John reversed the hammer and offered it to Ralph.
“Well, no,” said Ralph. “Not right now. I’m going down to Mr. Villiers’ camp.”
“Why?” John demanded.
“I’m going to ask him about putting on a show tonight down there. We can take everybody down and play the way we did the other night. And then when we’re done, we can bring out Torve by himself. This will really show everybody what we have in mind.”
“That’s a good idea,” John said. “That’s a great idea.”
Somewhat tentatively, Smetana said, “You put on a show tonight at the camp of your friend, Mr. Villiers?”
“Well, we sort of plan to.”
“Do you think we would be welcome, Daisy and me?”
Daisy looked long and sharply at her husband. She made no comment. On Shiawassee it would have been because it wasn’t done. With Daisy it was simply that she didn’t do it.
“Of course,” said Ralph. “Of course, you would be welcome. We’ll see you get the best seats.” He turned to John. “John, while I’m gone, you’re in charge.”
“Of what?”
Ralph gestured toward the blister-developing horde.
“Oh,” said John. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He smiled.
Ralph set off for Villiers’ camp, reminding himself to use the road and the path. He thought well in general of Villiers, but found certain bizarre aspects of his nature—like the need to build behemoth traps—baffling and eccentric.
Smetana looked at Daisy, and smiled ruefully. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “It’s best to go. It’s best to get it over. Then I don’t worry anymore.”
John strode up and down the veranda for some minutes, arms folded, feeling very much the master of the situation. There they were, and here he was. He looked down on them, except for the few who were higher on the building than he was.
He spent a few minutes entertaining himself in this manner, but finally he stopped. He hefted the hammer in his hand, and sighed. Then he came down off the veranda and went back to work under Pyatt Blevko. Because he chose to.
* * *
Fred led the way up the mountainside, following a blazed trail. Gillian followed behind him. They were both carrying packs.
Gillian was sunk in silence. As some women offer a variety of conversation, she had silences for every occasion. Some frightened. Some inquiring. Some intelligent. Some warm and comfortable—but you haven’t seen one of those yet, not a really good one. This one was gray and narrow, a silence of consideration.
Fred took no notice of her solemn mood. Unless you know what signs to read, silence from the outside looks like silence. He talked of what they were seeing and how it was balanced. He’d turn and point, or he’d stop and kneel. He’d talk of what would be an intrusion for men to do here, and what would not.
They passed through three forests. He showed where one ended and the next began, not in clear lines of demarcation, but in gradual zones of transition. High above others of its kind, a little grove of temperate forest in a secure pocket under the mountain shoulder.
In spite of his failure to recognize what is, after all, extremely difficult to recognize, that is, the tenor of Gillian’s thought, Fred was behaving precisely as he should. In spite of his failure to recognize what is, at least usually, extremely easy to recognize, that is, the fact of Gillian’s femaleness, he still wasn’t doing badly.
He paid attention to business, and he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He regarded it as his business to hoot down a hollow, just for the fun of it. He regarded it as his business to notice a difference in flower from one meadow to the next. He regarded it as his business to share birds floating like silver leaves in an azure bowl.
If you treat a dog with consistency, give it attention and affection and security, you will learn just how much of a dog you have. The same recipe works even better with people. That Fred treated Gillian in this manner from nature rather than out of principle should not be held against him.
They stopped for lunch. No weed grew here to toast. Fred commented as much.
Gillian opened her pack then and produced cuttings she had made that morning. Salt. Honey. A proper Big Beaver plans ahead. Fred congratulated her.
So they toasted and salted and dipped. When they went on, Gillian was feeling almost secure enough to speak. But you can’t just say it. You have to work your way into it.
As they walked, then, she had traded worry for nervousness. Her hands, thrust into her greatcoat pockets, trembled with tension.
Fred continued to say on in his steady, open way. He did pause to ask, “Are you feeling up to it? You’re beginning to look tired.”
At that moment, at that moment, she almost spoke. But she didn’t. She shook her head and waved him on.
They came at last to the realm of rock and cloud and wind. Little grew here. In this place, even more than elsewhere, life was a matter of fertility seeding available cracks and hollows. Humus collected where it could and out of it grew mosses and other low forms of life. Occasional hardy trees dared the wrath of wind, crouched crook-backed behind oblivious rocks and prayed to go unnoticed.
Rock was willing to endure Fred and Gillian walking if they minded where they stepped. Cloud hung over their shoulders and waved distracting misty fingers before their eyes. Wind, ever restless, keened as they walked, whistled through steel teeth, sang of pure cold love of rain and snow. They knew themselves here on sufferance.
They reached a promontory, a volcanic plug, and after some scrambling, reached the top. They didn’t dare to stand lest they be swept off, so they clung and stared about them.
Rock and cloud obscured their view, but straight below them they could see a granite drop and then forest, steeply stacked, and the sea. There was a road, but they couldn’t see that. On the other side, the gentler slope up which they had come, there was more cliff and forest. Other details were lost.
Gillian thought she had never been so high before. She had, of course, but never before under her own power. It makes a difference if you are safe inside a ship or clinging to a mountain face high above the sea.
It was harder to get down from the plug than to climb up it. Fred went first. Near the bottom he reached up a hand and helped Gillian across a difficult reach.
“Gloves,” said Fred. “You should be wearing gloves. If we start back directly, we should be there before dark.”
Dark sounded good to Gillian. It gives you something to hide in. It’s easier to talk in the dark. Maybe.
* * *
Villiers called Torve over to help him haul on a rope. It took their combined weight to pull it taut and it was only with difficulty that Villiers tied the line in place.
“Now watch where you step,” Villiers said. The trouble with traps as an instrument of policy is that they lack the ability to discriminate.
Torve returned to his reading and Villiers began to tidy up around the site of his construction. Ordinary and innocent is the way things should look.
While he was engrossed in this manicuring job, Claude drifted close overhead. Claude was the camp’s Plonk-in-Residence. He took apparent interest in everything and could not be discouraged.
Villiers looked at his work and found it good. He took one last look for possible giveaways, and found none. Satisfied, he made his way down into the camp for another perspective.
It looked fine from there but for one small thing. Claude the Plonk hovered just above and showed no sign of withdrawing.
Ordinary and innocent is the way things should look. An ordinary and innocent appearing trap loses something by having a small pink cloud hanging overhead.
“Scoot,” said Villiers. “Go on, move.”
It didn’t.
He shied a pebble at it and missed. And it didn’t move.
“Oh, well,” he said, and turned away. Ralph was coming up the path. He said, “Hello, Ralph.”
11
I’ll bet you never had an adventure in your life.
&n
bsp; The savant Aldahondo, whose best remembered bon mot is “nothing ventured, nothing lost,” would have approved. He had no truck with adventure. He held his life tightly, so that none might touch it and thereby do it damage. And so do most of us. We live lives we know to be safe, comfortable, and dull.
Secretly, however, we envy those who toss dice over their lives. Adventure is theirs. But Solomon “Biff” Dreznick had lost his life three times in a reckless pursuit of danger and knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who cannot feel.
Secretly, we envy those who dare greatly in the name of romance. Adventure is theirs. But Gillian U was many well-dared miles from home and bound, moreover, on purposes that could only be called romantic, and she knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who have to deal with the strange and frightening.
But why do you crave adventure? Life and death surround you. Your lives are chanced every day. And you, you confident people, stride through life dealing with danger and romance so automatically and professionally that you never even notice them.
You have adventures. Aldahondo had adventures. He just never admitted the fact to himself. Admit the fact to yourselves. Go ahead. Find your adventure in the common experience of every day.
Like Villiers.
* * *
The light was beginning to fade, the sky to clear, and the air to cool when Fred and Gillian arrived back at camp.
Villiers said, “I’m glad you’re back. I need somebody to go fetch water. Tired?”
Fred stripped off his pack. “Not overly. I could use a good dinner, though.”
“Ready in a minute. Somebody has to go for water first.”
Gillian took off her pack. She was tired, but not exhausted.
“We’re going to have company after dinner,” Villiers said.
“That same bunch?” Fred asked.
“Augmented by thirty.”
“Thirty! This was going to be a simple vacation.”
“Yes, I remember. But life offers us possibilities we can’t foresee. They have to be taken advantage of. We’re going to put on a concert for the thirty tonight. And then Torve is going to put on a solo performance.”
Fred touched his mustache, and then sighed. “Oh, all right. Damn you, Tony. If I didn’t enjoy that band, I wouldn’t play tonight.”
Villiers smiled. So did Gillian. She looked at her still-blistered fingers and then decided that yes, she could and would. She looked up and smiled again.
Villiers looked at her and raised his eyebrows, making the minutest of nods toward Fred.
She shook her head.
Fred said, “What is that plonk doing hovering up there?”
Villiers said, “That’s Claude. I can’t get rid of him. I wonder what he’ll make of our music.”
After a minute, Gillian rose and picked up the bucket to fetch water in. Villiers was concerned with the food and Fred was talking.
She walked down the path, swinging the bucket pensively. Tonight. Yes, not maybe. The problem was that your mind wouldn’t let you. You have to fool it.
You might start a conversation—if conversation was your forte. You might start a conversation beginning, oh, a million miles away, and leisurely drift with it. The mind soothed. The mind soothed. The tongue carrying the burden. Then you hand the tongue the words you want to say, and they are spoken before the mind can forbid. If you could talk.
But she couldn’t. So she walked, swinging the bucket and thinking.
The answer came when she was halfway back up the hill, walking sideways holding the filled bucket with two hands, one elbow held higher than the other against the slant of the hill. The answer came and she set the bucket down. She clapped her hands once and she smiled broadly.
But, then—she still had it to do.
* * *
Admiral Beagle ran his finger down the back of the long blade. He rubbed his hands together. He seized the sword in a two-handed grip, interlocking the forefinger of his left hand with the little finger of his right hand and laying his left thumb along the sword hilt and under his right thumb. He addressed the small tree.
Hola.
Admiral Beagle was magnificent. The sapling was so overwhelmed by the fury of his attack that it offered no defense; so hypnotized was it by the magic of his blade that it suffered pain without protest. A slice to the left, a slice to the right, and the decapitating stroke—snip, snap, snorum.
* * *
Fred said, “I should have gone for the water, but I wanted to talk to you, Tony.”
“It doesn’t hurt a guest to lift a hand.”
“I suppose not.” Fred sat on a rock. He looked at Villiers busying himself around the fire. The wind batted hands with the fire.
“Have you ever loved a man?” Fred asked. Villiers absorbed the question. “In what sense?”
“Sexually.”
“Not yet. Why?”
“Oh, it’s this business of finding out who you are. I thought I knew pretty much, and now I’m not so sure that I do.”
“Why not?”
“It’s this David, of all people. I touched him today and it gave me such a shock that all I could do was babble something inane about gloves. I’ve been wondering about it all afternoon. I’ve got to say that I find him attractive.”
“Minor lapses count for little in the generous eyes of a benevolent heaven. God will wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze.”
“Oh, it’s not that, Villiers. I don’t mind, except for the reassessing it’s going to take. But I’ve been thinking about David. Should I tell him to go home, or do you want to take over his Big Beaver training? I don’t think I should continue. He’s too young.”
Fred picked up a stone from the ground and flipped it at Claude the Plonk. His aim was better than Villiers’, perhaps because his intentions were less hostile.
“I wish you would stop that,” said the plonk.
When a small pink cloud talks to you, a variety of responses are possible. You can beat your breast and tear your hair, either in fear or in celebration. You can let your eyes roll up and fall back in a dead faint, but then that will cause you to miss much of what is happening.
Fred said, “Do you mind telling me why I should?”
“Yes,” said the plonk. “I’m God. And what is more, I will not wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze. I set a higher standard that that. And I’m not altogether sure I approve of homosexuality, so mind your step.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“No, but you were thinking of it.”
* * *
Ah, the motive power of fan mail. Clifford Morgenstern had spent years wondering which secret force unaccounted for was disturbing the predicted flow of color within his pantograph. Then a letter had come from the Tanner Trust and told him.
The little galloping madman said, “I’m Clifford Morgenstern,” as though that were the key to mysteries.
Comroe looked up. “Yes, may I help you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” Morgenstern said. “My name is famous. Everybody knows me. I wrote Color Selection in Galactic Pantography. You read that, sir, and you will never be the same. Here, let me show you a letter I got from a bright young man on Shiawassee. He knows his books.”
“I’m not supposed to read on duty,” Comroe said politely. “May I be of service to you?”
“Yes, I want that cretinous Admiral Beagle. I have words to say to the man.”
Comroe, of course, was unable to serve exact directions, but suggested that Green Mountain might be a place to make inquiries. “Because that’s the direction the rest of the circus has traveled,” is the way he put it in his mind. He reserved the words.
When Morgenstern had gone off to rent a small bicycle, Comroe shook his head.
“My third author,” he said, “and they were all like that.”
* * *
Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside. He
had been there all afternoon.
His head was lifted slightly in the grass. His legs were straight, his heels set together. His arms were pressed against his sides. He pointed himself and let the power grow.
He had seen the last of Villiers’ trap making and with admirable professionality recognized it for what it was. He smiled a smile of icy contempt. He sneered a haughty sneer.
The power continued to build within him. From his nether regions warm fires flowed. He couldn’t let them go too soon. He pushed at the red with cold black thoughts, and it pushed back, and a tension built. At first, black holds easily, but then red’s power grows. It becomes a struggle between equals. When black can hold no longer, red bursts forward and the power discharges.
Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside, gathering power.
* * *
“I don’t ask much of you,” said Claude. “Just that you do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly hand in hand with me. Figuratively speaking, of course.”
“You’ll forgive me, sir . . . Is ‘sir’ sufficiently respectful?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to put more emphasis on it.”
“You’ll forgive me, Sir,” said Villiers, “when I tell you that mere assertion is not sufficient to compel belief. If you do indeed desire to be worshiped, as you say you do, I think you had better offer some evidence of your divinity.”
“Why should evidence be necessary to belief?” the plonk asked.
“For some people it isn’t,” Fred said. “For us it is. I’m indeed sorry.”
“And I as well,” said Villiers. “Dinner is ready and it cannot be stayed. You will have to give us leave from the discussion until we have eaten.”
“Sir,” the plonk added in correction.
“Sir,” said Villiers, accepting the criticism.
“You should take note of the fact that man does not live by bread alone.”
“Not by bread alone, but by bread.”
Fred said, “All I can say is that you aren’t much of a God if you don’t understand human needs.”
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