A blow to the side of my face sent me sprawling to my right. He was upon me then, and we grappled in the sand, rolling, wrestling for position. Crying out would have been a waste of breath, for there was nobody else around. I tried to scuff sand into his eyes, I tried to knee him in the groin and jab him in any of a dozen painful places. He had been well trained, however, and he outweighed me and seemed faster, too.
Strange as it sounds, we fought for close to five minutes before I realized who he was. We were in the wet sand then, with the surf breaking about us, and he had already broken my nose with a forward smash of his head and snapped two of my fingers when I'd tried for a lock about his throat. The moonlight touched his moist face and I saw that it was Shandon and knew that I would have to kill him to stop him. A knockout would not be good enough. A prison or a hospital would only postpone another encounter. He had to die if I was to live. I imagine his reasoning was the same.
Moments later, something hard and sharp jabbed me in the back, and I wriggled to the left. If a man decides he wants to kill me, I don't much care how I do it to him. Being first is the only thing that matters.
As the surf splashed about my ears and Shandon pushed my head backwards into the water, I groped with my right hand and found the rock.
The first blow glanced off the forearm he had raised in defense. Telepaths have a certain advantage in a fight, because they often know what the other fellow is planning to do next. But it is a terrible thing to know and not be able to do a thing about it. My second blow smashed into his left eyesocket, and he must have seen his death coming because he howled then, like a dog, right before I pulped his temple. I hit him twice again for good measure, pushed him off and rolled away, the rock slipping from my fingers and splashing beside me.
I lay there for a long while, blinking back at the stars, while the surf washed me and the body of my enemy rocked gently, a few feet away.
When I recovered, I searched him, and among other things I found a pistol. It carried a full charge and was in perfect operating condition.
In other words, he'd wanted to kill me with his hands. He had estimated he was able to, and he had preferred risking injury in order to do it that way. He could have nailed me from the shadows, but he had had guts enough to follow the dictates of his hate. He could have been the most dangerous man I had ever faced, if he had used his brains. For this, I respected him. If it had been the other way around, _I_ would have done it the easy way. If the reasons for any violence in which I may indulge are emotional ones, I never let those feelings dictate the means.
I reported the attack, and Shandon lay dead on Earth. Somewhere in Dallas, he had become a strip of tape you could hold in the palm of your hand--all that he ever was or hoped to be--weighing less than an ounce. After thirty days, that too, would be gone.
Weeks later, on the eve of my departure, I stood on the same spot, there on the other side of the Big Pond from Tokyo Bay, and I knew that once you go down in it you do not come again. The reflected stars buckled and twisted, like in warp-drive, and though I did not know it at the time, somewhere a green man was laughing. He had gone fishing in the Bay.
"You stupid son of a bitch," I said.
VI
To have it all to do over again annoyed me. But more than annoyance, there was a certain fear. Shandon had slipped up, selling himself to his emotions once. He would not be likely to make the same mistake again. He was a tough, dangerous man, and now he apparently had a piece of something which made him even more dangerous. Also, he had to be aware of my presence on Illyria, after my sending to Green Green earlier in the evening.
"You have complicated my problem," I said, "so you are going to help me resolve it."
"I do not understand," Green Green said.
"You baited a trap for me and it has grown more teeth," I told him, "but the bait is just as much an inducement now as it was before. I'm going after it, and you're coming along."
He laughed.
"I am sorry, but my path leads in the opposite direction. I will not go back willingly, and I would be of no use to you as a prisoner. In fact, I would represent a distinct impediment."
"I have three choices," I said. "I can kill you now, let you go your way, or allow you to accompany me. You may dismiss the first for the time being, as you are of no use to me dead. If you go your way, I will proceed as I began, on my own. If I obtain what I wish, I will return to Megapei. There, I will tell how you failed in your centuries-long plan of vengeance on an Earthman. I will tell how you dropped your plan and fled, because another man of that same race had scared the hell out of you. If you wish then to take wives, you must seek them from among your people on other worlds--and even there, the word may reach them eventually. None would call you _Dra_, despite your wealth. Megapei would refuse your bones when you die. You will never again hear the ringing of the tidal bells and know that they ring for you."
"May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light," he said, "recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow."
I blew a smoke ring. "... And if I should proceed as I began, on my own," I said, "and be slain myself in the coming encounter, do you think that you will escape from harm? Did you not look into the mind of Mike Shandon as you fought him? Did you not say that you hurt him? Do you not know that he is a man who will not forget such a thing? He is not so subtle as a Pei'an. He does not consider it necessary to proceed with finesse. He will simply turn and seek you, and when he finds you he will cut you down. So whether I win or lose, your end will be disgrace or death."
"If I elect to accompany you and assist you, what then?" he asked.
"I will forget the vengeance which you sought upon me," I said. "I will show you that there was no _pai'badra_, no instrument of affront, so that you may take leave of this vengeance with honor. I will not seek recompense, and we may go our ways thereafter, each freed of the hooks of the other."
"No," he said. "There was _pai'badra_ in your elevation to a Name. I do not accept what you propose."
I shrugged. "Very well," I said, "then how does this sound? Since your feelings and intentions are known to me, it would be useless for either of us to plot vengeance along classical lines. That fine, final moment, where the enemy realizes the instrument, the mover and the _pai'badra_ and knows then that his entire life has been but a preface to this irony--that moment would be diminished, if not destroyed.
"So let me offer you satisfaction rather than forgiveness," I went on. "Assist me, and I will give you a fair opportunity to destroy me afterwards. I, of course, will require an equal chance to destroy you. What do you say to that?"
"What means did you have in mind?"
"None, at the moment. Anything that is mutually agreeable will do."
"What assurance may I have of this?"
"I swear it by the Name that I bear."
He turned away and was silent for a time, then, "I agree to your terms," he said. "I will accompany you and assist you."
"Then let us move back to my campsite and become more comfortable," I said. "There are things you have hinted at which I must know more fully."
I turned my back upon him then and walked away. I knocked down the tent and spread the ffimsy then for us to sit upon. I rekindled the campfire.
The ground shook very slightly before we seated ourselves upon.it.