"Come into my office and have a drink. My name is Howard."
"That's an old Earth name," said Casher.
"Why shouldn't it be?" asked Howard. "I came here from old Earth. I looked for the best of all places, and it took me a long time to find it. This is it—the Kermesse Dorg¸eil. We have nothing here but simple and clean pleasures; we have only those vices which help and support. We accomplish the possible; we reject the impossible. We live life, not death. Our talk is about things and not about ideas. We have nothing but scorn for that city behind you, the City of the Perfect Ones. And we have nothing but pity for the holier than holies far back where they claim to have Hopeless Hope, and practice nothing but evil religion. I passed through those places too, although I had to go around the City of the Perfect Ones. I know what they are and I've come all the way from Earth, and if I have come all the way from old old Earth I should know what this is. You should take my word for it."
"I've been on Earth myself," said Casher, rather dryly. "It's not that unusual."
The man stopped with surprise.
"My name," said Casher, "is Casher O'Neill."
The man halted and then gave him a deep bow.
"If you are Casher O'Neill, you have changed this world; you have come back, my lord and master. Welcome. We are no longer your host. This is your city. What do you wish of us?"
"To look a while, to rest a while, to ask directions for the voyage."
"Directions? Why should anyone want directions away from here? People come here and ask directions from a thousand places to get to Kermesse Dorg¸eil."
"Let's not argue this now," said Casher. "Show us the rooms, let us clean ourselves up. Two separate rooms."
Howard walked upstairs. With an intricate twist of his hand he unlocked two rooms.
"At your service," he said. "Call me with your voice; I can hear you anywhere in the building."
Casher called once for sleeping gear, toothbrushes, shaving equipment. He insisted that they send the shampooer, a woman of apparent Earth origin, in to attend to D'alma; and D'alma actually knocked at his door and begged that he not shower her with these attentions.
He said, "You with your deep kindness have helped me so far. I am helping you very little."
They ate a light repast together in the garden just below their two rooms, and then they went to their rooms and slept.
It was only on the morning of the second day that they went with Howard into the city to see what could be found.
Everywhere the city was strong with happiness. The population could not have been very large, twenty or thirty thousand persons at most.
At one point, Casher stopped; he could smell the scorch of ozone in the air. He knew the atmosphere itself had been burned and that meant only one thing, spaceships coming in or going out.
He asked, "Where is the spaceport for Earth?"
Howard looked at him quickly and keenly. "If you were not the lord Casher O'Neill, I'd never tell you. We have a small spaceport there. That is the way that we avoid our traffic with most of Mizzer. Do you need it, sir?"
"Not now," said Casher. "I just wondered where it was." They came to a woman who danced as she sang to the accompaniment of two men with wild archaic guitars. Her feet did not have the laughter of ordinary dance, but they had the positiveness, the compulsion of a meaning. Howard looked at her appreciatively; he even ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.
"She is not yet spoken for," said Howard. "And yet she is a very unusual thing. A resigned ex-lady of the Instrumentality."
"I find that unusual, indeed. What is her name?"
"Celalta," said Howard. "Celalta, the other one. She has been in many worlds, perhaps as many worlds as you have, sir. She's faced dangers like the ones you've faced. And oh, my lord and master, forgive me for saying it, but when I look at her dancing, and I see you looking at her, I can see a little bit into the future; and I can see you both dead together, the winds slowly blowing the flesh off your bones. And your bones anonymous and white, lying two valleys over from this very place."
"That's an odd enough prophecy," said Casher. "Especially from someone who seems not to be poetic. What is that?"
"I seem to see you in the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene. There's a road out of here that goes there and some people, not many, go there, and when they go there, they die. I don't know why," said Howard. "Don't ask me."
D'alma whispered, "That is the road to the Shrine of Shrines. That's the place to the Quel itself. Find out where it starts."
"Where does that road start?" asked Casher.
"Oh, you'll find out; there's nothing you won't find out. Sorry, my lord and master. The road starts just beyond that bright orange roof." He pointed to a roof and then turned back.
Without saying anything more, he clapped his hands at the dancer and she gave him a scornful look. Howard clapped his hands again; she stopped dancing and walked over.
"And what is it you want now, Howard?"
He gave her a deep bow. "My former lady, my mistress, here is the lord and master of this planet, Casher O'Neill."
"I am not really the lord and master," said Casher O'Neill. "I merely would have been if Wedder had not taken the rule away from my uncle."
"Should I care about that?" asked the woman.
Casher smiled back. "I don't see why you should."
"Do you have anything you want to say to me?"
"Yes," said Casher. He reached over and seized her wrist. Her wrist was almost as strong as his.
"You have danced your last dance, madam, at least for the time. You and I are going to a place that this man knows about, and he says that we are going to die there, and our bones will be blown with the wind."
"You give me commands," she cried.
"I give you commands," he said.
"What is your authority?" she asked scornfully.
"Me," he said.
She looked at him, he looked back at her, still holding her wrist.
She said, "I have powers. Don't make me use them."
He said, "I have powers, too; nobody can make me use mine."
"I'm not afraid of you; go ahead."
Fire shot at him as he felt the lunge of her mind toward his, her attack, her flight for freedom, but he kept her wrist and she said nothing.
But with his mind responding to hers he unfolded the many worlds, the old Earth itself, the gem planet, Olympia of the blind brokers, the storm planet, Henriada, and a thousand other places that most people only knew in stories and dreams. And then, just for a little bit, he showed her who he was, a native of Mizzer who had become a citizen of the Universe. A fighter who had been transformed into a doer. He let her know that in his own mind he carried the powers of T'ruth the turtle-girl, and behind T'ruth herself, he carried the personalities of the Hechizera of Gonfalon. He let her see the ships in the sky turning and twisting as they fought nothing at all, because his mind, or another mind which had become his, had commanded them to.
And then with the shock of a sudden vision, he projected to her the two pieces of wood, the image of a man in pain. And gently, but with the simple rhetoric of profound faith, he pronounced: "This is the call of the First Forbidden One, and the Second Forbidden One, and the Third Forbidden One. This is the symbol of the Sign of the Fish. For this you are going to leave this town, and you are going with me, and it may be that you and I shall become lovers."
Behind him a voice spoke. "And I," said D'alma, "will stay here."
He turned around to her. "D'alma, you've come this far; you've got to come further."
"I can't, my lord. I read my duty as I see it. If the authorities who sent me want me enough, they will send me back to my dishwasher on Pontoppidan, otherwise they will leave me here. I am temporarily beautiful and I'm rich and I'm happy and I don't know what to do with myself, but I know I have seen you as far as I can. May the Sign of the Fish be with you."
Howard merely stood aside, making no attempt to hinder them
or to help them.
Celalta walked beside Casher like a wild animal which had never been captured before.
Casher O'Neill never let go of her wrist.
"Do we need food for this trip?" he asked of Howard.
"No one knows what you need."
"Should we take food?"
"I don't see why," said Howard. "You have water. You can always walk back here if you have disappointments. It's really not very far."
"Will you rescue me?"
"If you insist on it," said Howard. "I suppose somewhere people will come out and bring you back, but I don't think you will insist—because that is the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene, and the people who go in there do not want to come out, and do not want to eat, and they do not want to go forward. We have never seen anyone vanish to the other side, but you might make it."
"I am looking," said Casher, "for something which is more than power between the worlds. I am looking for a sphinx that is bigger than the sphinx on old Earth. For weapons which cut sharper than lasers, for forces that move faster than bullets. I am looking for something which will take the power away from me and put the simple humanity back into me. I am looking for something which will be nothing, but a nothing I can serve and can believe in."
"You sound like the right kind of man," said Howard, "for that kind of trip. Go in peace, both of you."
Celalta said, "I do not really know who you are, my lord, master, but I have danced my last dance. I see what you mean. This is the road that leads away from happiness. This is the path which leaves good clothes and warm shops behind. There are no restaurants where we are going, no hotels, no river anymore. There are neither believers nor unbelievers; but there is something that comes out of the soil which makes people die. But if you think, Casher O'Neill, that you can triumph over it, I will go with you. And if you do not think it, I will die with you."
"We are going, Celalta, I didn't know that it was just going to be the two of us, but we are going and we are going now."
X
It was actually less than two kilometers to get over the ridge away from the trees, away from the moisture-laden air along the river, and into a dry, calm valley which had a clean blessed quietness which Casher had never seen before. Celalta was almost gay.
"This, this is the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene?"
"I suppose it is," said Casher, "but I propose to keep on walking. It isn't very big."
As they walked their bodies became burdensome; they carried not only their own weight but the weight of every month of their lives. The decision seemed good to them that they should lie down in the valley and rest amid the skeletons, rest as the others had rested. Celalta became disoriented. She stumbled, and her eyes became unfocused.
Not for nothing had Casher O'Neill learned all the arts of battle of a thousand worlds. Not for nothing had he come through space-three. This valley might have been tempting if already he had not ridden the cosmos on his eyes alone.
He had. He knew the way out. It was merely through. Celalta seemed to come more to life as they reached the top of the ridge. The whole world was suddenly transformed by not more than ten steps. Far behind them, several kilometers, perhaps, there were still visible the last rooftops of the Kermesse Dorg¸eil. Behind them lay the bleaching skeletons, in front—
In front of them was the final source and the mystery, the Quel of the Thirteenth Nile.
XI
There was no sign of a house, but there were fruits and melons and grain growing, and there were deep trees at the edges of caves, and there were here and there signs of people that had been there long ago. There were no signs of present occupancy.
"My lord," said the once-lady Celalta, "my lord," she repeated, "I think this is it."
"But this is nothing," said Casher.
"Exactly. Nothing is victory, nothing is arrival, nowhere is getting there. Don't you see now why she left us?"
"She?" asked Casher.
"Yes, your faithful companion, the dog-woman D'alma."
"No, I don't see it. Why did she leave this to us?"
Celalta laughed. "We're Adam and Eve in a way. It's not up to us to be given a god or to be given a faith. It's up to us to find the power and this is the quietest and last of the searching places. The others were just phantoms, hazards on our route. The best way to find freedom is not to look for it, just as you obtained your utter revenge on Wedder by doing him a little bit of good. Can't you see it, Casher? You have won at last the immense victory that makes all battles seem vain. There is food around us; we can even walk back to the Kermesse Dorg¸eil, if we want clothing or company or if we want to hear the news. But, most of all, this is the place in which I feel the presence of the First Forbidden One, the Second Forbidden One, and the Third Forbidden One. We don't need a church for this, though I suppose there are still churches on some planets. What we need is a place to find ourselves and be ourselves and I'm not sure that this chance exists in many other places than this one spot."
"You mean," said Casher, "that everywhere is nowhere?"
"Not quite that," said Celalta. "We have some work to do getting this place in shape, feeding ourselves. Do you know how to cook? Well, I can cook better. We can catch a few things to eat; we can shut ourselves in that cave and then"—and then Celalta smiled, her face more beautiful than he ever expected he would find a face to be—"we have each other."
Casher stood battle-ready, facing the most beautiful dancer he had ever met. He realized that she had once been a part of the Instrumentality, a governor of worlds, a genuine advisor in the destination of mankind. He did not know what strange motives had caused her to quit authority and to come up to this hard-to-find river, unmarked on maps. He didn't even know why the man Howard should have paired them so quickly: perhaps there was another force. A force behind that dog-woman which had sent him to his final destination.
He looked down at Celalta and then he looked up at the sky, and he said, "Day is ending; I will catch a few of those birds if you know how to cook them. We seem to be a sort of Adam and Eve, and I do not know whether this is paradise or hell. But I know that you are in it with me, and that I can think about you because you ask nothing of me."
"That is true, my lord, I ask nothing of you. I, too, am looking for both of us, not myself alone. I can make a sacrifice for you, but I look for those things which only we two, acting together, can find in this valley."
He nodded in serious agreement.
"Look," she said, "that is the Quel itself, there the Thirteenth Nile comes out of the rocks, and here are the woods below. I seem to have heard of it. Well, we'll have plenty of time. I'll start the fire, but you go catch two of those chickens. I don't even think they're wild birds. I think they are just left over people-chickens that have grown wild since their previous owners left. . . ."
"Or died," said Casher.
"Or died," repeated Celalta. "Isn't that a risk anybody has to take? Let us live, my lord, you and me, and let us find the magic, the deliverance which strange fates have thrown in front of you and me. You have liberated Mizzer, is that not enough? Simply by touching Wedder, you have done what otherwise could have been accomplished at the price of battle and great suffering."
"Thank you," said Casher.
"I was once Instrumentality, my lord, and I know that the Instrumentality likes to do things suddenly and victoriously. When I was there we never accepted defeat, but we never paid anything extra. The shortest route between two points might look like the long way around; it isn't. It's merely the cheapest human way of getting there. Has it ever occurred to you, that the Instrumentality might be rewarding you for what you have done for this planet?"
"I hadn't thought of it," said Casher.
"You hadn't thought of it?" She smiled.
"Well . . ." said Casher, embarrassed and at a loss for words.
"I am a very special kind of woman," said Celalta. "You will be finding that out in the next few weeks. Why else do you think that I
would be given to you?"
He did not go to hunt the chickens, not just then. He reached his arms out to her and, with more trust and less fear than he had felt in many years, he held her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips. This time there was no secret reserve in his mind, no promise that after this he would get on with his journey to Mizzer. He had won, his victory was behind him, and in front of him there lay nothing, but this beautiful and powerful place and . . . Celalta.
Three to a Given Star
I
"Stick your left arm straight forward, Samm," said Folly.
He stretched his arm out.
"I can sense it!" cried Folly. "Now wiggle your fingers!"
Samm wiggled them.
Finsternis said nothing, but both of them caught from his mind, riding clear and wise beside them, a "sense of the situation." His "sense of the situation" could be summed up in the one-word comment, which he did not need to utter:
"Foolishness!"
"It is not foolishness, Finsternis," cried Folly. "Here are the three of us, riding empty space millions of kilometers from nowhere. We were people once, Earth people from Old Earth itself. It is foolish to remember what we used to be? I was a woman once. A beautiful woman. Now I'm this—this thing, bent on a mission of murder and destruction. I used to have hands myself, real hands. Is it wrong for me to enjoy looking at Samm's hands now and then? To think of the past which all three of us have left behind."
Finsternis did not answer; his mind was blank to both of them. There was nothing but space around them, not even much space dust, and the bluish light of Linschoten XV straight ahead. From the third planet of that star they could occasionally hear the cackle and gabble of the man-eaters.
Once again Folly cried to Finsternis, "Is that so wrong, that I should enjoy looking at a hand? Samm has well-shaped hands. I was a person once, and so were you. Did I ever tell you that I was a beautiful woman once?"
She had been a beautiful woman once and now she was the control of a small spaceship which fled across emptiness with two grotesque companions.
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