The bird came closer, still singing.
I have wings, too, Paul thought. But you can’t see them. And I can feel the wind under them, feel the air bearing up the weight of my body.
When his vision cleared, the bird had gone.
“He knew you were listening, Joan said. “He’s a terrible ham.”
“Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”
“Yes,” Joan said. “They’re all hams, the birds and animals, but they won’t show off to you unless they sense that you won’t hurt them. They don’t have as much knowledge as humans, but much more wisdom. Some of them, particularly cats, are great philosophers and holy men.”
“Are you a holy woman?” he asked, surprised at his own question.
“Perhaps. If I have any ambition it’s to be something like a saint or holy woman. What else is worthwhile?”
Paul said thoughtfully, “You’ve made it about halfway.” He chose his words with care. “Buddha and Christ began by going off into the wilderness, into the kind of aloneness you seem to be in now, but they didn’t stay there. They came back—to try to do something for the rest of us. Maybe they failed. But at least they tried.” With a grunt he rose unsteadily to his feet, stood swaying, then stretched and felt all right.
“Where are you going?” Joan asked.
“Back to the city,” Paul said grimly. “I’ve got work to do.”
Much to his own surprise, Gus Swenesgard found himself still alive after the Great Battle. And, being alive, he could indulge himself in the luxury of admiring his enemy.
“We got some pretty good Neegs in these hills,” he said to nobody in particular as he stumped through
the lobby of his hotel and out into the morning sunshine. Pausing, he inhaled a good, hefty amount of dusty air laden with the healthy smell of decaying weeds; he then ran his hand over his somewhat unshaven jowls, coughed and spat. "I gotta quit smoking one of these days,” he muttered under his breath. But he knew, deep inside, that he didn’t have the strength to do it.
Instead, he pulled out a cigar and lit it.
Ah, he thought dreamily, that’s better. There was nothing that covered up the taste of old, stale smoke quite so well as new, fresh smoke. Gus exhaled, then swaggered down the front steps—carefully avoiding the broken one—and headed for the prisoners’ compound down the street; several vacant lots had been fenced in to provide a temporary dwelling-place for the Neeg-part deserters that streamed into Gus’ plantation in ever-increasing numbers. Since the battle of the phantoms the trickle of turncoats had become a torrent. If thpy just keep using that illusion machine, Gus said to himself, I’ll be sittin’ pretty.
When he reached the fence of the prisoners’ compound he paused a moment, pondering. It’s no good, he decided, keeping those good, black bucks standing around idle; I think we’d better get a little public works goin’ here. First off I’ll get a sign-painting factory going to make signs and posters that say ‘ FULL EMPLO YMENT’ ’ and ‘ LET’S ALL PULL TOGETHER” and that sort of thing, and then we’ll have to get a money factory going to pay them. I think we got some old steel engravings of confederate money in the museum that are still as good as in the old days when Jeff Davis lived.
Once we get the money printed up, he thought happily, we can start fixin’ up this place. Roads to be built, ionocrafts to be repaired. And a government to be set up. In his mind he began to list all his relatives and personal friends; they, of course, would have to have special political positions set up for them and under them he would create an overlapping maze of job-holding bureaucratic functionaries whose tasks would be vague—but who would constitute all the. gpod people personally familiar to. him on a man-to-man hand-shaking basis throughout the bale. Have to get a few of the right kind of Neegs in there, too, he reflected. To keep them from getting restless.
He spotted the lean, stooped figure of Doc Burns emerging from the compound, past the guards. “How’s it going, Doc?” Gus said.
“You ought to get these people out of here; these conditions breed disease.”
“How about sending them into battle—they left the ’parts; now let them fight the ’parts.
Doc Bums said, “These Neegs didn’t leave the ’parts; they left those weapons. And they’re not about to go into battle against those same weapons. It was bad enough for them, being on the giving end; they’re not about to—”
“But,” Gus said, “I gotta clean out those hills once andfor all. I haven’t given up: Ican’t give up.” “Use robots.”
“You know, Doc, maybe you got something there.” A robot army, Gus thought, might not be affected by illusions. Anyhow it seemed worth a try. “An all-out offensive against the Neeg-parts,” he said aloud, “using nothing but autonomic and homeostatic weapons.”
Doc Burns said skeptically, “Where will you get such weapons?”
“From the worms,” Gus said. “I’ll get Mekkis to give me the best they’ve got; stuff maybe which we’ve never seen.” He strode off.
“Read no more,” the Oracle pleaded mournfully. “The hour of the Nowhere Girl is upon us!” Mekkis wove, sent out his tongue to depress a button on his office intercom. “Send in the Huckster,” he ordered his wik secretary.
A moment later the door slid aside; a smiling, well-dressed Terran with bow tie and purple velvet coveralls entered. “I am the Huckster,” he informed Mekkis.
“I know,” Mekkis said, and he thought, You must be a telepath, too; otherwise you never would have learned to scramble. And also, he said to himself, you must be a graduate of Balkani’s school.
“You are, I understand,” the Huckster said, “looking for certain documents, certain obscure papers written by Dr. Rudolph Balkani and circulated privately to students at his seminars. Papers crucial to a comprehension of Balkani’s theories, yet withheld from the general public.”
“Do you have such papers?”
“For a price.”
“Of course,” Mekkis said. “I’m told that it is you who sold my predecessor, Marshal Koli, this vast collection of plastic model planes and other various historical odds and ends now enshrined in these offices. If you can supply me with these documents I will trade you the entire World War One sequence of fighter aircraft for them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” the Huckster said, grinning.
“I realize that you may find my generosity a little overwhelming,” Mekkis said, “but we Ganyme- dians are a—”
“You don’t understand.” The Huckster had begun to laugh openly. “I wouldn’t take those model planes if you paid me to haul them away. They’re utterly worthless.”
“What! But Marshal Koli said—”
“Marshal Koli was a collector, Mr. Administrator. I’m a businessman. The documents I have to sell should be worth in the neighborhood of one hundred Ganymedian cluds. It is that or nothing.”
“Let me see it,” Mekkis said.
“One page, that’s all.”
Mekkis said, “I could have you arrested and the document taken from you by force.”
“True,” the Huckster said. “But you would never see the other documents I could bring you; this is only one of many such lovely items.”
‘ ‘ Very well. My secretary will make out a check for you to the amount of one hundred cluds. Now let’s see the thing.”
After the Huckster had gone Mekkis studied the document carefully. It appeared authentic; he recognized the writing-style of the erratic Balkani. The key, Mekkis thought; analysis of the experiments in chemotherapy which made possible his Oblivion Therapy. Great god almighty!
I’ll have to see what else that young Terran has for sale, mused the Ganymedian Administrator.
He did not grant an audience to Gus Swenesgard.
When notified of Gus’ presence he did not even bother to scan him. “As I’ve already ordered,” he informed his secretary, “give him what he wants and leave me alone.” Gus, therefore, left with a requisition for first-line autonomic and homeostatic Ganymedian attack weapons.
Mekkis did not know this, but, had he known, he would not have cared. Because a report had come in—news completely unexpected