From the mouth of the cave, he could see his ship, perched on a level plain of scorched ground. He was in no rush to get back to it. In six days the inscription was done, cut deeply and eternally into the rock.
The thought that had been bothering him as he stared at the grey granite finally came to the surface. The only people who would come to read it would be visitors from the stars. How would they decipher it? He stared at the inscription angrily. He should have written it in symbols. But what kind of symbols? Mathematics? Of course, but what would that tell them about Man? And what made him think they would discover the cave anyway? There was no use for an inscription when Man's entire history was written over the face of the planet, scorched into the crust for anyone to see. He cursed his stupidity for wasting six days working at the useless inscription. He was about to uncreate it when he turned his head, hearing footsteps at the mouth of the cave.
He almost fell off the chair getting to his feet.
A girl was standing there. He blinked rapidly, and she was still there, a tall, dark-haired girl dressed in a torn, dirty one-piece cover-all.
"Hi," she said, and walked into the cave. "I heard your hammer from the valley."
Automatically, he offered her his chair and created another for himself. She tested it gingerly before she sat down.
"I saw you do it," she said, "but I still don't believe it. Mirrors?"
"No," he muttered uncertainly. "I create. That is, I have the power to — wait a minute! How did you get here?" While he was demanding to know, he was considering and rejecting possibilities. Hidden in a cave? On a mountain-top? No, there would be only one possible way ...
"I was in your ship, pal." She leaned back in the chair and clasped her hands around one knee. "When you loaded up that cruiser, I figured you were going to beat it. I was getting tired of setting fuses eighteen hours a day, so I stowed away. Anybody else alive?"
"No. Why didn't I see you, then?" He stared at the ragged, beautiful girl, and a vague thought crossed his mind. He reached out and touched her arm. She didn't draw back, but her pretty face grew annoyed.
"I'm real," she said bluntly. "You must have seen me at the Base. Remember?"
He tried to think back to the time when there had been a Base — centuries ago, it seemed. There had been a dark-haired girl there, one who had never given him a tumble.
"I think I froze to death," she was saying. "Or into coma, anyhow, a few hours after your ship took off. Lousy heating system you have in that crate!" She shivered reminiscently.
"Would have used up too much oxygen," he explained. "Just kept the pilot's compartment heated and aired. Used a suit to drag supplies forward when I needed them."
"I'm glad you didn't see me," she laughed. "I must have looked like the devil, all covered with frost and killed, I bet. Some sleeping beauty I probably made! Well, I froze. When you opened all the compartments, I revived. That's the whole story. Guess it took a few days. How come you didn't see me?"
1 suppose I never looked back there," he admitted. "Quick enough, I found I didn't need supplies. Funny, I thought I opened all the compartments, but I don't really remember—"
She looked at the inscription on the wall. "What's that?"
"I thought I'd leave a sort of monument—"
"Who's going to read it?" she asked practically.
"No one probably. It was just a foolish idea." He concentrated on it. In a few moments the granite wall was bare. "I still don't understand how you could be alive now," he said puzzled.
"But I am. I don't see how you do that" — she gestured at the chair and wall — "but I'll accept the fact that you can. Why don't you accept the fact that I'm alive?"
"Don't get me wrong," the man said. "I want company very much, especially female company. It's just — turn your back."
She complied with a questioning look. Quickly he destroyed the stubble on his face and created a clean pair of pressed trousers and a shirt. Stepping out of his tattered uniform, he put on the new clothes, destroyed the rags, and, on an afterthought, created a comb and straightened his tangled brown hair.
"All right," he said. "You can turn back now."
"Not bad," she smiled, looking him over. "Let me use that comb — and would you please make me a dress? Size twelve, but see that the weight goes in the right places."
On the third attempt he had the thing right — he had never realized how deceptive the shapes of women could be — and then he made a pair of gold sandals with high heels for her.
"A little tight," she said, putting them on, "and not too practical without sidewalks. But thanks very much. This trick of yours really solves the Christmas-present problem, doesn't it?" Her dark hair was shiny in the noon sun, and she looked very lovely and warm and human.
"See if you can create," he urged, anxious to share his startling new ability with her.
"I've already tried," she said. "No go. Still a man's world-"
He frowned. "How can I be absolutely sure you're real?"
"That again? Do you remember creating me, master?" she asked mockingly, bending to loosen the strap on one shoe.
"I had been thinking — about women," he said grimly. "I might have created you while I was asleep. Why shouldn't my subconscious mind have as much power as my conscious mind? I would have equipped you with a memory, given you a background. You would have been extremely plausible. And if my subconscious mind did create you, then it would make certain that my conscious mind would never know."
"You're ridiculous!"
"Because if my conscious mind knew," he went on relentlessly, "it would reject your existence. Your entire function, as a creation of my subconscious, would be to keep me from knowing. To prove, by any means in your power, by any logic, that you were—•"
"Let's see you make a woman, then, if your mind is so good!" She crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair, giving a single sharp nod.
"All right." He stared at the cave wall and a woman started to appear. It took shape sloppily, one arm too short, legs too long. Concentrating harder, he was able to make its proportions fairly true. But its eyes were set at an odd angle; its shoulders and back were sloped and twisted. He had created a shell without brains or internal organs, an automaton. He commanded it to speak, but only gulps came from the shapeless mouth; he hadn't given it any vocal apparatus. Shuddering, he destroyed the nightmare figure.
"I'm not a sculptor," he said. "Nor am I God."
"I'm glad you finally realize that."
"That still doesn't prove," he continued stubbornly, "that you're real. I don't know what my subconscious mind is capable of."
"Make something for me," she said abruptly. "I'm tired of listening to this nonsense."
I've hurt her feelings, he thought. The only other human on Earth and I've hurt her. He nodded, took her by the hand, and led her out of the cave. On the flat plain below he created a city. He had experimented with it a few days back, and it was much easier this time. Patterned after pictures and childhood dreams of the Thousand and One Nights, it towered black and white and rose. The walls were gleaming ruby, and the gates were of silver-stained ebony. The towers were red-gold, and sapphires glittered in them. A great staircase of milky ivory climbed to the highest opal spire, set with thousands of steps of veined marble. There were lagoons of blue water, and little birds fluttered above them, and silver and gold fish darted through the still depths.