A World Out of Time

toward the female," Gording panted.

Corbell looked back and saw something wheat-colored bounding through the tall wheat. A glance at the old man made him say, "You'll wear yourself... out. We'll have... to fight."

They stopped, blowing.

The female's caution gave them time to breathe. She stalked out of the wheat to find them facing her like statues of athletes, eight feet apart. She roared. They didn't flinch. She thought it over. She roared again. Corbell stood poised, confident, happy.

The female departed. Twice she looked back, thought it over, and kept going.

Corbell walked now with a silly smile plastered across his face. He couldn't help it. Everytime he let his face relax it came back. Any normal pair of men would have been bragging unmercifully; but Gording clearly considered the incident closed. He didn't even show relief at Corbel's competence... which was flattering, in a way.

Finally Corbell said, "Real lions would have torn us up. Why are there so many small versions of big animals?"

"Are there?"

"Yeah. Lions, elephants, buffalo. There must have been about ten thousand Jupiter years of famine here, before the soil turned fertile. The big animals must have starved faster. Or maybe they died of heat prostration: too much volume, not enough surface."

"I believe you. I look at you and I see a different kind of dikt. We have had time to adapt to reddened sunlight and long days and long nights. Animals and plants and dikta... and Boys adapted through the dikta. If Uranus widens the world's path now, it will all be lost."

"I know."

"Are you ready to face Mirelly-Lyra?"

"Yeah." Corbell shivered, though the morning was not especially cool. It would get cooler. Corbell tried to visualize six years of night- and saw Mirelly-Lyra stalking him in the dark. He said, "It'd be nice if we could find dikta immortality before we meet her. She'd do damn near anything for that."

"If we ever find it, my turn comes first."

Corbell laughed. "There's bound to be enough of it. Otherwise it would have been... guarded."

"Why did you pause?"

"Guarded. The hospital vault in Sarash-Zillish wasn't guarded. Were the Boys that sure a dilct couldn't get to it? It looked just like the other vault except for the guard systems, the vault door and the one-way prilatsil and the armored glass cubicles in the roof."

"What of it? What if one dikt or three found dikta immortality? The guarded chamber in Four City was protected from dikta by dikta who owned it, or so you assumed."

"I was wrong. Four City was old, but not like Parhalding. More like Sarash-Zillish. I think the Boys built Four City."

The trees were closer now. Fruit trees. Corbell was hungry. He shrugged that off. He had the tail end of something...

Ashes of a dying fire. Most of it comes out in the feces and urine but not all of that; urea can build up in the joints and cause gout. Cholesterol can build up in the veins and arteries. But even when all these are washed away... there are still the inert molecules that accumulate in the cell itself.

Picture the miracle that can remove those. Now tell me what it looks like.

"There was nothing to guard!"

"I don't under-"

"There was nothing to guard in Sarash-Zillish. I had it turned around. Heeeyaa! I've got it! Dikta immortality!"

Gording backed away a bit. "You had it once before. What fierce beast is to bite me this time?"

"I don't have to say. I made a fool of myself once. Not this time. Come on." The trees were close and Corbell was hungry.

IV

Corbell walked alone through the streets of Sarash-Zillish. His face itched. His scalp itched. His chest itched. He was trying to ignore an acid stomach.

How did loners walk? He'd seen only one loner close enough to tell. That one had been certain of welcome; his walk had been springy and confident, Boyish. Corbell tried to keep his walk springy and confident.

The windows of Sarash-Zillish were dark. The streets were empty and silent. This whole charade could turn out to be u

They had filled their bellies with fruit in the forest outside Sarash-Zillish. There Corbell had used the head of the broken spear to shave his face and his chest and four inches of his scalp around a topknot. Gording had cut away his long white hair. Gording had shaved too, for all the good that would do; there were white-haired albino Boys, but they didn't move like their joints hurt.

Laughing, joking Boys spilled out of a probable department store. Corbell turned a corner to avoid them, just like a loner would, maybe. At a distance he should pass as a loner. Close up, no chance. Dikta immortality be damned, he was no twelve-year-old. He wished Gording were beside him; but that would have torn it. Two was just the wrong number to pass.

The brush clogging the street thickened. Corbell waded into it. Here were tangled vines rising almost vertically to a wall. Corbell turned along its length.

The wall, he found, had a gentle curve to it. Probably it formed a circle or an ellipse. Here there was a break, and near the break the shrubbery thickened and grew taller, as if the park spilled out through the opening. Corbell passed it and kept going. There were park sounds: tree limbs rustling in the breeze, small birds whistling, a sudden loud squawk followed by (Corbell jumped) a burst of laughter. Boys! Boys on the other side of the wall. And the wall opened ahead of him.

Beyond the opening, a twelve-foot Christmas ornament floated above knee-deep vines.

Corbell thought it through. Then, within sight of the car, he began searching for a straight sapling. Most of the bushes were of the wrong kind, but he found one that would do, even if it was a bit short. He hacked at the base with the truncated spear until he could break it loose. He sat down cross-legged...

What was keeping Gording?

Gording was well behind him, tracking him. If anyone noticed, two loners happened to be moving in the same direction, their target a reasonable one: the park.

Squatting cross-legged, Corbell disengaged the spearhead from the broken haft and used it to shave the sapling. He barely glanced up as Boys came wading through the tangle in what had been a park gate: two, five, ten Boys with a giant turkey carcass slung on poles. Where were they going with that? A kitchen in a nearby building? Effete, that was. He heard a louder voice followed by a pause, and, judging that he had been hailed, he glanced up, held a gri

The new halt was shaping nicely. He tried the end against the spearhead. A bit too big. He'd shave it down a little and carve a notch and wedge it in. The rushing of the Boys diminished, moving across the street, but two quiet, puzzled voices were speaking too near him. He glanced up under lowered brows.

They were near, and looking at him as they talked. The car was- Gording was crouched behind the car!

How had he gotten there? Corbell hadn't heard a sound. He must have spotted the car, gone over the wall, circled inside the park and gone over the wall again. Now he crouched, immobile, but looking guilty as hell if anyone should see him.

The tall Boy with hair like a black puffball hailed Corbell again. "Perfunctory apologies because we interrupt. May we examine your work?"

Corbell unfolded his legs and slowly stood up, then sprinted for the car.

The door was open as he had left it. By that much did the Boys fail to intercept him. Gording was ahead of him, sliding in the other door. Corbell slammed his door and clung to the handle, leaning back to hold it shut, while Gording jabbed at the keyboard.