She knew him in all his roles, who could not exist with­out an audience. He was Life.

He was the Shaper...

He was the Maker and the Mover.

He was greater than heroes.

A mind may hold many things. It learns. It cannot teach itself not to think, though.

Emotions remain the same, qualitatively, throughout life; the stimuli to which they respond are subject to quantita­tive variations, but the feelings are stock in trade.

This why the theater survives: it is cross-cultural; it con­tains the North Pole and the South Pole of the human condition; the emotions fall like iron filings within its field.

A mind cannot teach itself not to think, but feelings fall into destined patterns.

He was her theater ...

He was the poles of the world.

He was all actions.

He was not the imitation of actions, but the actions them­selves.

She knew he was a very capable man named Charles Render.

She felt he was the Shaper.

A mind may hold many things.

But he was more than any one thing:

He was every.

... She felt it.

When she stood to leave, her heels made echoes across the emptied dark.

As she moved up the aisle, the sounds returned to her and returned to her.

She was walking through an emptied theater, away from an emptied stage. She was alone.

At the head of the aisle, she stopped.

Like distant laughter, ended by a sudden slap, there was silence.

She was neither audience nor player now. She was alone in a dark theater.

She had cut a throat and saved a life.

She had listened tonight, felt tonight, applauded tonight.

Now, again, it was all gone away, and she was alone in a dark theater.

She was afraid.

The man continued to walk along the highway until he reached a certain tree. He stood, hands in his pockets, and

stared at it for a long while. Then he turned and headed back in the direction from which he had come. Tomorrow was another day.

"Oh, sorrow-crowned love of my life, why hast thou for­saken me? Am I not fair? I have loved thee long, and all the places of silence know my wailings. I have loved thee beyond myself, and I suffer for it. I have loved thee beyond life with all its sweetness, and the sweetnesses have turned to cloves and to almonds. I am ready to leave this my life for thee. Why shouldst thou depart in the greatwinged, manylegged ships over the sea, bearing with thee thy Lares and Penates, and I here alone? I shall make me a fire, to burn. I shall make me a fire—a conflagration to incinerate time and to burn away the spaces that separate us. I would be with thee always. I shall not go gently and silent into that holocaust, but wailing. I am no ordinary maiden, to pine away my life and to die, dark-eyed and sallow. For I am of the blood of the Princes of the Earth, and my arm is as the arm of a man's in the battle. My upraised sword smites the helm of my foe and he falls down before it. I have never been subdued, my lord. But my eyes are sick of weeping, and my tongue of crying out. To make me to see thee, and then to never see thee again is a crime beyond expiation. I cannot forgive my love, nor thee. There was a time when I laughed at the songs of love and the plaints of the maidens by the riverside. Now is my laughter drawn, as an arrow from a wound, and I am myself without thee and alone. Forgive me not, love, for having loved thee. I want to fuel a fire with memory and my hopes. I want to set to burning my already burning thoughts of thee, to lay thee like a poem upon a campfire, to burn thy rhythmic utterance to ash. I loved thee, and thou hast departed. Never again will I see thee in this life, hear again the music of thy voice, feel again the thunder of thy touch. I loved thee, and I am forsaken and alone. I loved thee, and my words fell upon ears that were deaf and my self upon eyes that saw not. Am I not fair, oh winds of the Earth, who

wash me over, who stoke these, my fires? Why then hast thou forsaken me, oh life of the heart in my breast? I go now to the flame my father, to better be received. In all the passes of loving, there will never be another such as thee. May the gods bless thee and sustain thee, oh light, and may their judgment not come too heavy upon thee for this thing thou hast done. Aeneas, I burn for thee! Fire, be my last love!"

There was applause as she swayed within the lighted cir­cle and fell. Then the room was darkened.

A moment later the light was restored, and the other members of the Act a Myth Club rose and came forward to congratulate her on her perceptive interpretation. They dis­cussed the significance of the folk-motif, from the suttee to the immolation of Brunhilde. Good, basic—fire—they decided. "Fire... my last love"—good: Eros and Thanatos in a final cleansing burst of flame.

After they had used up their appreciation, a small, stooped man and his birdlike, birdtracked wife moved to the center of the room.

"Heloise and Abelard," the man announced.

A respectful silence gathered about them.

A beefy man in his middle-forties moved to his side, face glazed with perspiration.

"My chief castrater," said Abelard.

The big man smiled and bowed.

"Now, let us begin..."

There was a single clap and darkness fell.

Like deep-burrowing, mythological worms, power lines, pipelines, and pneumatic tubes stretch themselves across the continent. Pulsing, peristalsis-like, they drink of the Earth and the thunderbolt. They take oil and electricity and water and coal-wash and small parcels and large pack­ages and letters into themselves. Passing through them, be­neath the Earth, these things are excreted at their proper destinations, and the machines who work in these places take over from there.

Blind, they sprawl far away from the sun; without taste, the Earth and the thunderbolt go undigested; without smell or hearing, the Earth is their rock-filled prison. They only know what they touch; and touching is their constant func­tion.

Such is the deep-buried joy of the worm.

Render had spoken with the staff psychologist and had in­spected the physical education equipment at the new shool. He had also inspected the students' quarters and had been satisfied.

Now, though, as he left Peter once again at the place of education, he felt somehow dissatisfied. He was not certain why. Everything had seemed in as good order as it had been when first he had visited. Peter had seemed in high spirits, too. Exceptionally high spirits.

He returned to his car and drifted out onto the highway— that great rootless tree whose branches covered two continents (and once the Bering Bridgeway was completed would enfold the world, saving only Australia, the polar icecaps, and islands)—he wondered, and wondering, he found no answer to his discontent.

Should he call Jill and ask about her cold? Or was she still angry over her coat and the Christmas that had accompanied it?

His hands fell into his lap, and the countryside jumped up and down around him as he moved through the ranks of the hills.

His hand twitched toward the panel once more.

"Hello?"

"Eileen, Render here. I didn't get to call you when it happened, but I heard about that tracheotomy you performed at the Play House..."

"Yes," she said, "good thing I was handy—me and a sharp knife. Where are you calling from?"

"My car. I just left Peter at school. On my way back now."

"Oh? How is he? His ankle... ?"

"Fine. We had a little scare there at Christmas, but noth-

ing came of it. —Tell me how it happened at the Play House, if it doesn't bother you."