“I’d like to buy the restaurant for her, the one the bear-man has, and let it become a sort of meeting place open to people and underpeople. She could give it the romantic and interesting touch so that it could be a success.”
“A wonderful idea. A perfect project for your Foundation,” smiled the E’telekeli. “It shall be done.”
“And the Catmaster?” asked Rod. “Is there anything I can do for him?”
“No, do not concern yourself with C’william,” said the E’telekeli. “He is under the protection of the Instrumentality and he knows the sign of the Fish.” The great underman paused to give Rod a chance to inquire what that sign might be, but Rod did not note the significance of the pause, so the birdlike giant went on. “C’william has already received his reward in the good change which he has made in your life. Now, if you are ready, we will put you to sleep, my son E’ikasus will change you out of your cat-body and you will wake in orbit around your home.”
“C’mell? Can you wake her up so I can say goodbye after that thousand years?”
The master of the underworld took Rod gently by the arm and walked him across the huge underground room, talking as they went. “Would you want to have another goodbye, after that thousand years she remembers with you, if you were she? Let her be. It is kinder this way. You are human. You can afford to be rich with kindness. It is one of the best traits which you human people have.”
Rod stopped. “Do you have a recorder of some kind, then? She welcomed me to Earth with a wonderful little song about ‘high birds crying’ and I want to leave one of our Norstrilian songs for her.”
“Sing anything,” said the E’telekeli, “and the chorus of my attendants will remember it as long as they live. The others would appreciate it too.”
Rod looked around at the underpeople who had followed them. For a moment he was embarrassed at singing to all of them, but when he saw their warm, adoring smiles, he was at ease with them. “Remember this, then, and be sure to sing it to C’mell for me, when she awakens.” He lifted his voice a little and sang.
The chorus sang it back at him with a wealth and richness which he had never heard in the little song before.
“And now,” said the E’telekeli, “the blessing of the First Forbidden One be upon you.” The giant bowed a little and kissed Rod McBan on the forehead. Rod thought it strange and started to speak, but the eyes were upon him.
Eyes — like twin fires.
Fire — like friendship, like warmth, like a welcome and a farewell.
Eyes — which became a single fire.
He awakened only when he was in orbit around Old North Australia.
The descent was easy. The ship had a viewer. The snake-pilot said very little. He put Rod down in the Station of Doom, a few hundred meters from his own door. He left two heavy packages. An Old North Australian patrol ship hovered overhead and the air hummed with danger while Norstrilian police floated to the ground and made sure that no one besides Rod McBan got off. The Earth ship whispered and was gone.
“I’ll give you a hand, Mister,” said one of the police. He clutched Rod with one mechanical claw of his ornithopter, caught the two packages in the other, and flung his machine into the air with a single beat of the giant wings. They coasted into the yard, the wings tipped up, Rod and his packages were deposited deftly and the machine flapped away in silence.
There was nobody there. He knew that Aunt Doris would come soon. And Lavinia. Lavinia! Here, now, on this dear poor dry Earth, he knew how much Lavinia suited him. Now he could spiek, he could hier!
It was strange. Yesterday — or was it yesterday? (for it felt like yesterday) — he had felt very young indeed. And now, since his visit to the Catmaster, he felt somehow grown up, as if he had discovered all his personal ingrown problems and had left them behind on Old Earth. He seemed to know in his deepest mind that C’mell had never been more than nine-tenths his, and that the other tenth — the most valuable and beautiful and most secret tenth of her life — was forever given to some other man or underman whom he would never know. He felt that C’mell would never give her heart again. And yet he kept for her a special kind of tenderness, which would never recur. It was not marriage which they had had, but it was pure romance.
But here, here waited home itself, and love.
Lavinia was in it, dear Lavinia with her mad lost father and her kindness to a Rod who had not let much kindness into his life.
Suddenly, the words of an old poem rose unbidden to his mind:
He spieked. He spieked very loud, “Lavinia!” Beyond the hill the cry came back, right into his mind, “Rod, Rod! Oh, Rod! Rod?”
“Yes,” he spieked. “Don’t run. I’m home.” He felt her mind coming near, though she must have been beyond one of the nearby hills. When he touched minds with Lavinia, he knew that this was her ground, and his too. Not for them the wet wonders of Earth, the golden-haired beauties of C’mell and Earth people! He knew without doubt that Lavinia would love and recognize the new Rod as she had loved the old.
He waited very quietly and then he laughed to himself under the grey nearby friendly sky of Norstrilia. He had momentarily had the childish impulse to rush across the hills and to kiss his own computer. He waited for Lavinia instead.
COUNSELS, COUNCILS, CONSOLES AND CONSULS
“You don’t believe all the malarkey, do you?”
“What’s ‘malarkey’?”
“Isn’t that a beautiful word? It’s ancient. A robot dug it up. It means rubbish, hooey, nonsense, gibberish, phlutt, idle talk or hallucinations — in other words, just what you’ve been saying.”
“You mean about a boy buying the planet Earth?”
“Sure. He couldn’t do it, not even with Norstrilian money. There are too many regulations. It was just an economic adjustment.”
“What’s an ‘economic adjustment?’ ”
“That’s another ancient word I found. It’s almost as good as malarkey. It does have some meaning, though, it means that the masters rearrange things by changing the volume of the flow or the title to property. The Instrumentality wanted to shake down the Earth government and get some more free credits to play around with, so between them they invented an imaginary character named Rod McBan. Then, they had him buy the Earth. Then he goes away. It doesn’t make sense. No normal boy would have done that. They say he had one million women. What do you think a normal boy would do if somebody gave him one million women?”
“You’re not proving anything. Anyhow, I saw Rod McBan myself, two years ago.”
“That’s the other one, not the one who is supposed to have bought Earth. That’s just a rich immigrant who lives down near Meeya Meefla. I could tell you some things about him, too.”