether the iron babe, for her voice broke and +she started to shake and to sob rackingly, although her face was still a +mask of rage, and she threw up the wine. Sid stepped in and made her +stop, which I think he'd been wanting to do all along. + + + + +CHAPTER 5 + + Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts + creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. + They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to + me. + + --Ibsen + +SID INSISTS ON GHOSTGIRLS + + +My Elizabethan boy friend put his fists on his hips and laid down the +law to us as if we were a lot of nervous children who'd been playing too +hard. + +"Look you, masters, this is a Recuperation Station and I am running it +as such. A plague of all operations! I care not if the frame of things +disjoints and the whole Change World goes to ruin, but you, warrior +maid, are going to rest and drink more wine slowly before you tell your +tale and your colleagues are going to be properly companioned. No +questions, anyone. Beau, and you love us, give us a lively tune." + +Kaby relaxed a little and let him put his hand carefully against her +back in token of support and she said grudgingly, "All right, Fat +Belly." + +Then, so help me, to the tune of the Muskrat Ramble, which I'd taught +Beau, we got girls for those two ETs and everybody properly paired up. + +Right here I want to point out that a lot of the things they say in the +Change World about Recuperation Stations simply aren't so--and anyway +they always leave out nine-tenths of it. The Soldiers that come through +the Door are looking for a good time, sure, but they're hurt real bad +too, every one of them, deep down in their minds and hearts, if not +always in their bodies or so you can see it right away. + +Believe me, a temporal operation is no joke, and to start with, there +isn't one person in a hundred who can endure to be cut from his lifeline +and become a really wide-awake Doubleganger--a Demon, that is--let alone +a Soldier. What does a badly hurt and mixed-up creature need who's been +fighting hard? _One individual_ to look out for him and feel for him and +patch him up, and it helps if the one is of the opposite sex--that's +something that goes beyond species. + +There's your basis for the Place and the wild way it goes about its +work, and also for most other Recuperation Stations or Entertainment +Spots. The name Entertainer can be misleading, but I like it. She's got +to be a lot more than a good party girl--or boy--though she's got to be +that too. She's got to be a nurse and a psychologist and an actress and +a mother and a practical ethnologist and a lot of things with longer +names--and a reliable friend. + + * * * * * + +None of us are all those things perfectly or even near it. We just try. +But when the call comes, Entertainers have to forget grudges and gripes +and envies and jealousies--and remember, they're lively people with +sharp emotions--because there isn't any time then for anything but _help +and don't ask who_! + +And, deep inside her, a good Entertainer doesn't care who. Take the way +it shaped up this time. It was pretty clear to me I ought to shift to +Illy, although I wasn't quite easy in my mind about leaving Erich, +because the Lunan was a long time from home and, after all, Erich was +among anthropoids. Ilhilihis needed someone who was _simpatico_. + +I like Illy and not just because he is a sort of tall cross between a +spider monkey and a persian cat--though that is a handsome combo when +you come to think of it. I like him for himself. So when he came in all +lopped and shaky after a mean operation, I was the right person to look +out for him. Now I've made my little speech and know-nothings in the +Change World can go on making their bum jokes. But I ask you, how could +an arrangement between Illy and me be anything but Platonic? + +We might have had some octopoid girls and nymphs in stock--Sid couldn't +be sure until he checked--but Ilhilihis and Sevensee voted for real +people and I knew Sid saw it their way. Maud squeezed Mark's hand and +tripped over to Sevensee ("Those are sharp hoofs you got, man"--she's +picked up some of my language, like she has everything else), though +Beau did frown over his shoulder at Lili from the piano, maybe to argue +that she ought to take on the ET, as Mark had been a real casualty and +could use live nursing. But it was plain as day to anybody but Beau that +Bruce and Lili were a big thing and the last to be disturbed. + +Erich acted stiffly hurt at losing me, but I knew he wasn't. He thinks +he has a great technique with Ghostgirls and he likes to show it off, +and he really is pretty slick at it, if you go for that sort of thing +and--yang my yin!--who doesn't at times? + +And when Sid formally wafted the Countess out of Stores--a real blonde +stunner in a white satin hobble skirt with a white egret swaying up from +her tiny hat, way ahead of Maud and Lili and me when it came to looks, +though transparent as cigarette smoke--and when Erich clicked his heels +and bowed over her hand and proudly conducted her to a couch, black +Svengali to her Trilby, and started to German-talk some life into her +with much head cocking and toothy smiling and a flow of witty flattery, +and when she began to flirt back and the dream look in her eyes +sharpened hungrily and focused on him--well, then I knew that Erich was +happy and felt he was doing proud by the _Reichswehr_. No, my little +commandant wasn't worrying me on that score. + + * * * * * + +Mark had drawn a Greek hetaera, name of Phryne; I suppose not the one +who maybe still does the famous courtroom striptease back in Athens, and +he was waking her up with little sips of his scotch and soda, though, +from some looks he'd flashed, I got the idea Kaby was the kid he really +went for. Sid was coaxing the fighting gal to take some high-energy +bread and olives along with the wine, and, for a wonder, Doc seemed to +be carrying on an animated and rational conversation with Sevensee and +Maud, maybe comparing notes on the Northern Venusian Shallows, and Beau +had got on to Panther Rag, and Bruce and Lili were leaning on the piano, +smiling very appreciatively, but talking to each other a mile a minute. + +Illy turned back from inspecting them all and squeaked, "Animals with +clothes are so refreshing, dahling! Like you're all carrying banners!" + +Maybe he had something there, though my banners were kind of Ash +Wednesday, a charcoal gray sweater and skirt. He looked at my mouth with +a tentacle to see how I was smiling and he squeaked softly, "Do I seem +dull and commonplace to you, Greta girl, because I haven't got banners? +Just another Zombie from a billion years in your past, as gray and +lifeless as Luna is today, not as when she was a real dreamy sister +planet simply bursting with air and water and feather forests. Or am I +as strangely interesting to you as you are to me, girl from a billion +years in my future?" + +"Illy, you're sweet," I told him, giving him a little pat. I noticed his +fur was still vibrating nervously and I decided the heck with Sid's +orders, I'm going to pump him about what he was doing with Kaby and the +satyr. Couldn't have him a billion years from home and bottled up, too. +Besides, I was curious. + + + + +CHAPTER 6 + + Maiden, Nymph, and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity of the + island, and the Goddess, who is worshipped there in each of these + aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign + Deity. + + --Graves + +CRETE CIRCA 1300 B.C. + + +Kaby pushed back at Sid some seconds of bread and olives, and, when he +raised his bushy eyebrows, gave him a curt nod that meant she knew what +she was doing. She stood up and sort of took a position. All the talk +quieted down fast, even Bruce's and Lili's. Kaby's face and voice +weren't strained now, but they weren't relaxed either. + +"Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it +bravely, like strong women. When we got the gun unlimbered, I heard +seaweed fry and crackle. We three leaped behind the rock wall, saw our +gun grow white as sunlight in a heat-ray of the Serpents! Natch, we +feared we were outnumbered and I called upon my Caller." + +[Illustration] + +I don't know how she does it, but she does--in English too. That is, +when she figures she's got something important to report, and maybe she +needs a little time to get ready. + +Beau claims that all the ancients fit their thoughts into measured lines +as naturally as we pick a word that will do, but I'm not sure how good +the Vicksburg language department is. Though why I should wonder about +things like that when I've got Kaby spouting the stuff right in front of +me, I don't know. + +"But I didn't die there, kiddos. I still hoped to hurt the Greek ships, +maybe with the Snake's own heat gun. So I quick tried to outflank them. +My two comrades crawled beside me--they are males, but they have +courage. Soon we spied the ambush-setters. They were Snakes and they +were many, filthily disguised as Cretans." + +There was an indignant murmur at this, for our cutthroat Change War has +its code, the Soldiers tell me. Being an Entertainer, I don't have to +say what I think. + +"They had seen us when we saw them," Kaby swept on, "and they loosed a +killing volley. Heat- and knife-rays struck about us in a storm of wind +and fire, and the Lunan lost a feeler, fighting for Crete's Triple +Goddess. So we dodged behind a sand hill, steered our flight back toward +the water. It was awful, what we saw there: Crete's brave ships all sunk +or sinking, blue sky sullied by their death-smoke. Once again the Greeks +had licked us!--aided by the filthy Serpents. + +"Round our wrecks, their black ships scurried, like black beetles, filth +their diet, yet this day they dine on heroes. On the quiet sunlit beach +there, I could feel a Change Gale blowing, working changes deep inside +me, aches and pains that were a stranger's. Half my memories were +doubled, half my lifeline crooked and twisted, three new moles upon my +sword-hand. Goddess, Goddess, Triple Goddess--" + + * * * * * + +Her voice wavered and Sid reached out a hand, but she straightened her +back. + +"Triple Goddess, give me courage to tell everything that happened. We +ran down into the water, hoping to escape by diving. We had hardly +gotten under when the heat-rays hit above us, turning all the cool green +surface to a roaring white inferno. But as I believe I told you, I was +calling on my Caller, and a Door now opened to us, deep below the deadly +steam-clouds. We dived in like frightened minnows and a lot of water +with us." + +Off Chicago's Gold Coast, Dave once gave me a lesson in skin-diving and, +remembering it, I got a flash of Kaby's Door in the dark depths. + +"For a moment, all was chaos. Then the Door slammed shut behind us. We'd +been picked up in time's nick by--an Express Room of our +Spiders!--sloshing two feet deep in water, much more cramped for space +than this Place. It was manned by a magician, an old coot named +Benson-Carter. He dispelled the water quickly and reported on his +Caller. We'd got dry, were feeling human, Illy here had shed his +swimsuit, when we looked at the Maintainer. It was glowing, changing, +melting! And when Benson-Carter touched it, he fell backward--death was +in him. Then the Void began to darken, narrow, shrink and close around +us, so I called upon my Caller--without wasting time, let me tell you! + +"We can't say for sure what was it slowly squeezed that sweet Express +Room, but we fear the dirty Snakes have found a way to find our Places +and attack outside the cosmos!--found the Spiderweb that links us in the +Void's gray less-than-nothing." + +No murmur this time. This reaction was genuine; we'd been hit where we +lived and I could see everybody was scared as sick as I was. Except +maybe Bruce and Lili, who were still holding hands and beaming gently. I +decided they were the kind that love makes brave, which it doesn't do to +me. It just gives me two people to worry about. + +"I can see you dig our feelings," Kaby continued. "This thing scared the +pants off of us. If we could have, we'd have even Introverted the +Maintainer, broken all the ties that bind us, chanced it incommunicado. +But the little old Maintainer was a seething red-hot puddle filled with +bubbles big as handballs. We sat tight and watched the Void close. I +kept calling on my Caller." + + * * * * * + +I squeezed my eyes shut, but that made it easier to see the three of +them with the Void shutting down on them. (Was ours still behaving? Yes, +Bibi Miriam.) Poetry or no poetry, it got me. + +"Benson-Carter, lying dying, also thought the Snakes had done it. And he +knew that death was in him, so he whispered me his mission, giving me +precise instructions: how to press the seven death's hands, starting +lockside counterclockwise, one, three, five, six, two, four, seven, then +you have a half an hour; after you have pressed the seven, do not monkey +with the buttons--get out fast and don't stop moving." + +I wasn't getting this part and I couldn't see that anyone else was, +though Bruce was whispering to Lili. I remembered seeing skulls engraved +on the bronze chest. I looked at Illy and he nodded a tentacle and +spread two to say, I guessed, that yes, Benson-Carter had said something +like that, but no, Illy didn't know much about it. + +"All these things and more he whispered," Kaby went on, "with the last +gasps of his life-force, telling all his secret orders--for he'd not +been sent to get us, he was on a separate mission, when he heard my +SOSs. Sid, it's you he was to contact, as the first leg of his mission, +pick up from you three black hussars, death's-head Demons, daring +Soldiers, then to wait until the Places next match rhythm with the +cosmos--matter of two mealtimes, barely--and to tune in northern Egypt +in the age of the last Caesar, in the year of Rome's swift downfall, +there to start an operation in a battle near a city named for Thrace's +Alexander, there to change the course of battle, blow sky-high the +stinking Serpents, all their agents, all their Zombies! + +"Goddess, pardon, now I savvy how you've guided my least footstep, when +I thought you'd gone and left me--for I flubbed your three-mole signal. +We've found Sid's Place, that's the first leg, and I see the three black +hussars, and we've brought with us the weapon and the Parthian +disguises, salvaged from the doomed Express Room when your Door appeared +in time's nick, and the Room around us closing spewed us through before +it vanished with the corpse of Benson-Carter. Triple Goddess, draw the +milk now from the womanhood I flaunt here and inject the blackest +hatred! Vengeance now upon the Serpents, vengeance sweet in northern +Egypt, for your island, Crete, Goddess!--and a victory for the Spiders! +Goddess, Goddess, we can swing it!" + +The roar that made me try to stop my ears with my shoulders didn't come +from Kaby--she'd spoken her piece--but from Sid. The dear boy was purple +enough to make me want to remind him you can die of high blood pressure +just as easy in the Change World. + +"Dump me with ops! 'Sblood, I'll not endure it! Is this a battle post? +They'll be mounting operations from field hospitals next. Kabysia +Labrys, thou art mad to suggest it. And what's this prattle of locks, +clocks, and death's heads, buttons and monkeys? This brabble, this +farrago, this hocus-pocus! And where's the weapon you prate of? In that +whoreson bronze casket, I suppose." + +She nodded, looking blank and almost a little shy as poetic possession +faded from her. Her answer came like its faltering last echo. + +"It is nothing but a tiny tactical atomic bomb." + + + + +CHAPTER 7 + + After about 0.1 millisecond (one ten-thousandth part of a second) + has elapsed, the radius of the ball of fire is some 45 feet, and the + temperature is then in the vicinity of 300,000 degrees Centigrade. + At this instant, the luminosity, as observed at a distance of + 100,000 yards (5.7 miles), is approximately 100 times that of the + sun as seen at the earth's surface ... the ball of fire expands very + rapidly to its maximum radius of 450 feet within less than a second + from the explosion. + + --Los Alamos + +TIME TO THINK + + +Brother, that was all we needed to make everybody but Kaby and the two +ETs start yelping at once, me included. It may seem strange that Change +People, able to whiz through time and space and roust around outside the +cosmos and knowing at least by hearsay of weapons a billion years in the +future, like the Mindbomb, should panic at being shut in with a little +primitive mid-20th Century gadget. Well, they feel the same as atomic +scientists would feel if a Bengal tiger were brought into their +laboratory, neither more nor less scared. + +I'm a moron at physics, but I do know the Fireball is bigger than the +Place. Remember that, besides the bomb, we'd recently been presented +with a lot of other fears we hadn't had time to cope with, especially +the business of the Snakes having learned how to get at our Places and +melt the Maintainers and collapse them. Not to mention the general +impression--first Saint Petersburg, then Crete--that the whole Change +War was going against the Spiders. + +Yet, in a free corner of my mind, I was shocked at how badly we were all +panicking. It made me admit what I didn't like to: that we were all in +pretty much the same state as Doc, except that the bottle didn't happen +to be our out. + +And had the rest of us been controlling our drinking so well lately? + +Maud yelled, "Jettison it!" and pulled away from the satyr and ran from +the bronze chest. Beau, harking back to what they'd thought of doing in +the Express Room when it was too late, hissed, "Sirs, we must +Introvert," and vaulted over the piano bench and legged it for the +control divan. Erich seconded him with a white-faced "_Gott in Himmel, +ja!_" from beside the surly, forgotten Countess, holding, by its slim +stem, an empty, rose-stained wine glass. + +I felt my mind flinch, because Introverting a Place is several degrees +worse than foxholing. It's supposed not only to keep the Door tight +shut, but also to lock it so even the Change Winds can't get +through--cut the Place loose from the cosmos altogether. + +I'd never talked with anyone from a Place that had been Introverted. + + * * * * * + +Mark dumped Phryne off his lap and ran after Maud. The Greek Ghostgirl, +quite solid now, looked around with sleepy fear and fumbled her +apple-green chiton together at the throat. She wrenched my attention +away from everyone else for a moment, and I couldn't help wondering +whether the person or Zombie back in the cosmos, from whose lifeline the +Ghost has been taken, doesn't at least have strange dreams or thoughts +when something like this happens. + +Sid stopped Beau, though he almost got bowled over doing it, and he held +the gambler away from the Maintainer in a bear hug and bellowed over his +shoulders, "Masters, are you mad? Have you lost your wits? Maud! Mark! +Marcus! Magdalene! On your lives, unhand that casket!" + +Maud had swept the clothes and bows and quivers and stuff off it and was +dragging it out from the bar toward the Door sector, so as to dump it +through fast when we got one, I guess, while Mark acted as if he were +trying to help her and wrestle it away from her at the same time. + +They kept on as if they hadn't heard a word Sid said, with Mark yelling, +"Let go, _meretrix_! This holds Rome's answer to Parthia on the Nile." + +Kaby watched them as if she wanted to help Mark but scorned to scuffle +with a mere--well, Mark had said it in Latin, I guess--call girl. + +Then, on the top of the bronze chest, I saw those seven lousy skulls +starting at the lock as plain as if they'd been under a magnifying +glass, though ordinarily they'd have been a vague circle to my eyes at +the distance, and I lost my mind and started to run in the opposite +direction, but Illy whipped three tentacles around me, gentle-like, and +squeaked, "Easy now, Greta girl, don't you be doing it, too. Hold still +or Papa spank. My, my, but you two-leggers can whirl about when you have +a mind to." + +My stampede had carried his featherweight body a couple of yards, but it +stopped me and I got my mind back, partly. + +"Unhand it, I say!" Sid repeated without accomplishing anything, and he +released Beau, though he kept a hand near the gambler's shoulder. + +Then my fat friend from Lynn Regis looked real distraught at the Void +and blustered at no one in particular, "'Sdeath, think you I'd mutiny +against my masters, desert the Spiders, go to ground like a spent fox +and pull my hole in after me? A plague of such cowardice! Who suggests +it? Introversion's no mere last-ditch device. Unless ordered, supervised +and sanctioned, it means the end. And what if I'd Introverted ere we got +Kaby's call for succor, hey?" + + * * * * * + +His warrior maid nodded with harsh approval and he noticed it and shook +his free hand at her and scolded her, "Not that I say yea to your mad +plan for that Devil's casket, you half-clad lackwit. And yet to +jettison.... Oh, ye gods, ye gods--" he wiped his hand across his +face--"grant me a minute in which I may think!" + +Thinking time wasn't an item even on the strictly limited list at the +moment, although Sevensee, squatting dourly on his hairy haunches where +Maud had left him, threw in a dead-pan "Thas tellin em, Gov." + +Then Doc at the bar stood up tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat and +shawl and 19th Century duds and raised an unwavering arm for silence and +said something that sounded like: "Introversh, inversh, glovsh," and +then his enunciation switched to better than perfect as he continued, "I +know to an absolute certainty what we must do." + +It showed me how rabbity we were that the Place got quiet as a church +while we all stopped whatever we were doing and waited breathless for a +poor drunk to tell us how to save ourselves. + +He said something like, "Inversh ... bosh ..." and held our eyes for a +moment longer. Then the light went out of his and he slobbered out a +"_Nichevo_" and slid an arm far along the bar for a bottle and started +to pour it down his throat without stopping sliding. + +Before he completed his collapse to the floor, in the split second while +our attention was still focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted up on top of +it, so fast it was almost like he'd popped up from nowhere, though I'd +seen him start from behind the piano. + +"I've a question. Has anyone here triggered that bomb?" he said in a +voice that was very clear and just loud enough. "So it can't go off," he +went on after just the right pause, his easy grin and brisk manner +putting more heart into me all the time. "What's more, if it were to be +triggered, we'd still have half an hour. I believe you said it had that +long a fuse?" + +He stabbed a finger at Kaby. She nodded. + +"Right," he said. "It'd have to be that long for whoever plants it in +the Parthian camp to get away. There's another safety margin. + +"Second question. Is there a locksmith in the house?" + + * * * * * + +For all Bruce's easiness, he was watching us like a golden eagle and he +caught Beau's and Maud's affirmatives before they had a chance to +explain or hedge them and said, "That's very good. Under certain +circumstances, you two'd be the ones to go to work on the chest. But +before we consider that, there's Question Three: Is anyone here an +atomics technician?" + +That one took a little conversation to straighten out, Illy having to +explain that, yes, the Early Lunans had atomic power--hadn't they +blasted the life off their planet with it and made all those ghastly +craters?--but no, he wasn't a technician exactly, he was a "thinger" (I +thought at first his squeakbox was lisping); what was a thinger?--well, +a thinger was someone who manipulated things in a way that was truly +impossible to describe, but no, you couldn't possibly thing atomics; the +idea was quite ridiculous, so he couldn't be an atomics thinger; the +term was worse than a contradiction, well, really!--while Sevensee, from +his two-thousand-millennia advantage of the Lunan, grunted to the effect +that his culture didn't rightly use any kind of power, but just sort of +moved satyrs and stuff by wrastling space-time around, "or think em roun +ef we hafta. Can't think em in the Void, tho, wus luck. Hafta have--I +dunno wut. Dun havvit anyhow." + +"So we don't have an A-tech," Bruce summed up, "which makes it worse +than useless, downright dangerous, to tamper with the chest. We wouldn't +know what to do if we did get inside safely. One more question." He +directed it toward Sid. "How long before we can jettison anything?" + +Sid, looking a shade jealous, yet mostly grateful for the way Bruce had +calmed his chickens, started to explain, but Bruce didn't seem to be +taking any chance of losing his audience, and as soon as Sid got to the +word "rhythm," he pulled the answer away from him. + +"In brief, not until we can effectively tune in on the cosmos again. +Thank you, Master Lessingham. That's at least five hours--two mealtimes, +as the Cretan officer put it," and he threw Kaby a quick soldierly +smile. "So, whether the bomb goes to Egypt or elsewhere, there's not a +thing we can do about it for five hours. All right then!" + +His smile blinked out like a light and he took a couple of steps up and +down the bar, as if measuring the space he had. Two or three cocktail +glasses sailed off and popped, but he didn't seem to notice them and we +hardly did either. It was creepy the way he kept staring from one to +another of us. We had to look up. Behind his face, with the straight +golden hair flirting around it, was only the Void. + +"All right then," he repeated suddenly. "We're twelve Spiders and two +Ghosts, and we've time for a bit of a talk, and we're all in the same +bloody boat, fighting the same bloody war, so we'll all know what we're +talking about. I raised the subject a while back, but I was steamed up +about a glove, and it was a big jest. All right! But now the gloves are +off!" + + * * * * * + +Bruce ripped them out of his belt where they'd been tucked and slammed +them down on the bar, to be kicked off the next time he paced back and +forth, and it wasn't funny. + +"Because," he went right on, "I've been getting a completely new picture +of what this Spiders' war has been doing to each one of us. Oh, it's +jolly good sport to slam around in space and time and then have a rugged +little party outside both of them when the operation's over. It's sweet +to know there's no cranny of reality so narrow, no privacy so intimate +or sacred, no wall of was or will be strong enough, that we can't +shoulder in. Knowledge is a glamorous thing, sweeter than lust or +gluttony or the passion of fighting and including all three, the +ultimate insatiable hunger, and it's great to be Faust, even in a pack +of other Fausts. + +"It's sweet to jigger reality, to twist the whole course of a man's life +or a culture's, to ink out his or its past and scribble in a new one, +and be the only one to know and gloat over the changes--hah! killing men +or carrying off women isn't in it for glutting the sense of power. It's +sweet to feel the Change Winds blowing through you and know the pasts +that were and the past that is and the pasts that may be. It's sweet to +wield the Atropos and cut a Zombie or Unborn out of his lifeline and +look the Doubleganger in the face and see the Resurrection-glow in it +and Recruit a brother, welcome a newborn fellow Demon into our ranks and +decide whether he'll best fit as Soldier, Entertainer, or what. + +"Or he can't stand Resurrection, it fries or freezes him, and you've got +to decide whether to return him to his lifeline and his Zombie dreams, +only they'll be a little grayer and horrider than they were before, or +whether, if she's got that tantalizing something, to bring her shell +along for a Ghostgirl--that's sweet, too. It's even sweet to have Change +Death poised over your neck, to know that the past isn't the precious +indestructible thing you've been taught it was, to know that there's no +certainty about the future either, whether there'll even be one, to know +that no part of reality is holy, that the cosmos itself may wink out +like a flicked switch and God be not and nothing left but nothing!" + +He threw out his arms against the Void. "And knowing all that, it's +doubly sweet to come through the Door into the Place and be out of the +worst of the Change Winds and enjoy a well-earned Recuperation and share +the memories of all these sweetnesses I've been talking about, and work +out all the fascinating feelings you've been accumulating back in the +cosmos, layer by black layer, in the company of and with the help of the +best bloody little band of fellow Fausts and Faustines going! + +"Oh, it's a sweet life, all right, but I'm asking you--" and here his +eyes stabbed us again, one by one, fast--"I'm asking you what it's done +to us. I've been getting a completely new picture, as I said, of what my +life was and what it could have been if there'd been changes of the sort +that even we Demons can't make, and what my life is. I've been watching +how we've all been responding to things just now, to the news of Saint +Petersburg and to what the Cretan officer told beautifully--only it +wasn't beautiful what she had to tell--and mostly to that bloody box of +bomb. And I'm simply asking each one of you, what's happened to you?" + + * * * * * + +He stopped his pacing and stuck his thumbs in his belt and seemed to be +listening to the wheels turning in at least eleven other heads--only I +stopped mine pretty quick, with Dave and Father and the Rape of Chicago +coming up out of the dark on the turn and Mother and the Indiana Dunes +and Jazz Limited just behind them, followed by the unthinkable thing +the Spider doctor had flicked into existence when I flopped as a nurse, +because I can't stand that to be done to my mind by anybody but myself. + +I stopped them by using the old infallible Entertainers' gimmick, a fast +survey of the most interesting topic there is--other people's troubles. + + * * * * * + +Offhand, Beau looked as if he had most troubles, shamed by his boss and +his girl given her heart to a Soldier; he was hugging them to himself +very quiet. + +I didn't stop for the two ETs--they're too hard to figure--or for Doc; +nobody can tell whether a fallen-down drunk's at the black or bright end +of his cycle; you just know it's cycling. + +Maud ought to be suffering as much as Beau, called names and caught out +in a panic, which always hurts her because she's plus three hundred +years more future than the rest of us and figures she ought to be that +much wiser, which she isn't always--not to mention she's over fifty +years old, though her home-century cosmetic science keeps her looking +and acting teenage most of the time. She'd backed away from the bronze +chest so as not to stand out, and now Lili came from behind the piano +and stood beside her. + +Lili had the opposite of troubles, a great big glow for Bruce, proud as +a promised princess watching her betrothed. Erich frowned when he saw +her, for he seemed proud too, proud of the way his _Kamerad_ had taken +command of us panicky whacks _Fuehrer_-fashion. Sid still looked mostly +grateful and inclined to let Bruce keep on talking. + +Even Kaby and Mark, those two dragons hot for battle, standing a little +in front and to one side of us by the bronze chest, like its guardians, +seemed willing to listen. They made me realize one reason Sid had for +letting Bruce run on, although the path his talk was leading us down was +flashing with danger signals: When it was over, there'd still be the +problem of what to do with the bomb, and a real opposition shaping up +between Soldiers and Entertainers, and Sid was hoping a solution would +turn up in the meantime or at least was willing to put off the evil day. + +But beyond all that, and like the rest of us, I could tell from the way +Sid was squinting his browy eyes and chewing his beardy lip that he was +shaken and moved by what Bruce had said. This New Boy had dipped into +our hearts and counted our kicks so beautifully, better than most of us +could have done, and then somehow turned them around so that we had to +think of what messes and heels and black sheep and lost lambs we +were--well, we wanted to keep on listening. + + + + +CHAPTER 8 + + Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. + + --Archimedes + +A PLACE TO STAND + + +Bruce's voice had a faraway touch and he was looking up left at the Void +as he said, "Have you ever really wondered why the two sides of this war +are called the Snakes and the Spiders? Snakes may be clear enough--you +always call the enemy something dirty. But Spiders--our name for +ourselves? Bear with me, Ilhilihis; I know that no being is created +dirty or malignant by Nature, but this is a matter of anthropoid +feelings and folkways. Yes, Mark, I know that some of your legions have +nicknames like the Drunken Lions and the Snails, and that's about as +insulting as calling the British Expeditionary Force the Old +Contemptibles. + +"No, you'd have to go to bands of vicious youths in cities slated for +ruin to find a habit of naming like ours, and even they would try to +brighten up the black a bit. But simply--Spiders. And Snakes, for that's +their name for themselves too, you know. Spiders and Snakes. What are +our masters, that we give them names like that?" + +It gave me the shivers and set my mind working in a dozen directions and +I couldn't stop it, although it made the shivers worse. + +Illy beside me now--I'd never given it a thought before, but he did have +eight legs of a sort, and I remembered thinking of him as a spider +monkey, and hadn't the Lunans had wisdom and atomic power and a billion +years in which to get the Change War rolling? + +Or suppose, in the far future, Terra's own spiders evolved intelligence +and a cruel cannibal culture. They'd be able to keep their existence +secret. I had no idea of who or what would be on Earth in Sevensee's +day, and wouldn't it be perfect black hairy poisoned spider-mentality to +spin webs secretly through the world of thought and all of space and +time? + +And Beau--wasn't there something real Snaky about him, the way he moved +and all? + +Spiders and Snakes. _Spinne und Schlange_, as Erich called them. S & S. +But SS stood for the Nazi _Schutzstaffel_, the Black Shirts, and what if +some of those cruel, crazy Jerries had discovered time travel and--I +brought myself up with a jerk and asked myself, "Greta, how nuts can you +get?" + + * * * * * + +From where he was on the floor, the front of the bar his sounding board, +Doc shrieked up at Bruce like one of the damned from the pit, "Don't +speak against the Spiders! Don't blaspheme! They can hear the Unborn +whisper. Others whip only the skin, but they whip the naked brain and +heart," and Erich called out, "That's enough, Bruce!" + +But Bruce didn't spare him a look and said, "But whatever the Spiders +are and no matter how much whip they use, it's plain as the telltale on +the Maintainer that the Change War is not only going against them, but +getting away from them. Dwell for a bit on the current flurry of stupid +slugging and panicky anachronism, when we all know that anachronism is +what gets the Change Winds out of control. This punch-drunk pounding on +the Cretan-Dorian fracas as if it were the only battle going and the +only way to work things. Whisking Constantine from Britain to the +Bosporus by rocket, sending a pocket submarine back to sail with the +Armada against Drake's woodensides--I'll wager you hadn't heard those! +And now, to save Rome, an atomic bomb. + +"Ye gods, they could have used Greek fire or even dynamite, but a +fission weapon.... I leave you to imagine what gaps and scars that will +make in what's left of history--the smothering of Greece and the +vanishment of Provence and the troubadours and the Papacy's Irish +Captivity won't be in it!" + +The cut on his cheek had opened again and was oozing a little, but he +didn't pay any attention to it, and neither did we, as his lips thinned +in irony and he said, "But I'm forgetting that this is a cosmic war and +that the Spiders are conducting operations on billions, trillions of +planets and inhabited gas clouds through millions of ages and that we're +just one little world--one little solar system, Sevensee--and we can +hardly expect our inscrutable masters, with all their pressing +preoccupations and far-flung responsibilities, to be especially +understanding or tender in their treatment of our pet books and +centuries, our favorite prophets and periods, or unduly concerned about +preserving any of the trifles that we just happen to hold dear. + +"Perhaps there are some sentimentalists who would rather die forever +than go on living in a world without the _Summa_, the Field Equations, +_Process and Reality_, _Hamlet_, Matthew, Keats, and the _Odyssey_, but +our masters are practical creatures, ministering to the needs of those +rugged souls who want to go on living no matter what." + + * * * * * + +Erich's "Bruce, I'm telling you that's enough," was lost in the +quickening flow of the New Boy's words. "I won't spend much time on the +minor signs of our major crack-up--the canceling of leaves, the sharper +shortages, the loss of the Express Room, the use of Recuperation +Stations for ops and all the other frantic patchwork--last operation +but one, we were saddled with three Soldiers from outside the Galaxy +and, no fault of theirs, they were no earthly use. Such little things +might happen at a bad spot in any war and are perhaps only local. But +there's a big thing." + +He paused again, to let us wonder, I guess. Maud must have worked her +way over to me, for I felt her dry little hand on my arm and she +whispered out of the side of her mouth, "What do we do now?" + +"We listen," I told her the same way. I felt a little impatient with her +need to be doing something about things. + +She cocked a gold-dusted eyebrow at me and murmured, "You, too?" + +I didn't get to ask her me, too, what? Crush on Bruce? Nuts!--because +just then Bruce's voice took up again in the faraway range. + +"Have you ever asked yourselves how many operations the fabric of +history can stand before it's all stitches, whether too much Change +won't one day wear out the past? And the present and the future, too, +the whole bleeding business. Is the law of the Conservation of Reality +any more than a thin hope given a long name, a prayer of theoreticians? +Change Death is as certain as Heat Death, and far faster. Every +operation leaves reality a bit cruder, a bit uglier, a bit more +makeshift, and a whole lot less rich in those details and feelings that +are our heritage, like the crude penciled sketch on canvas when you've +stripped off the paint. + +"If that goes on, won't the cosmos collapse into an outline of itself, +then nothing? How much thinning can reality stand, having more and more +Doublegangers cut out of it? And there's another thing about every +operation--it wakes up the Zombies a little more, and as its Change +Winds die, it leaves them a little more disturbed and nightmare-ridden +and frazzled. Those of you who have been on operations in heavily +worked-over temporal areas will know what I mean--that look they give +you out of the sides of their eyes as if to say, 'You again? For +Christ's sake, go away. We're the dead. We're the ones who don't want to +wake up, who don't want to be Demons and hate to be Ghosts. Stop +torturing us.'" + + * * * * * + +I looked around at the Ghostgirls; I couldn't help it. They'd somehow +got together on the control divan, facing us, their backs to the +Maintainers. The Countess had dragged along the bottle of wine Erich had +fetched her earlier and they were passing it back and forth. The +Countess had a big rose splotch across the ruffled white lace of her +blouse. + +Bruce said, "There'll come a day when all the Zombies and all the Unborn +wake up and go crazy together and figuratively come marching at us in +their numberless hordes, saying, 'We've had enough.'" + +But I didn't turn back to Bruce right away. Phryne's chiton had slipped +off one shoulder and she and the Countess were sitting sagged forward, +elbows on knees, legs spread--at least, as far as the Countess's hobble +skirt would let her--and swayed toward each other a little. They were +still surprisingly solid, although they hadn't had any personal +attention for a half hour, and they were looking up over my head with +half-shut eyes and they seemed, so help me, to be listening to what +Bruce was saying and maybe hearing some of it. + +"We make a careful distinction between Zombies and Unborn, between those +troubled by our operations whose lifelines lie in the past and those +whose lifelines lie in the future. But is there any distinction any +longer? Can we tell the difference between the past and the future? Can +we any longer locate the now, the real now of the cosmos? The Places +have their own nows, the now of the Big Time we're on, but that's +different and it's not made for real living. + +"The Spiders tell us that the real now is somewhere in the last half of +the 20th Century, which means that several of us here are also alive in +the cosmos, have lifelines along which the now is traveling. But do you +swallow that story quite so easily, Ilhilihis, Sevensee? How does it +strike the servants of the Triple Goddess? The Spiders of Octavian Rome? +The Demons of Good Queen Bess? The gentlemen Zombies of the Greater +South? Do the Unborn man the starships, Maud? + +"The Spiders also tell us that, although the fog of battle makes the now +hard to pin down precisely, it will return with the unconditional +surrender of the Snakes and the establishment of cosmic peace, and roll +on as majestically toward the future as before, quickening the continuum +with its passage. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe, as I +do, that we've used up all the future as well as the past, wasted it in +premature experience, and that we've had the real now smudged out of +existence, stolen from us forever, the precious now of true growth, the +child-moment in which all life lies, the moment like a newborn baby that +is the only home for hope there is?" + + * * * * * + +He let that start to sink in, then took a couple of quick steps and went +on, his voice rising over Erich's "Bruce, for the last time--" and +seeming to pick up a note of hope from the very word he had used, "But +although things look terrifyingly black, there remains a chance--the +slimmest chance, but still a chance--of saving the cosmos from Change +Death and restoring reality's richness and giving the Ghosts good sleep +and perhaps even regaining the real now. We have the means right at +hand. What if the power of time traveling were used not for war and +destruction, but for healing, for the mutual enrichment of the ages, for +quiet communication and growth, in brief, to bring a peace message--" + +But my little commandant is quite an actor himself and knows a wee bit +about the principles of scene-stealing, and he was not going to let +Bruce drown him out as if he were just another extra playing a Voice +from the Mob. He darted across our front, between us and the bar, took a +running leap, and landed bang on the bloody box of bomb. + +A bit later, Maud was silently showing me the white ring above her elbow +where I'd grabbed her and Illy was teasing a clutch of his tentacles out +of my other hand and squeaking reproachfully, "Greta girl, don't ever do +that." + +Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefully +straddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you could +hardly push them in the right order by jumping on them, and he was +pointing at Bruce and saying, "--and that means mutiny, my young sir. +_Um Gottes willen_, Bruce, listen to me and step down before you say +anything worse. I'm older than you, Bruce. Mark's older. Trust in your +_Kameraden_. Guide yourself by their knowledge." + +He had got my attention, but I had much rather have him black my eye. + +"You older than me?" Bruce was grinning. "When your twelve-years' +advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdom of a race of sadistic +dreamers gone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already been +muddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas and +loyalties are those of a wolf pack of unimaginative sluggers two +thousand years younger than I am? Either of you older because you have +more of the killing cynicism that is all the wisdom the Change World +ever gives you? Don't make me laugh! + +"I'm an Englishman, and I come from an epoch when total war was still a +desecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off or +blighted. I'm a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they're the +only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time. Right, +Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace message, I want you to +think about it concretely in terms of using the Places to bring help +across the mountains of time when help is really needed, not to bring +help that's undeserved or knowledge that's premature or contaminating, +sometimes not to bring anything at all, but just to check with infinite +tenderness and concern that everything's safe and the glories of the +universe unfolding as they were intended to--" + +"Yes, you are a poet, Bruce," Erich broke in. "You can tootle soulfully +on the flute and make us drip tears. You can let out the stops on the +big organ pipes and make us tremble as if at Jehovah's footsteps. For +the last twenty minutes, you have been giving us some very _charmante_ +poetry. But what are you? An Entertainer? Or are you a Soldier?" + + * * * * * + +Right then--I don't know what it was, maybe Sid clearing his throat--I +could sense our feelings beginning to turn against Bruce. I got the +strangest feeling of reality clamping down and bright colors going dull +and dreams vanishing. Yet it was only then I also realized how much +Bruce had moved us, maybe some of us to the verge of mutiny, even. I was +mad at Erich for what he was doing, but I couldn't help admiring his +cockiness. + +I was still under the spell of Bruce's words and the more-than-words +behind them, but then Erich would shift around a bit and one of his +heels would kick near the death's-head pushbuttons and I wanted to stamp +with spike heels on every death's-head button on his uniform. I didn't +know exactly what I felt yet. + +"Yes, I'm a Soldier," Bruce told him, "and I hope you won't ever have to +worry about my courage, because it's going to take more courage than any +operation we've ever planned, ever dreamed of, to carry the peace +message to the other Places and to the wound-spots of the cosmos. +Perhaps it will be a fast wicket and we'll be bowled down before we +score a single run, but who cares? We may at least see our real masters +when they come to smash us, and for me that will be a deep satisfaction. +And we may do some smashing of our own." + +"So you're a Soldier," Erich said, his smile showing his teeth. "Bruce, +I'll admit that the half-dozen operations you've been on were rougher +than anything I drew in my first hundred sleeps. For that, I am all +honest sympathy. But that you should let them get you into such a state +that love and a girl can turn you upside down and start you babbling +about peace messages--" + +"Yes, by God, love and a girl have changed me!" Bruce shouted at him, +and I looked around at Lili and I remembered Dave saying, "I'm going to +Spain," and I wondered if anything would ever again make my face flame +like that. "Or, rather, they've made me stand up for what I've believed +in all along. They've made me--" + +"_Wunderbar_," Erich called and began to do a little sissy dance on the +bomb that set my teeth on edge. He bent his wrists and elbows at arty +angles and stuck out a hip and ducked his head simperingly and blinked +his eyes very fast. "Will you invite me to the wedding, Bruce? You'll +have to get another best man, but I will be the flower girl and throw +pretty little posies to all the distinguished guests. Here, Mark. Catch, +Kaby. One for you, Greta. _Danke schoen. Ach, zwei Herzen in +dreivierteltakt ... ta-ta ... ta-ta ... ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ..._" + +"What the hell do you think a woman is?" Bruce raged. "Something to mess +around with in your spare time?" + + * * * * * + +Erich kept on humming "Two Hearts in Waltz Time"--and jigging around to +it, damn him--but he slipped in a nod to Bruce and a "Precisely." So I +knew where I stood, but it was no news to me. + +"Very well," Bruce said, "let's leave this Brown Shirt _maricon_ to +amuse himself and get down to business. I made all of you a proposal and +I don't have to tell you how serious it is or how serious Lili and I are +about it. We not only must infiltrate and subvert other Places, which +luckily for us are made for infiltration, we also must make contact with +the Snakes and establish working relationships with their Demons at our +level as one of our first steps." + +That stopped Erich's jig and got enough of a gasp from some of us to +make it seem to come from practically everybody. Erich used it to work a +change of pace. + +"Bruce! We've let you carry this foolery further than we should. You +seem to have the idea that because anything goes in the Place--dueling, +drunkenness, _und so weiter_--you can say what you have and it will all +be forgotten with the hangover. Not so. It is true that among such a set +of monsters and free spirits as ourselves, and working as secret agents +to boot, there cannot be the obvious military discipline that would +obtain in a Terran army. + +"But let me tell you, Bruce, let me grind it home into you--Sid and Kaby +and Mark will bear me out in this, as officers of equivalent rank--that +the Spider line of command stretches into and through this Place just as +surely as the word of _der Fuehrer_ rules Chicago. And as I shouldn't +have to emphasize to you, Bruce, the Spiders have punishments that +would make my countrymen in Belsen and Buchenwald--well, pale a little. +So while there is still a shadow of justification for our interpreting +your remarks as utterly tasteless clowning--" + +"Babble on," Bruce said, giving him a loose downward wave of his hand +without looking. "I made you people a proposal." He paused. "How do you +stand, Sidney Lessingham?" + +Then I felt my legs getting weak, because Sid didn't answer right away. +The old boy swallowed and started to look around at the rest of us. Then +the feeling of reality clamping down got something awful, because he +didn't look around, but straightened his back a little. Just then, Mark +cut in fast. + +"It grieves me, Bruce, but I think you are possessed. Erich, he must be +confined." + + * * * * * + +Kaby nodded, almost absently. "Confine or kill the coward, whichever is +easier, whip the woman, and let's get on to the Egyptian battle." + +"Indeed, yes," Mark said. "I died in it. But now perhaps no longer." + +Kaby said to him, "I like you, Roman." + +Bruce was smiling, barely, and his eyes were moving and fixing. "You, +Ilhilihis?" + +Illy's squeak box had never sounded mechanical to me before, but it did +as he answered, "I'm a lot deeper into borrowed time than the rest of +you, tra-la-la, but Papa still loves living. Include me very much out, +Brucie." + +"Miss Davies?" + +Beside me, Maud said flatly, "Do you think I'm a fool?" Beyond her, I +saw Lili and I thought, "My God, I might look as proud if I were in her +shoes, but I sure as hell wouldn't look as confident." + +Bruce's eyes hadn't quite come to Beau when the gambler spoke up. "I +have no cause to like you, sir, rather the opposite. But this Place has +come to bore me more than Boston and I have always found it difficult to +resist a long shot. A very long one, I fear. I am with you, sir." + +There was a pain in my chest and a roaring in my ears and through it I +heard Sevensee grunting, "--sicka these lousy Spiders. Deal me in." + +And then Doc reared up in front of the bar and he'd lost his hat and his +hair was wild and he grabbed an empty fifth by the neck and broke the +bottom of it all jagged against the bar and he waved it and screeched, +"_Ubivaytye Pauki--i Nyemetzi!_" + +And right behind his words, Beau sang out fast the English of it, "Kill +the Spiders--and the Germans!" + +And Doc didn't collapse then, though I could see he was hanging onto +the bar tight with his other hand, and the Place got stiller, inside and +out, than I've ever known it, and Bruce's eyes were finally moving back +toward Sid. + + * * * * * + +But the eyes stopped short of Sid and I heard Bruce say, "Miss Forzane?" +and I thought, "That's funny," and I started to look around at the +Countess, and felt all the eyes and I realized, "Hey, that's me! But +this can't happen to me. To the others, yes, but not to me. I just work +here. Not to Greta, no, no, no!" + +But it had, and the eyes didn't let go, and the silence and the feeling +of reality were Godawful, and I said to myself, "Greta, you've got to +say something, if only a suitable four-letter word," and then suddenly I +knew what the silence was like. It was like that of a big city if there +were some way of shutting off all the noise in one second. It was like +Erich's singing when the piano had deserted him. It was as if the Change +Winds should ever die completely ... and I knew beforehand what had +happened when I turned my back on them all. + +The Ghostgirls were gone. The Major Maintainer hadn't merely been +switched to Introvert. It was gone, too. + + + + +[Illustration] + + +CHAPTER 9 + + "We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed." + + "You looked among D----'s papers, of course, and into the books of + the library?" + + "Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened + every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume...." + + --Poe + +A LOCKED ROOM + + +Three hours later, Sid and I plumped down on the couch nearest the +kitchen, though too tired to want to eat for a while yet. A tighter +search than I could ever have cooked up had shown that the Maintainer +was not in the Place. + +Of course it had to be in the Place, as we kept telling each other for +the first two hours. It had to be, if circumstances and the theories we +lived by in the Change World meant anything. A Maintainer is what +maintains a Place. The Minor Maintainer takes care of oxygen, +temperature, humidity, gravity, and other little life-cycle and +matter-cycle things generally, but it's the Major Maintainer that keeps +the walls from buckling and the ceiling from falling in. It is little, +but oh my, it does so much. + +It doesn't work by wires or radio or anything complicated like that. It +just hooks into local space-time. + +I have been told that its inside working part is made up of vastly +tough, vastly hard giant molecules, each one of which is practically a +vest-pocket cosmos in itself. Outside, it looks like a portable radio +with a few more dials and some telltales and switches and plug-ins for +earphones and a lot of other sensory thingumajigs. + +But the Maintainer was gone and the Void hadn't closed in, yet. By this +time, I was so fagged, I didn't care much whether it did or not. + +One thing for sure, the Maintainer had been switched to Introvert before +it was spirited away or else its disappearance automatically produced +Introversion, take your choice, because we sure were Introverted--real +nasty martinet-schoolmaster grip of reality on my thoughts that I knew, +without trying, liquor wouldn't soften, not a breath of Change Wind, +absolutely stifling, and the gray of the Void seeming so much inside my +head that I think I got a glimmering of what the science boys mean when +they explain to me that the Place is a kind of interweaving of the +material and the mental--a Giant Monad, one of them called it. + +Anyway, I said to myself, "Greta, if this is Introversion, I want no +part of it. It is not nice to be cut adrift from the cosmos and know it. +A lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific and a starship between galaxies +are not in it for loneliness." + + * * * * * + +I asked myself why the Spiders had ever equipped Maintainers with +Introversion switches anyway, when we couldn't drill with them and +weren't supposed to use them except in an emergency so tight that it was +either Introvert or surrender to the Snakes, and for the first time the +obvious explanation came to me: + +Introversion must be the same as scuttling, its main purpose to withhold +secrets and materiel from the enemy. It put a place into a situation +from which even the Spider high command couldn't rescue it, and there +was nothing left but to sink down, down (out? up?), down into the Void. + +If that was the case, our chances of getting back were about those of my +being a kid again playing in the Dunes on the Small Time. + +I edged a little closer to Sid and sort of squunched under his shoulder +and rubbed my cheek against the smudged, gold-worked gray velvet. He +looked down and I said, "A long way to Lynn Regis, eh, Siddy?" + +"Sweetling, thou spokest a mouthful," he said. He knows very well what +he is doing when he mixes his language that way, the wicked old +darling. + +"Siddy," I said, "why this gold-work? It'd be a lot smoother without +it." + +"Marry, men must prick themselves out and, 'faith I know not, but it +helps if there's metal in it." + +"And girls get scratched." I took a little sniff. "But don't put this +doublet through the cleaner yet. Until we get out of the woods, I want +as much you around as possible." + +"Marry, and why should I?" he asked blankly, and I think he wasn't +fooling me. The last thing time travelers find out is how they do or +don't smell. Then his face clouded and he looked as though he wanted to +squunch under my shoulder. "But 'faith, sweetling, your forest has a few +more trees than Sherwood." + +"Thou saidst it," I agreed, and wondered about the look. He oughtn't to +be interested in my girlishness now. I knew I was a mess, but he had +stuck pretty close to me during the hunt and you never can tell. Then I +remembered that he was the other one who hadn't declared himself when +Bruce was putting it to us, and it probably troubled his male vanity. +Not me, though--I was still grateful to the Maintainer for getting me +out of that spot, whatever other it had got us all into. It seemed ages +ago. + + * * * * * + +We'd all jumped to the conclusion that the two Ghostgirls had run away +with the Maintainer, I don't know where or why, but it looked so much +that way. Maud had started yipping about how she'd never trusted Ghosts +and always known that some day they'd start doing things on their own, +and Kaby had got it firmly fixed in her head, right between the horns, +that Phryne, being a Greek, was the ringleader and was going to wreak +havoc on us all. + +But when we were checking Stores the first time, I had noticed that the +Ghostgirl envelopes looked flat. Ectoplasm doesn't take up much space +when it's folded, but I had opened one anyway, then another, and then +called for help. + +Every last envelope was empty. We had lost over a thousand Ghostgirls, +Sid's whole stock. + +Well, at least it proved what none of us had ever seen or heard of being +demonstrated: that there is a spooky link--a sort of Change Wind +contact--between a Ghost and its lifeline; and when that umbilicus, I've +heard it called, is cut, the part away from the lifeline dies. + +Interesting, but what had bothered me was whether we Demons were going +to evaporate too, because we are as much Doublegangers as the Ghosts and +our apron strings had been cut just as surely. We're more solid, of +course, but that would only mean we'd take a little longer. Very +logical. + +I remember I had looked up at Lili and Maud--us girls had been checking +the envelopes; it's one of the proprieties we frequently maintain and +anyway, if men check them, they're apt to trot out that old wheeze about +"instant women" which I'm sick to death of hearing, thank you. + +Anyway, I had looked up and said, "It's been nice knowing you," and Lili +had said, "Twenty-three, skiddoo," and Maud had said, "Here goes +nothing," and we had shook hands all around. + +We figured that Phryne and the Countess had faded at the same time as +the other Ghostgirls, but an idea had been nibbling at me and I said, +"Siddy, do you suppose it's just barely possible that, while we were all +looking at Bruce, those two Ghostgirls would have been able to work the +Maintainer and get a Door and lam out of here with the thing?" + +"Thou speakst my thoughts, sweetling. All weighs against it: Imprimis, +'tis well known that Ghosts cannot lay plots or act on them. Secundo, +the time forbade getting a Door. Tercio--and here's the real meat of +it--the Place folds without the Maintainer. Quadro, 'twere folly to +depend on not one of--how many of us? ten, elf--not looking around in +all the time it would have taken them--" + +"I looked around once, Siddy. They were drinking and they had got to the +control divan under their own power. Now when was that? Oh, yes, when +Bruce was talking about Zombies." + +"Yes, sweetling. And as I was about to cap my argument with quinquo when +you 'gan prattle, I could have sworn none could touch the Maintainer, +much less work it and purloin it, without my certain knowledge. Yet ..." + +"Eftsoons yet," I seconded him. + + * * * * * + +Somebody must have got a door and walked out with the thing. It +certainly wasn't in the Place. The hunt had been a lulu. Something the +size of a portable typewriter is not easy to hide and we had been inside +everything from Beau's piano to the renewer link of the Refresher. + +We had even fluoroscoped everybody, though it had made Illy writhe like +a box of worms, as he'd warned us; he said it tickled terribly and I +insisted on smoothing his fur for five minutes afterward, although he +was a little standoffish toward me. + +Some areas, like the bar, kitchen and Stores, took a long while, but we +were thorough. Kaby helped Doc check Surgery: since she last made the +Place, she has been stationed in a Field Hospital (it turns out the +Spiders actually are mounting operations from them) and learned a few +nice new wrinkles. + +However, Doc put in some honest work on his own, though, of course, +every check was observed by at least three people, not including Bruce +or Lili. When the Maintainer vanished, Doc had pulled out of his +glassy-eyed drunk in a way that would have surprised me if I hadn't seen +it happen to him before, but when we finished Surgery and got on to the +Art Gallery, he had started to putter and I noticed him hold out his +coat and duck his head and whip out a flask and take a swig and by now +he was well on his way toward another peak. + +The Art Gallery had taken time too, because there's such a jumble of +strange stuff, and it broke my heart but Kaby took her ax and split a +beautiful blue woodcarving of a Venusian medusa because, although there +wasn't a mark in the paw-polished surface, she claimed it was just big +enough. Doc cried a little and we left him fitting the pieces together +and mooning over the other stuff. + +After we'd finished everything else, Mark had insisted on tackling the +floor. Beau and Sid both tried to explain to him how this is a one-sided +Place, that there is nothing, but nothing, under the floor; it just gets +a lot harder than the diamonds crusting it as soon as you get a quarter +inch down--that being the solid equivalent of the Void. But Mark was +knuckle-headed (like all Romans, Sid assured me on the q.t.) and broke +four diamond-plus drills before he was satisfied. + +Except for some trick hiding places, that left the Void, and things +don't vanish if you throw them at the Void--they half melt and freeze +forever unless you can fish them out. Back of the Refresher, at about +eye-level, are three Venusian coconuts that a Hittite strongman threw +there during a major brawl. I try not to look at them because they are +so much like witch heads they give me the woolies. The parts of the +Place right up against the Void have strange spatial properties which +one of the gadgets in Surgery makes use of in a way that gives me the +worse woolies, but that's beside the point. + + * * * * * + +During the hunt, Kaby and Erich had used their Callers as direction +finders to point out the Maintainer, just as they're used in the cosmos +to locate the Door--and sometimes in the Big Places, people tell me. But +the Callers only went wild--like a compass needle whirling around +without stopping--and nobody knew what that meant. + +The trick hiding places were the Minor Maintainer, a cute idea, but it +is no bigger than the Major and has its own mysterious insides and had +obviously kept on doing its own work, so that was out for several +reasons, and the bomb chest, though it seemed impossible for anyone to +have opened it, granting they knew the secret of its lock, even before +Erich jumped on it and put it in the limelight double. But when you've +ruled out everything else, the word impossible changes meaning. + +Since time travel is our business, a person might think of all sorts of +tricks for sending the Maintainer into the past or future, permanently +or temporarily. But the Place is strictly on the Big Time and everybody +that should know tells me that time traveling _through_ the Big Time is +out. It's this way: the Big Time is a train, and the Little Time is the +countryside and we're on the train, unless we go out a Door, and as +Gertie Stein might put it, you can't time travel through the time you +time travel in when you time travel. + +I'd also played around with the idea of some fantastically obvious +hiding place, maybe something that several people could pass back and +forth between them, which would mean a conspiracy, and, of course, if +you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including +the cosmos itself. Still, I'd got a sort of shell-game idea about the +Soldiers' three big black shakos and I hadn't been satisfied until I'd +got the three together and looked in them all at the same time. + +"Wake up, Greta, and take something. I can't stand here forever." Maud +had brought us a tray of hearty snacks from then and yon, and I must say +they were tempting; she whips up a mean hors d'oeuvre. + +I looked them over and said, "Siddy, I want a hot dog." + +"And I want a venison pasty! Out upon you, you finical jill, you +o'erscrupulous jade, you whimsic and tyrannous poppet!" + +I grabbed a handful and snuggled back against him. + +"Go on, call me some more, Siddy," I told him. "Real juicy ones." + + + + +CHAPTER 10 + + My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, + Shakes so my single state of man that function + Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is + But what is not. + + --Macbeth + +MOTIVES AND OPPORTUNITIES + + +My big bad waif from King's Lynn had set the tray on his knees and +started to wolf the food down. The others were finishing up. Erich, Mark +and Kaby were having a quietly furious argument I couldn't overhear at +the end of the bar nearest the bronze chest, and Illy was draped over +the piano like a real octopus, listening in. + +Beau and Sevensee were pacing up and down near the control divan and +throwing each other a word now and then. Beyond them, Bruce and Lili +were sitting on the opposite couch from us, talking earnestly about +something. Maud had sat down at the other end of the bar and was +knitting--it's one of the habits like chess and quiet drinking, or +learning to talk by squeak box, that we pick up to pass the time in the +Place in the long stretches between parties. Doc was fiddling around the +Gallery, picking things up and setting them down, still managing to stay +on his feet at any rate. + + * * * * * + +Lili and Bruce stood up, still gabbing intensely at each other, and Illy +began to pick out with one tentacle a little tune in the high keys that +didn't sound like anything on God's earth. "Where do they get all the +energy?" I wondered. + +As soon as I asked myself that, I knew the answer and I began to feel +the same way myself. It wasn't energy; it was nerves, pure and simple. + +Change is like a drug, I realized--you get used to the facts never +staying the same, and one picture of the past and future dissolving into +another maybe not very different but still different, and your mind +being constantly goosed by strange moods and notions, like nightclub +lights of shifting color with weird shadows between shining right on +your brain. + +The endless swaying and jogging is restful, like riding on a train. + +You soon get to like the movement and to need it without knowing, and +when it suddenly stops and you're just you and the facts you think from +and feel from are exactly the same when you go back to them--boy, that's +rough, as I found out now. + +The instant we got Introverted, everything that ordinarily leaks into +the Place, wake or sleep, had stopped coming, and we were nothing but +ourselves and what we meant to each other and what we could make of +that, an awfully lonely, scratchy situation. + +I decided I felt like I'd been dropped into a swimming pool full of +cement and held under until it hardened. + +I could understand the others bouncing around a bit. It was a wonder +they didn't hit the Void. Maud seemed to be standing it the best; maybe +she'd got a little preparation from the long watches between stars; and +then she is older than all of us, even Sid, though with a small "o" in +"older." + + * * * * * + +The restless work of the search for the Maintainer had masked the +feeling, but now it was beginning to come full force. Before the search, +Bruce's speech and Erich's interruptions had done a passable masking job +too. I tried to remember when I'd first got the feeling and decided it +was after Erich had jumped on the bomb, about the time he mentioned +poetry. Though I couldn't be sure. Maybe the Maintainer had been +Introverted even earlier, when I'd turned to look at the Ghostgirls. I +wouldn't have known. Nuts! + +Believe me, I could feel that hardened cement on every inch of me. I +remembered Bruce's beautiful picture of a universe without Big Change +and decided it was about the worst idea going. I went on eating, though +I wasn't so sure now it was a good idea to keep myself strong. + +"Does the Maintainer have an Introversion telltale? Siddy!" + +"'Sdeath, chit, and you love me, speak lower. Of a sudden, I feel not +well, as if I'd drunk a butt of Rhenish and slept inside it. Marry yes, +blue. In short flashes, saith the manual. Why ask'st thou?" + +"No reason. God, Siddy, what I'd give for a breath of Change Wind." + +"Thou can'st say that eftsoons," he groaned. I must have looked pretty +miserable myself, for he put his arm around my shoulders and whispered +gruffly, "Comfort thyself, sweetling, that while we suffer thus sorely, +we yet cannot die the Change Death." + +"What's that?" I asked him. + +I didn't want to bounce around like the others. I had a suspicion I'd +carry it too far. So, to keep myself from going batty, I started to +rework the business of who had done what to the Maintainer. + +During the hunt, there had been some pretty wild suggestions tossed +around as to its disappearance or at least its Introversion: a feat of +Snake science amounting to sorcery; the Spider high command bunkering +the Places from above, perhaps in reaction to the loss of the Express +Room, in such a hurry that they hadn't even time to transmit warnings; +the hand of the Late Cosmicians, those mysterious hypothetical beings +who are supposed to have successfully resisted the extension of the +Change War into the future much beyond Sevensee's epoch--unless the Late +Cosmicians are the ones fighting the Change War. + +One thing these suggestions had steered very clear of was naming any one +of us as a suspect, whether acting as Snake spy, Spider political +police, agent of--who knows, after Bruce?--a secret Change World +Committee of Public Safety or Spider revolutionary underground, or +strictly on our own. Just as no one had piped a word, since the +Maintainer had been palmed, about the split between Erich's and Bruce's +factions. + +Good group thinking probably, to sink differences in the emergency, but +that didn't apply to what I did with my own thoughts. + + * * * * * + +Who wanted to escape so bad they'd Introvert the Place, cutting off all +possible contact and communication either way with the cosmos and +running the very big risk of not getting back to the cosmos at all? + +Leaving out what had happened since Bruce had arrived and stirred things +up, Doc seemed to me to have the strongest motive. He knew that Sid +couldn't keep covering up for him forever and that Spider punishments +for derelictions of duty are not just the clink of a firing squad, as +Erich had reminded us. But Doc had been flat on the floor in front of +the bar from the time Bruce had jumped on top of it, though I certainly +hadn't had my eye on him every second. + +Beau? Beau had said he was bored with the Place at a time when what he +said counted, so he'd hardly lock himself in it maybe forever, not to +mention locking Bruce in with himself and the babe he had a yen for. + +Sid loves reality, Changing or not, and every least thing in it, people +especially, more than any man or woman I've ever known--he's like a +big-eyed baby who wants to grab every object and put it in his +mouth--and it was hard to imagine him ever cutting himself off from the +cosmos. + +Maud, Kaby, Mark and the two ETs? None of them had any motive I knew of, +though Sevensee's being from the very far future did tie in with that +idea about the Late Cosmicians, and there did seem to be something +developing between the Cretan and the Roman that could make them want to +be Introverted together. + +"Stick to the facts, Greta," I reminded myself with a private groan. + +That left Erich, Bruce, Lili and myself. + +Erich, I thought--now we're getting somewhere. The little commandant has +the nervous system of a coyote and the courage of a crazy tomcat, and if +he thought it would help him settle his battle with Bruce better to be +locked in with him, he'd do it in a second. + +But even before Erich had danced on the bomb, he'd been heckling Bruce +from the crowd. Still, there would have been time between heckles for +him to step quietly back from us, Introvert the Maintainer and ... well, +that was nine-tenths of the problem. + +If I was the guilty party, I was nuts and that was the best explanation +of all. Gr-r-r! + +Bruce's motives seemed so obvious, especially the mortal (or was it +immortal?) danger he'd put himself in by inciting mutiny, that it seemed +a shame he'd been in full view on the bar so long. Surely, if the +Maintainer had been Introverted before he jumped on the bar, we'd all +have noticed the flashing blue telltale. For that matter, I'd have +noticed it when I looked back at the Ghostgirls--if it worked as Sid +claimed, and he said he had never seen it in operation, just read in the +manual--oh, 'sdeath! + + * * * * * + +But Bruce didn't need opportunity, as I'm sure all the males in +the Place would have told me right off, because he had Lili to +pull the job for him and she had as much opportunity as any of +the rest of us. Myself, I have large reservations to this +woman-putty-in-the-hands-of-the-man-she-loves-madly theory, but I had to +admit there was something to be said for it in this case, and it had +seemed quite natural to me when the rest of us had decided, by unspoken +agreement, that neither Lili's nor Bruce's checks counted when we were +hunting for the Maintainer. + +That took care of all of us and left only the mysterious stranger, +intruding somehow through a Door (how'd he get it without using our +Maintainer?) or from an unimaginable hiding place or straight out of the +Void itself. I know that last is impossible--nothing can step out of +nothing--but if anything ever looked like it was specially built for +something not at all nice to come looming out of, it's the Void--misty, +foggily churning, slimy gray.... + +"Wait a second," I told myself, "and hang onto this, Greta. It should +have smacked you in the face at the start." + +Whatever came out of the Void, or, more to the point, whoever slipped +back from our crowd to the Maintainer, Bruce would have seen them. He +was looking at the Maintainer past our heads the whole time, and +whatever happened to it, he saw it. + +Erich wouldn't have, even after he was on the bomb, because he'd been +stagewise enough to face Bruce most of the time to build up his role as +tribune of the people. + +But Bruce would have--unless he got so caught up in what he was +saying.... + +No, kid, a Demon is always an actor, no matter how much he believes in +what he's saying, and there never was an actor yet who wouldn't +instantly notice a member of the audience starting to walk out on his +big scene. + +So Bruce knew, which made him a better actor than I'd have been willing +to grant, since it didn't look as if anyone else had thought of what had +just occurred to me, or they'd have gone over and put it to him. + +Not me, though--I don't work that way. Besides, I didn't feel up to +it--Nervy Anna enfold me, I felt like pure hell. + +"Maybe," I told myself encouragingly, "the Place is Hell," but added, +"Be your age, Greta--be a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless +twenty-nine." + + + + +CHAPTER 11 + + The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed + With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, + Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. + Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear, + They leave their trenches, going over the top, + While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists + + --Sassoon + +THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917 + + +"Please don't, Lili." + +"I shall, my love." + +"Sweetling, wake up! Hast the shakes?" + +I opened my eyes a little and lied to Siddy with a smile and locked my +hands together tight and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel nobly near the +control divan and wished I had a great love to blur my misery and +provide me with a passable substitute for Change Winds. + +Lili won the argument, judging from the way she threw her head back and +stepped away from Bruce's arms while giving him a proud, tender smile. +He walked off a few steps; praise be, he didn't shrug his shoulders at +us like an old husband, though his nerves were showing and he didn't +seem to be standing Introversion well at all, as who of us were? + +Lili rested a hand on the head of the control divan and pressed her lips +together and looked around at us, mostly with her eyes. She'd wound a +gray silk bandeau around her bangs. Her short gray silk dress without a +waistline made her look, not so much like a flapper, though she looked +like that all right, as like a little girl, except the neckline was +scooped low enough to show she wasn't. + +Her gaze hesitated and then stopped at me and I got a sunk feeling of +what was coming, because women are always picking on me for an audience. +Besides, Sid and I were the centrist party of two in our +fresh-out-of-the-shell Place politics. + +She took a deep breath and stuck out her chin and said in a voice that +was even a little higher and Britisher than she usually uses, "We girls +have often cried, 'Shut the Door!' But now the Door is jolly well shut +for keeps!" + +I knew I'd guessed right and I felt crawly with embarrassment, because I +know about this love business of thinking you're the other person and +trying to live their life--and grab their glory, though you don't know +that--and carry their message for them, and how it can foul things up. +Still, I couldn't help admitting what she said wasn't too bad a +start--unpleasantly apt to be true, at any rate. + +"My fiance believes we may yet be able to open the Door. I do not. He +thinks it is a bit premature to discuss the peculiar pickle in which we +all find ourselves. I do not." + +There was a rasp of laughter from the bar. The militarists were +reacting. Erich stepped out, looking very happy. "So now we have to +listen to women making speeches," he called. "What is this Place, +anyhow? Sidney Lessingham's Saturday Evening Sewing Circle?" + + * * * * * + +Beau and Sevensee, who'd stopped their pacing halfway between the bar +and the control divan, turned toward Erich, and Sevensee looked a little +burlier, a little more like half a horse, than satyrs in mythology book +illustrations. He stamped--medium hard, I'd say--and said, "Ahh, go flya +kite." I'd found out he'd learned English from a Demon who'd been a +longshoreman with syndicalist-anarchist sympathies. Erich shut up for a +moment and stood there grinning, his hands on his hips. + +Lili nodded to the satyr and cleared her throat, looking scared. But she +didn't speak; I could see she was thinking and feeling something, and +her face got ugly and haggard, as if she were in a Change Wind that +hadn't reached me yet, and her mouth went into a snarl to fight tears, +but some spurted out, and when she did speak her voice was an octave +lower and it wasn't just London talking but New York too. + +"I don't know how Resurrection felt to you people, because I'm new and I +loathe asking questions, but to me it was pure torture and I wished only +I'd had the courage to tell Suzaku, 'I wish to remain a Zombie, if you +don't mind. I'd rather the nightmares.' But I accepted Resurrection +because I've been taught to be polite and because there is the Demon in +me I don't understand that always wishes to live, and I found that I +still felt like a Zombie, although I could flit about, and that I still +had the nightmares, except they'd grown a deal vivider. + +"I was a young girl again, seventeen, and I suppose every woman wishes +to be seventeen, but I wasn't seventeen inside my head--I was a woman +who had died of Bright's disease in New York in 1929 and also, because a +Big Change blew my lifeline into a new drift, a woman who had died of +the same disease in Nazi-occupied London in 1955, but rather more slowly +because, as you can fancy, the liquor was in far shorter supply. I had +to live with both those sets of memories and the Change World didn't +blot them out any more than I'm told it does those of any Demon, and it +didn't even push them into the background as I'd hoped it would. + +"When some Change Fellow would say to me, 'Hallo, beautiful, how about a +smile?' or 'That's a posh frock, kiddo,' I'd be back at Bellevue looking +down at my swollen figure and the light getting like spokes of ice, or +in that dreadful gin-steeped Stepney bedroom with Phyllis coughing +herself to death beside me, or at best, for a moment, a little girl in +Glamorgan looking at the Roman road and wondering about the wonderful +life that lay ahead." + + * * * * * + +I looked at Erich, remembering he had a long nasty future back in the +cosmos himself, and at any rate he wasn't smiling, and I thought maybe +he's getting a little humility, knowing someone else has two of those +futures, but I doubted it. + +"Because, you see," Lili kept forcing it out, "all my three lives I'd +been a girl who fell in love with a great young poet she'd never met, +the voice of the new youth and all youth, and she'd told her first big +lie to get in the Red Cross and across to France to be nearer him, and +it was all danger and dark magics and a knight in armor, and she +pictured how she'd find him wounded but not seriously, with a little +bandage around his head, and she'd light a fag for him and smile +lightly, never letting him guess what she felt, but only being her best +self and watching to see if that made something happen to him.... + +"And then the Boche machine guns cut him down at Passchendaele and there +couldn't ever have been bandages big enough and the girl stayed +seventeen inside and messed about and tried to be wicked, though she +wasn't very good at that, and to drink, and she had a bit more talent +there, though drinking yourself to death is not nearly as easy as it +sounds, even with a kidney weakness to help. But she turned the trick. + +"Then a cock crows. She wakes with a tearing start from the gray dreams +of death that fill her lifeline. It's cold daybreak. There's the smell +of a French farm. She feels her ankles and they're not at all like huge +rubber boots filled with water. They're not swollen the least bit. +They're young legs. + +"There's a little window and the tops of a row of trees that may be +poplars when there's more light, and what there is shows cots like her +own and heads under blankets, and hanging uniforms make large shadows +and a girl is snoring. There's a very distant rumble and it moves the +window a bit. Then she remembers they're Red Cross girls many, many +kilometers from Passchendaele and that Bruce Marchant is going to die at +dawn today. + +"In a few more minutes, he's going over the top where there's a +crop-headed machine-gunner in field gray already looking down the sights +and swinging the gun a bit. But she isn't going to die today. She's +going to die in 1929 and 1955. + +"And just as she's going mad, there's a creaking and out of the shadows +tiptoes a Jap with a woman's hairdo and the whitest face and the +blackest eyebrows. He's wearing a rose robe and a black sash which belts +to his sides two samurai swords, but in his right hand he has a strange +silver pistol. And he smiles at her as if they were brother and sister +and lovers at the same time and he says, '_Voulez-vous vivre, +mademoiselle?_' and she stares and he bobs his head and says, 'Missy +wish live, yes, no?'" + +[Illustration] + + * * * * * + +Sid's paw closed quietly around my shaking hands. It always gets me to +hear about anyone's Resurrection, and although mine was crazier, it also +had the Krauts in it. I hoped she wouldn't go through the rest of the +formula and she didn't. + +"Five minutes later, he's gone down a stairs more like a ladder to wait +below and she's dressing in a rush. Her clothes resist a little, as if +they were lightly gummed to the hook and the stained wall, and she hates +to touch them. It's getting lighter and her cot looks as if someone were +still sleeping there, although it's empty, and she couldn't bring +herself to put her hand on the place if her new life depended on it. + +"She climbs down and her long skirt doesn't bother her because she knows +how to swing it. Suzaku conducts her past a sentry who doesn't see them +and a puffy-faced farmer in a smock coughing and spitting the night out +of his throat. They cross the farmyard and it's filled with rose light +and she sees the sun is up and she knows that Bruce Marchant has just +bled to death. + +"There's an empty open touring car chugging loudly, waiting for someone; +it has huge muddy wheels with wooden spokes and a brass radiator that +says 'Simplex.' But Suzaku leads her past it to a dunghill and bows +apologetically and she steps through a Door." + +I heard Erich say to the others at the bar, "How touching! Now shall I +tell everyone about my operation?" But he didn't get much of a laugh. + +"That's how Lilian Foster came into the Change World with its +steel-engraved nightmares and its deadly pace and deadlier lassitudes. I +was more alive than I ever had been before, but it was the kind of life +a corpse might get from unending electrical shocks and I couldn't summon +any purpose or hope and Bruce Marchant seemed farther away than ever. + +"Then, not six hours ago, a Soldier in a black uniform came through the +Door and I thought, 'It can't be, but it does look like his +photographs,' and then I thought I heard someone say the name Bruce, and +then he shouted as if to all the world that he was Bruce Marchant, and I +knew there was a Resurrection beyond Resurrection, a true resurrection. +Oh, Bruce--" + +She looked at him and he was crying and smiling and all the young beauty +flooded back into her face, and I thought, "It has to be Change Winds, +but it can't be. Face it without slobbering, Greta--there's something +that works bigger miracles than Change." + +And she went on, "And then the Change Winds died when the Snakes +vaporized the Maintainer or the Ghostgirls Introverted it and all three +of them vanished so swiftly and silently that even Bruce didn't +notice--those are the best explanations I can summon and I fancy one of +them is true. At all events, the Change Winds died and my past and even +my futures became something I could bear lightly, because I have someone +to bear them with me, and because at last I have a true future +stretching out ahead of me, an unknown future which I shall create by +living. Oh, don't you see that all of us have it now, this big +opportunity?" + +"_Hussa_ for Sidney's suffragettes and the W.C.T.U.!" Erich cheered. +"Beau, will you play us a medley of 'Hearts and Flowers' and 'Onward, +Christian Soldiers'? I'm deeply moved, Lili. Where do the rest of us +queue up for the Great Love Affair of the Century?" + + + + +CHAPTER 12 + + Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight + of the past's mistakes and the future's fears. + + I had to learn to close the front door to tomorrow and the back door + to yesterday and settle down to here and now. + + --Anonymous + +A BIG OPPORTUNITY + + +Nobody laughed at Erich's screwball sarcasms and still I thought, "Yes, +perish his hysterical little gray head, but he's half right--Lili's got +the big thing now and she wants to serve it up to the rest of us on a +platter, only love doesn't cook and cut that way." + +Those weren't bad ideas she had about the Maintainer, though, especially +the one about the Ghostgirls doing the Introverting--it would explain +why there couldn't be Introversion drill, the manual stuff about blue +flashes being window-dressing, and something disappearing without +movement or transition is the sort of thing that might not catch the +attention--and I guess they gave the others something to think about +too, for there wasn't any follow-up to Erich's frantic sniping. + +But I honestly didn't see where there was this big opportunity being +stuck away in a gray sack in the Void and I began to wonder and I got +the strangest feeling and I said to myself, "Hang onto your hat, Greta. +It's hope." + +"The dreadful thing about being a Demon is that you have all time to +range through," Lili was saying with a smile. "You can never shut the +back door to yesterday or the front door to tomorrow and simply live in +the present. But now that's been done for us: the Door is shut, we need +never again rehash the past or the future. The Spiders and Snakes can +never find us, for who ever heard of a Place that was truly lost being +rescued? And as those in the know have told me, Introversion is the end +as far as those outside are concerned. So we're safe from the Spiders +and Snakes, we need never be slaves or enemies again, and we have a +Place in which to live our new lives, the Place prepared for us from the +beginning." + +She paused. "Surely you understand what I mean? Sidney and Beauregard +and Dr. Pyeshkov are the ones who explained it to me. The Place is a +balanced aquarium, just like the cosmos. No one knows how many ages of +Big Time it has been in use, without a bit of new material being brought +in--only luxuries and people--and not a bit of waste cast off. No one +knows how many more ages it may not sustain life. I never heard of Minor +Maintainers wearing out. We have all the future, all the security, +anyone can hope for. We have a Place to live together." + + * * * * * + +You know, she was dead right and I realized that all the time I'd had +the conviction in the back of my mind that we were going to suffocate or +something if we didn't get a Door open pretty quick. I should have known +differently, if anybody should, because I'd once been in the Place +without a Door for as long as a hundred sleeps during a foxhole stretch +of the Change War and we'd had to start cycling our food and it had been +okay. + +And then, because it is also the way my mind works, I started to picture +in a flash the consequences of our living together all by ourselves like +Lili said. + +I began to pair people off; I couldn't help it. Let's see, four women, +six men, two ETs. + +"Greta," I said, "you're going to be Miss Polly Andry for sure. We'll +have a daily newspaper and folk-dancing classes, we'll shut the bar +except evenings, Bruce'll keep a rhymed history of the Place." + +I even thought, though I knew this part was strictly silly, about +schools and children. I wondered what Siddy's would look like, or my +little commandant's. "Don't go near the Void, dears." Of course that +would be specially hard on the two ETs, but Sevensee at least wasn't so +different and the genetics boys had made some wonderful advances and +Maud ought to know about them and there were some amazing gadgets in +Surgery when Doc sobered up. The patter of little hoofs ... + +"My fiance spoke to you about carrying a peace message to the rest of +the cosmos," Lili added, "and bringing an end to the Big Change, and +healing all the wounds that have been made in the Little Time." + +I looked at Bruce. His face was set and strained, as will happen to the +best of them when a girl starts talking about her man's business, and I +don't know why, but I said to myself, "She's crucifying him, she's +nailing him to his purpose as a woman will, even when there's not much +point to it, as now." + +And Lili went on, "It was a wonderful thought, but now we cannot carry +or send any message and I believe it is too late in any event for a +peace message to do any good. The cosmos is too raveled by change, too +far gone. It will dissolve, fade, 'leave not a rack behind.' We're the +survivors. The torch of existence has been put in our hands. + +"We may already be all that's left in the cosmos, for have you thought +that the Change Winds may have died at their source? We may never reach +another cosmos, we may drift forever in the Void, but who of us has been +Introverted before and who knows what we can or cannot do? We're a seed +for a new future to grow from. Perhaps all doomed universes cast off +seeds like this Place. It's a seed, it's an embryo, let it grow." + +She looked swiftly at Bruce and then at Sid and she quoted, "'Come, my +friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world'." + + * * * * * + +I squeezed Sid's hand and I started to say something to him, but he +didn't know I was there; he was listening to Lili quote Tennyson with +his eyes entranced and his mouth open, as if he were imagining new +things to put into it--oh, Siddy! + +And then I saw the others were looking at her the same way. Ilhilihis +was seeing finer feather forests than long-dead Luna's grow. The +greenhouse child Maud ap-Ares Davies was stowing away on a starship +bound for another galaxy, or thinking how different her life might have +been, the children she might have had, if she'd stayed on the planets +and out of the Change World. Even Erich looked as though he might be +blitzing new universes, and Mark subduing them, for an eight-legged +_Fuehrer-imperator_. Beau was throbbing up a wider Mississippi in a +bigger-than-life sidewheeler. + +Even I--well, I wasn't dreaming of a Greater Chicago. "Let's not go +hog-wild on this sort of thing," I told myself, but I did look up at the +Void and I got a shiver because I imagined it drawing away and the whole +Place starting to grow. + +"I truly meant what I said about a seed," Lili went on slowly. "I know, +as you all do, that there are no children in the Change World, that +there cannot be, that we all become instantly sterile, that what they +call a curse is lifted from us girls and we are no longer in bondage to +the moon." + +She was right, all right--if there's one thing that's been proved a +million times in the Change World, it's that. + +"But we are no longer in the Change World," Lili said softly, "and its +limitations should no longer apply to us, including that one. I feel +deeply certain of it, but--" she looked around slowly--"we are four +women here and I thought one of us might have a surer indication." + +My eyes followed hers around like anybody's would. In fact, everybody +was looking around except Maud, and she had the silliest look of +surprise on her face and it stayed there, and then, very carefully, she +got down from the bar stool with her knitting. She looked at the +half-finished pink bra with the long white needles stuck in it and her +eyes bugged bigger yet, as if she were expecting it to turn into a baby +sweater right then and there. Then she walked across the Place to Lili +and stood beside her. While she was walking, the look of surprise +changed to a quiet smile. The only other thing she did was throw her +shoulders back a little. + +I was jealous of her for a second, but it was a double miracle for her, +considering her age, and I couldn't grudge her that. And to tell the +truth, I was a little frightened, too. Even with Dave, I'd been bothered +about this business of having babies. + + * * * * * + +Yet I stood up with Siddy--I couldn't stop myself and I guess he +couldn't either--and hand in hand we walked to the control divan. Beau +and Sevensee were there and Bruce, of course, and then, so help me, +those Soldiers to the death, Kaby and Mark, started over from the bar +and I couldn't see anything in their eyes about the greater glory of +Crete and Rome, but something, I think, about each other, and after a +moment Illy slowly detached himself from the piano and followed, lightly +trailing his tentacles on the floor. + +I couldn't exactly see him hoping for little Illies in this company, +unless it was true what the jokes said about Lunans, but maybe he was +being really disinterested and maybe he wasn't; maybe he was simply +figuring that Illy ought to be on the side with the biggest battalions. + +I heard dragging footsteps behind us and here came Doc from the Gallery, +carrying in his folded arms an abstract sculpture as big as a newborn +baby. It was an agglomeration of perfect shiny gray spheres the size of +golf balls, shaping up to something like a large brain, but with holes +showing through here and there. He held it out to us like an infant to +be admired and worked his lips and tongue as if he were trying very hard +to say something, though not a word came out that you could understand, +and I thought, "Maxey Aleksevich may be speechless drunk and have all +sorts of holes in his head, but he's got the right instincts, bless his +soulful little Russian heart." + +We were all crowded around the control divan like a football team +huddling. The Peace Packers, it came to me. Sevensee would be fullback +or center and Illy left end--what a receiver! The right number, too. +Erich was alone at the bar, but now even he--"Oh, no, this can't be," I +thought--even he came toward us. Then I saw that his face was working +the worst ever. He stopped halfway and managed to force a smile, but it +was the worst, too. "That's my little commandant," I thought, "no team +spirit." + +"So now Lili and Bruce--yes, and _Grossmutterchen_ Maud--have their +little nest," he said, and he wouldn't have had to push his voice very +hard to get a screech. "But what are the rest of us supposed to +be--cowbirds?" + + * * * * * + +He crooked his neck and flapped his hands and croaked, "Cuc-koo! +Cuc-koo!" And I said to myself, "I often thought you were crazy, boy, +but now I know." + +"_Teufelsdreck!_--yes, Devil's dirt!--but you all seem to be infected +with this dream of children. Can't you see that the Change World is the +natural and proper end of evolution?--a period of enjoyment and +measuring, an ultimate working out of things, which women call +destruction--'Help, I'm being raped!' 'Oh, what are they doing to my +children?'--but which men know as fulfillment. + +"You're given good parts in _Goetterdaemmerung_ and you go up to the +author and tap him on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, Herr Wagner, but +this Twilight of the Gods is just a bit morbid. Why don't you write an +opera for me about the little ones, the dear little blue-eyed +curly-tops? A plot? Oh, boy meets girl and they settle down to breed, +something like that.' + +"Devil's dirt doubled and damned! Have you thought what life will +be like without a Door to go out of to find freedom and adventure, +to measure your courage and keenness? Do you want to grow long gray +beards hobbling around this asteroid turned inside out? Putter around +indoors to the end of your days, mooning about little baby +cosmoses?--incidentally, with a live bomb for company. The cave, the +womb, the little gray home in the nest--is that what you want? It'll +grow? Oh, yes, like the city engulfing the wild wood, a proliferation +of _Kinder_, _Kirche_, _Kueche_--I should live so long! + +"Women!--how I hate their bright eyes as they look at me from the +fireside, bent-shouldered, rocking, deeply happy to be old, and say, +'He's getting weak, he's giving out, soon I'll have to put him to bed +and do the simplest things for him.' Your filthy Triple Goddess, Kaby, +the birther, bride, and burier of man! Woman, the enfeebler, the +fetterer, the crippler! Woman!--and the curly-headed little cancers she +wants!" + +He lurched toward us, pointing at Lili. "I never knew one who didn't +want to cripple a man if you gave her the chance. Cripple him, swaddle +him, clip his wings, grind him to sausage to mold another man, hers, a +doll man. You hid the Maintainer, you little smother-hen, so you could +have your nest and your Brucie!" + +He stopped, gasping, and I expected someone to bop him one on the +schnozzle, and I think he did, too. I turned to Bruce and he was +looking, I don't know how, sorry, guilty, anxious, angry, shaken, +inspired, all at once, and I wished people sometimes had simple suburban +reactions like magazine stories. + +Then Erich made the mistake, if it was one, of turning toward Bruce and +slowly staggering toward him, pawing the air with his hands as if he +were going to collapse into his arms, and saying, "Don't let them get +you, Bruce. Don't let them tie you down. Don't let them clip you--your +words or your deeds. You're a Soldier. Even when you talked about a +peace message, you talked about doing some smashing of your own. No +matter what you think and feel, Bruce, no matter how much lying you do +and how much you hide, you're really not on their side." + +That did it. + + * * * * * + +It didn't come soon enough or, I think, in the right spirit to please +me, but I will say it for Bruce that he didn't muck it up by tipping or +softening his punch. He took one step forward and his shoulders spun and +his fist connected sweet and clean. + +As he did it, he said only one word, "Loki!" and darn if that didn't +switch me back to a campfire in the Indiana Dunes and my mother telling +me out of the Elder Saga about the malicious, sneering, all-spoiling +Norse god and how, when the other gods came to trap him in his hideaway +by the river, he was on the point of finishing knotting a mysterious net +big enough, I had imagined, to snare the whole universe, and that if +they'd come a minute later, he would have. + +Erich was stretched on the floor, his head hitched up, rubbing his jaw +and glaring at Bruce. Mark, who was standing beside me, moved a little +and I thought he was going to do something, maybe even clobber Bruce in +the old spirit of you can't do that to my buddy, but he just shook his +head and said, "_Omnia vincit amor._" I nudged him and said, "Meaning?" +and he said, "Love licks everything." + +I'd never have expected it from a Roman, but he was half right at any +rate. Lili had her victory: Bruce clearing the field for the marriage by +laying out the woman-hating boy friend who would be trying to get him to +go out nights. At that moment, I think Bruce wanted Lili and a life with +her more than he wanted to reform the Change World. Sure, us women have +our little victories--until the legions come or the Little Corporal +draws up his artillery or the Panzers roar down the road. + +Erich scrambled to his feet and stood there in a half-slump, +half-crouch, still rubbing his jaw and glaring at Bruce over his hand, +but making no move to continue the fight, and I studied his face and +said to myself, "If he can get a gun, he's going to shoot himself, I +know." + +Bruce started to say something and hesitated, like I would have in his +shoes, and just then Doc got one of his unpredictable inspirations and +went weaving out toward Erich, holding out the sculpture and making +deaf-and-dumb noises like he had to us. Erich looked at him as if he +were going to kill him, and then grabbed the sculpture and swung it up +over his head and smashed it down on the floor, and for a wonder, it +didn't shatter. It just skidded along in one piece and stopped inches +from my feet. + +That thing not breaking must have been the last straw for Erich. I swear +I could see the red surge up through his eyes toward his brain. He swung +around into the Stores sector and ran the few steps between him and the +bronze bomb chest. + +Everything got very slow motion for me, though I didn't do any moving. +Almost every man started out after Erich. Bruce didn't, though, and +Siddy turned back after the first surge forward, while Illy squunched +down for a leap, and it was between Sevensee's hairy shanks and Beau's +scissoring white pants that I saw that under-the-microscope circle of +death's heads and watched Erich's finger go down on them in the order +Kaby had given: one, three, five, six, two, four, seven. I was able to +pray seven distinct times that he'd make a mistake. + +He straightened up. Illy landed by the box like a huge silver spider and +his tentacles whipped futilely across its top. The others surged to a +frightened halt around them. + +Erich's chest was heaving, but his voice was cool and collected as he +said, "You mentioned something about our having a future, Miss Foster. +Now you can make that more specific. Unless we get back to the cosmos +and dump this box, or find a Spider A-tech, or manage to call +headquarters for guidance on disarming the bomb, we have a future +exactly thirty minutes long." + + + + +CHAPTER 13 + + But whence he was, or of what wombe ybore, + Of beasts, or of the earth, I have not red: + But certes was with milke of wolves and tygres fed. + + --Spenser + +THE TIGER IS LOOSE + + +I guess when they really push the button or throw the switch or spring +the trap or focus the beam or what have you, you don't faint or go crazy +or anything else convenient. I didn't. Everything, everybody, every move +that was made, every word that was spoken, was painfully real to me, +like a hand twisting and squeezing things deep inside me, and I saw +every least detail spotlighted and magnified like I had the seven +skulls. + +Erich was standing beyond the bomb chest; little smiles were ruffling +his lips. I'd never seen him look so sharp. Illy was beside him, but not +on his side, you understand. Mark, Sevensee and Beau were around the +chest to the nearer side. Beau had dropped to a knee and was scanning +the chest minutely, terror-under-control making him bend his head a +little closer than he needed to for clear vision, but with his hands +locked together behind his back, I guess to restrain the impulse to push +any and everything that looked like a disarming button. + +Doc was sprawled face down on the nearest couch, out like a light, I +suppose. + +Us four girls were still by the control divan. With Kaby, that surprised +me, because she didn't look scared or frozen, but almost as intensely +alive as Erich. + +Sid had turned back, as I'd said, and had one hand stretched out toward +but not touching the Minor Maintainer, and a look on his beardy face as +if he were calling down death and destruction on every boozy rogue who +had ever gone up from King's Lynn to Cambridge and London, and I +realized why: if he'd thought of the Minor Maintainer a second sooner, +he could have pinned Erich down with heavy gravity before he could touch +the buttons. + +Bruce was resting one hand on the head of the control divan and was +looking toward the group around the chest, toward Erich, I think, as if +Erich had done something rather wonderful for him, though I can't +imagine myself being tickled at being included in anybody's suicide +surprise party. Bruce looked altogether too dreamy, Brahma blast him, +for someone who must have the same steel-spiked thought in his head that +I know darn well the rest of us had: that in twenty-nine minutes or so, +the Place would be a sun in a bag. + + * * * * * + +Erich was the first to get down to business, as I'd have laid any odds +he would be. He had the jump on us and he wasn't going to lose it. + +"Well, when are you going to start getting Lili to tell us where she hid +the Maintainer? It has to be her--she was too certain it was gone +forever when she talked. And Bruce must have seen from the bar who took +the Maintainer, and who would he cover up for but his girl?" + +There he was plagiarizing my ideas, but I guess I was willing to sign +them over to him in full if he got us the right pail of water for that +time-bomb. + +He glanced at his wrist. "According to my Caller, you have twenty-nine +and a half minutes, including the time it will take to get a Door or +contact headquarters. When are you going to get busy on the girl?" + +Bruce laughed a little--deprecatingly, so help me--and started toward +him. "Look here, old man," he said, "there's no need to trouble Lili, or +to fuss with headquarters, even if you could. Really not at all. Not to +mention that your surmises are quite unfounded, old chap, and I'm a bit +surprised at your advancing them. But that's quite all right because, as +it happens, I'm an atomics technician and I even worked on that very +bomb. To disarm it, you just have to fiddle a bit with some of the +ankhs, those hoopy little crosses. Here, let me--" + +Allah il allah, but it must have struck everybody as it did me as being +just too incredible an assertion, too bloody British a bare-faced bluff, +for Erich didn't have to say a word; Mark and Sevensee grabbed Bruce by +the arms, one on each side, as he stooped toward the bronze chest, and +they weren't gentle about it. Then Erich spoke. + +"Oh, no, Bruce. Very sporting of you to try to cover up for your girl +friend, but we aren't going to let ourselves be blown to stripped atoms +twenty-eight minutes too soon while you monkey with the buttons, the +very thing Benson-Carter warned against, and pray for a guesswork +miracle. It's too thin, Bruce, when you come from 1917 and haven't been +on the Big Time for a hundred sleeps and were calling for an A-tech +yourself a few hours ago. Much too thin. Bruce, something is going to +happen that I'm afraid you won't like, but you're going to have to put +up with it. That is, unless Miss Foster decides to be cooperative." + +"I say, you fellows, let me go," Bruce demanded, struggling +experimentally. "I know it's a bit thick to swallow and I did give you +the wrong impression calling for an A-tech, but I just wanted to capture +your attention then; I didn't want to have to work on the bomb. Really, +Erich, would they have ordered Benson-Carter to pick us up unless one of +us were an A-tech? They'd be sure to include one in the bally +operation." + +"When they're using patchwork tactics?" Erich grinningly quoted back at +him. + + * * * * * + +Kaby spoke up beside me and said, "Benson-Carter was a magician of +matter and he was going on the operation disguised as an old woman. We +have the cloak and hood with the other garments," and I wondered how +this cold fish of a she-officer could be the same girl who was giving +Mark slurpy looks not ten minutes ago. + +"Well?" Erich asked, glancing at his Caller and then swinging his eyes +around at us as if there must be some of the old _Wehrmacht_ iron +somewhere. We all found ourselves looking at Lili and she was looking so +sharp herself, so ready to jump and so at bay, that it was all _I_ +needed, at any rate, to make Erich's theory about the Maintainer a +rock-bottom certainty. + +Bruce must have realized the way our minds were working, for he started +to struggle in earnest and at the same time called, "For God's sake, +don't do anything to Lili! Let me loose, you idiots! Everything's true I +told you--I can save you from that bomb. Sevensee, you took my side +against the Spiders; you've nothing to lose. Sid, you're an Englishman. +Beau, you're a gentleman and you love her, too--for God's sake, stop +them!" + +Beau glanced up over his shoulder at Bruce and the others surging around +close to his ankles and he had on his poker face. Sid I could tell was +once more going through the purgatory of decision. Beau reached his own +decision first and I'll say it for him that he acted on it fast and +intelligently. Right from his kneeling position and before he'd even +turned his head quite back, he jumped Erich. + +But other things in this cosmos besides Man can pick sides and act fast. +Illy landed on Beau midway and whipped his tentacles around him tight +and they went wobbling around like a drunken white-and-silver barber +pole. Beau got his hands each around a tentacle, and at the same time +his face began to get purple, and I winced at what they were both going +through. + +Maybe Sevensee had a hoof in Sid's purgatory, because Bruce shook loose +from the satyr and tried to knock out Mark, but the Roman twisted his +arm and kept him from getting in a good punch. + +Erich didn't make a move to mix into either fight, which is my little +commandant all over. Using his fists on anybody but me is beneath him. + + * * * * * + +Then Sid made his choice, but there was no way for me to tell what it +was, for, as he reached for the Minor Maintainer, Kaby contemptuously +snatched it away from his hands and gave him a knee in the belly that +doubled me up in sympathy and sent him sprawling on his knees toward the +fighters. On the return, Kaby gave Lili, who'd started to grab too, an +effortless backhand smash that set her down on the divan. + +Erich's face lit up like an electric sign and he kept his eyes fixed on +Kaby. + +She crouched a little, carrying her weight on the balls of her feet and +firmly cradling the Minor Maintainer in her left arm, like a basketball +captain planning an offensive. Then she waved her free hand decisively +to the right. I didn't get it, but Erich did and Mark too, for Erich +jumped for the Refresher sector and Mark let go of Bruce and followed +him, ducking around Sevensee's arms, who was coming back into the fight +on which side I don't know. Illy un-whipped from Beau and copied Erich +and Mark with one big spring. + +Then Kaby twisted a dial as far as it would go and Bruce, Beau, Sevensee +and poor Siddy were slammed down and pinned to the floor by about eight +gravities. + +It should have been lighter near us--I hoped it was, but you couldn't +tell from watching Siddy; he went flat on his face, spread-eagled, one +hand stretched toward me so close, I could have touched it (but not let +go!), and his mouth was open against the floor and he was gasping +through a corner of it and I could see his spine trying to sink through +his belly. Bruce just managed to get his head and one shoulder up a bit, +and they all made me think of a Dore illustration of the _Inferno_ where +the cream of the damned are frozen up to their necks in ice in the +innermost circle of Hell. + +The gravity didn't catch me, although I could feel it in my left arm. I +was mostly in the Refresher sector, but I dropped down flat too, partly +out of a crazy compassion I have, but mostly because I didn't want to +take a chance of having Kaby knock me down. + +Erich, Mark and Illy had got clear and they headed toward us. Maud +picked the moment to make her play; she hadn't much choice of times, if +she wanted to make one. The Old Girl was looking it for once, but I +guess the thought of her miracle must have survived alongside the fear +of sacked sun and must have meant a lot to her, for she launched out +fast, all set to straight-arm Kaby into the heavy gravity and grab the +Minor Maintainer with the other hand. + + + + +CHAPTER 14 + + Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust. + + --Webster + +"NOW WILL YOU TALK?" + + +Cretans have eyes under their back hair, or let's face it, Entertainers +aren't Soldiers. Kaby weaved to one side and flicked a helpful hand and +poor old Maud went where she'd been going to send Kaby. It sickened me +to see the gravity take hold and yank her down. + +I could have jumped up and made it four in a row for Kaby, but I'm not a +bit brave when things like my life are at stake. + +Lili was starting to get up, acting a little dazed. Kaby gently pushed +her down again and quietly said, "Where is it?" and then hauled off and +slapped her across the face. What got me was the matter-of-fact way Kaby +did it. I can understand somebody getting mad and socking someone, or +even deliberately working up a rage so as to be able to do something +nasty, but this cold-blooded way turns my stomach. + +Lili looked as if half her face were about to start bleeding, but she +didn't look dazed any more and her jaw set. Kaby grabbed Lili's pearl +necklace and twisted it around her neck and it broke and the pearls went +bouncing around like ping-pong balls, so Kaby yanked down Lili's gray +silk bandeau until it was around the neck and tightened that. Lili +started to choke through her tight-pressed lips. Erich, Mark and Illy +had come up and crowded around, but they seemed to be content with the +job Kaby was doing. + +"Listen, slut," she said, "we have no time. You have a healing room in +this place. I can work the things." + +"Here it comes," I thought, wishing I could faint. On top of everything, +on top of death even, they had to drag in the nightmare personally +stylized for me, the horror with my name on it. I wasn't going to be +allowed to blow up peacefully. They weren't satisfied with an A-bomb. +They had to write my private hell into the script. + +"There is a thing called an Invertor," Kaby said exactly as I'd known +she would, but as I didn't really hear it just then--a mental split I'll +explain in a moment. "It opens you up so they can cure your insides +without cutting your skin or making you bleed anywhere. It turns the big +parts of you inside out, but not the blood tubes. All your skin--your +eyes, ears, nose, toes, all of it--becoming the lining of a little hole +that's half-filled with your hair. + +"Meantime, your insides are exposed for whatever the healer wants to do +to them. You live for a while on the air inside the hole. First the +healer gives you an air that makes you sleep, or you go mad in about +fifty heartbeats. We'll see what ten heartbeats do to you without the +sleepy air. Now will you talk?" + + * * * * * + +I hadn't been listening to her, though, not the real me, or I'd have +gone mad without getting the treatment. I once heard Doc say your liver +is more mysterious and farther away from you than the stars, because +although you live with your liver all your life, you never see it or +learn to point to it instinctively, and the thought of someone messing +around with that intimate yet unknown part of you is just too awful. + +I knew I had to do something quick. Hell, at the first hint of +Introversion, before Kaby had even named it, Illy had winced so that his +tentacles were all drawn up like fat feather-sausages. Erich had looked +at him questioningly, but that lousy Looney had un-endeared himself to +me by squeaking, "Don't mind me, I'm just sensitive. Get on with the +girl. Make her tell." + +Yes, I knew I had to do something, and here on the floor that meant +thinking hard and in high gear about something else. The screwball +sculpture Erich had tried to smash was a foot from my nose and I saw a +faint trail of white stuff where it had skidded. I reached out and +touched the trail; it was finely gritty, like powdered glass. I tipped +up the sculpture and the part on which it had skidded wasn't marred at +all, not even dulled; the gray spheres were as glisteningly bright as +ever. So I knew the trail was diamond dust rubbed off the diamonds in +the floor by something even harder. + +That told me the sculpture was something special and maybe Doc had had a +real idea in his pickled brain when he'd been pushing the thing at all +of us and trying to tell us something. He hadn't managed to say anything +then, but he had earlier when he'd been going to tell us what to do +about the bomb, and maybe there was a connection. + +I twisted my memory hard and let it spring back and I got "Inversh ... +bosh ..." Bosh, indeed! Bosh and inverse bosh to all boozers, Russki or +otherwise. + +So I quick tried the memory trick again and this time I got "glovsh" and +then I grasped and almost sneezed on diamond dust as I watched the +pieces fit themselves together in my mind like a speeded-up movie reel. + +It all hung on that black right-hand hussar's glove Lili had produced +for Bruce. Only she couldn't have found it in Stores, because we'd +searched every fractional pigeonhole later on and there hadn't been any +gloves there, not even the left-hand mate there would have been. Also, +Bruce had had two left-hand gloves to start with, and we had been +through the whole Place with a fine-tooth comb, and there had been only +the two black gloves on the floor where Bruce had kicked them off the +bar--those two and those two only, the left-hand glove he'd brought from +outside and the right-hand glove Lili had produced for him. + + * * * * * + +So a left-hand glove had disappeared--the last I'd seen of it, Lili had +been putting it on her tray--and a right-hand glove had appeared. Which +could only add up to one thing: Lili had turned the left-hand glove into +an identical right. She couldn't have done it by turning it inside out +the ordinary way, because the lining was different. + +But as I knew only too sickeningly well, there was an extraordinary way +to turn things inside out, things like human beings. You merely had to +put them on the Invertor in Surgery and flick the switch for full +Inversion. + +Or you could flick it for partial Inversion and turn something into a +perfect three-dimensional mirror image of itself, just what a right-hand +glove is of a left. Rotation through the fourth dimension, the science +boys call it; I've heard of it being used in surgery on the highly +asymmetric Martians, and even to give a socially impeccable right hand +to a man who'd lost one, by turning an amputated right arm into an +amputated left. + +Ordinarily, nothing but live things are ever Inverted in Surgery and you +wouldn't think of doing it to an inanimate object, especially in a Place +where the Doc's a drunk and the Surgery hasn't been used for hundreds of +sleeps. + +But when you've just fallen in love, you think of wonderful crazy things +to do for people. Drunk with love, Lili had taken Bruce's extra +left-hand glove into Surgery, partially Inverted it, and got a +right-hand glove to give him. + +What Doc had been trying to say with his "Inversh ... bosh ..." was +"Invert the box," meaning we should put the bronze chest through full +Inversion to get at the bomb inside to disarm it. Doc too had got the +idea from Lili's trick with the glove. What an inside-out tactical +atomic bomb would look like, I could not imagine and did not +particularly care to see. I might have to, though, I realized. + +But the fast-motion film was still running in my head. Later on, Lili +had decided like I had that her lover was going to lose out in his plea +for mutiny unless she could give him a really captive audience--and +maybe, even then, she had been figuring on creating the nest for Bruce's +chicks and ... all those other things we'd believed in for a while. So +she'd taken the Major Maintainer and remembered the glove, and not many +seconds later, she had set down on a shelf of the Art Gallery an object +that no one would think of questioning--except someone who knew the +Gallery by heart. + + * * * * * + +I looked at the abstract sculpture a foot from my nose, at the clustered +gray spheres the size of golf balls. I had known that the inside of the +Maintainer was made up of vastly tough, vastly hard giant molecules, but +I hadn't realized they were quite _that_ big. + +I said to myself, "Greta, this is going to give you a major psychosis, +but you're the one who has to do it, because no one is going to listen +to your deductions when they're all practically living on negative time +already." + +I got up as quietly as if I were getting out of a bed I shouldn't have +been in--there are some things Entertainers are good at--and Kaby was +just saying "you go mad in about fifty heartbeats." Everybody on their +feet was looking at Lili. Sid seemed to have moved, but I had no time +for him except to hope he hadn't done anything that might attract +attention to me. + +I stepped out of my shoes and walked rapidly to Surgery--there's one +good thing about this hardest floor anywhere, it doesn't creak. I walked +through the Surgery screen that is like a wall of opaque, odorless +cigarette smoke and I concentrated on remembering my snafued nurse's +training, and before I had time to panic, I had the sculpture positioned +on the gleaming table of the Invertor. + +I froze for a moment when I reached for the Inversion switch, thinking +of the other time and trying to remember what it had been that bothered +me so much about an inside-out brain being bigger and not having eyes, +but then I either thumbed my nose at my nightmare or kissed my sanity +good-by, I don't know which, and twisted the switch all the way over, +and there was the Major Maintainer winking blue about three times a +second as nice as you could want it. + +It must have been working as sweet and steady as ever, all the time it +was Inverted, except that, being inside out, it had hocused the +direction finders. + + + + +CHAPTER 15 + + black legged spiders + with red hearts of hell + + --marquis + +LORD SPIDER + + +"Jesu!" I turned and Sid's face was sticking through the screen like a +tinted bas-relief hanging on a gray wall and I got the impression he had +peered unexpectedly through a slit in an arras into Queen Elizabeth's +bedroom. + +He didn't have any time to linger on the sensation, even if he'd wanted +to, for an elbow with a copper band thrust through the screen and dug +his ribs and Kaby marched Lili in by the neck. Erich, Mark and Illy were +right behind. They caught the blue flashes and stopped dead, staring at +the long-lost. Erich spared me one look which seemed to say, so you did +it, not that it matters. Then he stepped forward and picked it up and +held it solidly to his left side in the double right-angle made by +fingers, forearm and chest, and reached for the Introversion switch with +a look on his face as if he were opening a fifth of whisky. + +The blue light died and Change Winds hit me like a stiff drink that had +been a long, long time in coming, like a hot trumpet note out of +nowhere. + +I felt the changing pasts blowing through me, and the uncertainties +whistling past, and ice-stiff reality softening with all its duties and +necessities, and the little memories shredding away and dancing off like +autumn leaves, leaving maybe not even ghosts behind, and all the crazy +moods like Mardi Gras dancers pouring down an evening street, and +something inside me had the nerve to say it didn't care whether Greta +Forzane's death was riding in those Winds because they felt so good. + +I could tell it was hitting the others the same way. Even battered, +tight-lipped Lili seemed to be saying, you're making me drink the stuff +and I hate you for it, but I do love it. I guess we'd all had the worry +that even finding and Extroverting the Maintainer wouldn't put us back +in touch with the cosmos and give us those Winds we hate and love. + +The thing that cut through to us as we stood there glowing was not the +thought of the bomb, though that would have come in a few seconds more, +but Sid's voice. He was still standing in the screen, except that now +his face was out the other side and we could just see parts of his +gray-doubleted back, but, of course, his "Jesu!" came through the screen +as if it weren't there. + +At first I couldn't figure out who he could be talking to, but I swear I +never heard his voice so courtly obsequious before, so strong and yet so +filled with awe and an under-note of, yes, sheer terror. + +"Lord, I am filled from top to toe with confusion that you should so +honor my poor Place," he said. "Poor say I and mine, when I mean that I +have ever busked it faithfully for you, not dreaming that you would ever +condescend ... yet knowing that your eye was certes ever upon me ... +though I am but as a poor pinch of dust adrift between the suns ... I +abase myself. Prithee, how may I serve thee, sir? I know not e'en how +most suitably to address thee, Lord ... King ... Emperor Spider!" + + * * * * * + +I felt like I was getting very small, but not a bit less visible, worse +luck, and even with the Change Winds inside me to give me courage, I +thought this was really too much, coming on top of everything else; it +was simply unfair. + +At the same time, I realized it was to be expected that the big bosses +would have been watching us with their unblinking beady black eyes ever +since we had Introverted waiting to pounce if we should ever come out of +it. I tried to picture what was on the other side of the screen and I +didn't like the assignment. + +But in spite of being petrified, I had a hard time not giggling, like +the zany at graduation exercises, at the way the other ones in Surgery +were taking it. + +I mean the Soldiers. They each stiffened up like they had the old ramrod +inside them, and their faces got that important look, and they glanced +at each other and the floor without lowering their heads, as if they +were measuring the distance between their feet and mentally chalking +alternate sets of footprints to step into. The way Erich and Kaby held +the Major and Minor Maintainers became formal; the way they checked +their Callers and nodded reassuringly was positively esoteric. Even Illy +somehow managed to look as if he were on parade. + +Then from beyond the screen came what was, under the circumstances, the +worst noise I've ever heard, a seemingly wordless distant-sounding +howling and wailing, with a note of menace that made me shake, although +it also had a nasty familiarity about it I couldn't place. Sid's voice +broke into it, loud, fast and frightened. + +"Your pardon, Lord, I did not think ... certes, the gravity ... I'll +attend to it on the instant." He whipped a hand and half a head back +through the screen, but without looking back and snapped his fingers, +and before I could blink, Kaby had put the Minor Maintainer in his hand. + +Sid went completely out of sight then and the howling stopped, and I +thought that if that was the way a Lord Spider expressed his annoyance +at being subjected to incorrect gravity, I hoped the bosses wouldn't +start any conversations with me. + +Erich pursed his lips and threw the other Soldiers a nod and the four of +them marched through the screen as if they'd drilled a lifetime for this +moment. I had the wild idea that Erich might give me his arm, but he +strode past me as if I were ... an Entertainer. + +I hesitated a moment then, but I had to see what was happening outside, +even if I got eaten up for it. Besides, I had a bit of the thought that +if these formalities went on much longer, even a Lord Spider was going +to discover just how immune he was to confined atomic blast. + +I walked through the screen with Lili beside me. + + * * * * * + +The Soldiers had stopped a few feet in front of it. I looked around +ahead for whatever it was going to turn out to be, prepared to drop a +curtsy or whatever else, bar nothing, that seemed expected of me. + +I had a hard time spotting the beast. Some of the others seemed to be +having trouble too. I saw Doc weaving around foolishly by the control +divan, and Bruce and Beau and Sevensee and Maud on their feet beyond it, +and I wondered whether we were dealing with an invisible monster; ought +to be easy enough for the bosses to turn a simple trick like +invisibility. + +Then I looked sharply left where everyone else, even glassy-eyed Doc, +was coming to look, into the Door sector, only there wasn't any monster +there or even a Door, but just Siddy holding the Minor Maintainer and +grinning like when he is threatening to tickle me, only more fiendishly. + +"Not a move, masters," he cried, his eyes dancing, "or I'll pin the pack +of you down, marry and amen I will. It is my firm purpose to see the +Place blasted before I let this instrument out of my hands again." + +My first thought was, "'Sblood but Siddy is a real actor! I don't care +if he didn't study under anyone later than Burbage, that just proves how +good Burbage is." + +Sid had convinced us not only that the real Spiders had arrived, but +earlier that the gravity in the edge of Stores had been a lot heavier +than it actually was. He completely fooled all those Soldiers, including +my swelled-headed victorious little commandant, and I kind of filed away +the timing of that business of reaching out the hand and snapping the +fingers without looking, it was so good. + +"Beauregard!" Sid called. "Get to the Major Maintainer and call +headquarters. But don't come through Door, marry go by Refresher. I'll +not trust a single Demon of you in this sector with me until much more +has been shown and settled." + +"Siddy, you're wonderful," I said, starting toward him. "As soon as I +got the Maintainer unsnarled and looked around and saw your sweet old +face--" + +"Back, tricksy trull! Not the breadth of one scarlet toenail nearer me, +you Queen of Sleights and High Priestess of Deception!" he bellowed. +"You least of all do I trust. Why you hid the Maintainer, I know not, +'faith, but later you'll discover the truth to me or I'll have your +gizzard." + +I could see there was going to have to be a little explaining. + + * * * * * + +Doc, touched off, I guess, by Sid waving his hand at me, threw back his +head and let off one of those shuddery Siberian wolf-howls he does so +blamed well. Sid waved toward him sharply and he shut up, beaming +toothily, but at least I knew who was responsible for the Spider wail of +displeasure that Sid had either called for or more likely got as a gift +of the gods and used in his act. + +Beau came circling around fast and Erich shoved the Major Maintainer +into his hands without making any fuss. The four Soldiers were looking +pretty glum after losing their grand review. + +Beau dumped some junk off one of the Art Gallery's sturdy taborets and +set the Major Maintainer on it carefully but fast, and quickly knelt in +front of it and whipped on some earphones and started to tune. The way +he did it snatched away from me my inward glory at my big Inversion +brainwave so fast, I might never have had it, and there was nothing in +my mind again but the bronze bomb chest. + +I wondered if I should suggest Inverting the thing, but I said to +myself, "Uh-uh, Greta, you got no diploma to show them and there +probably isn't time to try two things, anyway." + +Then Erich for once did something I wanted him to, though I didn't care +for its effect on my nerves, by looking at his Caller and saying +quietly, "Nine minutes to go, if Place time and cosmic time are +synching." + +Beau was steady as a rock and working adjustments so fine that I +couldn't even see his fingers move. + +Then, at the other end of the Place, Bruce took a few steps toward us. +Sevensee and Maud followed a bit behind him. I remembered Bruce was +another of our nuts with a private program for blowing up the place. + +"Sidney," he called, and then, when he'd got Sid's attention, "Remember, +Sidney, you and I both came down to London from Peterhouse." + +I didn't get it. Then Bruce looked toward Erich with a devil-may-care +challenge and toward Lili as if he were asking her forgiveness for +something. I couldn't read her expression; the bruises were blue on her +throat and her cheek was puffy. + +Then Bruce once more shot Erich that look of challenge and he spun and +grabbed Sevensee by a wrist and stuck out a foot--even half-horses +aren't too sharp about infighting, I guess, and the satyr had every +right to feel at least as confused as I felt--and sent him stumbling +into Maud, and the two of them tumbled to the floor in a jumble of hairy +legs and pearl-gray frock. Bruce raced to the bomb chest. + + * * * * * + +Most of us yelled, "Stop him, Sid, pin him down," or something like +that--I know I did because I was suddenly sure that he'd been asking +Lili's pardon for blowing the two of them up--and all the rest of us +too, the love-blinded stinker. + +Sid had been watching him all the time and now he lifted his hand to the +Minor Maintainer, but then he didn't touch any of the dials, just +watched and waited, and I thought, "Shaitan shave us! Does Siddy want in +on death, too? Ain't he satisfied with all he knows about life?" + +Bruce had knelt and was twisting some things on the front of the chest, +and it was all as bright as if he were under a bank of Klieg lights, and +I was telling myself I wouldn't know anything when the fireball fired, +and not believing it, and Sevensee and Maud had got unscrambled and were +starting for Bruce, and the rest of us were yelling at Sid, except that +Erich was just looking at Bruce very happily, and Sid was still not +doing anything, and it was unbearable except just then I felt the little +arteries start to burst in my brain like a string of fire-crackers and +the old aorta pop, and for good measure, a couple of valves come +unhinged in my ticker, and I was thinking, "Well, now I know what it's +like to die of heart failure and high blood pressure," and having a last +quiet smile at having cheated the bomb, when Bruce jumped up and back +from the chest. + +"That does it!" he announced cheerily. "She's as safe as the Bank of +England." + +Sevensee and Maud stopped themselves just short of knocking him down and +I said to myself, "Hey, let's get a move on! I thought heart attacks +were fast." + +Before anyone else could speak, Beau did. He had turned around from the +Major Maintainer and pulled aside one of the earphones. + +"I got headquarters," he said crisply. "They told me how to disarm the +bomb--I merely said I thought we ought to know. What did you do, sir?" +he called to Bruce. + +"There's a row of four ankhs just below the lock. The first to your left +you give a quarter turn to the right, the second a quarter turn to the +left, same for the fourth, and you don't touch the third." + +"That is it, sir," Beau confirmed. + +The long silence was too much for me; I guess I must have the shortest +span for unspoken relief going. I drew some nourishment out of my +restored arteries into my brain cells and yelled, "Siddy, I know I'm a +tricksy trull and the High Vixen of all Foxes, but what the Hell is +Peterhouse?" + +"The oldest college at Cambridge," he told me rather coolly. + + + + +CHAPTER 16 + + "Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate + systems?--the notion that everything is possible--and I mean + everything--and everything has happened. _Everything._" + + --Heinlein + +THE POSSIBILITY-BINDERS + + +An hour later, I was nursing a weak highball and a black eye in the +sleepy-time darkness on the couch farthest from the piano, half watching +the highlighted party going on around it and the bar, while the Place +waited for rendezvous with Egypt and the Battle of Alexandria. + +Sid had swept all our outstanding problems into one big bundle and, +since his hand held the joker of the Minor Maintainer, he had settled +them all as high-handedly as if they'd been those of a bunch of +schoolkids. + +It amounted to this: + +We'd been Introverted when most of the damning things had happened, so +presumably only we knew about them, and we were all in so deep one way +or another that we'd all have to keep quiet to protect our delicate +complexions. + +Well, Erich's triggering the bomb did balance rather neatly Bruce's +incitement to mutiny, and there was Doc's drinking, while everybody who +had declared for the peace message had something to hide. Mark and Kaby +I felt inclined to trust anywhere, Maud for sure, and Erich in this +particular matter, damn him. Illy I didn't feel at all easy about, but I +told myself there always has to be a fly in the ointment--a darn big +one this time, and furry. + +Sid didn't mention his own dirty linen, but he knew we knew he'd flopped +badly as boss of the Place and only recouped himself by that last-minute +flimflam. + +Remembering Sid's trick made me think for a moment about the real +Spiders. Just before I snuck out of Surgery, I'd had a vivid picture of +what they must look like, but now I couldn't get it again. It depressed +me, not being able to remember--oh, I probably just imagined I'd had a +picture, like a hophead on a secret-of-the-universe kick. Me ever find +out anything about the Spiders?--except for nervous notions like I'd had +during the recent fracas?--what a laugh! + +The funniest thing (ha-ha!) was that I had ended up the least-trusted +person. Sid wouldn't give me time to explain how I'd deduced what had +happened to the Maintainer, and even when Lili spoke up and admitted +hiding it, she acted so bored I don't think everybody believed +her--although she did spill the realistic detail that she hadn't used +partial Inversion on the glove; she'd just turned it inside out to make +it a right and then done a full Inversion to get the lining back inside. + + * * * * * + +I tried to get Doc to confirm that he'd reasoned the thing out the same +way I had, but he said he had been blacked out the whole time, except +during the first part of the hunt, and he didn't remember having any +bright ideas at all. Right now, he was having Maud explain to him twice, +in detail, everything that had happened. I decided that it was going to +take a little more work before my reputation as a great detective was +established. + +I looked over the edge of the couch and just made out in the gloom one +of Bruce's black gloves. It must have been kicked there. I fished it up. +It was the right-hand one. My big clue, and was I sick of it! Got +mittens, God forbid! I slung it away and, like a lurking octopus, Illy +shot up a tentacle from the next couch, where I hadn't known he was +resting, and snatched the glove like it was a morsel of underwater +garbage. These ETs can seem pretty shuddery non-human at times. + +I thought of what a cold-blooded, skin-saving louse Illy had been, and +about Sid and his easy suspicions, and Erich and my black eye, and how, +as usual, I'd got left alone in the end. My men! + +Bruce had explained about being an A-tech. Like a lot of us, he'd had +several widely different jobs during his first weeks in the Change World +and one of them had been as secretary to a group of the minor atomics +boys from the Manhattan-Project-Earth-Satellite days. I gathered he'd +also absorbed some of his bothersome ideas from them. I hadn't quite +decided yet what species of heroic heel he belonged to, but he was thick +with Mark and Erich again. Everybody's men! + +Sid didn't have to argue with anybody; all the wild compulsions and +mighty resolves were dead now, anyway until they'd had a good long rest. +I sure could use one myself, I knew. + +The party at the piano was getting wilder. Lili had been dancing the +black bottom on top of it and now she jumped down into Sid's and +Sevensee's arms, taking a long time about it. She'd been drinking a lot +and her little gray dress looked about as innocent on her as diapers +would on Nell Gwyn. She continued her dance, distributing her marks of +favor equally between Sid, Erich and the satyr. Beau didn't mind a bit, +but serenely pounded out "Tonight's the Night"--which she'd practically +shouted to him not two minutes ago. + +I was glad to be out of the party. Who can compete with a highly +experienced, utterly disillusioned seventeen-year-old really throwing +herself away for the first time? + + * * * * * + +Something touched my hand. Illy had stretched a tentacle into a furry +wire to return me the black glove, although he ought to have known I +didn't want it. I pushed it away, privately calling Illy a washed-out +moronic tarantula, and right away I felt a little guilty. What right had +I to be critical of Illy? Would my own character have shown to advantage +if I'd been locked in with eleven octopoids a billion years away? For +that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone? + +Still, I was glad to be out of the party, though I kept on watching it. +Bruce was drinking alone at the bar. Once Sid had gone over to him and +they'd had one together and I'd heard Bruce reciting from Rupert Brooke +those deliberately corny lines, "For England's the one land, I know, +Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; and Cambridgeshire, of all +England, The Shire for Men who Understand;" and I'd remembered that +Brooke too had died young in World War One and my ideas had got fuzzy. +But mostly Bruce was just calmly drinking by himself. Every once in a +while Lili would look at him and stop dead in her dancing and laugh. + +I'd figured out this Bruce-Lili-Erich business as well as I cared to. +Lili had wanted the nest with all her heart and nothing else would ever +satisfy her, and now she'd go to hell her own way and probably die of +Bright's disease for a third time in the Change World. Bruce hadn't +wanted the nest or Lili as much as he wanted the Change World and the +chances it gave for Soldierly cavorting and poetic drunks; Lili's seed +wasn't his idea of healing the cosmos; maybe he'd make a real mutiny +some day, but more likely he'd stick to bar-room epics. + +His and Lili's infatuation wouldn't die completely, no matter how rancid +it looked right now. The real-love angle might go, but Change would +magnify the romance angle and it might seem to them like a big thing of +a sort if they met again. + +Erich had his _Kamerad_, shaped to suit him, who'd had the guts and +cleverness to disarm the bomb he'd had the guts to trigger. You have to +hand it to Erich for having the nerve to put us all in a situation where +we'd have to find the Maintainer or fry, but I don't know anything +disgusting enough to hand to him. + +I had tried a while back. I had gone up behind him and said, "Hey, how's +my wicked little commandant? Forgotten your _und so weiter_?" and as he +turned, I clawed my nails and slammed him across the cheek. That's how I +got the black eye. Maud wanted to put an electronic leech on it, but I +took the old handkerchief in ice water. Well, at any rate Erich had his +scratches to match Bruce's, not as deep, but four of them, and I told +myself maybe they'd get infected--I hadn't washed my hands since the +hunt. Not that Erich doesn't love scars. + + * * * * * + +Mark was the one who helped me up after Erich knocked me down. + +"You got any omnias for that?" I snapped at him. + +"For what?" Mark asked. + +"Oh, for everything that's been happening to us," I told him +disgustedly. + +He seemed to actually think for a moment and then he said, "_Omnia +mutantur, nihil interit._" + +"Meaning?" I asked him. + +He said, "All things change, but nothing is really lost." + +It would be a wonderful philosophy to stand with against the Change +Winds. Also damn silly. I wondered if Mark really believed it. I wished +I could. Sometimes I come close to thinking it's a lot of baloney trying +to be any decent kind of Demon, even a good Entertainer. Then I tell +myself, "That's life, Greta. You've got to love through it somehow." But +there are times when some of these cookies are not too easy to love. + +Something brushed the palm of my hand again. It was Illy's tentacle, +with the tendrils of the tip spread out like a little bush. I started to +pull my hand away, but then I realized the Loon was simply lonely. I +surrendered my hand to the patterned gossamer pressures of +feather-talk. + +[Illustration] + +Right away I got the words, "Feeling lonely, Greta girl?" + +It almost floored me, I tell you. Here I was understanding feather-talk, +which I just didn't, and I was understanding it in English, which didn't +make sense at all. + +For a second, I thought Illy must have spoken, but I knew he hadn't, and +for a couple more seconds I thought he was working telepathy on me, +using the feather-talk as cues. Then I tumbled to what was happening: he +was playing English on my palm like on the keyboard of his squeakbox, +and since I could play English on a squeakbox myself, my mind translated +automatically. + +Realizing this almost gave my mind stage fright, but I was too fagged to +be hocused by self-consciousness. I just lay back and let the thoughts +come through. It's good to have someone talk to you, even an underweight +octopus, and without the squeaks Illy didn't sound so silly; his +phrasing was soberer. + + * * * * * + +"Feeling sad, Greta girl, because you'll never understand what's +happening to us all," Illy asked me, "because you'll never be anything +but a shadow fighting shadows--and trying to love shadows in between the +battles? It's time you understood we're not really fighting a war at +all, although it looks that way, but going through a kind of evolution, +though not exactly the kind Erich had in mind. + +"Your Terran thought has a word for it and a theory for it--a theory +that recurs on many worlds. It's about the four orders of life: Plants, +Animals, Men and Demons. Plants are energy-binders--they can't move +through space or time, but they can clutch energy and transform it. +Animals are space-binders--they can move through space. Man (Terran or +ET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a time-binder--he has memory. + +"Demons are the fourth order of evolution, possibility-binders--they can +make all of what might be part of what is, and that is their +evolutionary function. Resurrection is like the metamorphosis of a +caterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of the +chrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life. The leap from the +ripped cocoon of an unchanging reality is like the first animal's leap +when he ceases to be a plant, and the Change World is the core of +meaning behind the many myths of immortality. + +"All evolution looks like a war at first--octopoids against monopoids, +mammals against reptiles. And it has a necessary dialectic: there must +be the thesis--we call it Snake--and the antithesis--Spider--before +there can be the ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities are fully +realized in one ultimate universe. The Change War isn't the blind +destruction it seems. + +"Remember that the Serpent is your symbol of wisdom and the Spider your +sign for patience. The two names are rightly frightening to you, for all +high existence is a mixture of horror and delight. And don't be +surprised, Greta girl, at the range of my words and thoughts; in a way, +I've had a billion years to study Terra and learn her languages and +myths. + +"Who are the real Spiders and Snakes, meaning who were the first +possibility-binders? Who was Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? Who were +Eve and Lilith? + +"In binding all possibility, the Demons also bind the mental with the +material. All fourth-order beings live inside and outside all minds, +throughout the whole cosmos. Even this Place is, after its fashion, a +giant brain: its floor is the brainpan, the boundary of the Void is the +cortex of gray matter--yes, even the Major and Minor Maintainers are +analogues of the pineal and pituitary glands, which in some form sustain +all nervous systems. + +"There's the real picture, Greta girl." + +The feather-talk faded out and Illy's tendril tips merged into a soft +pad on which I fingered, "Thanks, Daddy Longlegs." + + * * * * * + +Chewing over in my mind what Illy had just told me, I looked back at the +gang around the piano. The party seemed to be breaking up; at least some +of them were chopping away at it. Sid had gone to the control divan and +was getting set to tune in Egypt. Mark and Kaby were there with him, all +bursting with eagerness and the vision of ranks on ranks of mounted +Zombie bowmen going up in a mushroom cloud; I thought of what Illy had +told me and I managed a smile--seems we've got to win and lose all the +battles, every which way. + +Mark had just put on his Parthian costume, groaning cheerfully, +"Trousers again!" and was striding around under a hat like a fur-lined +ice-cream cone and with the sleeves of his metal-stuffed candys flapping +over his hands. He waved a short sword with a heart-shaped guard at +Bruce and Erich and told them to get a move on. + +Kaby was going along on the operation wearing the old-woman disguise +intended for Benson-Carter. I got a half-hearted kick out of knowing she +was going to have to cover that chest and hobble. + +Bruce and Erich weren't taking orders from Mark just yet. Erich went +over and said something to Bruce at the bar, and Bruce got down and +went over with Erich to the piano, and Erich tapped Beau on the shoulder +and leaned over and said something to him, and Beau nodded and yanked +"Limehouse Blues" to a fast close and started another piece, something +slow and nostalgic. + +Erich and Bruce waved to Mark and smiled, as if to show him that whether +he came over and stood with them or not, the legate and the lieutenant +and the commandant were very much together. And while Sevensee hugged +Lili with a simple enthusiasm that made me wonder why I've wasted so +much imagination on genetic treatments for him, Erich and Bruce sang: + + "_To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, + To our brothers in the tunnels outside time, + Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and + robot-crammed, + And Commandos of the Spiders-- + Here's to crime! + We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track, + Hush--hush--hush! + We've lost our now and will never get back, + Hush--hush--hush! + Change Commandos out on the spree, + Damned through all possibility, + Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we, + Hush--hush--hush!_" + +While they were singing, I looked down at my charcoal skirt and over at +Maud and Lili and I thought, "Three gray hustlers for three black +hussars, that's our speed." Well, I'd never thought of myself as a +high-speed job, winning all the races--I wouldn't feel comfortable that +way. Come to think of it, we've got to lose and win all the races in the +long run, the way the course is laid out. + +I fingered to Illy, "That's the picture, all right, Spider boy." + + --FRITZ LEIBER + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ March and + April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the + U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and + typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Time, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIG TIME *** + +***** This file should be named 32256.txt or 32256.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/2/5/32256/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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