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_You are damned right I do, and I will act to preserve it_.
_Good. The estimate I gave you concerning his life expectancy might be several months off_.
_I will be judicious in acting upon it. --Tell me more of Morwin_.
_He is troubled_.
_Aren't we all?_
_He will be landing soon and coming by. It seems that his mind is invaded by fears given there by people of the place that you hate_.
_Likely. He lives among them_.
He only glanced at the vision of his world.
He had activated the Screens which showed him much of the Earth, to while away a few minutes. He shut them down because the changed map bored him. Living beside a volcano, simply because the site had once meant something, had accustomed him to the worst that the screens could show. It still meant something to him, but there was little he could do to change the landscape. Now he followed the trail of the ship and watched Morwin emerge.
Fixing a tracer on the man, he primed several weapons systems.
This is ridiculous, he decided. There must be somebody a man can trust.
He observed Morwin's progress all the way to his gate, however; and followed him with a hover-globe that could pour fiery death in an instant.
The space-armored figure halted and looked upward. Fracture lines crossed the globe. Malacar struck the recall button on his massive Weapons Console.
A white light blinked, and he turned a dial, bringing in words and static:
"I'm just here to say 'Hi,' sir. If you want me to go away, I will."
He touched Broadcast.
"No. Come on in. It's just the old precaution business."
But he tracked Morwin every step of the way, feeding the movement patterns into his battle computer. He X-rayed him, weighed him, determined his heartbeat rate, blood pressure and electroencephalographic indices. He fed this data to another computer which analyzed it and routed it back to the battle computer.
_Negative_, was the reading, as he had expected it to be.
_Shind? What do you read?_
_I would say that he is just stopping by to say "Hi," sir_.
_Okay_.
He opened the front gate of his fortress and the artist entered.
Morwin moved into the massive front hail. He seated himself upon a drifting divan.
Stripping, Malacar stepped into a screen of hazes that bathed him and shaved him as he passed. Moving to a closet, he dressed quickly, concealing only the ordinary weapons on his person.
He tubed then to ground level and entered the main hall of his fortress.
"Hello," he said. "How are you?"
Morwin smiled.
"Hello. WThat were you shooting at when I came down, sir?"
"Ghosts."
"Oh. Hit any?"
"Never. --It's a pity that all Earth's vineyards are dead, but I still have a good supply of their squeezings. Would you care for some?"
"That would be fine."
Malacar crossed to a wine chest, poured two glasses, passed one to Morwin, who had followed him.
"A toast to your health. Then di
"Thank you."
They touched glasses.
He stood. He stretched. Better. Much better.
He tested his legs, his arms. There were still painful spots, cramped muscles. These he massaged. He brushed at his clothing. He moved his head from side to side.
Then he crossed the shed and peered out through its grimy window.
The lengthening shadows. The end of day once again.
He laughed.
For an instant, a sad blue countenance seemed to swim before his sleep-spotted eyes.
"Sorry," he said; and then he moved to sit upon a box while he waited for the night.
He felt the power singing in his sores, and in a new, unhealed lesion which had occurred on the back of his right hand.
It was good.
Deiling of Digla meditated, as was his custom, while awaiting the ringing of the tidal bell. His eyes half-lidded, he nodded, there on his balcony, not really seeing the ocean he faced.
The event had been one for which his training in the priesthood had not really prepared him. He had never heard of a similar occurrence, but then it was an ancient and complicated religion wherein he held his ministry.
It was inconceivable that the matter had not been called to the attention of the Names. Traditionally, the lighting was a galaxy-wide phenomenon.
But the Names were strangely indifferent to the doings of their own shrines. Generally, the Name-bearers only communicated with one another on matters of worldscaping, in which nearly all of them engaged.
Would it be impertinent for him to submit an inquiry to one of the Thirty-one Who Lived?
Probably.
But if they were truly unaware, they should be advised. Should they not?
He pondered. For a long while, he pondered.
Then, with the ringing of the tidal bell, he rose and sought the communications unit.
It was unfair, he decided. It was what he had wanted, and it was appropriate, so far as he was now concerned. But the intention had been lacking at the time of the act, and this took away a taste which would have been far sweeter upon his lips.
He moved through the streets of Italbar. There were no lights. There was no movement beneath those blazing stars.
He tore down a quarantine sign, stared at it, ripped it across. He let the pieces fall to the ground and walked on.
He had wanted to come in the night, touching door handles with his wounds, ru
Where were they now? Dead, evacuated, dying. The town bore no resemblance to what he had seen that first evening, from the hilltop, when his intentions had been far different.
He regretted that he had been their agent of destruction by accident rather than by design.
But there would be other Italbars--worlds, and worlds filled with Italbars.
When he passed the corner where the boy had shaken his hand, he paused to cut himself a staff.
When he passed the place where the man had offered him a lift, he spat.
Having led a solitary life for so many years, he felt that he could see man's basic nature far, far better than those who had dwelled in cities all their lives. Seeing, he could judge.
Clutching his staff, he passed out of the town and into the hills, the wind tumbling his hair and beard, the stars of Italbar in his eyes.
Smiling he went.
Malacar stretched his arsenal arms and legs and stifled a yawn.
"More coffee, Mr. Morwin?"
"Thank you, Commander."
"... So, the CL is thinking of further hostilities and they want to use me as an excuse? Very good."
"That's not exactly the way it was put to me, sir."
"It amounts to the same thing."
Too bad I ca
_He is thinking of it now_, said Shind.
_What else is he thinking?_
_Whatever the information I feared, it is not foremost in his mind. Or if it is, I do not recognize it as such_.
"Mr. Morwin, there is a favor I would like to ask of you."
"What is it, sir?"
"It concerns those dream-globe things that you make ..."
"Yes?"
"I'd like you to make me one."
"I'd be only too happy. But I don't have my equipment with me. If I had known you were interested, I could have brought the gear along. But--"
"I understand, in principle, what it is that you do. I believe that my laboratory facilities would be sufficient for us to work something out."