Guyal of Sfere

JACK VANCE

 

 

 

Here’s one of the classic visions of the far future, from Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, taking us millions of years into the future, to the Earth at the end of time, when the sun is growing cold and the world is on the brink of being plunged into eternal Night, grues and deodands creep through the haunted forests, and technology has (as per Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum) become indistinguishable from magic …

Born in San Francisco in 1920, Jack Vance served throughout World War II in the U.S. Merchant Navy. Most of the individual stories that would later be melded into his first novel, The Dying Earth, were written while Vance was at sea—he was unable to sell them, a problem he would also have with the book itself, the market for fantasy being almost nonexistent at the time. The Dying Earth was eventually published in an obscure edition in 1950 by a small semi-professional press, went out of print almost immediately, and remained out of print for more than a decade thereafter. Nevertheless, this slender little volume of stories became an underground cult classic, and was of immense evolutionary importance to the development of both modern fantasy and modern science fiction, as well as being one of the keystone works in the development of the hybrid form sometimes referred to as science-fantasy. Although it itself was clearly influenced by earlier work such as Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique and William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, the effect of The Dying Earth on future generations of writers is incalculable: for one example, out of many, The Dying Earth is one of the most recognizable influences on Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. (Wolfe has said, for instance, that The Book of Gold, which is mentioned by Severian, is supposed to be The Dying Earth.) Vance returned to this milieu in 1965, with a series of stories that would be melded into The Eyes of the Overworld, and, in the early eighties, returned yet again with Cugel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous—taken together, The Dying Earth and the three volumes of Cugel stories represent one of the most impressive achievements in science-fantasy.

Vance is also a towering ancestral figure in science fiction proper, where he has produced some of the very best work of the last forty years. His most famous SF novels—The Dragon Masters, The Last Castle, Big Planet, Emphyrio, the five-volume Demon Princes series (the best known of which are The Star King and The Killing Machine), Blue World, The Anome, The Languages of Pao, among many others—as well as dazzling short works such as “The New Prime,” “The Miracle Workers,” “The Last Castle,” and “The Moon Moth” have had such a widespread impact that writers describing distant worlds and alien societies with strange alien customs write inevitably in the shadow of Vance: no one in the history of the field has brought more intelligence, imagination, or inexhaustible fertility of invention to that theme than he has, a fertility that shows no sign of slackening even here at the end of the nineties, with recent books such as Night Lamp as richly and lushly imaginative as the stuff he was writing in the fifties; even ostensible potboilers such as his Planet of Adventure series are full of vivid and richly portrayed alien societies and bizarre and often profoundly disturbing insights into the ways in which human psychology might be altered by immersion in alien values and cultural systems.

Vance has won two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, two World Fantasy Awards (one the prestigious Life Achievement Award), a Grandmaster Nebula Award for Life Achievement, and the Edgar Award for best mystery novel. His other books include The Palace of Love, City of the Chasch, To Live Forever, The Dirdir, The Pnume, The Gray Prince, The Brave Free Men, Space Opera, Showboat World, Marune: Alastor 933, Wyst: Alastor 1716, Lyonesse, The Green Pearl, Madouc, Araminta Station, Ecce and Olde Earth, and Throy, among many others. His short fiction has been collected in Eight Fantasms and Magics, The Best of Jack Vance, Green Magic, Lost Moons, The Complete Magnus Ridolph, The World Between and Other Stories, The Dark Side of the Moon, and The Narrow Land. His most recent books are an omnibus volume, Alastor, collecting three of his Alastor novels, and the new novels Night Lamp and Ports of Call.

 

Guyal of Sfere had been born one apart from his fellows and early proved vexation for his sire. Normal in outward configuration, there existed within his mind a void which ached for nourishment. It was as if a spell had been cast upon his birth, a harassment visited on the child in a spirit of sardonic mockery, so that every occurrence, no matter how trifling, became a source of wonder. Even as young as four seasons he was expounding such inquiries as:

“Why do squares have more sides than triangles?”

“How will we see when the sun goes dark?”

“Do flowers grow under the ocean?”

“Do stars hiss and sizzle when rain comes by night?”

To which his impatient sire gave answers:

“So it was ordained by the Pragmatica; squares and triangles must obey the rote.”

“We will be forced to grope and feel our way.”

“I have not verified this matter; only the Curator would know.”

“Never. The stars are above the rain, higher even than the highest clouds, and swim in a rarified air where rain can never breed.”

As Guyal grew to youth, this void in his mind, instead of dwindling becoming sedimented with wax, throbbed with a more violent ache. And so he asked:

“Why do people die when they are killed?”

“Where does beauty vanish when it goes?”

“How long have men lived on Earth?”

“What is beyond the sky?”

To which his sire, biting acerbity back from his lips, would respond:

“Death is the heritage of life; a man’s vitality is like air in a bladder. Poinct this bubble and away, away, away, flees life, like the color of fading dream.”

“Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.”

“Some say men germinated in the soil like grubs in a corpse; others aver that the first men desired residence and so created Earth by sorcery. The question is shrouded in technicality; only the Curator may answer with exactness.”

“An endless waste.”

Guyal pondered and postulated, proposed and expounded, until he found himself the subject of surreptitious humor. The demesne was visited by a rumor that a gleft, coming upon Guyal’s mother in labor, had stolen part of Guyal’s brain, which deficiency he now industriously sought to restore.

Guyal therefore drew himself apart and roamed the grassy hills of Sfere in solitude. But ever was his mind acquisitive, ever did he seek to exhaust the lore of all around him, until at last his father in vexation refused to hear further inquiries, declaring that all knowledge had been known, that the trivial and useless had been discarded, leaving only that residue necessary to a sound man.

At this time Guyal was in his first manhood, a slight but erect youth with wide clear eyes, a penchant for severely elegant dress, a firm somewhat compressed mouth.

Hearing his father’s angry statement, Guyal said, “One more question, then I ask no more.”

“Speak,” declared his father. “One more question I grant you.”

“You have often referred me to the Curator; who is he, and where may I find him?”

A moment the father scrutinized the son whom he now considered past the verge of madness. Then he responded in a quiet voice, “The Curator guards the Museum of Man, which antique legend places in the Land of the Falling Wall—beyond the mountains of Fer Aquila and north of Ascolais. It is not certain that either Curator or Museum still exist; still it would seem that if the Curator knows all things, as is the legend, then surely he would know the wizardly foil to death.”

Guyal said, “I would seek the Curator and the Museum of Man, that I likewise may know all things.”

The father said with patience, “I will bestow on you my fine white horse, my Expansible Egg for your shelter, my Scintillant Dagger to illuminate the night. In addition, I lay a blessing along the trail, and danger will slide you by so long as you never wander aside.”

Guyal quelled the hundred new questions at his tongue, including an inquisition as to where his father had learned these manifestations of sorcery, and accepted the gifts: the horse, the magic shelter, the dagger with the luminous pommel, and the blessing to guard him from the disadvantageous circumstances which plagued those who travelled the dim trails of Ascolais.

He caparisoned the horse, honed the dagger, cast a last glance around the old manse at Sfere, and set forth to the north.

He ferried the River Scaum on an old barge. Aboard the barge, and so off the trail, the blessing lost its cogency and in fact seemed to stimulate a counterinfluence, so that the barge-tender, who coveted Guyal’s rich accoutrements, struck out suddenly with his cudgel. Guyal fended off the blow and tripped the man into the murky deep.

Mounting the north bank of the Scaum he saw ahead the Porphiron Scar, the dark poplars and white columns of Kaiin, the dull gleam of Sanreale Bay.

Wandering the crumbled streets, he put the languid inhabitants such a spate of questions that one in wry jocularity commended him to a professional augur.

This, a lank hermetic with red-rimmed eyes and a stained white beard, dwelled in a booth painted with the Signs of the Aumoklopelastianic Cabal.

“What are your fees?” inquired Guyal cautiously.

“I respond to three questions,” stated the augur. “For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and decisive language; for ten I use a professional cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce I babble in an unknown tongue.”

“First I must inquire, how profound is your knowledge?”

“I know all,” responded the augur. “The secrets of red and the secrets of black, the lost spells of Grand Motholam, the way of the fish and the voice of the bird.”

“And where have you learned all these things?”

“By pure induction,” explained the augur. “I retire into my booth, I closet myself with never a glint of light and, so sequestered, I resolve the mysteries of the world.”

“Controlling such efficacy,” ventured Guyal, “why do you live so meagerly, with not an ounce of fat to your frame and miserable rags to your back?”

The augur stood back in fury. “Go along with you! Already I have wasted fifty terces of wisdom on you who have never a copper to your pouch. If you desire free enlightenment,” and he cackled in mirth, “seek out the Curator.” He sheltered himself in his booth.

Guyal took lodging for the night, and in the morning went on his way. The trail made a wide detour around the haunted ruins of Old Town, then took to the fabulous forest.

For many a day Guyal rode toward the north. By night he surrounded himself and his horse in the Expansible Egg, a membrane impermeable to thew, claw, pressure, sound, and chill, and rested at ease despite the avid creatures of the dark.

The dull sun fell behind; the days grew wan and the nights bitter, and at last the crags of Fer Aquila showed as a tracing on the north horizon. In this region the forest was a scattering of phalurge and daobado; these last, massive constructions of heavy bronze branches clumped with dark balls of foliage. Beside a giant of the species Guyal came upon a village of turf huts. A group of surly louts appeared and surrounded him with expressions of curiosity. Guyal, no less than the villagers, had questions to ask, but none would speak till the hetman strode up—a burly man in a shaggy fur hat, a cloak of brown fur, and a bristling beard, so that it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. He exuded a rancid odor which displeased Guyal, although from motives of courtesy, he took pains to keep his distaste concealed.

“Where go you?” asked the hetman.

“I wish to cross the mountains to the Museum of Man,” said Guyal. “Which way does the trail lead?”

The hetman pointed out a notch on the silhouette of the mountains. “There is Omona Gap, which is the shortest and best route, though there is no trail. None comes and none goes, since when you pass the Gap, you walk an unknown land. And with no traffic there manifestly need be no trail.”

The news did not cheer Guyal.

“How then is it known that Omona Gap is on the way to the Museum?”

The hetman shrugged. “Such is our tradition.”

Guyal turned his head at a hoarse snuffling and saw a pen of woven wattles. In a litter of filth and matted straw stood a number of hulking men eight or nine feet tall. They were naked, with wax-colored faces, shocks of dirty yellow hair and watery blue eyes. As Guyal watched, one of them ambled to a trough and noisily began to gulp gray mash.

Guyal said, “What manner of things are these?”

The hetman guffawed at Guyal’s ignorance. “They are oasts, naturally.” He indicated Guyal’s white horse. “Never have I seen a stranger oast than the one you bestride. Ours carry us more easily and appear to be less vicious; in addition, no flesh is more delicious than oast properly braised and kettled.”

Standing close he fondled the metal of Guyal’s saddle and the red and yellow embroidered quilt. “Your deckings however are rich and of superb quality. I will therefore bestow you my large and weighty oast in return for this creature with its accoutrements.”

Guyal politely declared himself satisfied with his present mount, and the hetman shrugged his shoulders.

A horn sounded. The hetman looked about, then turned back to Guyal. “Food is prepared; will you eat?”

Guyal glanced toward the oast-pen. “I am not presently hungry, and I must hasten forward. However, I am grateful for your kindness.”

He departed; as he passed under the arch of the great daobado he turned a glance back toward the village. There seemed an unwonted activity among the huts. Remembering the hetman’s covetous touch at his saddle, and aware that no longer did he ride the trail, Guyal urged his horse forward and pounded fast under the trees.

As he neared the foothills the forest dwindled to a savanna, floored with a dull, jointed grass that creaked under the horse’s hooves. Guyal glanced up and down the plain. The sun wallowed in the southwest; the light across the plain was dim and watery. Another hour, then the dark night of the latter-day Earth. Guyal twisted in the saddle, looked behind him. Four oasts, carrying men on their shoulders, came trotting from the forest. Sighting Guyal they broke into a lumbering run. With a crawling skin Guyal wheeled his horse and eased the reins; the white horse loped across the plain toward Omona Gap. Behind ran the oasts, bestraddled by the fur-cloaked villagers.

The sun touched the horizon. Guyal looked back to his pursuers, bounding now a mile behind, then turned his gaze to the forest ahead. An ill place to ride by night, but where was his choice?

The foliage loomed above him; he passed under the first gnarled daobados. He changed directions, turned once, twice, a third time, then stood his horse to listen. Far away a crashing in the brake reached his ears. Guyal dismounted, led the horse into a deep hollow where a bank of foliage made a screen. Presently the four men on their hulking oasts passed across the afterglow, black double-shapes in attitudes suggestive of ill-temper and disappointment.

The thud and pad of feet dwindled and died.

The horse moved restlessly; the foliage rustled.

A damp air passed down the hollow and chilled the back of Guyal’s neck. Darkness stood in the hollow like ink in a basin.

Guyal urged his horse up to the height and sat listening. Far down the wind he heard a hoarse call. Turning in the opposite direction he let the horse choose its own path.

Branches and boughs knit patterns on the fading sky; the air smelt of moss and mold. The horse stopped short. Guyal, tensing in every muscle, leaned a little forward. The air was still, uncanny; his eyes could plumb not ten feet into the black. Somewhere near was death—grinding death, to come as a sudden shock.

Sweating cold, afraid to stir a muscle, he forced himself to dismount. Stiffly he slid from the saddle, brought forth the Expansible Egg and flung it around his horse and himself. Safety. Guyal released the pressure of his breath.

 

 

Guyal of Sfere had lost his way in a land of wind and naked crags. As night came he slouched numbly in the saddle while his horse took him where it would. Somewhere the ancient way through Omona Gap led to the northern tundra, but now, under a chilly overcast, north, east, south, and west were alike.

The horse halted and Guyal found himself at the brink of a quiet valley. Guyal leaned forward, staring. Below spread a dark city. Mist blew along the streets; the afterglow fell dull on slate roofs.

The horse snorted and scraped the stony ground.

“A strange town,” said Guyal, “with no lights, no sound, no smell of smoke … . Doubtless an abandoned ruin from ancient times … .”

He debated descending to the streets. At times the old ruins were haunted by peculiar distillations. On the other hand such a ruin might be joined to the tundra by a trail. With this thought in mind he started his horse down the slope.

He entered the town and the hooves rang loud and sharp on the cobbles. The buildings were stone and dark mortar and seemed in uncommonly good preservation. A few lintels had cracked and sagged, a few walls gaped open, but for the most part the stone houses had successfully met the gnaw of time … . Guyal scented smoke. Did people live here still? He would proceed with caution.

Before a building which seemed to be a hostelry flowers bloomed in an urn. Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.

“Hello!” he called—once, twice.

No heads peered from the doors, no orange flicker brightened the windows. Guyal slowly turned and rode on.

The street widened and twisted toward a large hall, where Guyal saw a light. The building had a high façade, broken by four large windows, each shielded by two blinds of corroded bronze filigree. A marble balustrade fronting the terrace shimmered bone-white behind, a portal of massive wood stood slightly ajar; from here came the beam of light and also a strain of music.

Guyal of Sfere, halting, gazed not at the house nor at the light through the door. He dismounted and bowed to the young woman who sat pensively along the course of the balustrade. Though it was very cold, she wore but a simple gown, yellow-orange, a daffodil’s color. Topaz hair fell loose to her shoulders and gave her face a cast of gravity and thoughtfulness.

As Guyal straightened from his greeting, the woman nodded, smiled slightly, and absently fingered the hair by her cheek.

“A bitter night for travelers.”

“A bitter night for musing on the stars,” responded Guyal.

She smiled again. “I am not cold. I sit and dream … . I listen to the music.”

“What place is this?” inquired Guyal, looking up the street, down the street, and once more to the girl. “Are there any here but yourself?”

“This is Carchasel,” said the girl, “abandoned by all ten thousand years ago. Only I and my aged uncle live here, finding this place a refuge from the Saponids of the tundra.” She rose to her feet. “But you are cold and weary,” said the girl, “and I keep you standing in the street. Our hospitality is yours.”

“Which I gladly accept,” said Guyal, “First I must stable my horse.”

“He will be content in the house yonder. We have no stable.” She indicated a long stone building with a door opening into blackness.

Guyal took the white horse thither and removed the bridle and saddle; then, standing in the doorway, he listened to the music he had noted before, the piping of an ancient air.

“Strange,” he muttered, stroking the horse’s muzzle. “The uncle plays music, the girl stares alone at the stars of the night … .” He considered a moment. “I may be over-suspicious. If witch she be, there is naught to be gained from me. If they be simple refugees as she says, and lovers of music, they may enjoy the airs from Ascolais; it will repay, in some measure, their hospitality.” He reached into his saddlebag, brought forth his flute, and tucked it into his boot.

He returned to where the girl awaited him.

“You have not told me your name,” she reminded him, “that I may introduce you to my uncle.”

“I am Guyal of Sfere, by the River Scaum in Ascolais. And you?”

She smiled, pushing the portal wider. Warm yellow light fell into the cobbled street.

“I have no name. I need none. There has never been any but my uncle; and when he speaks there is no one to answer but I.”

Guyal stared in astonishment; then, deeming his wonder too apparent for courtesy he controlled his expression. Perhaps she suspected him of wizardry and feared to pronounce her name lest he make magic with it.

They entered a flagged hall and the sound of piping grew louder.

“I will call you Ameth, if I may,” said Guyal. “That is a flower of the south, as golden and kind as you seem to be.”

She nodded. “You may call me Ameth.”

They entered a tapestry-hung chamber. A great fire glowed at one wall, and here stood a table bearing food. On a bench sat the musician—an old man, untidy, unkempt. White hair hung tangled down his back; his beard, in no better case, was dirty and yellow. He wore a ragged kirtle, by no means clean, and the leather of his sandals had broken into dry cracks. Strangely, he did not take the flute from his mouth but kept up his piping; and the girl in yellow, so Guyal noted, seemed to move in rhythm to the tones.

“Uncle Ludowik,” she cried in a gay voice, “I bring you a guest, Sir Guyal of Sfere.”

Guyal looked into the man’s face and wondered. The eyes, though somewhat rheumy with age, were gray and intelligent and, so Guyal thought, bright with a strange joy, which further puzzled Guyal, for the lines of the face indicated nothing other than years of misery.

“Perhaps you play?” inquired Ameth. “My uncle is a great musician, and this is his time for music. He has kept the routine for many years … .” She turned and smiled at Ludowik the musician, who jerked his head and contrived an acquiescent grin, never taking the flute from his mouth.

Ameth motioned to the bounteous table. “Eat, Guyal, and I will pour you wine. Afterwards perhaps you will play the flute for us.”

“Gladly,” said Guyal, and he noticed how the joy on Ludowik’s face grew more apparent, quivering around the corners of his mouth.

He ate and Ameth poured him golden wine until his head went to reeling. And never did Ludowik cease his piping—a tender melody of running water, then a grave tune that told of the lost ocean to the west, then a simple melody such as a child might sing at his games. Guyal noted with wonder how Ameth fitted her mood to the music—grave and gay as the music led her. Strange! thought Guyal. But then—people thus isolated were apt to develop peculiar mannerisms, and they seemed kindly withal.

He finished his meal and stood erect, steadying himself against the table. Ludowik was lilting a melody of glass birds swinging round and round in the sunlight. Ameth came dancing over to him and stood close, so that he smelled the perfume of her loose golden hair. Her face was happy and wild … . Peculiar how Ludowik watched so grimly, and yet without a word. Perhaps he misdoubted a stranger’s intent. Still …

“Now,” breathed Ameth, “perhaps you will play the flute; you are strong and young.” Then she said, as she saw Guyal’s eyes widen. “I mean you will play on the flute for old Uncle Ludowik, and he will be happy and go off to bed—and then we will sit and talk far into the night.”

“Gladly will I play the flute,” said Guyal. “I am accounted quite skillful at my home in Sfere.” Glancing at Ludowik, he surprised an expression of crazy gladness. Marvelous that a man should be so fond of music!

“Then—play!” breathed Ameth, urging him a little toward Ludowik and the flute.

“Perhaps,” suggested Guyal, “I had better wait till your uncle pauses. I would seem discourteous—”

“No, as soon as you indicate that you wish to play, he will let off. Merely take the flute. You see,” she confided, “he is rather deaf.”

“Very well,” said Guyal, “except that I have my own flute.” And he brought it out from his boot. “Why—what is the matter?” For a change had come over the girl and the old man. A quick light had risen in her eyes, and Ludowik’s strange gladness had gone, and there was but dull hopelessness in his eyes, stupid resignation.

Guyal slowly stood back, bewildered. “Do you not wish me to play?”

There was a pause. “Of course,” said Ameth, young and charming once more. “But I’m sure that Uncle Ludowik would enjoy hearing you play his flute. He is accustomed to the pitch; another scale might be unfamiliar … .”

Ludowik nodded, and hope again shone in the rheumy old eyes. It was indeed a fine flute, Guyal saw, a rich piece of white metal, chased and set with gold, and Ludowik clutched this flute as if he would never let go.

“Take the flute,” suggested Ameth. “He will not mind in the least.” Ludowik shook his head, to signify the absence of objection. But Guyal, noting with distaste the long, stained beard, also shook his head. “I can play any scale, any tone on my flute. There is no need for me to use that of your uncle and possibly distress him. Listen,” and he raised his instrument. “Here is a song of Kaiin, called ‘The Opal, the Pearl, and the Peacock.’”

He put the pipe to his lips and began to play, very skillfully indeed, and Ludowik followed him, filling in gaps, making chords. Ameth, forgetting her vexation, listened with eyes half closed, and moved her arm to the rhythm.

“Did you enjoy that?” asked Guyal when he had finished.

“Very much. Perhaps you would try it on Uncle Ludowik’s flute? It is a fine flute to play, very soft and easy to the breath.”

“No,” said Guyal, with sudden obstinacy. “I am able to play only my own instrument.” He blew again, and it was a dance of the festival, a quirking carnival air. Ludowik, playing with supernal skill, ran merry phrases as might fit, and Ameth, carried away by the rhythm, danced a dance of her own, a merry step in time to the music.

Guyal played a tarantella of the peasant folk, and Ameth danced wilder and faster, flung her arms, wheeled, jerked her head in a fine display. And Ludowik’s flute played a brilliant obbligato, hurtling over, now under, chording, veering, warping little silver strings of sound around Guyal’s melody, adding urgent little grace-phrases.

Ludowik’s eyes now clung to the whirling figure of the dancing girl. And suddenly he struck up a theme of his own, a tune of wildest abandon, of a frenzied beating rhythm; and Guyal, carried away by the force of the music, blew as he never had blown before, invented trills and runs, gyrating arpeggios, blew high and shrill, loud and fast and clear.

It was as nothing to Ludowik’s music. His eyes were starting; sweat streamed from his seamed old forehead; his flute tore the air into shreds.

Ameth danced frenzy; she was no longer beautiful, she appeared grotesque and unfamiliar. The music became something more than the senses could bear. Guyal’s vision turned pink and gray; he saw Ameth fall in a faint, in a foaming fit; and Ludowik, fiery-eyed, staggered erect, hobbled to her body and began a terrible intense concord, slow measures of most solemn and frightening meaning.

Ludowik played death.

Guyal of Sfere turned and ran wide-eyed from the hall. Ludowik, never noticing, continued his terrible piping, played as if every note were a skewer through the twitching girl’s shoulder blades.

Guyal ran through the night and cold air bit at him like sleet. He burst into the shed, and the white horse nickered. On with the saddle, on with the bridle, away down the streets of old Carchasel, along the starlit cobbles, past the gaping black windows, away from the music of death!

Guyal of Sfere galloped up the mountain with the stars in his face, and not until he came to the shoulder did he turn in the saddle to look back.

The verging of dawn trembled into the stony valley. Where was Carchasel? There was no city, only a crumble of ruins … .

Hark! A far sound?

No. All was silence.

And yet …

Only dark stones on the floor of the valley.

Guyal, fixed of eye, turned and went his way along the trail which stretched north before him.

 

 

The walls of the defile were gray granite, stained dull scarlet and black by lichen. The horse’s hooves made a clop-clop-clop on the stone. After the sleepless night Guyal began to sag in the saddle. He resolved to round one more bend in the trail and then take rest.

The rock looming above hid the sky. The trail twisted around a shoulder of rock; ahead shone a patch of indigo. One more turning, Guyal told himself. The defile fell open, the mountains were at his back. He looked out across a hundred miles of steppe: a land shaded with subtle colors, fading and melting into the haze at the horizon. To the east he saw a lone eminence cloaked by a a dark company of trees, the glisten of a lake at its foot. To the west a ranked mass of gray-white ruins was barely discernible. The Museum of Man? … Guyal dismounted and sought sleep within the Expansible Egg.

The sun rolled in sad majesty behind the mountains; murk fell across the tundra. Guyal awoke and refreshed himself. He gave meal to his horse, ate dry fruit and bread; then he mounted and rode down the trail. Gloom deepened; the plain sank from sight like a drowned land. Guyal reined his horse. Better, he thought, to ride in the morning. If he lost the trail in the dark, who could tell what he might encounter?

A mournful sound. Guyal turned his face to the sky. A sigh? A moan? … Another sound, closer: the rustle of cloth. Guyal cringed into his saddle. Floating slowly across the darkness came a shape robed in white. Under the cowl and glowing with witch-light was a drawn face with eyes like the holes in a skull.

It breathed a sad sound and drifted away.

Guyal drew a shuddering breath and slumped against the pommel. Then he slipped to the ground and established the Egg about himself and his horse; presently, as he lay staring into the dark, sleep came on him and so the night passed.

He awoke before dawn and set forth. The trail was a ribbon of white sand between banks of gray furze; the miles passed swiftly.

As he neared the tree-shrouded hillock he saw roofs through the foliage and smoke rising into the sharp air. And presently to right and left spread fields of spikenard, callow, and mead-apple. Guyal continued with eyes watchful for men.

The trail passed beside a fence of stone and black timber enclosing a region of churned and scorched earth, which Guyal paused to examine. The horse started nervously; Guyal, turning, saw three men who had come quietly upon him: individuals tall and well-formed, somewhat solemn, with golden-ivory skin and jet-black hair. Their garments implied an ancient convention: tight suits of maroon leather trimmed with black lace and silver chain, maroon cloth hats crumpled in precise creases, with black leather flaps extended horizontally over each ear. Their attitudes expressed neither threat nor welcome. “Greetings, stranger,” said one. “Whither bound?”

“I go as fate directs,” replied Guyal cautiously. “You are Saponids?”

“That is our race, though now we are few. Before you is our final city, Issane.” He inspected Guyal with frank curiosity. “And what of yourself?”

“I am Guyal of Sfere, which is in Ascolais, far to the south.”

The Saponids regarded Guyal with respect. “You have come a long and perilous way.”

Guyal looked back at the mountains. “Through the north forests and the wastes of Fer Aquila. At nightfall yesterday I passed through the mountains. In the dark a ghost hovered above till I thought the grave had marked me for its own.”

He paused in surprise; his words seemed to have released a powerful emotion in the Saponids. Their features lengthened, their mouths grew white. The spokesman, his polite detachment a trifle diminished, searched the sky. “A ghost … . In a white garment, floating on high?”

“Yes; is it a known familiar of the region?”

There was a pause.

“In a certain sense,” said the Saponid. “It is a signal of woe … . But I interrupt your tale.”

“There is little to tell. I took shelter for the night, and this morning I fared down to the plain.”

“Were you not molested further? By the Walking Serpent, who ranges the slopes like fate?”

“I saw neither walking serpent nor so much as a lizard; still, a blessing protects my trail and I come to no harm so long as I keep my course.”

“Interesting, interesting.”

“Now,” said Guyal, “permit me to inquire of you, since there is much I would learn; what is this ghost, what event does he commemorate, and what are the portents?”

“You ask beyond my certain knowledge,” replied the Saponid cautiously. “Of this ghost it is well not to speak lest our attention reinforce its malignity.”

“As you will,” replied Guyal. “Perhaps—” He caught his tongue. Before inquiring for the Museum of Man it would be wise to learn in what regard the Saponids held it, lest learning his interest they should seek to deny him knowledge.

“Yes?” inquired the Saponids. “What is your lack?”

Guyal indicated the seared area behind the fence of stone and timber. “What is the cause of this devastation?”

The Saponid looked across the area with a blank expression.

“It is one of the ancient places; so much is known, no more. You will desire to rest and refresh yourself at Issane. Come; we will guide you.”

He turned down the trail; Guyal finding neither words nor reasons to reject the idea, urged his horse forward.

The Saponids walked in silence; Guyal, though he seethed with a thousand questions, likewise held his tongue. They skirted a placid lake. The surface mirrored the sky, shoals of reeds, boats in the shape of sickles, with bow and stern curving high from the water.

So they entered Issane: a town of no great pretense. The houses were hewn timber, golden brown, russet, weathered black. The construction was intricate and ornate, the walls rising three stories to steep gables. Pillars and piers were carved with complex designs: meshing ribbons, tendrils, leaves, lizards. The screens that guarded the windows were likewise carved, with foliage patterns, animal faces, radiant stars; rich textures in the mellow wood. Much effort, much expressiveness, had been expended on the carving.

They proceeded up a steep lane under the gloom cast by the trees, and the Saponids came forth to stare. They moved quietly and spoke in low voices, and their garments were of an elegance Guyal had not expected to see on the northern steppe.

One of the men turned to Guyal. “Will you oblige us by waiting until the First Elder is informed, so that he may prepare a suitable reception?”

The request was framed in candid words and with guileless eyes. Guyal thought to perceive ambiguity in the phrasing, but since the hooves of his horse were planted in the center of the road, and since he did not propose leaving the road, Guyal assented with an open face. The Saponids disappeared and Guyal sat musing on the pleasant town perched so high above the plain.

A group of girls came to look at Guyal with curious eyes. Guyal returned the inspection, and sensed a lack about their persons, a discrepancy which he could not instantly identify. They wore graceful garments of woven wool, striped and dyed various colors; they were supple and slender, and seemed not lacking in coquetry. And yet …

The Saponid returned. “Now, Sir Guyal, may we proceed?”

Guyal, endeavoring to remove any flavor of suspicion from his words, said, “You will understand that by the very nature of my father’s blessing I dare not leave the delineated trail; for then, instantly, I would become liable to any curse placed on me along the way.”

The Saponid made an understanding gesture. “Naturally; you follow a sound principle.”

Guyal bowed in gratification, and they continued up the road.

A hundred paces and the road leveled, crossing a common planted with small, fluttering, heart-shaped leaves, colored in all shades of purple, red, and black.

The Saponid turned to Guyal. “As a stranger I must caution you never to set foot on the common. It is one of our sacred places, and tradition requires that a severe penalty be exacted for transgressions and sacrilege.”

“I note your warning,” said Guyal. “I will respectfully obey your law.”

They passed a dense thicket; with hideous clamor a bestial shape sprang from concealment, a creature with tremendous fanged jaws. Guyal’s horse shied, bolted, sprang out upon the sacred common and trampled the fluttering leaves.

A number of Saponid men rushed forth, grasped the horse, seized Guyal and dragged him from the saddle.

“Wait!” cried Guyal. “What means this? Release me!”

The Saponid who had been his guide advanced, shaking his head in reproach. “Indeed, and only had I just impressed upon you the gravity of such an offense!”

“But the monster frightened my horse!” said Guyal. “I am nowise responsible for this trespass; release me, let us proceed to the reception.”

The Saponid said, “I fear that the penalties prescribed by tradition must first come into effect. Your protests, though of superficial plausibility, will not sustain examination. For instance, the creature you term a monster is in reality a harmless domesticated beast. Secondly, I observe the animal you bestride; he will not make a turn or twist without the twitch of the reins. Thirdly, even if your postulates were conceded, you thereby admit to guilt by virtue of negligence and omission. You should have secured a mount less apt to unpredictable action, or upon learning of the sanctitude of the common, you should have considered such a contingency as even now occurred, and therefore dismounted, leading your beast. Therefore, Sir Guyal, though loath, I am forced to believe you guilty of impertinence, impiety, disregard and impudicity. Therefore, as Castellan and Sergeant-Reader of the Litany, so responsible for the detention of law-breakers, I must order you secured, contained, pent, incarcerated and confined until such time as the penalties will be exacted.”

“The entire episode is mockery!” raged Guyal. “Are you savages, then, thus to mistreat a lone wayfarer?”

“By no means,” replied the Castellan. “We are a civilized people, with customs bequeathed us by the past. Since the past was more glorious than the present, we would show presumption by questioning these laws!”

Guyal fell quiet. “And what are the usual penalties for my act?”

The Castellan made a reassuring motion. “The rote prescribes three acts of penance, which in your case, I am sure will be nominal. But—the forms must be observed, and it is necessary that you be constrained in the Felon’s Caseboard.” He motioned to the men who held Guyal’s arm. “Away with him, cross neither track nor trail, for then your grasp will be nerveless and he will be delivered from justice.”

Guyal was pent in a well aired but poorly lighted cellar of stone. The floor he found dry, the ceiling free of crawling insects. He had not been searched, nor had his Scintillant Dagger been removed from his sash. With suspicions crowding his brain he lay on the rush bed and, after a period, slept.

Now ensued the passing of a day. He was given food and drink; and at last the Castellan came to visit him.

“You are indeed fortunate,” said the Saponid, “in that, as a witness, I was able to suggest your delinquencies to be more the result of negligence than malice. The last penalties exacted for the crime were stringent; the felon was ordered to perform the following three acts: First, to cut off his toes and sew the severed members into the skin at his neck; second, to revile his forbears for three hours, commencing with a Common Bill of Anathema, including feigned madness and hereditary disease, and at last defiling the hearth of his clan; and third, walking a mile under the lake with leaded shoes in search of the Lost Book of Caraz.” And the Castellan regarded Guyal with complacency.

“What deeds must I perform?” inquired Guyal drily.

The Castellan joined the tips of his fingers together. “As I say, the penances are nominal, by decree of the Elder. First, you must swear never again to repeat your crime.”

“That I gladly do,” said Guyal, and so bound himself.

“Second,” said the Castellan with a slight smile, “you must adjudicate at a Grand Pageant of Pulchritude among the maids of the village and select her whom you consider the most beautiful.”

“Scarcely an arduous task,” commented Guyal. “Why does it fall to my lot?”

The Castellan looked vaguely to the ceiling. “There are a number of concomitants to victory in this contest … . Every person in the town would find relations among the participants—a daughter, a sister, a niece—and so would hardly be considered unprejudiced. The charge of favoritism could never be leveled against you; therefore you make an ideal selection for this important post.”

Guyal seemed to hear the ring of sincerity in the Saponid’s voice; still he wondered why the selection of the town’s loveliest was a matter of such import.

“And third?” he inquired.

“That will be revealed after the contest, which occurs this afternoon.”

The Saponid departed the cell.

Guyal, who was not without vanity, spent several hours restoring himself and his costume from the ravages of travel. He bathed, trimmed his hair, shaved his face, and, when the Castellan came to unlock the door, he felt that he made no discreditable picture.

He was led out upon the road and directed up the hill toward the summit of the terraced town of Saponce. Turning to the Castellan he said, “How is it that you permit me to walk the trail once more? You must know that now I am safe from molestation … .”

The Castellan shrugged. “True. But you would gain little by insisting upon your temporary immunity. Ahead the trail crosses a bridge which we could demolish; behind we need but breach the dam to Green Torrent; then, should you walk the trail you would be swept to the side and so rendered vulnerable. No, Sir Guyal of Sfere, once the secret of your immunity is abroad then you are liable to a variety of stratagems. For instance, a large wall might be placed athwart the way, before and behind you. No doubt the spell would preserve you from thirst and hunger but what then? So would you sit till the sun went out.”

Guyal said no word. Across the lake he noticed a trio of the crescent boats approaching the docks, prows and sterns rocking and dipping into the shaded water with a graceful motion. The void in his mind made itself known. “Why are your boats constructed in such fashion?”

The Castellan looked blankly at him. “It is the only practicable method. Do not the oe-pods grow thusly to the south?”

“Never have I seen oe-pods.”

“They are the fruit of a great vine, and grow in scimitar-shape. When sufficiently large we cut and clean them, slit the inner edge, grapple end to end with strong line, and constrict till the pod opens as is desirable. When cured, dried, varnished, carved, burnished and lacquered, fitted with deck, thwarts and gussets—then have we our boats.”

They entered the plaza, a flat area at the summit surrounded on three sides by tall houses. To Guyal’s surprise there seemed to be no preliminary ceremonies or formalities to the contest, and small spirit of festivity was manifest among the townspeople. Indeed they seemed beset by subdued despondency and eyed him without enthusiasm.

A hundred girls stood in a disconsolate group. It seemed to Guyal that they had gone to few pains to embellish themselves. To the contrary, they wore shapeless rags, their hair seemed deliberately misarranged, their faces were dirty and scowling.

Guyal turned to his guide. “The girls seem not to covet the garland of pulchritude.”

The Castellan nodded wryly. “As you see, they are by no means jealous for distinction; modesty has always been a Saponid trait.”

Guyal hesitated. “What is the form of procedure? I do not desire in my ignorance to violate another of your arcane regulations.”

The Castellan said with a blank face, “There are no formalities. We conduct these pageants with expedition and the least possible ceremony. You need but pass among these maidens and point out her whom you deem the most attractive.”

Guyal advanced to his task, feeling more than half foolish. Then he reflected: this is a penalty for contravening an absurd tradition; I will conduct myself with efficiency and so the quicker rid myself of the obligation.

He stood before the hundred girls who eyed him with hostility and anxiety, and Guyal saw that his task would not be simple, since, on the whole, they were of a comeliness which even the dirt, grimacing, and rags could not disguise.

“Range yourselves, if you please, into a line,” said Guyal. “In this way, none will be at disadvantage.”

Sullenly the girls formed a line.

Guyal surveyed the group. He saw at once that a number could be eliminated: the squat, the obese, the lean, the pocked and coarse-featured—perhaps a quarter of the group. He said suavely, “Never have I seen such unanimous loveliness; each of you might legitimately claim the cordon. My task is arduous; I must weigh fine imponderables; in the end my choice will undoubtedly be based on subjectivity and those of real charm will no doubt be the first discharged from the competition.” He stepped forward. “Those whom I indicate may retire.”

He walked down the line, pointing, and the ugliest, with expressions of unmistakable relief, hastened to the sidelines.

A second time Guyal made his inspection, and now, somewhat more familiar with those he judged, he was able to discharge those who, while suffering no whit from ugliness, were merely plain.

Roughly a third of the original group remained. These stared at Guyal with varying degrees of apprehension and truculence as he passed before them, studying each in turn.

… All at once his mind was determined, and his choice definite.

Guyal made one last survey down the line. No, he had been accurate in his choice. There were girls here as comely as the senses could desire, girls with opal-glowing eyes and hyacinth features, girls as lissome as reeds, with hair silky and fine despite the dust which they seemed to have rubbed upon themselves.

The girl whom Guyal had selected was slighter than the others and possessed of a beauty not at once obvious. She had a small triangular face, great wistful eyes, and thick black hair cut short at the ears. Her skin was of a transparent paleness, like the finest ivory; her form slender, graceful, and of a compelling magnetism. She seemed to have sensed his decision and her eyes widened.

Guyal took her hand, led her forward, and turned to the Elder—an old man sitting stolidly in a heavy chair.

“This is she whom I find the loveliest among your maidens.”

There was silence through the square. Then there came a hoarse sound, a cry of sadness from the Castellan and Sergeant-Reader. He came forward, sagging of face, limp of body. “Guyal of Sfere, you have wrought a great revenge for my tricking you. This is my beloved daughter, Shierl, whom you have designated.”

Guyal stammered, “I meant but complete impersonality. Your daughter Shierl I find the loveliest creature of my experience; I cannot understand where I have offended.”

“No, Guyal,” said the Castellan, “you have chosen fairly, for such indeed is my own thought.”

“Well, then,” said Guyal, “reveal to me now my third task that I may finish, and then continue my pilgrimage.”

The Castellan said, “Three leagues to the north lies the ruin which tradition tells us to be the olden Museum of Man.”

“Ah,” said Guyal, “go on, I attend.”

“You must, as your third charge, conduct my daughter Shierl to the Museum of Man. At the portal you will strike on a copper gong and announce to whoever responds: ‘We are those summoned from Issane.’”

Guyal frowned. “How is this? ‘We’?”

“Such is your charge,” said the Castellan in a voice like thunder.

Guyal looked to left, right, forward, and behind. But he stood in the center of the plaza surrounded by the hardy men of Issane.

“When must this charge be executed?” he inquired in a controlled voice.

The Castellan said in a voice bitter as gall: “Even now Shierl goes to clothe herself in yellow. In one hour shall she appear; in one hour shall you set forth for the Museum of Man.”

“And then?”

“And then—for good or for evil, it is not known. You fare as thirteen thousand have fared before you.”

Down from the plaza, down the leafy lanes of Issane came Guyal, indignant and clamped of mouth, though the pit of his stomach felt heavy with trepidation. The ritual carried distasteful overtones. Guyal’s step faltered.

The Castellan seized his elbow with a hard hand. “Forward.”

The faces along the lane swam with morbid curiosity, inner excitement.

The eminence, with the tall trees and carved dark houses was at his back; he walked out into the claret sunlight of the tundra. Eighty women in white gowns with ceremonial buckets of woven straw over their heads surrounded a tall tent of yellow silk. Here the Castellan halted Guyal and beckoned to the Ritual Matron. She flung back the hangings at the door of the tent; Shierl came slowly forth, eyes dark with fright. She wore a stiff gown of yellow brocade, and the wand of her body seemed pent and constrained within. She stared at Guyal, at her father, as if she had never seen them before. The Ritual Matron put a hand on her waist, propelled her forward. Shierl stepped once, twice, irresolutely halted. The Castellan brought Guyal forward and placed him at the girl’s side; now two children, a boy and a girl, came hastening up with cups which they proffered to Guyal and Shierl. Dully she accepted the cup. Guyal glanced suspiciously at the murky brew. He asked the Castellan: “What is the nature of this potion?”

“Drink,” said the Castellan. “So will your way seem the shorter; you will march to the Museum with a steadier step.”

“I will not drink,” said Guyal. “My senses must be my own when I meet the Curator. I have come far for the privilege; I would not stultify the occasion stumbling and staggering.”

Shierl stared dully at the cup she held. Said Guyal: “I advise you likewise to avoid the drug; so will we come to the Museum of Man with our dignity.”

She returned the cup. The Castellan’s brow clouded, but he made no protest.

An old man in a black costume brought forward a satin pillow on which rested a whip with a handle of carved steel. The Castellan now lifted this whip, and advancing, laid three light strokes across the shoulders of both Shierl and Guyal.

“Now,” said the Castellan, “go from Issane outlawed forever. Seek succor at the Museum of Man. Never look back, leave all thoughts of past and future here. Go, I command; go, go, go!”

Shierl sunk her teeth into her lower lip; tears coursed her cheek though she made no sound. With hanging head she started across the tundra. Guyal, with a swift stride, joined her.

For a space the murmurs, the nervous sounds followed their ears; then they were alone. The north lay across the horizon; the tundra filled the foreground and background, an expanse dreary and dun. The Museum of Man rose before them; along the faint trail they walked.

Guyal said in a tentative tone, “There is much I would understand.”

“Speak,” said Shierl.

“Why are we forced to this mission?”

“It is thus because it has always been thus. Is this not reason enough?”

“Sufficient possibly for you,” said Guyal, “but not for me. In fact, my thirst for knowledge drew me here, to find the Museum of Man.”

She looked at him in wonder. “Are all to the south as scholarly as you?”

“In no degree,” said Guyal. “The habitants perform the acts which fed them yesterday, last week, a year ago. ‘Why strive for a pedant’s accumulation? ’ I have been asked. ‘Why seek and search? Earth grows cold; man gasps his last; why forgo merriment, music, and revelry for the abstract?’”

“Indeed,” said Shierl. “Such is the consensus at Issane. But ask what you will; I will try to answer.”

He studied the charming triangle of her face, the heavy black hair, the lustrous eyes, dark as sapphires. “In happier circumstances, there would be other yearnings for you to ease.”

“Ask,” said Shierl of Issane. “The Museum of Man is close; there is occasion for naught but words.”

“Why are we thus sent to the Museum?”

“The immediate cause is the ghost you saw on the hill. When the ghost appears, then we of Issane know that the most beautiful maiden and the most handsome youth must be dispatched to the Museum. The basis of the custom I do not know. So it is; so it has been; so it will be till the sun gutters out like a coal in the rain.”

“But what is our mission? Who greets us, what is our fate?”

“Such details are unknown.”

Guyal mused, “The likelihood of pleasure seems small … . You are beyond doubt the loveliest creature of the Saponids, the loveliest creature of Earth—but I, a casual stranger, am hardly the most well-favored youth of the town.”

She smiled. “You are not uncomely.”

Guyal said somberly, “More cogent is the fact that I am a stranger and so bring little loss to Issane.”

“That aspect has no doubt been considered.”

Guyal searched the horizon. “Let us then avoid the Museum of Man, let us circumvent this unknown fate and take to the mountains.”

She shook her head. “Do you suppose that we would gain by the ruse? The eyes of a hundred warriors will follow until we pass through the portals of the Museum. Should we attempt to avoid our duty we should be bound to stakes, stripped of our skins by the inch, and at last placed in bags with a thousand scorpions. Such is the traditional penalty; twelve times in history has it been invoked.”

Guyal threw back his shoulders. He spoke in a nervous voice, “Ah, well—the Museum of Man has been my goal for many years. On this motive I set forth from Sfere, so now I would seek the Curator and satisfy my obsession for brain-filling.”

“You are blessed with great fortune,” said Shierl, “for you are being granted your heart’s desire.”

Guyal could find nothing to say, so for a space they walked in silence.

Presently she touched his arm. “Guyal, I am greatly frightened.”

Guyal gazed at the ground beneath his feet, and a blossom of hope sprang alive in his brain. “See the marking through the lichen?”

“Yes; what then?”

“Is it a trail?”

Dubiously she responded, “It is a way worn by the passage of many feet. So then—it is a trail.”

“Here then is safety,” declared Guyal. “But I must guard you; you must never leave my side, you must swim in the charm which protects me; perhaps then we will survive.”

Shierl said sadly, “Let us not delude our reason, Guyal of Sfere.”

But as they walked, the trail grew plainer, and Guyal became correspondingly sanguine. And ever larger bulked the crumble that marked the Museum of Man.

If a storehouse of knowledge had existed here, little sign remained. There was a great flat floor, flagged in white stone, now chalky, broken and grown over with weeds. The surrounding monoliths, pocked and worn, were toppled off at various heights. The rains had washed the marble, the dust from the mountains had been laid on and swept off, laid on and swept off, and those who had built the Museum were less than a mote of this dust, so far and forgotten were they.

“Think,” said Guyal, “think of the vastness of knowledge which once was gathered here and which is now one with the soil—unless, of course, the Curator has salvaged and preserved.”

Shierl looked about apprehensively. “I think rather of the portal, and that which awaits us … . Guyal,” she whispered, “I fear, I fear greatly … . Suppose they tear us apart? Suppose there is torture and death? I fear a tremendous impingement.”

Guyal’s own throat was hot and full. He looked about with challenge. “While I still breathe and hold power in my arms to fight, there will be none to harm us.”

Shierl groaned softly. “Guyal, Guyal, Guyal of Sfere—why did you choose me?”

“Because,” said Guyal, “you were the loveliest and I thought nothing but good in store for you.”

Shierl said, “I must be courageous; after all, if it were not I it would be some other maid equally fearful … . And there is the portal.”

Guyal inhaled deeply, inclined his head, and strode forward. “Let us be to it, and know.”

The portal opened into a wall supporting the first floor; a door of flat black metal. Guyal followed the trail to the door and rapped staunchly with his fist on the small copper gong to the side.

The door groaned wide on its hinges, and cool air, smelling of the under-earth, billowed forth.

“Hello within!” cried Guyal.

A soft voice, full of catches and quavers, as if just after weeping, said, “Come you, come you forward. You are desired and awaited.”

Guyal leaned his head forward, straining to see. “Give us light, that we may not wander from the trail and bottom ourselves.”

The breathless quaver of a voice said, “Light is not needed; anywhere you step, that will be your trail, by an arrangement so agreed with the Way-Maker.”

“No,” said Guyal, “we would see the visage of our host. We come at his invitation; the minimum of his courtesy is light; light there must be before we set foot inside the dungeon. Know we come as seekers after knowledge; we are visitors to be honored.”

“Ah, knowledge, knowledge,” came the sad breathlessness. “That shall be yours, in fullness; oh, you shall swim in a tide of knowledge——”

Guyal interrupted the sad, sighing voice. “Are you the Curator? Hundreds of leagues have I come to know the Curator and put him my inquiries. Are you he?”

“By no means. I revile the name of the Curator as a nonessential.”

“Who then may you be?”

“I am no one, nothing. I am an abstraction, an emotion, the shake in the air when a scream has departed.”

“You speak with the voice of man.”

“Why not? Such things as I speak lie in the dearest center of the human brain.”

Guyal said in a subdued voice, “You do not make your invitation as enticing as might be hoped.”

“No matter, no matter; enter you must, into the dark and on the instant.”

“If light there be, we enter.”

“No light, no insolent scorch, is ever found in the Museum.”

“In this case,” said Guyal, drawing forth his Scintillant Dagger, “I innovate a welcome reform. For see, now there is light!”

From the under-pommel issued a searching glare; the ghost tall before them screeched and fell into twinkling ribbons like pulverized tinsel. There were a few vagrant motes in the air; he was gone.

Shierl, who had stood stark and stiff as one mesmerized, gasped a soft warm gasp and fell against Guyal. “How can you be so defiant?”

Guyal said in a voice, half-laugh, half-quaver, “In truth I do not know … . Perhaps I find it incredible that I should come from Sfere, through forest and across crag, into the northern waste, merely to play the role of victim. I disbelieve; I am bold.”

He moved the dagger to right and left, and they saw themselves to be at the portal of a keep, cut from concreted rock. At the back opened a black depth. Crossing the floor swiftly, Guyal kneeled and listened.

He heard no sound. Shierl, at his back, stared with eyes as black and deep as the pit itself.

Leaning with his glowing dagger, Guyal saw a crazy rack of stairs voyaging down into the dark, and his light showed them and their shadows in so confusing a guise that he blinked and drew back.

Shierl said, “What do you fear?”

Guyal rose. “We are momentarily untended here in the Museum of Man. If we stay here we shall be once more arranged in harmony with the hostile pattern. If we go forward boldly we may come to a position of advantage. I propose that we descend these stairs and seek the Curator.”

“But does he exist?”

“The ghost spoke fervently against him.”

“Let us go, then,” said Shierl. “I am resigned.”

“We go.”

They started down the stairs.

Back, forth, back, forth, down flights at varying angles, stages of varying heights, treads at varying widths, so that each step was a matter for concentration. Back, forth, down, down, down, and the black barred shadows moved and jerked in bizarre modes on the wall.

The flight ended; they stood in a room similar to the entry above, facing another black door, polished at one spot by use. On the walls to either side brass plaques carried messages in unfamiliar characters.

Guyal opened the door against a pressure of cold air, which, blowing through the aperture, made a slight rush, ceasing when Guyal opened the door farther.

“Listen.”

It was a far sound, an intermittent clacking, and it raised the hairs at Guyal’s neck. He felt Shierl’s hand gripping his with clammy pressure.

Dimming the dagger’s glow to a glimmer, Guyal passed through the door, with Shierl coming after. From afar came the evil sound, and by the echoes they knew they stood in a great hall.

Guyal directed the light to the floor: it was of a black resilient material. Next the wall: polished stone. He permitted the light to glow in the direction opposite to the sound, and a few paces distant they saw a bulky black case, studded with copper bosses.

With the purpose of the black case not apparent, they followed the wall, and as they walked similar cases appeared, looming heavy and dull, at regular intervals. The clacking receded as they walked; then they came to a right angle, and turning the corner, they seemed to approach the sound. Black case after black case passed; slowly, tense as foxes, they walked, eyes groping for sight through the darkness.

The wall made another angle, and here there was a door. Guyal hesitated. To follow the new direction of the wall would mean approaching the source of the sound. Would it be better to discover the worst quickly or to reconnoiter as they went?

He propounded the dilemma to Shierl, who shrugged. “It is all one; sooner or later the ghosts will flit down to pluck at us; then we are lost.”

“Not while I possess light to stare them away to wisps and shreds,” said Guyal. “Now I would find the Curator. Possibly he is behind this door. We will so discover.”

He laid his shoulder to the door; it eased ajar with a crack of golden light. Guyal peered through. He sighed, a muffled sound of wonder.

Now he opened the door farther; Shierl clutched at his arm.

“This is the Museum,” said Guyal in rapt tone. “Here there is no danger.” He flung wide the door.

The light came from an unknown source, from the air itself, as if leaking from the discrete atoms; every breath was luminous, the room floated full of invigorating glow. Beautiful works of human fashioning ranked the walls: panels of rich woods; scenes of olden times; formulas of color, designed to convey emotion rather than reality. Here were representations of three hundred marvelous flowers no longer extant on waning Earth; as many star-burst patterns; a multitude of other creations.

The door thudded softly behind them; the two from Earth’s final time moved forward through the hall.

“Somewhere near must be the Curator,” whispered Guyal. “There has been careful tending and great effort here.”

“Look.”

Opposite was a door which Guyal was unable to open, for it bore no latch, key, handle knob, or bar. He rapped with his knuckles and waited; no sound returned.

Shierl tugged at his arm. “These are private regions. It is best not to venture too rudely.”

Guyal turned away and they continued down the gallery, past the real expression of man’s brightest dreamings, until the concentration of so much fire and spirit put them into awe. “Great minds lie on the dust,” said Guyal. “Gorgeous souls have vanished. Nevermore will there be the like.”

The room turned a corner, widened. And now the clacking sound they had noticed in the dark outer hall returned, louder, more suggestive of unpleasantness. It seemed to enter the gallery through an arched doorway opposite.

Guyal moved quietly to this door, with Shierl at his heels, and so they peered into the next chamber.

A great face looked from the wall, a face taller than Guyal, as tall as Guyal might reach with hands on high. The chin rested on the floor, the scalp slanted back into the panel.

Guyal stared, taken aback. In this pageant of beautiful objects, the grotesque visage was the disparity and dissonance a lunatic might have created. Ugly and vile was the face. The skin shone a gun-metal sheen, the eyes gazed from slanting folds. The nose was a lump, the mouth a pulp.

Guyal turned to Shierl. “Does this not seem an odd work to be honored here in the Museum of Man?”

With hands jerking, she grabbed his arm, staggered back into the gallery

“Guyal,” she cried, “Guyal, come away!”

He faced her in surprise. “What are you saying?”

“That horrible thing in there——”

“The diseased effort of an elder artist.”

“It lives.”

“How is this?”

“It lives!” she babbled. “It looked at me, then looked at you.”

Guyal shrugged off her hand; in disbelief he looked through the doorway.

The face had changed. The torpor had evaporated; the glaze had departed the eye. The mouth squirmed; a hiss of escaping gas sounded. The mouth opened; a gray tongue protruded, and from this tongue darted a tendril. It terminated in a grasping hand, which groped for Guyal’s neck. He jumped aside; the hand missed its clutch, the tendril coiled.

Guyal sprang back into the gallery. The hand seized Shierl, grasped her ankle. The eyes glistened; and now the flabby tongue sprouted a new member … . Shierl stumbled, fell limp, her eyes staring, foam at her lips. Guyal shouting in a voice he could not hear, ran forward with his dagger. He cut at the gray wrist, but his knife sprang away as if the steel itself were horrified. He seized the tendril; with a mighty effort he broke it against his knee.

The face winced, the tendril jerked back. Guyal dragged Shierl into the gallery, back out of reach.

Through the doorway now, Guyal glared in hate and fear. The mouth had closed; it sneered disappointment. From the dank nostril oozed a wisp of white which swirled, writhed, formed a tall thing in a white robe—a thing with a drawn face and eyes like holes in a skull. Whimpering and mewing in distaste for the light, it wavered forward into the gallery, moving with curious little pauses and hesitancies.

Guyal stood still. Fear had exceeded its power; fear no longer persuaded. A brain could react only to the maximum of its intensity; how could this thing harm him now? He would smash it with his hands, beat it into sighing fog.

“Hold, hold, hold!” came a new voice. “Hold, hold, hold. My charms and tokens, an ill day for Thorsingol … . Be off with you, ghost, back to the orifice, back, I say! Go, else I loose the actinics; trespass is not allowed, by supreme command from the Lycurgat; aye, the Lycurgat of Thorsingol.” This was the voice of the old man who had hobbled into the gallery.

Back to the snoring face wandered the ghost, and let itself be sucked up into the nostril.

The face rumbled and belched a white fiery lick, flapping at the old man who moved not an inch. From a rod high on the door frame came a whirling disk of golden sparks, which cut and dismembered the white sheet, destroyed it back to the mouth of the face, whence now issued a black bar. This bar edged into the whirling disk and absorbed the sparks. There was an instant of dead silence.

Then the old man crowed, “Ah, you evil episode; you seek to interrupt my tenure. My clever baton holds you in abeyance; you are as naught. Disengage! Retreat into Jeldred!”

The mouth opened to display a gray viscous cavern; the eyes glittered in titanic emotion. The mouth yelled, a wave of sound to buffet the head and drive shock like a nail into the mind.

The baton sprayed a mist; the sound was captured and consumed; it was never heard.

The old man said, “You are captious today! You would disturb poor old Kerlin in his duties? So ho. Baton!” He turned and peered at the rod. “You have tasted that sound? Spew out a penalty.”

The fog balled, struck at the nose, buried itself in the pulp. An explosion; the face seethed; the nose was a clutter of shredded gray plasms. They waved like starfish arms and grew together once more, and now the nose was pointed like a cone.

Kerlin the Curator laughed, a shrill yammer on a single tone. He stopped short and the laugh vanished as if it had never begun. He turned to Guyal and Shierl, who stood pressed together in the door frame.

“How now? You are after the gong; the study hours are ended. Why do you linger?” He shook a stern finger. “The Museum is not the site for roguery; this I admonish. So now be off, home to Thorsingol; be more prompt the next time; you disturb the order … .” He paused and threw a fretful glance over his shoulder. “The day has gone ill; the Nocturnal Key-keeper is inexcusably late … . I have waited an hour on the sluggard; the Lycurgat shall be so informed. I would be home to couch and hearth; here is ill use for old Kerlin. And, further, the encroachment of you two laggards; away now, and be off; out into the twilight!” And he advanced, making directive motions with his hands.

Guyal said, “My lord Curator, I must speak with you.”

The old man halted, peered. “Eh? What now? At the end of a long day’s effort? No, no, you are out of order; regulation must be observed. Attend my audiarium at the fourth circuit tomorrow morning; then we shall hear you. So go now, go.”

Guyal stood back, nonplussed. Shierl fell on her knees. “Sir Curator, we beg you for help; we have no place to go.”

Kerlin the Curator looked at her blankly. “No place to go! What folly you utter! Go to your domicile, or to the Pubescentarium, or to the Temple, or to the Outward Inn. The Museum is no casual tavern.”

“My lord,” cried Guyal desperately, “will you hear me? We speak from emergency.”

“Say on then.”

“Some malignancy has bewitched your brain. Will you credit this?”

“Ah, indeed?” ruminated the Curator.

“There is no Thorsingol. There is naught but dark waste. Your city is an aeon gone.”

The Curator smiled benevolently. “A sad case. So it is with these younger minds.” He shook his head. “My duty is clear. Tired bones, you must wait your rest. Fatigue—begone; duty to humanity makes demands; here is madness to be countered and cleared. And in any event the Nocturnal Key-keeper is not here to relieve me of my tedium.” He beckoned. “Come.”

Hesitantly, Guyal and Shierl followed him. He opened one of his doors, passed through muttering and expostulating. Guyal and Shierl came after.

The room was cubical, floored with dull black stuff. A hooded chair occupied the center of the room and beside it was a chest-high lectern whose face displayed a number of toggles and knurled wheels.

“This is the Curator’s own Chair of Clarity,” explained Kerlin. “As such it will, upon proper adjustment, impose the Pattern of Hynomeneural Clarity.” He manipulated the manuals. “Now, if you will compose yourself I will repair your hallucination. It is beyond my call of duty, but I would not be spoken of as mean or unwilling.”

Guyal inquired anxiously, “Lord Curator, this Chair of Clarity, how will it affect me?”

Kerlin the Curator said grandly, “The fibers of your brain are snarled and frayed, and so make contact with unintentional areas. By the marvelous craft of our modern cerebrologists this hood will compose your synapses with the correct readings from the library—those of normality, you must understand—and so repair the skein, and make you once more a whole man.”

“Once I sit in the chair,” Guyal inquired, “What will you do?”

“Merely close this contact, engage this arm, throw in this toggle—then you daze. In thirty seconds, this bulb glows, signaling the success and completion of the treatment. Then I reverse the manipulation and you arise a creature of renewed sanity.”

Guyal looked at Shierl. “Did you hear and comprehend?”

“Yes, Guyal.”

“Remember.” Then to the Curator: “Marvelous. But how must I sit?”

“Merely relax in the seat. Then I pull the hood slightly forward, to shield the eyes from distraction.”

Guyal leaned forward, peered gingerly into the hood. “I fear I do not understand.”

The Curator hopped forward impatiently. “It is an act of the utmost facility. Like this.” He sat in the chair.

“And how will the hood be applied?”

“In this wise.” Kerlin seized a handle, pulled the shield over his face.

“Quick,” said Guyal to Shierl. She sprang to the lectern; Kerlin the Curator made a motion to release the hood; Guyal seized the spindly frame, held it. Shierl flung the switches; the Curator relaxed, sighed.

Shierl gazed at Guyal, dark eyes wide and liquid as the great waterflamerian of South Almery. “Is he … dead?”

“I hope not.”

They gazed uncertainly at the relaxed form. Seconds passed.

A clanging noise sounded from afar—a crush, a wrench, an exultant bellow.

Guyal rushed to the door. Prancing, wavering, sidling into the gallery came a dozen ghosts; through the open door behind, Guyal could see the great head. It was shoving out, pushing into the room. Great ears appeared, part of a neck, wreathed with purple wattles. The wall cracked, sagged, crumbled. A great hand thrust through, a forearm … .

Shierl screamed. Guyal, pale and quivering, slammed the door in the face of the nearest ghost. It seeped around the jamb, wisp by wisp.

Guyal sprang to the lectern. The bulb showed dullness. Guyal’s hands twitched along the controls. “Only Kerlin’s awareness controls the magic of the baton,” he panted. “So much is clear.” he stared into the bulb with agonized urgency.

“Glow, bulb, glow … .”

The bulb glowed. With a sharp cry Guyal returned the switches to neutrality, jumped down, flung up the hood.

Kerlin the Curator sat looking at him.

Behind, the ghost formed itself—a tall white thing in white robes, and the dark eye-holes stared like outlets into nonimagination.

Kerlin the Curator sat looking.

The ghost moved under the robes. A hand like a bird’s foot appeared, holding a clod of dingy matter. The ghost cast the matter to the floor; it exploded into a puff of black dust. The motes of the cloud grew, became a myriad of wriggling insects. With one accord they darted across the floor, growing as they spread, and became scuttling creatures with monkey-heads.

Kerlin the Curator moved. “Baton,” he said. He held up his hand. It held the baton. The baton spat an orange gout—red-dust. It puffed before the rushing horde and each mote became a red scorpion. So ensued a ferocious battle, and little shrieks and chittering sounds rose from the floor.

The monkey-headed things were killed, routed. The ghost sighed, moved his claw-hand once more. But the baton spat forth a ray of purest light and the ghost sloughed into nothingness.

“Kerlin!” cried Guyal. “The demon is breaking into the gallery.”

Kerlin flung open the door, stepped forth.

“Baton,” said Kerlin, “perform thy utmost.”

The demon said, “No, Kerlin, hold the magic; I thought you dazed. Now I retreat.”

With a vast quaking and heaving he pulled back until once more only his face showed through the hole.

“Baton,” said Kerlin, “rest on guard.”

The baton disappeared from his hand.

Kerlin turned and faced Guyal and Shierl.

“There is need for many words, for now I die. I die, and the Museum shall lie alone. So let us speak quickly, quickly, quickly … .”

Kerlin moved with feeble steps to a portal which snapped aside as he approached. Guyal and Shierl stood hesitantly to the rear.

“Come, come,” said Kerlin in sharp impatience. “My strength flags, I die. You have been my death.”

Guyal moved slowly forward, with Shierl half a pace behind.

Kerlin surveyed them with a thin grin. “Halt your misgivings and hasten; I wane; my sight flickers … .”

He waved a despairing hand, then, turning, led them into the inner chamber where he slumped into a great chair. With many uneasy glances at the door Guyal and Shierl settled upon a padded couch.

Kerlin jeered in a feeble voice, “You fear the white phantasms? Poh, they are held from the gallery by the baton. Only when I am smitten out of mind—or dead—will the baton cease its function. You must know,” he added with somewhat more vigor, “that the energies and dynamics do not channel from my brain but from the central potentium of the Museum, which is perpetual; I merely direct and order the rod.”

“But this demon—who or what is he? Why does he come to look through the walls?”

“He is Blikdak, of the demon-world Jeldred. He wrenched the hole intent on taking the knowledge of the Museum into his mind, but I forestalled him; so he sits waiting in the hole till I die. Then he will glut himself with erudition to the great disadvantage of men.”

“Why cannot this demon be exhorted hence and the hole abolished?”

Kerlin the Curator shook his head. “The furious powers I control are not valid in the air of the demon-world, where substance and form are of different entity. So far as you see him, he has brought his environment with him; so far he is safe. When he ventures farther the power of Earth dissolves the Jeldred mode; then may I strike him with fervor from the potentium … . But enough of Blikdak; tell me, what is the news of Thorsingol?”

Guyal said in a halting voice, “Thorsingol is passed beyond memory. There is naught above but arid tundra and the old town of the Saponids. This girl Shierl is of the Saponids; we came to the Museum at the behest of Blikdak’s ghosts.”

“Ah,” breathed Kerlin, “have I been so aimless? These youthful shapes by which Blikdak relieved his tedium: they flit down my memory like May flies … . I put them aside as creatures of his own conception.”

Shierl grimaced. “What use to him are human creatures?”

Kerlin said dully, “Blikdak is past your conceiving. These human creatures are his play, on whom he practices various junctures, nauseas, antics, and at last struggles to the death. Then he sends forth a ghost demanding further youth and beauty.”

Guyal said in puzzlement, “Such acts would seem derangements of humanity. They are anthropoid by the very nature of the functioning organs. Since Blikdak is a demon—”

“Consider him!” spoke Kerlin. “His lineaments, his apparatus. He is nothing else but anthropoid, and such is his origin, together with all the demons, frits, and winged glowing-eyed creatures that infest latter-day Earth. Blikdak, like the others, derives from the mind of man. The condensation, the cloacal humors, the scatophiliac whims that have drained through humanity formed a vast tumor; so Blikdak assumed his being. But of Blikdak, enough. I die, I die!” He sank into the chair with heaving chest. “My eyes vary and waver. My breath is shallow as a bird’s, my bones are the pith of an old vine. I have lived beyond knowledge; in my madness I knew no passage of time. Now I remember the years and centuries, the millennia, the epochs—they are like quick glimpses through a shutter. Curing my madness, you have killed me.”

“But when you die,” cried Shierl, “what then?”

Guyal asked, “In the Museum of Man are there no exorcisms to dissolve this demon?

“Blikdak must be eradicated,” said Kerlin. “Then will I die in ease; then must you assume the care of the Museum.” He licked his white lips. “An ancient principle specifies that, in order to destroy a substance the nature of the substance must be determined. In short, before Blikdak may be dissolved, we must discover his nature.” And his eyes moved glassily to Guyal.

“Your pronouncement is sound beyond argument,” admitted Guyal, “but how may this be accomplished? Blikdak will never submit to investigation.”

“No; there must be subterfuge, some instrumentality … .”

“The ghosts are part of Blikdak’s stuff?”

“Indeed.”

“Can the ghosts be stayed and prevented?”

“Indeed; in a box of light, the which I can effect by a thought. Yes, a ghost we must have.” Kerlin raised his head. “Baton! One ghost; admit a ghost!”

A moment passed; Kerlin held up his hand. There was a faint scratch at the door and a soft whine. “Open,” said a voice, full of sobs and catches and quavers. “Open and let forth the youthful creatures.”

Kerlin laboriously rose to his feet. “It is done.”

From behind the door came a sad voice, “I am pent, I am snared in scorching brilliance!”

“Now we experiment,” said Guyal. “What dissolves the ghost dissolves Blikdak.”

“True indeed,” assented Kerlin.

“Why not light?” inquired Shierl. “Light parts the fabric of the ghosts as wind tatters the fog.”

“But merely for their fragility; Blikdak is harsh and solid.” Kerlin mused. After a moment he gestured to the door. “We go to the image-expander; there we will explode the ghost to macroid dimension; so shall we find his basis. Guyal of Sfere, you must support my frailness; my limbs are weak as wax.”

On Guyal’s arm he tottered forward, and with Shierl close at their heels they gained the gallery. Here the ghost wept in its cage of light, and searched constantly for a dark aperture to seep his essence through.

Paying him no heed Kerlin hobbled and limped across the gallery. In their wake followed the box of light and perforce the ghost.

“Open the great door,” cried Kerlin in a voice beset with cracking and hoarseness. “The great door into the Cognitive Repository!”

Shierl ran ahead and thrust her force against the door; it slid aside, and they looked into the great dark hall, and the golden light from the gallery dwindled into the shadows and was lost.

“Call for light,” Kerlin said.

“Light!” cried Guyal.

Illumination came to the great hall, and it proved so tall that pilasters along the wall dwindled to threads, and so long and wide that perspective was distorted. Spaced in equal rows were the black cases with the copper bosses that Guyal and Shierl had noted on their entry. Above each hung five similar cases, precisely fixed, floating without support.

“What are these?” asked Guyal.

“Would my poor brain encompassed a hundredth part of what these banks know,” panted Kerlin. “They are repositories crammed with all that has been experienced, achieved, or recorded by man. Here is the lost lore, early and late, the fabulous imaginings, the history of ten million cities, the beginnings of time and the presumed finalties; the reason for human existence and the reason for the reason. Daily I have labored and toiled in these banks; my achievement has been a synopsis of the most superficial sort: a panorama across a wide and multifarious country.”

Said Shierl, “Would not the craft to destroy Blikdak be contained here?”

“Indeed, indeed; our task would be merely to find the information. Under which casting would we search? Consider these categories: Demon-lands; Killings and Mortefactions; Expositions and Dissolutions of Evil; History of Granvilunde (where such an entity was repelled); Attractive and Detractive Hyperordnets; Therapy for Hallucinants and Ghost-takers; Constructive Journal, item for regeneration of burst walls, subdivision for invasion by demons; Procedural Suggestions in Time of Risk … . Aye, these and a thousand more. Somewhere is knowledge. But where to look? There is no Index Major; none except the poor synopsis of my compilation. He who seeks specific knowledge must often go on an extended search … .” His voice trailed off. Then: “Forward! Forward through the banks to the Mechanismus.”

So through the banks they went, like roaches in a maze, and behind drifted the cage of light with the wailing ghost. At last they entered a chamber smelling of metal; again Kerlin instructed Guyal and Guyal called for light.

At a tall booth Kerlin halted the cage of light. A pane dropped before the ghost. “Observe now,” Kerlin said, and manipulated the activants.

They saw the ghost, depicted and projected: the flowing robe, the haggard visage. The face grew large, flattened; a segment under the vacant eye became a scabrous white place. It separated into pustules, and a single pustule swelled to fill the pane. The crater of the pustule was an intricate stippled surface, a mesh as of fabric, knit in a lacy pattern.

“Behold!” said Shierl. “He is a thing woven as if by thread.”

Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger. “Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases … . Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture made … .”

Shierl said dubiously, “Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?”

“The pane shields our actions; he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free.”

The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.

“Go!” cried Kerlin. “Back to your genetrix, back, return and go!”

The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, “Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs him up.”

At a cautious distance Guyal watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, and returned to where Kerlin waited by the rotor. “The ghost has once more become part of Blikdak.”

“Now then,” said Kerlin, “we cause the rotor to twist, the bobbin to whirl, and we shall observe.”

The rotor whirled to a blur; the bobbin (as long as Guyal’s arm) became spun with ghost-thread, at first glowing pastel polychrome, then nacre, then fine milk-ivory.

The rotor spun, a million times a minute, and the thread drawn unseen and unknown from Blikdak thickened on the bobbin.

The rotor spun; the bobbin was full—a cylinder shining with glossy silken sheen. Kerlin slowed the rotor: Guyal snapped a new bobbin into place, and the unraveling of Blikdak continued.

Three bobbins—four—four—five—and Guyal, observing Blikdak from afar, found the giant face quiescent, the mouth working and sucking, creating the clacking sound which had first caused them apprehension.

Eight bobbins. Blikdak opened his eyes, stared in puzzlement around the chamber.

Twelve bobbins; a discolored spot appeared on the sagging cheek, and Blikdak quivered in uneasiness.

Twenty bobbins: the spot spread across Blikdak’s visage, across the slanted fore-dome, and his mouth hung lax; he hissed and fretted.

Thirty bobbins: Blikdak’s head seemed stale and putrid; the gunmetal sheen had become an angry maroon, the eyes bulged, the mouth hung open, the tongue lolled limp.

Fifty bobbins: Blikdak collapsed. His dome lowered against his mouth; his eyes shone like feverish coals.

Sixty bobbins, seventy bobbins; Blikdak was no more. The breach in the wall gave on barren rock, unbroken and rigid.

And in the Mechanismus seventy shining bobbins lay stacked.

Kerlin fell back against the wall. “My time has come. I have guarded the Museum; together we have won it from Blikdak … . Attend me now. Into your hands I pass the curacy; now the Museum is your charge to guard and preserve.”

“For what end?” asked Shierl. “Earth expires, almost as you … . Wherefore knowledge?”

“More now than ever,” gasped Kerlin. “Attend: the stars are bright, the stars are fair; the banks know blessed magic to fleet you to youthful climes. Now … I go. I die.”

“Wait!” cried Guyal. “Wait, I beseech!”

“Why wait?” whispered Kerlin. “You call me back?”

“How do I extract from the banks?”

“The key to the index is in my chambers, the index of my life … .” And Kerlin died.

 

 

Guyal and Shierl climbed to the upper ways and stood outside the portal on the ancient floor. It was night; the marble shone faintly underfoot, the broken columns loomed on the sky.

Across the plain the yellow lights of Issane shone warm through the trees; above in the sky shone the stars.

Guyal said to Shierl, “There is your home; do you wish to return?”

She shook her head. “We have looked through the eyes of knowledge. We have seen old Thorsingol, and the Sherrit Empire before it, and Golwan Andra before that, and the Forty Kades even before. We have seen the warlike green-men, and the knowledgeable Pharials and the Clambs who departed Earth for the stars, as did the Merioneth before them and the Gray Sorcerers still earlier. We have seen oceans rise and fall, the mountains crust up, peak and melt in the beat of rain; we have looked on the sun when it glowed hot and full and yellow … . No, Guyal, there is no place for me at Issane … .”

Guyal, leaning back on the weathered pillar, looked up to the stars. “Knowledge is ours, Shierl—all of knowing to our call. And what shall we do?”

Together they looked up to the white stars.

“What shall we do …”