Roger Zelazny. Eye of cat --------------------------------------------------------------- Eye of cat I have learned hate. I have been waiting for the chance to escape, to track you as you once tracked me, to destroy you. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Now that we know what you are, amends can be made. The sun of my world has since gone nova. The world and all others of my kind are no more. How can you restore it to me? I cannot. Cat slammed against the field and sparks outlined his entire figure. Billy did not move. After a time, Cat drew back, shaking himself. He seemed smaller now, and his body coiled around and around upon itself, sinking into the ground. Finally, I will help you - for a price, Cat said. And what is that price? Your life. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either am the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- AVON BOOKS A division of Th Hearst Corporation 105 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10016 Copyright (C) 1982 by The Amber Corporation Cover art by Tim White Published by arrangement with the author Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93388 ISBN: 0-380-76002-9 All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Kirby McCauley, Ltd., 432 Park Avenue South, Suite 1509, New York, New York 10016. First Avon Books Printing: January l991 AVON TRADEMAAK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A. Printed in the U.S.A. ARC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FOR JOE LEAPHORN, JIMMY CHEE AND TONY HILLERMAN -------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART 1 At the door to the House of Darkness lies a pair of red coyotes with heads reversed. Nayenezgani parts them with his dark stag and comes in search of me. With lightning behind him, with lightning before him, he comes in search of me, with a rock crystal and a talking ketahn. Beyond, at the corners by the door of the House of Darkness, lie two red btuejays with heads reversed. With lightning behind him, with lightning before him, he parts them with his dark staff and comes in search of me. Farther, at the fire-pit of the Dark House, tie two red hoot-owls with heads reversed. He parts these with his stag and comes in search of me, with rock crystal and talking ketahn. At the center of the Darkness House where two red screech-owls lie with heads reversed, Nayenezgani casts them aside coming in search of me, lightning behind him, lightning before him. Bearing a rock crystal and a talking ketahn, he comes for me. From the center of the earth he comes. Farther... Evil-Chasing Prayer NIGHT, NEAR THE EASTERN edge of the walled, sloping grounds of the estate, within these walls, perhaps a quarter-mile from the house itself, at the small stand of trees, under a moonless sky, listening, he stands, absolutely silent. Beneath his boots, the ground is moist. A cold wind tells him that winter yields but grudgingly to spring in upstate New York. He reaches out and touches the dark line of a slender branch to his right, gently. He feels the buds of the fresh year's green, dreaming of summer beneath his wide, dark hand. He wears a blue velveteen shirt hanging out over his jeans, a wide concha belt securing it at his waist. A heavy squash blossom necklace - a very old one - hangs down upon his breast. High about his neck is a slender strand of turquoise heiche. He has a silver bracelet on his left wrist, studded with random chunks of turquoise and coral. The buttons of his shirt are hammered dimes from the early twentieth century. His long hair is bound with a strip of red cloth. Tall, out of place, out of time, he listens for that which may or may not become audible: indication of the strange struggle at the dark house. No matter how the encounter goes, he, William Blackhorse Singer, will be the loser. But this is his own thing to bear, from a force he set into motion long ago, a chindi which has dogged his heels across the years. He hears a brief noise from the direction of the house, followed immediately by a loud crashing. This does not end it, however. The sounds continue. From somewhere out over the walls, a coyote howls. He almost laughs. A dog, certainly. Though it sounds more like the other, to which he has again become accus- tomed. None of them around here, of course. William Blackhorse Singer. He has other names, but the remembering machines know him by this one. It was by this one that they summoned him. The sounds cease abruptly, and after a short while begin again. He estimates that it must be near midnight in this part of the world. He looks to the skies, but Christ's blood does not stream in the firmament. Only Ini, the bird of thunder among the southwestern stars, ready with his lightning, clouds and rain, extending his headplume to tickle the nose of Sas, the bear, telling him it is time to bring new life to the earth, there by the Milky Way. Silence. Sudden, and stretching pulsebeat by pulsebeat to fill his world. Is it over? Is it really over? Again, short barks followed by the howling. Once he had known many things to do, still knew some of them. All are closed to him now, but for the waiting. No. There is yet a thing with which to fill it. Softly, but with growing force, he begins the song. FIRST MAN WAS NOT EXACTLY jumping with joy over the dark underworld in which he was created. He shared it with eight other humans, and the ants and the beetles and later the locusts whom they encountered as they explored, and Coyote - the First Angry One, He- who-was-formed-in-the-water, Scrawny Wanderer. Every- one multiplied; and the dragonflies, the wasps and the bat people later joined them; and Spider Man and Spider Woman. The place grew crowded and was full of bugs. Strife ensued. "Let's get out of here," a number of them suggested. First Man, who was wise and powerful, fetched his trea- sures of White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone, Jet and the Red- White Stone. He placed the White Shell in the east and breathed upon it. Up from it rose a white tower of cloud. He placed the Turquoise to the south and breathed upon it. From it there rose a blue cloud tower. To the west he set the Abalone, and when he had breathed upon it a yellow cloud tower rose up in that place. To the north he set the Jet, and touched by his breath it sent up a black tower of cloud. The white and the yellow grew, met overhead and crossed, as did the blue and the black. These became the Night and the Day. Then he placed the Red-White Stone at the center and breathed upon it. From it there rose a many-colored tower. The tower to the east was called Folding Dawn; that to the south was called Folding Blue Sky; to the west, Folding Twilight; that to the north, Folding Darkness. One by one, Coyote visited each of them, changing his color to match their own. For this reason, he is known as Child of the Dawn, as Child of the Blue Sky, Child of the Twilight and Child of Darkness, along with all his other names. At each of these places, his power was increased. While the towers of the four cardinal points were holy, giving birth to the prayer rites, the central one bore all pains, evils and diseases. And it was this tower up which First Man and Coyote led the People, bringing them into the second world; and, of course, along with them, the evils. There they explored and they met with others, and First Man fought with many, defeating them all and taking their songs of power. But this also was a place of suffering, of misery, a thing Coyote discovered as he went to and fro in the world and up and down it. And so to First Man he took the pleas that they depart. First Man made a white smoke and blew it to the east, then swallowed it again - and the same in every direction. This removed all the evils from the world and brought them back to the People from whence they had come. Then he laid Lightning, both jagged and straight, to the east, and Rain- bow and Sunlight, but nothing occurred. He moved them to the south, the west and the north. The world trembled but brought forth no power to bear them upward. He made then a wand of Jet, Turrquoise, Abalone and White Shell. Atop this, he set the Red-White Stone. It rose and bore them upward into the next world. Here they met the many snakes, and Salt Man and Woman and Fire God. Nor should Spider Ant be forgotten. And light and darkness came up from the towers of the four colors, as in the other worlds. But then First Man set a streak of yellow and another of red and yellow in the east, and these halted the movement of the white light. And the People were afraid. Salt Man counseled them to explore in the east, but the streaks retreated as they ad- vanced. Then they heard a voice summoning them to the south. There they found the old man Dontso, called Messen- ger Fly, who told them what First Man had done. The yellow streak, he said, represented the emergence of the People; the other, vegetation and pollen, with the red part indicating all diseases. Then Owl and Kit Fox and Wolf and Wildcat came, and with them Horned Rattlesnake, who offered First Man the shell he carried on his head - and promises of offerings of White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone and Jet in the future. First Man accepted the shell and its magic and removed the streaks from the sky. The People then realized that First Man was evil. Coyote spied upon their counsels and reported to First Man that they knew he had stopped the light in the east to gain a treasure. When later they confronted him with it, First Man replied, "Yes. It is true, grandchildren. Very true. I am evil. Yet I have employed my evil on your behalf. For these offerings shall benefit all of us. And I do know when to withhold my evil from those about me." And he proceeded to prove this thing by building the first medicine hogan, where he shared with them his knowledge of things good and evil. HE REMEMBERED THE PARTY the night before he had found the coyote. Garbed in the rented splendor of a shimmering synthetic- fibered foursquare and blackrib Pleat 4, Ruffle evegarb, he had tripped through to the mansion in Arlington. Notables past and present filled the sparkling, high-ceilinged rooms. He was decidedly Past, but he had gone anyway, to see a few old friends, to touch that other life again. A middle-aged woman of professional charm greeted him, approached him, embraced him and spoke with him for half a minute in the enthusiastic voice of a newscaster, until a fresh arrival at his back produced a reflex pressure from her hand upon his arm, directing him to the side. Grateful, he moved off; accepting a drink from a tray, glancing at faces, nodding to some, pausing to exchange a few words, working his way to a small room he recalled Gem previous visits. He sighed when he entered. He liked the wood and iron, stone and rough plaster, books and quiet pictures, the single window with its uninterrupted view of the river, the fireplace burning softly. "I knew you'd find me here," she said, from her chair near the hearth. He smiled. "So did I - in the only room built during a lapse in tastelessness." He drew up a chair, seating himself near her but facing slightly past her toward the fire. Her heavy, lined face, the bright blue eyes beneath white hair, her short stocky figure, had not changed recently. In some ways she was the older, in others she was not. Time had played its favorite game - irony - with them both. He thought of the century-old Fon- tenelle and Mme. Grimaud, almost as old as he. Yet there was a gulf here of a different sort. "Will you go collecting again soon?" she asked him. "They've all the beasties they need for a while. I'm retired." "Do you like it?" "As well as anything." Her brows tightened in a small wince. "I can never tell whether it's native fatalism, world- weariness or a pose with you." "I can't either, anymore," he said. "Perhaps you're suffering from leisure." "That's about as exclusive as rain these days. I exist in a private culture." "Really. It can't be as bad as all that," she said. "Bad? Good and evil are always mixed up. It provides order." "Nothing else?" "It is easy to love what is present and desire what is absent." She reached out and squeezed his hand. "You crazy Indian. Do you exist when I'm not here?" "I'm not sure," he said. "I was a privileged traveler. Maybe I died and no one had the heart to tell me. How've you been, Margaret?" After a time, she said, "Still living in an age of timidity, I suppose. And ideas." He raised his drink and took a big swallow. "... Stale, flat and unprofitable," she said. He raised the glass higher, holding it to the light, staring through it. "Not that bad," he stated. "They got the vermouth right this time." She chuckled. "Philosophy doesn't change people, does it?" she asked. "I don't think so." "What are you going to do now?" "Go and talk with some of the others, I guess, have a few more drinks. Maybe dance a little." "I don't mean tonight." "I know. Nothing special, I guess. I don't need to." "A man like you should be doing something." "What?" "That's for you to say. When the gods are silent someone must choose." "The gods are silent," he said, finally looking into her bright ancient eyes, "and my choices are all used up." "That's not true." He looked away again. "Let it be," he said, "as you did before." "Don't " "I'm sorry." She removed her hand from his. He finished his drink. "Your character is your fate," she said at last, "and you are a creature of change." "I live strategically." "Maybe too much so." "Let it be, lady. It's not on my worry-list. I've changed enough and I'm tired." "Will even that last?" "Sounds like a trick question to me. You had your chance. If I've an appointment with folly I'll keep it. Don't try to heal my wounds until you're sure they're there." "I'm sure. You have to find something." "I don't do requests." "... And I hope it's soon." "I've got to take a little walk," he said. "I'll be back." She nodded and he left quickly. She would too, shortly. Later that evening his eyes suddenly traced a red strand in the rug and he followed it, to find himself near the trip-box. "What the hell," he said. He sought his hostess, thanked her and moved back to the transport unit. He pushed the coordinates, and as he entered he stumbled. Freeze frame on man falling. There was a time when the day light was night light. Black-god rode upon my right shoulder. Time spun moebius about me, as I sailed up Darkness Mountain in the sky. And the beasts, the beasts I hunted. When l called them they would come to me, out of Darkness Mountain. IT HAD SNOWED THE PREVIOUS night, dry and powdery, but the day had been unseasonably warm and much of it had melted. The sky was still clear as the sun retreated behind a dark rocky crest, and already the cold was coming back into the world, riding the wind that sighed among the pine trees. Silvery strings of sunlight marked the higher sinews of a mesa far to the right, its foot already aswirl with gray in the first tides of evening. At least there would be no snow tonight, he knew, and he could watch the stars before he closed his eyes. As he made his camp, the coyote limped after him, its left foreleg still bound. Tonight was the night to take care of that, too. He built his fire and prepared his meal, the pinon smoke redolent in his nostrils. By the time that it was ready the day was gone, and the mesa and the ridge were but lumps of greater darkness against the night. "Your last free meal," he said, tossing a portion of the food to the beast at his feet. As they ate, he remembered other nights and other camps, a long trail of them stretching back over a century. Only this time there was nothing to hunt, and in a way this pleased him. Drinking his coffee, he thought of the hundred-seventy years of his existence: how it had begun in this place, of the fairylands and hells through which he had taken it and how he had come - back. "Home," under the circumstances, would be more than an irony. He sipped the scalding brew from the metal cup, peopling the night with demons, most of whom now resided in San Diego. Later, with his hunting knife, he removed the dressing from the animal's leg. It remained perfectly still as he did this, watching. As he cut away at the stiff material, he recalled the day some weeks before when he had come upon it, leg broken, in a trap. There had been a time when he would have acted differently. But he had released it, taken it home with him, treated it. And even this, this long trek into the Carrizos, was for the purpose of turning it free at a sufficient distance from his home, with a full night ahead to tempt it into wandering back to its own world, rather than prolonging an unnatural association. He slapped its flank. "Go on. Run!" It rose, its movements still stiff, leg still held at an awk- ward angle. Only gradually did it lower the limb as it moved about the campsite. After a time, it passed into and out of the circle of firelight, remaining away for longer and longer periods. As he prepared his bedroll, he was startled by a buzzing noise. Simultaneously, a red light began winking on the small plastic case which hung from his belt. He switched o the buzzer, but the light continued to blink. He shrugged and put it aside, face down. It indicated an incoming call at his distant home. He had gotten into the habit of wearing the unit when he was near the place and had forgotten to remove it. He never wore the more elaborate version, however, and so was not equipped to answer the call from here. This did not seem important. It had been several years since he had received anything which might be considered an important call. Still, it troubled him as he lay regarding the stars. It had been a long while since he had received any calls at all. He wished now that he had either carried along the unit's other component or had not brought anything. But he was retired, his newsworthiness long vanished. It could not really be important.... ... He was traversing an orange plain beneath a yellow sky in which a massive white sun blazed. He was approach- ing an orange, pyramidal structure covered with a webwork of minute fractures. He drew near and halted, hurriedly setting up the projector. Then he commenced waiting, occa- sionally moving to tend another machine which produced a continuous record as the cracks grew. Time meant very little to him. The sun drifted slowly. Abruptly, one of the jagged lines widened and the structure opened. A wide-shouldered form covered with pink stubble rose up suddenly out of it, swaying, a raw, bristle-edged opening facing him forward of the bulbous projection at its top, beneath a dazzling red band of jewel-like knobs. He triggered the projector and a gleam- ing net was cast upon it. It struggled within it but could not come free. Its movements came to correspond with a faint drumming sound which might be his heartbeat. Now the entire world crashed and fell away and he was running, running into the east, younger self of his self, beneath a blue sky, past saltbush and sagebrush, clumps of scrub grass and chamisa, the sheep barely noting his passage, save for one which suddenly rose up, assuming all the colors of the dawn, swaying.... And then everything swam away on dark currents to the places where dreams dwell when they are not being used.... Birdnotes and predawn stasis: he was cast up onto the shoals of sleep, into a world where time hung flexed at the edge of light. Frozen. His emerging awareness moved slowly over preverbal landscapes of thought he had quitted long ago. Or was it yesterday? He awoke knowing that the call was important. He tended to his morning and removed all signs of his camp before the sun was fully risen. The coyote was nowhere in sight. He began walking. It had been a long time, too long for him to go further into the portent. His feelings, however, were another matter. He scrutinized them occasionally, but seldom exam- ined them closely. As he hiked across the morning, he considered his world. It was small again, as in the beginning, though this was a relative matter - relative to all the worlds he had traveled in. He moved now in the foothills of the Carrizo Mountains in Dinetah, the land of the Navajos, over twenty-five thousand square miles, much of it still grazing land, over a million and a half acres still wildland, bounded by the four sacred mountains - Debentsa in the north, Mount Taylor in the south, San Francisco Peaks in the west and Blanco Peak in the east, each with its stories and sacred meanings. Unlike many things he had known, Dinetah had changed only slowly, was still recognizable in this, the twenty-second century, as the place it had been in his boyhood. Returning to this land after so many years had been like traveling backward in time. Yet there were differences between this day and that other. For one, his clan had always been a small one, and now he found himself its last survivor. While it was true that one is born a member of one's mother's clan but in a sense is also born for one's father's clan, his father had been a Taoseno and there had been very little contact with the pueblo. His father - a tall, sinewy man, an unusually gifted tracker, with more than a little Plains blood - had come to live in Dinetah, as was proper, tending his wife's flocks and hoeing her corn, until the day a certain restlessness over- took him. Even so, it was not the lack of clan affiliation which had altered his life. A Navajo has great potential for personal contacts through the complex network of tribal interrelation- ships, so that even though all of the people he had known in his youth were likely dead, he might still find ready accep- tance elsewhere. But he had returned with an Anglo wife and had not done this. He felt a momentary pang at the thought, though more than three years had passed since Dora's death. It was more than that. A Navajo alone, on his own, away from the People, is said to be no longer a Navajo - and he felt that in a way this was true, though his mother, his grandmother and his great-grandmother were buried some- where near the place where he now lived. He knew that he had changed, changed considerably, during the years away. Yet so had the People. While the land was little altered, they had lost many of the small things he remembered, small things adding up to something large. Paradoxically, then, he was on the one hand of an earlier era than his contempo- raries, and on the other... He had walked beneath alien suns. He had tracked strange beasts, worthy of Monster- Slayer himself. He had learned the ways of the bellicanos and was not uncomfortable among them. There were de- grees after his name, some of them earned. There was a library in his head, held firmly in the trained memory of one who had studied the chants of yataalii. More traditional yet more alien he found himself. He wanted to be alone, what- ever he was. He broke into an easy jog, telling himself that its purpose was to get the cold out of his bones. He ran past walls and outcrops of granite and sandstone, hillsides of pinon and juniper. Dead yuccas, their leaves touched with ice, lay like burned out stars nailed to the ground along his trail. The snow glinted on distant mountain peaks beneath a perfectly clear sky. Even after the cold had left him, he maintained his pace, deriving a kind of joy from the exertion. The day wore on. He did not break his stride, however, until midmorning, when he halted for a brief meal upon a hillside commanding a long view down a narrow canyon where sheep grazed on dry grasses. In the distance, smoke rose from a conical, dirt-insulated hogan, its Pendleton-hung door facing him, there in the east. An old man with a stick came out from behind a cluster of rocks, where he might have been resting while watching the sheep. Limping, he took a circuitous path which eventually brought him near. "Ya'at'eeh," the man said, looking past him. "Ya'at'eeh." He asked the man to share his food, and they ate in silence for a time. After a while, he asked the man's clan - it would have been impolite to ask his name - and learned that he was of the Rabbit Redwater People. He always found it easier to talk with the older people than the younger ones, those who lived far out rather than near the cities. Eventually the man asked him his own clan. When he told him, the other grew silent. It is not good to talk of the dead. "I am the last," he finally said, wanting the other to understand. "I've been away a long time." "I know, I know the story of Star Tracker." He pushed down upon the crown of his wide-brimmed black hat as a gust of wind struck them. He looked back along the trail to the north. "Something follows you." Still smiling at the way the old man had named him without naming him, he turned his head and looked in that direction. A large ball of tumbleweed bounced and rolled along the foot of the hill. "Russian thistle," he said. "No," the other replied. "Something more dangerous." Despite his years, the fear of the chindi rose for a moment out of his youth. He shuddered beneath the touch of the wind. "I see nothing else," he said. "You have been gone for many years. Have you had an Enemyway?" "No." "Perhaps you should." "Perhaps I will. You know a good Enemyway singer?" "I am a singer." "Perhaps I will see you again on this before long." "I have heard that Star Tracker was a singer. Long ago." "Yes." "When you come by again we will talk more of these things." "Yes." The man looked back once more, along the trail. "In the meantime," he said, follow a twisted path.- "I will do that." Later, as he passed along the streaky blue shale and frozen crimson clay of a dry riverbed, naked cottonwoods flanking it like fracture lines against the cold blue of the sky, he thought of the old mas's words and the things of which they reminded him - of the sky creatures and water crea- tures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagina- tion - here in the season when the snakes and the thunder still slept. It had been a long while since he had considered his problems in the old terms. A chindi... Real or of the mind - what difference? Something malicious at his back. Yes, another way of looking at things... The day wore on to noon and past it before the butte near his home came into view, a high-standing wind-sculpture reminiscent of something he had once seen in a seaweed- fringed valley beneath the waters of an alien ocean. He halted again at this point to eat the rest of his rations. Nature had long moods in the Southwest, he reflected, as he looked off in that direction. While it was true that the land was little altered, there had been some change between the then and the now. He could just make out stands of blue spruce near the monolith's base, a tree he had not seen in this area a century and a half ago. But then the climate had also altered somewhat during the span, the winters becoming a trifle more clement, coming later, ending a bit sooner than they once had. He filled his pipe and lit it. Shadows like multitudes of fingers stretched slowly out of the west. To run all this way, then sit and rest when the end was in sight-it seemed the thing to do. Was he afraid? he wondered. Afraid of that damned call? Maybe that was it. Or did he want a last slow- moving view of this piece of his life before something happened to change it? There had been a song.... He could not remember it. When he felt that the time was proper he rose and began walking through the coolness and shadow toward the large, distant, six-sided house with the door to the east, his hogan that was not exactly a hogan. * * * The sky was darker by the time he reached the neighbor- hood of his dwelling, and the trees curtained off even more of the light, casting an as yet starless evening over the raised log-and-stucco structure. He wandered about it for several minutes before approaching from the east and mounting the rough-cut decking with which he had surrounded the place. He entered then and turned on the light. He had his own power supply, rooftop and below-ground. Moving to the central fogon, he arranged some kindling and struck it to fire. He disrobed then, tossing his Levi's and red-and-white flannel shirt into a hamper along with the rest of his clothing. Crossing to a tall, narrow stall, he entered and set the timer for a three-minute UHF shower. Water was not a thing to be expended lightly in this region. When he emerged, he drew on a buckskin shirt, khaki bush pants and a pair of soft moccasins. Activating his news recorder and display screen and ad- justing it to some of his general interests, he passed to the small, open kitchen area to the right and prepared a meal, amid hanging ristras of chilis and onions. He ate in a low, fur-covered chair and the walls about him were hung with rugs from Two Gray Hills and Ganado, interspersed with framed photographs of alien landscapes. A rack of weapons hung on the far wall; a meter-square metal platform enclosed by shining vertical bars of varying heights stood nearby, a large console with a display screen to its right. Its message light was still blinking. When he finished eating, he toyed with his belt unit and put it aside. He went to the kitchen and got a beer. DISK 1 CHILEAN QUAKES ABORTED TAXTONIES ARRESTED and three demonstrators were apprehended after report- edly setting fire to the car belonging to the official responsi- ble for the ruling PETROCEL DENIES PATENT INFRINGEMENT CLAIMS "GREW OUR OWN," DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH INSISTS A MILD SPRING FOR MUCH OF THE NATION EARLY FLOOD WATCHES IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY CHIMPANZEE COMPLAINS OF ART THEFT References to a drugged banana figured prominently in the bizarre statement taken today by Los Angeles detectives KILLED THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE THERE, MOTHER OF THREE EXPLAINS It's been a long time since you left me. Don't know what I'm gonna do. I look up at the sky and wonder - Earthlight always makes me think of you. COLUMBIA STUDENTS SKYDIVE FROM ORBIT TO SET NEW RECORD "Naturally the university is proud," Dean Schlobin re- marked, "but STRAGEAN AMBASSADOR CLOSETED WITH SECRETARY-GENERAL Stragean Ambassador Daltmar Stango and Consul Orar Bogarthy continue a second day of talks with Secretary- General Walford. Speculation on a breakthrough in trade- agreement negotiations runs high, but so far the news com- munity W. COAST DOLPHINS PRESS CLAIMS A-1 CANNING BELIEVED READY TO SETTLE BAKIN M BAWA PREDICTS END OF WORLD AGAIN I sip the beer and hear the music, Watch the ships as they arrive. You packed your bag and went away, love I feel like H-E-L-L5. CHURCH OF NATURAL LIFE RADICALS SUSPECTED IN SPERMOVA BANK BOMBING MAN SUES TO RECOVER FORMER PERSONALITY Relying on a district court order, Menninger officials performed BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA COMPUTER CHARGED WITH FELONY IN BONDS MANIPULATION SCANDAL Oh, I'm sittin' here and hurtin' In this slowly turnin' dive. If you ever want to reach me Just dial H-E-L-L5. hate somewhere he still exists and there is no force great enough to keep me from him forever it has taken a long while to learn the ways but soon i will be ready i am ready eight days and had i known then what i know now he would be gone i would be gone burned? burned they say? nevermore amid the slagheaps to chase the crawling tubes and crunch them for their juiciness? but this air too i breathe and only the jagged and the straight lightnings hold me here i know the way beyond them now and the trees outside the walls visions of cities the lesser ones bear i know the ways i know the forms wait the lesser ones' twisted minds tell me what i need one will come one day who will know of the one who is not like the others who still exists i will leave for that somewhere he exists eight days i died a little he will die wholly nothing can keep me from him forever i will talk first now i know of it words like the crawling things crunch them taste their juiciness strike now and see the lesser ones draw back now i know them i will use them words to tell him the why of it now i will be a sphere and roll about ha! lesser ones! p hate i will talk it that when tell it then eight days burned hate BACK WHEN NAYENEZGANI and his brother were in the process of disposing of the monsters the People had found in the new world, there were some - such as the Endless Serpent - who were, for various reasons, spared. Yet even these were tamed to a degree in their acknowledgement as necessary evils. The world was indeed becoming a safer place, though some few yet re- mained. There was, for instance, Tse'Naga'Hai, the Traveling Rock, which rolled after its victims to crush and devour them. Nayenezgani traveled on a rainbow and the crooked lightning in search of it. His brother having counseled him to take the magic knives with him, he had all eight of them about his person. When he came to the place called Betchil gai, he took out his two black knives, crossed them and planted them. Be- yond, he planted the two blue knives, crosswise. Farther along, he crossed the two yellow knives and planted them. Farther yet, he planted the two knives with the serrated edges, also crosswise. He moved then in sight of the giant Rock. "What are you waiting for, Tse'Naga'Hai?" he asked it. "Do you not pursue my kind?" With a crunching, grinding noise, the mossless boulder he had just addressed stirred. It moved slowly in his direction, gaining momentum noticeably after but a few moments. It almost took him by surprise with the speed with which it approached. But he whirled and raced away. It came on rapidly at his . back, gaining upon him. When he reached the place of the serrated knives, Nay- enezgani leaped over them. The Rock rolled across them and a big piece broke away. He continued to flee, jumping over the yellow knives. Tse'Naga'Hai rolled over them also, and another fracture occurred; more pieces fell away. By now, the Rock was bouncing from side to side and rolling in an irregular pattern. And when Nayenezgani leaped over the blue knives and the Rock crashed into them and bounced over, more pieces fell away. By now, its size was considerably reduced though its velocity was increas- ing. Nayenezgani sprang over the black knives. When he heard the Rock grating and cracking itself upon them, he turned. All that remained was a relatively small stone. He halted, then moved toward it. Immediately it swerved, altering its course to bound away from him. Now he pursued it into the west, beyond the San Juan River. Finally, there he caught it, and much of the life and wit seemed gone out of it. "Now, Tse'Naga'Hai," he said, "the power to harm me is gone from you, but you are not without a certain virtue I noted earlier. In the future you will serve to light the fires of the Dineh." He raised what remained of the Rock and bore it off with him to show to First Woman, who otherwise would not have believed what he had done. FINALLY HE SIGHED AND ROSE. He crossed to the console beside the area enclosed by the shining bars. He pushed the "Messages" button and the display screen came alive. EDWIN TEDDERS CALLED, it read, followed by the pre- vious day's date and the time - the time when his unit had signaled in the wilderness. Below, it listed six other attempts by Edwin Tedders to reach him, the most recent only a few hours ago. There was an eastern code and a number, and a request that he return the call as soon as possible, prefaced by the word URGENT. He tried to recall whether he had ever known an Edwin Tedders. He decided that he had not. He punched out the digits and waited. The buzzing which followed was broken, but the screen remained dark. "Yes?" came a crisp male voice. "William Blackhorse Singer," he said, "returning Edwin Tedders's call." "Just a moment, please." The words hurried and rose in pitch. "I'll get him." He tugged at a turquoise earring and regarded the blank screen. A minute shuffled its numbers on a nearby clock- display. Another... The screen suddenly glowed, and the heavily lined face of a dark-haired man with pale eyes appeared before him. His smile seemed one of relief rather than pleasure. "I'm Edwin Tedders," he said. "I'm glad we finally got hold of you, Mr. Singer. Can you come through right now?" "Maybe." He glanced at the gleaming cage to his left. "But what's this all about?" "I'll have to tell you in person. Please reverse the transfer charges. It is important, Mr. Singer." "All right. I'll come." He moved to his trip-box and began its activation. It whined faintly for an instant. Zones of color moved upward within the shafts. "Ready," he said, stepping into the unit. Looking down, he saw that his feet were growing dim. For a moment, the world was disarrayed. Then his thoughts fell back into place again. He was standing within a unit similar to his own. When he raised his head he looked out across a large room done up in an old-fashioned man- ner - dark paneled walls, heavy leather chairs, a Chinese rug, bookshelves filled with leatherbound volumes, drapes, a fireplace burning real logs. Two men stood facing him - Tedders, and a slight, blond man whose voice identified him as the one with whom he had first spoken. "This is Mark Brandes, my secretary," Tedders stated as he watched him step down. He inadvertently pressed his palm rather than clasping hands, in the old way of the People. Brandes looked puzzled but Tedders was already gesturing toward the chairs. "Have a seat, Mr. Singer." "Call me Billy." "All right, Billy. Would you care for a drink?" "Sure." -I have some excellent brandy." "That'll be fine." Tedders looked at Brandes, who immediately moved to a sideboard and poured a pair of drinks. "Early spring," Tedders said. Billy nodded, accepted his glass. "You've had a fascinating career. Both freezing and time- dilation effects kept you around till you could benefit from medical advances. A real old-timer, but you don't look it." Billy took a sip of his brandy. "This is very good stuff," he said. "Yes. Real vintage. How many trackers are there around these days?" "I don't know." "There are others, but you're the best. Old school." Billy chuckled. "What do you want?" he asked. Tedders chuckled also. "The best," he said. "What do you want tracked?" "It isn't exactly that." "What, then?" "It's hard to know where to begin...." Billy looked out the window, across the moon-flooded lawn. In the distance, the prospect was broken by a high wall. "I am a special assistant to Secretary-General Walford," Tedders finally stated. "He is here - upstairs - and so are the Stragean ambassador and consul - Stango and Bogarthy. Do you know much about the Strageans?" "I've met a few, here and there." "How'did they strike you?" He shrugged. "Tall, strong, intelligent... What do you mean?" "Would you want one for an enemy?" "No." "Why not?" "They could be very dangerous." "In what ways?" "They'd be hard to stop. They're shapeshifters. They have a kind of mental control over their bodies. They can move their organs around. They can -" "Walk through walls?" Billy shook his head. "I don't know about that. I've heard it said, but I've never -" "It's true. They have a training regimen which will pro- duce this ability in some of them. Semireligious, quite ardu- ous, takes years, doesn't always work. But they can produce some peculiar adepts." "Then you know more about it than I do." "Yes." "So why ask me?" "One of them is on her way here." Billy shrugged. "There are a few thousand around. Have been for years." Tedders sipped his drink; "They're all normals. I mean one of those with that special training." "So?" "She's coming to kill the Secretary-General." Billy sniffed his brandy. "Good that you got word," he finally said, "and can turn it over to the security people." "Not good enough." Throughout the conversation, Tedders had been struggling to obtain eye-contact. At last Billy was staring at him, and he felt some small sense of triumph, not realizing that this meant the man doubted what he was saying. "Why not?" "They're not equipped to deal with Stragean adepts," he said. "She could well be too much for them." Billy shook his head. "I don't understand why you're telling me about it." "The computer came up with your name." "In response to what?" "We'd asked it for someone who might be able to stop her." Billy finished his drink and set the glass aside. "Then you need a new programmer or something. There must be a lot of people who know more about Stragean adepts than I do." "You are an expert on the pursuit and capture of exotic life forms. You spent most of your life doing it. You practi- cally stocked the Interstellar Life Institute single-handed, You -" Billy waved his hand. "Enough," he said. "The alien you are talking about is an intelligent being. I spent much of my life tracking animals - exotic ones, to be sure, some very crafty and with tricky behavior patterns - but animals nevertheless, not creatures capable of elaborate planning." Cat... "... So I don't see that my experience is really applicable in this situation," he concluded. Tedders nodded. "Perhaps, and perhaps not," he said at last. "But in a matter like this we should really be certain. Will you talk with the Stragean representatives who are visiting here? They can probably give you a clearer picture than I can." "Sure. I'll talk to anybody." Tedders finished his drink and rose. "May I get you another of those?" "All right." He replenished the snifter. Then, "I'll be back in a few minutes," he said, and he moved off to the right and de- parted the room. Billy set down the glass and rose. He paced the room, regarded the titles on the bookshelves, felt the volumes' spines, sniffed the air. Mingled with the smell of old leather, a faint, almost acrid aroma he had not been able to place earlier came to him again, a scent he had experienced upon meeting Strageans in the past, in another place. They must have been about this building for some time, he decided, or have been in this room very recently, to mark it so with their presence. He remembered them as humanoid, over two meters in height, dark-skinned save for silvery faces, necks and breasts; flat-headed, narrow-waisted beings with wide shoulders, collarlike outgrowths of spiny material which served as sound-sensors and small, feral eyes, slitted, usu- ally yellow but sometimes cinnamon or amber in color; hairless, graceful in a many-jointed, insectlike way, they moved quietly and spoke a language that reminded him vaguely of Greek, which he did not understand either. It is language, he decided, that sets the sentients apart from the animals. Isn't it? Cat...? He moved to the window, stared out across the lawn. Difficult to cross there without being detected, he con- cluded, with even the simplest security devices in operation. And this place must have plenty. But she could assume almost any guise, could penetrate the place in an innocuous form.... Why be furtive, though? That is what they would be expecting. While the defenders were concentrating on the sophisticated, why not hijack a heavy vehicle, come barrel- ing across the lawn, crash through a wall, jump down from the cab and start shooting everything that moves? He shook himself and turned away. This was not his problem. There must be plenty of people more qualified than himself to second-guess the alien, no matter what the com- puter said. He returned to his chair and took up his drink. Footsteps were approaching now from the direction in which Tedders had departed. Footsteps, and the soft sound of voices, accompanied by a faint ringing in his ears. The language of the Strageans ranged into the ultrasonic on the human scale, and though they narrowed their focus when speaking Terran tongues there were always some overtones. Too long a conversation with a Stragean normally resulted in a head- ache. He took another drink and lowered the glass as they rounded the corner. The two Strageans wore dark blue kilts and belts which crossed their breasts like bandoliers. Ornamental pins or badges of office were affixed to these latter. Between Ted- ders and the aliens walked another man, short, heavy, with just a fringe of dark hair; his eyes were jadelike under heavy brows; he wore a green robe and slippers. Billy recognized him as UN Secretary-General Milton Walford. Tedders introduced him to Daltmar Stango and Orar Bo- garthy as well as to Walford. Everyone was seated then, and Tedders said, "They will tell you more about this." Billy nodded. The Stragean known as Daltmar Stango, staring at nothing directly before him, recited: "It has to do with the coming of your people to stay on our world. There is already a sizable enclave of them there, just as there is of our kind here on Earth. There has been very little trouble on either world because of this. But now, with my present mission to negoti- ate political and trade agreements, it appears that the settle- ments will become permanent diplomatic posts." He paused but a moment, as if to refocus his thoughts, and then continued: "Now, there is a small religious group on Strage which believes that when Terrans die there, their life essences foul the place of the afterlife. Permanent posts will guarantee that this group's fears will be realized with in- creasing frequency as time goes on. Hence, they are against any agreements with your people, and they would like all of them off our world." "How large a group are they?" Billy asked. "Small. Fifty to a hundred thousand members, at most. It is not their size which is important, though. They are an austere sect, and many of them undertake a severe course of training which sometimes produces spectacular effects in the individual." "So I've heard." "One such individual has taken it upon herself to correct matters. She commandeered a vessel and set a course for Earth. She feels that an assassination at this level will disrupt our negotiations to the point where there will be no treaty - and that this will lead to the withdrawal of Terrans from our world." "How close is she to the truth?" "It is always difficult to speculate in these matters, but it would certainly slow things down." "And she's due to arrive in a few days?" "Yes. We received the information from other members of her sect, and they could not be more precise. They did not learn the story in its entirety until after her departure, when they informed the authorities. They were anxious that it be known she was acting on her own initiative and not under orders." Billy smiled. "Who can say?" he said. "Yes. At any rate, since a message can travel faster than a ship, the warning was sent." "You must know best how to stop one of your own people." "The problem seldom occurs," Daltmar said. "But the customary method is to set a team of similarly endowed adepts after a wrongdoer. Unfortunately..." "Oh." "So we must make do with what is at hand," the alien went on. "Your people will try to intercept her in space, but projections only give them a twenty-seven percent chance of success. Have you any ideas?" Cat? "No," Billy replied. "If it were a dangerous animal, I'd want to study it in its habitat for a time." "There is no way and no time." "Then I don't know what to tell you." Walford produced a small parcel from the pocket of his robe. "There is a chip in here that I want you to take back with you and run through your machine," he said. "It will tell you everything we know about this individual and about others of that sort. It is the closest thing we can give you to a life study." Billy rose and accepted the package. "All right," he said. "I'll take it home and run it. Maybe something will suggest itself." Walford and the others rose to their feet. As Billy turned toward the transporter, the Stragean called Orar Bogarthy spoke. "Yours is one of the aboriginal peoples of this continent?" he said. "Yes," Billy replied, halting but not turning. "Have the jewels in your earlobes a special significance? Religious, perhaps?" Billy laughed. "I like them. That's all." "And the one in your hair?" Billy touched it as he turned slowly. "That one? Well... it is believed to protect one from being struck by lightning." "Does it work?" "This one has. So far." "I am curious. Being struck by lightning is not the most common occurrence in life. Why do you wear it?" "We Navajos have a thing about lightning. It destroys taboos. It twists reality. Not a thing to fool around with." He turned away, moved ahead, punched a series of num- bers, stepped up into the unit. He glanced up at the expres- sionless humans and aliens as the delay factor passed and his body began to melt. Traveling the distance from hill to hill, passing from place to place as the wind passes, trackless. There should be a song for it, but I have never learned the words. So I sing this one of my own making: I am become a rainbow, beginning there and ending here. I leave no mark upon the land between as I arc from there to here. May I go in beauty. May it lie before, behind, above and below, to the right and the left of me. I pass cleanly through the gates of the sky. WE CALL IT THE ENEMYWAY, the old man said, but the white people came along and started calling it a squaw danc - probably because they saw the women dancing for it. You get a special name if you're the one they're going to sing over, a warrior's name. It's a sacred name you're just supposed to use in ceremonials, not the kind you go around telling everybody or just letting people call you by. It all started, he said, back when Nayenezgani was pro- tecting the People. He killed off a whole bunch of monsters that were giving us a hard time. There was the Horned Monster and Big God and the Rock Monster Eagle and the Traveling Rock and a lot of others. That was why he got to be called Monster-Slayer. His fourth monster, though, was called Tracking Bear. It was a bear, but it looked more like a lion the size of a floatcar. Once it came across your tracks, it would start following them and it wouldn't stop until it had found you and had you for dinner on the spot. Nayenezgani went out and tracked the tracker and then let it track him. But when it finally found him, he was ready. He wasn't called Monster-Slayer for nothing. When it was all over, the world was that much safer. But at about that time, it started to get to him. He suffered for it because of all those enemies he killed, and the bear just added another one to their band. Their spirits followed him around and made him pretty miserable. This is where the word Anaa'ji, for the Enemyway, comes from. Naayee' means an enemy, or something really bad that's bothering you. Now, neezghani means "he has gotten rid of it," and ana'i means an enemy that's been gotten rid of. So Anaa'ji is probably really the best word to call it by. It's a ceremony for getting rid of really bad troubles. HE PACED. THE SCREEN STILL glowed. He had not turned off the unit after viewing the chip. The walls seemed to lean toward him, to press in upon him. The wind was singing a changing song he almost understood. He paused at various times, to inspect an old basket, an ancient flaked spear point, the photograph of a wild landscape beneath an indigo sky. He touched the barrel of a high-powered rifle, took the weapon into his hands, checked it, replaced it on its pegs. Finally he turned on his heel and stepped outside into the night. He stood upon the decking which surrounded the hogan. He peered into the shadows. He looked up at the sky. "I have no words..." he began, and a part of his mind mocked the other part. He was, as always, conscious of this division. When it had first occurred he could no longer say. "... But you require an answer." He was not even certain what it was that he addressed. The Navajo language has no word for "religion." Nor was he even certain that that was the category into which his feelings fell. Category? The reason there was no word was that in the old days such things had been inextricably boun