Chapter VI

He was back. The roar of the crowd and the fire and the hideous 'poot-poot-poot' of the alarm filled his consciousness. He was stumbling forward into the pitchy blackness of the tunnel under the building. He could see a man a hundred feet ahead scrambling up to the walkway, illumined only by the glare from the tunnel mouth. Suddenly brightness bloomed beside the man and the golden form of a god cradled the man's body like a child, rose four or five feet into the air, and faded abruptly into nothingness. The tunnel was dark and empty ahead.

Herl turned and strode back toward the mouth of the tunnel. Just under the sheltering edge he paused to look out at the mob and to judge whether another part of the building were about to fall.

The throng was now a series of rings of luridly red wild-faced beings linked together at the elbows, swaying this way and that, howling in unison, "Burn the records! No more Eyefers! Burn the records! No more Eyefers!"

Hovering over the heads of the chanters, Herl could see at least half a dozen great yellow lights which he took to be gods watching the doings.

"Some sense of humor," he said to himself, as he leaned out of the shelter to look up.

The searing redness of the fire faded before his eyes to the cooler radiance of Abigail; and he was looking up at her where she hung near the ceiling of the _Krylla's_ cabin.

"They don't think it's funny at all," she replied reproachfully, as if he had addressed his last remark to her. "They are simply preventing accidents. Being trampled to death is not really a joke." This in a minor cadence of muted violins.

"But don't the Eyefers intend death and destruction to the non-Eyefers? That fire is no joke, either."

"No one will be hurt, as I told you. The Eyefer Plan calls only for the destruction of the records. They burned all the individual permits they could find before they left the houses. Now they burn the files. Nobody could tell an Eyefer from anybody else without the papers; and papers burn." She sounded quite pleased.

"Are you gods in on this?" Herl sat frustratedly on the edge of the desk. "Why didn't you just vanish the papers years ago?"

"We only help when people are sure they know what they want to do. The Eyefers had to be ready. After that they will do as they please and as they can and must."

"But you are involved in this revolt somehow," he frowned, "and why should this uprising come just when I arrive?"

"You are a catalyst," she giggled, a peal of tiny sleighbells, and drifted down toward the pilot chair. "And we are just preventing the Eyefers from being sorry for their plan as we prevented the civies from being sorry for theirs. The civies made a mistake and we are saving them from it." She laughed again. "They frown at people who are saved from their mistakes by 'supernatural agencies' so the Eyefers will save them."

Herl was ready to ask how he was a catalyst, but the words 'supernatural agencies' reminded him of Crawford and his own cases resting on the stalled carpter.

"My cases," he said. "I've got to get them back here. Take me back again, Abby." His thought continued that he would get a chance to see more of the fight, that had been brewing for decades.

"I'll bring them to you," she assented, resting lightly in the chair. "This isn't your squabble."

"But you said I was involved--as a catalyst at least."

"The reaction is self-sustaining now."

"But you don't know where the carpter is," he objected hopefully.

"You do ... so I do." The cases were on the table in front of him.

"What am I supposed to do now? Wait till Crawford calls to say all deals are off?" Herl remarked irritated. Who did the girl think she was, refusing like an over-solicitous mother to let him get back to the riot?

"Yes. Mr. Crawford won't be able to call you till the power is restored about noon tomorrow. And it will be months before he knows what he wants to order. What you do is your own will, of course. I can't penetrate that unless you can. I'm going back to the fire to help there. I'll see you again unless you decide to blast off before I come back."

Herl grabbed for her bare shoulders where they shone a mere yard in front of him. "You're not going back without me!" he stormed but she was quite gone before the sentence was complete, leaving him in the utter darkness of an unillumined cabin.

He found the back of the chair, seated himself, touched the light switch. He was indeed alone in the cabin. The heavy cases sat smug on the motionless table. He felt numb, aware only of an unwillingness to move and of the futility of trying to get back to the city if he was only to find himself back in the _Krylla_ if he did. "Damned interfering female," he muttered disgustedly, "I'll show her!" All he had to do, she'd said, was blast off. Why not?

He switched on the phone, still set for the control tower.

"Class M ship _Krylla_ on the field, calling control tower," he articulated crisply.

There was no response.

"Class M Ship," he repeated impatiently, "calling control tower. Come in tower!"

There was no carrier hum from his receiver. The thing seemed dead. He activated the viewscreen above the instrument panel and adjusted the angle for a full sight of the tower.

The tower was there, all right, a black hulk against the slightly luminous night sky, unlighted, solid, a mere chunk of construction.

"Hanh! Power's off, of course," Herl said aloud. Well, that meant nobody else would try to land here, so takeoff should be safe if he wanted to do his own manipulating out of the atmosphere.

But he'd have to leave some sort of message for Crawford, he realized. He swivelled the chair and regarded the cases of film and wire blankly. His job was coordination, not dashing off on a mad into space. He calculated quickly ... twenty-two, twenty-three hours till daylight; then maybe another ten hours or so till the power was restored and he could talk to Crawford ... if Crawford would talk to him ... if Crawford still had any power to negotiate extra-planetary purchases. And if Crawford didn't, he, Herl, would have to wait around till somebody did have the authority. Wait, wait, wait!

Every muscle in Herl's body seemed taut to the breaking point. He couldn't just sit and wait thirty-two hours for the privilege of waiting till the Eyefers formed a government and got ready to bargain! He jumped hopefully for an instant at the thought of walking the eighty miles to town. He could probably do that in thirty-two hours. Only to have that woman catch up to him when he was halfway there and plump him back in this ship.

* * * * *

A metallic clanging against the skin of the ship brought him to his feet. He moved to the inner lock door and opened it slowly, noiselessly. Maybe the Eyefers had got control of the tower already!

Bang! Bang! the hammering continued. Not power hammering, more like knocking.

Herl let the outer lock open a fraction of an inch toward him. The voice from outside filled the lock with its bellow. "Hey! Anybody in here? Hey, Captain."

It was the tower man of the first long wait.

"What d'you want?" Herl asked suspiciously, shoulder against the lock door.

"It's Saem Berry. I need help. Power's off, Joe Alco's gone, twenty-five hours mail is due in anytime. May try to land right on top of us! You got a radio!"

"Sure," Herl's suspicions faded. "Come in." He opened the lock wide and gave the heavy man a hand up. "Want me to try to contact the mail, huh?"

"Yeah. But you better let me talk to them." The towerman followed Herl to the chair, adding the necessary instructions for calling the mail ship.

Herl sat down and got to work.

Within five minutes the ship had been re-routed back to its last port of call and Herl and Saem were relaxing over cups of haffy Herl had opened in the galley. Saem tipped back in the pilot chair to reflect on the state of things in the city, which Herl had given him in bits and pieces as he relayed it to the oncoming mail ship.

"Well, Captain, I might as well get back to the tower and wait it out unless you're willing to have me here for company, that is. There's no other ship due till about morning."

"I'd be glad to have you stay," Herl said hesitantly, "but I haven't decided just what to do myself. I don't suppose Crawford and the commissioners will be in any position to trade now; and I'm not too hopeful about trying to deal with an irresponsible gang like those Eyefers. I could probably get back this way in, say, a couple of years when things have settled down and they know what they need." His voice was nonchalant, but with an undercurrent of eagerness for an excuse to be gone.

"I wouldn't be in any hurry, son," Saem assured him, taking a deep swig of haffy. "I don't think the Eyefers will try to run things at all. Not only out of the habit, but they don't want to. They'd have everything to lose by not using the present trade and power set-ups. All they want is jobs and justice."

"And no questions asked?" Herl frowned. "You sound as if you approved of this revolt."

"Why not?" Saem demanded truculently. "I had a kid all trained to take over the second day shift ... best radioman I ever had. When his mother went Eyefer they jerked him out of here to a bobbin job in the mills so fast I had to work twenty-two hours a day for a month before I got a replacement. I approve of anything that'll put a stop to such stupidity."

Herl squirmed, pursed his lips. "You think I'd better stay, then?"

"Well, why not wait for that goddess to come back? She'll have a report on what's going on and you can make up your mind then. She can give you better advice than I could." The shock-headed Saem set his empty cup down on the desk with a smack. "Got another of those?" he gestured at the cup.

"Blast the haffy, man! This calls for something better than that." Herl jumped down from the table. "I've got a bottle of bonded thiska for medicinal purposes. That'll shorten the wait!" He bounded past Saem through the galley door.

The towerman looked after him bewildered, watched him reach into a locker and bring out the plastic flask, saw him take down two small plastic beakers and come back past the doorway to perch jubilantly on the desk again holding out the flask invitingly. Saem looked at him questioningly.

"She said she wouldn't leave us as long as we're not sorry," Herl announced. "So let's get just as unsorry as this bottle will let us."

Saem approached the desk hesitantly. "What is that stuff," he asked, "something like beer?"

"Something like beer, the man says!" chuckled Herl. "Yes, boy, something like beer. Here." He poured out a beaker full of amber thiska and handed it to Saem. "One for me." He poured out another beaker full. "To not being sorry," he raised his beaker and drained it.

Saem tasted his, then gulped also. "Whooeee! Something like beer, the man says," he echoed and passed back his beaker. "Did you offer _this_ stuff to the commissioners?" he wanted to know.

"Silly old commissioners," Herl remarked archly, slopping out two more drinks. "Didn't want girlie shows ... don't like people to get mixed up with goddesses ... couldn't possibly appreciate bonded thiska. Didn't even offer them any." He drew a deep breath. Thiska couldn't work this fast on only one drink unless he were tired or upset. It must be thinking about Abigail that made him feel he had an antigravitor attached to his ears. Abigail!

"Here's to Abigail. May she never be sorry either!" he announced.

"Here's to Abby ... knows all, sees all, tells 'em nothing!" Saem downed his drink and moved over to the swivel chair, sat, held out his beaker.

"Say, Saem," Herl filled the extended beaker with deliberate care, "what kind of a wife would a girl make if a man never knew where she'd be next?"

"I dunno, son. Maybe you could anchor her at home with a pair of electro-magnets." Saem laughed longer and louder than Herl expected, downed his beaker and held it out again.

Herl looked at the proffered container, narrowed his eyes and looked at Saem suspiciously. "That's about enough for you, Saem. You're beginning to get blurry."

Saem looked down at his extended arm. Sure enough, a golden haze was starting to form around the limb, a naked, ripplingly muscular arm. He set his beaker with exaggerated precision on the edge of the desk and slapped at the offending haze. "Get back in there," he commanded. The haze cleared, the brown shirt sleeve regained complete opacity. "Nothing wrong with me," he announced firmly. "You must be seeing things. Give me another." He held up the beaker.

Herl shook his head and poured himself another. "I need this worse than you do. I'm the one that I ... need Abigail not to leave me ... myself and not you. You can get just as sorry as you like because then when she comes back she'll leave you and not me and that means she'll put you somewhere else. If I don't give you another drink, you'll be sorry and I'll have her all to myself ... do you follow me? Hurry up, Abigail!"

* * * * *

A flare exploded brilliantly by the galley door and it was Abigail. Her cloud of golden haze was forming into swirling tendrils which snapped into sparks at the ends.

Herl widened his eyes at the frequent revelation of thigh, of bosom.

Her voice was an angry pizzicato of steel strings. "Saem Berry! Dad! You're drunk! Get out of that matter this instant! The idea, Herl Hofner, getting Saem drunk when he was supposed to be keeping _you_ out of trouble!"

Her slender arm pointed accusingly at Saem. "Out of it!" she jangled, "or I'll leave you to do all the explaining."

Herl's gaze followed her gesture and he watched, trancelike, as the clothes of the transfiguring towerman disintegrated into wreaths of shining golden smoke which clung around a superb sculptured torso and swirled to leave a benign and thoughtful face regarding him with sympathetic, almost regretful amusement.

Saem's voice was the pedal tones of a great organ improvising in a minor key. "All that alcohol wasted when I put off the flesh," he sang at Abigail. "A new sensation, and you take it from me."

"You can go back to your tower and re-materialize with all that poison inside you, as soon as you've explained us and the rebellion to Herl. He doesn't trust me very much, yet," she chimed.

Herl shook his head and looked at Abigail and back at Saem. He blinked and straightened his spine and breathed deeply; but they didn't change or go away.

Saem looked at him intently and, to Herl, the interior of the room was filled with the liquid blue of his first tete-a-tete with Abigail ... blue and green waves of coolness washing through him and then complete clarity and sharpness of outline of everything about him.

"I'll synthesize you another flask of thiska," Saem apologized, "later."

Abigail relaxed her accusatory attitude, crossed her perfect legs and sat in the air at the level of the desk. "Now tell him quickly," she requested, "so he can leave if he wants to."

"Abby took one look at you and made up her mind," Saem said matter-of-factly, "partly because she'd like to travel and partly because most of us god-boys are younger than she and not ready to materialize and settle down ... and partly because ... well, she can tell you that herself."

"Oh?" Herl's clarity of mind did not prevent bewilderment at this sudden revelation. He looked at Abigail who smiled seraphically back.

"But she didn't want to miss the fun of the Eyefer revolution she'd been conniving at for years, so she had to precipitate that at once and get it over with."

"I see," said Herl, "what kind of catalyst I was." And he was beginning to.

"She was being quite literal when she told you she couldn't tell you what you ought to do. Your own morals and ethics are so far inside that she couldn't get at them without your full consent or hypnosis. But of course, like any other gal, she knew perfectly what she wanted you to do; and she did it."

"Aha," said Herl, whose grasp of the idea was sudden and complete.

"We can read formulated thoughts, of course, but not basic postulates unstated ... as long as we are composed of space, time, and energy and don't dabble in the slow stuff you call matter too much."

Herl looked at the shimmering Abigail keenly. "You mean to tell me that you can take on a matter body and give up sliding through my mind?" he demanded.

Abigail straightened her already straight posture. "If I want to," she replied coolly.

Saem chuckled in bull-fiddle tones. "If she wants a family she'll have to," he informed Herl. "The best babies are like the worst ... they all have to be made out of matter."

Abigail's sodium haze deepened toward the neon. "Dad!"

Her father's look became affectionate. "I don't know where you'd be if Mother and I hadn't settled down long ago with faked papers by the ream and started raising little pre-goddesses."

To Herl he said, "Mother's a somatic surgeon, specializing in the reversal of sterilization operations. That's one reason why they won't be able to tell Eyefers from anybody else when the smoke clears. Oh," he added, remembering, "I forgot to ask about the little insurrection and whether you think Delightites will want to buy anything from this sears-monkey."

"You're a dear old Eyefer, Dad," Abigail laughed. "The excitement is still on, but Hanner and Treece are smoothing things down." She turned to Herl. "I hope it isn't a disappointment to you, but Delight won't need to buy anything for years. They're just about to find out that they can do anything they want to. You'll have to peddle your planets and your calculators and your dancing girls somewhere else ... where they're really needed."

And back to Saem, "You can go see the fire for yourself now, if you like."

"I guess that's my cue," Saem stood up a foot or so above the floor, extended his glowing hand. "Take care of my little girl and drop back this way sometime soon."

Not knowing what else to do, Herl reached for the hand and saw his own vanish into the cloud, felt nothing. "Good-bye, sir," he fumbled.

He withdrew his hand and said, "But...."

But Saem was just not there.

Abigail laughed, sweet, musical.

Herl turned and saw her, a woman in a silky blue gown. A woman with red hair, not amber flames, a woman surrounded by a faint flowery scent, not incandescent sodium vapor. A woman standing shyly on the floor, not proudly seated on an airy throne.

He sprang down from the table and took her into his arms for a long long moment.

She drew away for an instant and laughed. "I thought I'd given up telepathy, dear, but I still seem to know just what you're thinking."

"And I know what I ought to do," he replied and did it.