The blade of the paddle had broken, Lanarck could not move the unwieldly bulk of the raft. The breeze, meanwhile, was easing the spaceboat even farther away. Lanarck exerted himself another fifteen minutes, pushing against the water with the splintered paddle, but the gap increased He cast down the paddle in disgust and turned to the girl, who, sitting cross-legged, regarded him thoughtfully. For no apparent reason, Lanarck was reminded of Laoome in the dimness of his white building, on the windy world. All this, he thought, looking from clear-eyed girl to heaving sun-lit sea to highlands of the continent ahead, was an idea in Laoome's brain.
He looked back at the girl. Her bright wheat-colored hair frothed around her head in ringlets, producing, thought Lanarck, a most pleasant effect. She returned his gaze for a moment, then, with jaunty grace, stood up.
She spoke to Lanarck who found to his amazement that he understood her. Then, remembering Laoome's manipulation of his brain, extracting ideas, altering, instilling new concepts, he was not so amazed.
"Thank you for your help," she said. "But now we are both in the same plight."
Lanarck said nothing. He knelt and began to remove his boots.
"What will you do?"
"Swim," he answered. The new language seemed altogether natural.
"The Bottom-people would pull you under before you went twenty feet." She pointed into the water, which teemed with circling dark shapes. Lanarck knew she spoke the truth.
"You are of Earth also?" she asked, inspecting him carefully.
"Yes. Who are you and what do you know of Earth?"
"I am Jiro from the city yonder, which is Gahadion. Earfh is the home of Isabel May, who came in a ship such as yours."
"Isabel May arrived but an hour ago! How could you know about her?"
"An hour?" replied the girl. "She has been here three months!" This last a little bitterly.
Lanarck reflected that Laoome controlled time in his universes as arbitrarily as he did space. "How did you come to be here on this raft?"
She grimaced toward the island. "The priests came for me. They live on the island and take people from the mainland. They took me but last night I escaped."
Lanarck looked from the island to the city on the mainland. "Why do not Gahadion authorities control the priests?"
Her lips rounded to an O. "They are sacred to the Great God Laoome, and so inviolate."
Lanarck wondered what unique evolutionary process Laoome had in progress here.
"Few persons thus taken return to the mainland," she went on. "Those who win free, and also escape the Bottom-people, usually live in the wilderness. If they return to Gahadion they are molested by fanatics and sometimes recaptured by the priests."
Lanarck was silent. After all, it concerned him little how these people fared. They were beings of fantasy, inhabiting an imaginary planet. And yet, when he looked at Jiro, detachment became easier to contemplate than to achieve.
"And Isabel May is in Gahadion?"
Tiro's lips tightened. "No. She lives on the island. She is the Thrice-Adept, the High Priestess."
Lanarck was surprised. "Why did they make her High Priestess?"
"A month after she arrived, the Hierarch, learning of the woman whose hair was the color of night, even as yours, tried to take her to Drefteli, the Sacred Isle, as a slave. She killed him with her weapon. Then when the lightnings of Laoome did not consume her, it was known that Laoome approved, and so she was made High Priestess in place of the riven Hierarch."
The philosophy, so Lanarck reflected, would have sounded naive on Earth, where the gods were more covert in their supervision of human affairs.
"Is Isabel May a friend of yours-or your lover?" asked Jiro softly.
"Hardly."
'Then what do you want with her?"
"I've come to take her back to Earth," He looked dubiously across the ever-widening gap between the raft and his spaceboat. "That at least was my intention."
"You shall see her soon," said Jiro. She pointed to a long black galley approaching from the island. "The Ordained Ones. I am once more a slave."
"Not yet," said Lanarck, feeling for the bulk of his needle-beam.
The galley, thrust by the force of twenty long oars, lunged toward them. On the after-deck stood a young woman, her black hair blowing in the wind. As her features became distinct, Lanarck recognized the face of Cardale's photograph, now serene and confident
Isabel May, looking from the silent two on the raft to the wallowing spaceboat a quarter-mile distant, seemed to laugh. The galley, manned by tall, golden-haired men, drew alongside.
"So Earth Intelligence pays me a visit?" She spoke in English. "How you found me, I cannot guess." She looked curiously at Lanarck's somber visage. "How?"
"I followed your trail, and then explained the situation to Laoome."
"Just what is the situation?"
"'I'd like to work out some kind of compromise to please everyone."
"I don't care whether I please anyone or not."
"Understandable."
The two studied each other. Isabel May suddenly asked, "What is your name?"
"Lanarck."
"Just Lanarck? No rank? No first name?"
"Lanarck is enough."
"Just as you like. I hardly know what to do with you. I'm not vindictive, and I don't want to handicap your career. But ferrying you to your spaceboat would be rather quixotic. I'm comfortable here, and I haven't the slightest intention of turning my property over to you."
Lanarck reached for his needle-beam.
She watched him without emotion. "Wet needle-beams don't work well."
"This one is the exception." Lanarck blasted the figurehead from the galley.
Isabel May's expression changed suddenly. "I see that I'm wrong. How did you do it?"
"A personal device," replied Lanarck. "No I have to request that you take me to my spaceboat."
Isabel May stared at him a moment, and in those blue eyes Lanarck detected something familiar. Where had he seen eyes with that expression? On Fan, the Pleasure Planet? In the Magic Groves of Hycithil? During the raids on the slave pens of Starlen? In Earth's own macropolis Tran?
She turned and muttered to her boatswain, a bronzed giant, his golden hair bound back by a copper band. He bowed and moved away.
"Very well," said Isabel May. "Come aboard."
Jiro and Lanarck clambered over the carven gunwale. The galley swept ahead, foaming up white in its wake.
Isabel May turned her attention to Jiro, who sat looking disconsolately toward the island Drefteli. "You make friends quickly," Isabel told Lanarck. "She's very beautiful What are you planning for her?"
"She's one of your escaped slaves. I don't have any plans. This place belongs to Laoome; he makes all plans. I'm interested only in getting you out. If you don't want to come back to Earth, give me the document which you brought with you, and stay here as long as you like."
"Sorry. The document stays with me. I don't carry it on my person, so please don't try to search me."
"That sounds quite definite," said Lanarck. "Do you know what's in the document?"
"More or less. It's like a blank check on the wealth of the world."
"That's a good description. As I understand this sorry affair, you became angry at the treatment accorded your father."
"That's a very quiet understatement."
"Would money help soothe your anger?"
"I don't want money. I want revenge. I want to grind faces into the mud; I want to kick people and make their lives miserable."
"Still don't dismiss money. It's nice to be rich. You have your life ahead of you. I don't imagine you want to spend it here, inside Laoome's head."
"Very true."
"So name a figure."*
"I can't measure anger and grief in dollars."
"Why not? A million? Ten million? A hundred million?"
"Stop there. I can't count any higher."
"That's your figure."
"What good will money do me? They'll take me back to Nevada."
"No. I'll give you my personal guarantee of this."
"Meaningless. I know nothing about you."