Its rider was once a man. He is the one who is called the Steel General. That is not a suit of armor that he is wearing; it is his body. He has turned off most of his humanity for the duration of the trip, and he stares now straight ahead past the scales like bronze oak leaves on the side of his mount’s neck. He holds four reins, each as thick as a strand of silk, on the fingertips of his left hand. He wears a ring of tanned human flesh on his little finger, because it would be senseless and noisy for him to wear metal jewelry. The flesh was once his; at least, it helped to surround him at one time long ago.
Wherever his goes, he carries a collapsible five-string banjo with him in a compartment near to where his heart used to be. When he plays it he becomes a kind of negative Orpheus and men follow him to Hell.
He is also one of the very few masters of temporal fugue in the entire universe. It is said that no man can lay hands upon him unless he permits it.
His mount was once a horse.
Regard the world of Blis, with its color and its laughter and its breezes. Regard the world of Blis as Megra of Kalgan.
Megra is a nurse in Kalgan Obstetrical Center 73, and she knows that the world is babies. Blis has something like ten billion people breathing at one another, with more occurring constantly and very few departing. The impaired are repaired. There is no infant mortality. Screams of the newborn and the laughter of their makers are the two most often heard sounds on Blis.
Megra of Kalgan regards Bliss through cobalt-colored eyes amidst long blonde lashes. The fine strands of her pale hair tickle her naked shoulders, and two stiffened spears of it cross to form an X in the center of her brow. Her nose is small, her mouth is a tiny blue flower, and she has very little chin to speak of. She wears a silver breast strap, a golden belt and a short silver skirt. She is barely five feet in height, and she has been touched with the odor of flowers she has never seen. She wears a golden pendant which grows warm upon her breast whenever men place aphrodisiacs before her.
Megra waited ninety-three days before she could gain entrance to the Fair. The waiting list was long, because of the fact that the fairground that is all colors and odors and movements is one of the very few such open places remaining upon Blis. There are only fourteen cities on Blis, but they cover the four continents from sea to creamy sea, burrow far beneath the land and tower into the sky. Portions of them also extend beneath the seas. Actually, all of them interlock with several others, making for continental layers of civilization; but since there are fourteen separate city governments with clear territorial jurisdictions, there are said to be fourteen cities on Blis. Megra’s city is Kalgan, where she tends life that is screaming and new, and occasionally life that is screaming and old, in all colors, all shapes. Since a gene pattern can be constructed to satisfy the parents’ specific wishes and substituted surgically for the nucleus of a fertilized cell, she is liable to see anything born and often does. Being old-fashioned, all that Megra’s own parents had wanted was a cobalt-eyed doll with the strength of a dozen or so men, so that the kid could take care of herself in life.
However, after having taken care of herself successfully for eighteen years, Megra decided that the time had come to contribute to the general breathing. It takes two to strive for infinity, and Megra decided upon the colors and the romance of the open places, of the fairground, for her striving. Life is her occupation and her religion, and she is anxious to serve it further. A month’s vacation lies before her.
All she has to do now is find the other one…
The Thing That Cries In The Night raises its voice within its barless prison. It howls, coughs and barks, gibbers, wails. It is contained within a silver cocoon of fluctuating energies, suspended from an invisible web of forces and hung within a place which has never known daylight.
The Prince Who Was A Thousand tickles it with laser beams, bathes it with gamma rays and feeds it a varying range of ultrasonics and subsonics.
Then it is silent, and for a bare moment the Prince raises his head from the equipment he has brought, and his green eyes widen and the corners of his thin lips twitch upwards after a smile they never reach.
It begins to scream again.
He gnashes his milk-white teeth and throws back his dark cowl.
His hair is a halo of fallow gold in the twilight of the Place Without Doors. He stares upward at the almost-seen form that writhes within the light. As often he has cursed it, his lips move mechanically around the words they always form when he fails.
For ten centuries he has tried to kill it, and still it lives.
He crosses his arms upon his breast, bows his head and vanishes.
A dark thing cries out within the light, within the night.
Madrak tilts the beaker, refills their glasses.
Vramin raises his, stares out across the wide esplanade before his pavilion, quaffs it.
Madrak pours once more.
“It is neither life, nor is it fair,” says Vramin, finally.
“Yet you never actively supported the program.”
“What matters that? It is my present feelings that control me.”
“The feelings of a poet…” Vramin strokes his beard.
“I can never give full allegiance to anything or to anyone,” he replies.
“Pity, poor Angel of the Seventh Station.”
“That title perished with the Station.”
“In exile, the aristocracy always tends to preserve small items pertaining to rank.”
“Face yourself in the darkness and what do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
“What is the connection?”
“Darkness.”
“I fail to see.”
“That, warrior-priest, is common in the dark.”
“Cease the riddling, Vramin. What is the matter?”
“Why did you seek me, here at the Fair?”
“I have the latest population figures with me. They strike me as approximating the mythical Point Critical- that which never occurs. Would you care to see them?”
“No. I do not need to. Whatever the figures, your conclusion is correct.”
“You feel it with your special perceptions, within the tides of the Power?” Vramin nods.
“Give me a cigarette,” says Madrak.
Vramin gestures, and a lighted cigarette appears between his fingers.
“It is special this time,” he says. “It is not just a waning of the tide of Life. There will be a rip tide, I fear.”
“How will this be manifest?”
“I do not know, Madrak. But I do not intend to stay here longer than is necessary to find out.”
“Oh? When will you depart?”
“Tomorrow evening, though I know I am flirting with the Black Tide once more. I had best do something about my death wish again, sometime soon, preferably in pentameter.”
“Do any others remain?”
“No, we are the only two immortals on Blis.”
“Will you give me a gateway when you go?”
“Of course.”
“Then I'll remain here at the Fair until tomorrow evening.”
“I should strongly recommend your going immediately, rather than waiting. I can provide a gateway now.” Vramin gestures again and draws upon a cigarette of his own. He notices his refilled glass and sips it. “It would be an act of wisdom to depart immediately,” he decides, “but wisdom is itself the product of knowledge; and knowledge, unfortunately, is generally the product of foolish doings. So, to add to my own knowledge and to enhance my wisdom I shall remain another day, to see what occurs.”
“Then you expect that something special will happen tomorrow?”
“Yes. The rip tide. I feel the coming of Powers. There was recently some movement in that great House where all things go.”
“Then this is knowledge which I, too, wish to obtain,” says Madrak, “as it affects my former master Who Was A Thousand.”
“You cling to an outworn loyalty, mighty one.”