So far they had stayed out of the cides, far away fromthe machines. Her emotions were still too powerful at thesight of the simple, carefully introduced objects to riskplunging her into so complicated and chaotic a wildernessyet; he would build her city slowly.

Something passed rapidly, high above the cathedral,uttering a sonic boom. Render took Jill's hand in his for amoment and smiled as she looked up at him. Knowingshe verged upon beauty, Jill normally took great pains toachieve it. But today her hair was simply drawn back andknotted behind her head, and her Ups' and her eyeswere pale; and her exposed ears were tiny and white andsomewhat pointed.

"Observe the scalloped capitals," he whispered. "Intheir primitive fluting they anticipated what was later tobecome a common motif."

"Faugh!" said she.

"Shh!" said a sunburned little woman nearby, whoseface seemed to crack and fall back together again as shepursed and unpursed her lips.

Later as they strolled back toward their hotel. Rendersaid, "Okay on Winchester?"

"Ofcay on Winchester."

"Happy?"

"Happy."

"Good, then we can leave this afternoon.""All right."

"For Switzerland...."

She stopped and toyed with a button on his coat.

"Couldn't we just spend a day or two looking at someold chateaux first? After all, they're just across the channel, and you could be sampling all the local wines whileI looked ..."

"Okay," he said.

She looked up—a trifle surprised.

"What? No argument?" she smiled. "Where is yourfighting spirit?—to let me push you around like this?"

She took his arm then and they walked on as he said,"Yesterday, while we were galloping about in the innards of that oid castle, I heard a weak moan, and thena voice cried out, 'For the love of God, Montresor!'I think it was my fighting spirit, because I'm certain itwas my voice. I've given up der geist der stets verneint.Pax vobiscum! Let us be gone to France. Alors!"

"Dear Rendy, it'll only be another day or two...."

"Amen," he said. "though my skis that were waxedare already waning."

So they did that, and on the morn of the third day,when she spoke to him of castles in Spain, be reflectedaloud that while psychologists drink and only grow angry,psychiatrists have been known to drink, grow angry andbreak things. Construing this as a veiled threat aimed atthe Wedgewoods she had collected, she acquiesced to hisdesire to go skiing.

Free! Render almost screamed it.

His heart was pounding inside his head. He leanedhard. He cut to the left. The wind strapped at his face; ashowed of ice crystals, like bullets of emery, fled by him,scraped against his cheek.

He was moving. Aye—the world had ended asWeissflujoch, and Dorftali led down and away from thisportal.

His feet were two gleaming rivers which raced acrossthe stark, curving plains; they could not be frozen intheir course. Downward. He flowed. Away from all therooms of the world. Away from the stifling lack of intensity, from the day's hundred spoon-fed welfares, fromthe killing pace of the forced amusements that hackedat the Hydra, leisure; away.And as he fled down the run he felt a strong desire tolook back over his shoulder, as though to see whether theworld he had left behind and above had set one fearsome embodiment of itself, like a shadow, to trail alongafter him, hunt him down and drag him back to a warmand well-lit coffin in the sky, there to be laid to rest witha spike of aluminum driven through his will and a garlandof alternating currents smothering his spirit.

"I hate you," he breathed between clenched teeth, andthe wind carried the words back; and he laughed then,for he always analyzed his emotions, as a matter of reflex; and he added, "Exit Orestes, mad, pursued by theFuries .. ."

After a time the slope leveled out and he reached thebottom of the run and had to stop.

He smoked one cigarette then and rode back up to thetop so that he could come down it again lor nontherapeutic reasons.

That night he sat before a fire is the big lodge, feelingits warmth soaking into his tired muscles. Jill massagedhis shoulders as he played Rorschach with the flames,and he came upon a blazing goblet which was snatchedaway from him in the same instant by the sound of hisname being spoken somewhere* across the Hall of theNine Hearths.

"Charles Render!" said the voice (only it soundedmore like "Shariz Runder"), and his head instantlyjerked in that direction, but his eyes danced with toomany afterimages for him to isolate the source of the calling.

"Maurice?" he queried after a moment, "Bartelmetz?"

"Aye," came the reply, and then Render saw the familiar grizzled visage, set neckless and balding abovethe red and blue shag sweater that was stretched mercilessly about the wine-keg rotundity of the man who nowpicked his way in their direction, deftly avoidingthe strewn crutches and the stacked skis and the peoplewho, like Jill and Render, disdained sitting in chairs.

Render stood, stretching, and shook hands as he cameupon them.

"You've put on more weight," Render observed."That's unhealthy."

"Nonsense, it's alt muscle. How have you been, andwhat are you up to these days?" He looked down atJill and she smiled back at him.

"This is Miss DeVille," said Render.

"Jill," she acknowledged.

He bowed slightly, finally releasing Render's achinghand.

"... And this is Professor Maurice Bartelmetz ofVienna," finished Render, "a benighted disciple of allforms of dialectical pessimism, and a very distinguishedpioneer in neuroparticipation—although you'd never guessit to look at him. I had the good fortune to be his pupilfor over a year."

Bartelmetz nodded and agreed with him, taking in theSchnapsflasche Render brought forth from a small plasticbag. and accepting the collapsible cup which he filled tothe brim.

"Ah, you are a good doctor still," he sighed. "You havediagnosed the case in an instant and you make the properprescription. Nozdrovial"

"Seven years in a gulp," Render acknowledged, refilling their glasses.

"Then we shall make time more malleable by sippingit."

They seated themselves on the floor, and the fire roaredup rhnnigh the great brick chimney as the logs burnedthemselves back to branches, to twigs, to thin sticks, ringby yearly ring.

Render replenished the fire.

"I read vour last book." said Bartelmetz finally, casually, "about four years ago."

Render reckoned that to be correct.

"Are you doing any research work these days?"

Render poked lazily at the fire.

"Yes," he answered, "sort of."

He glanced at Jili, who was dozing with her cheekagainst the arm of the huge leather chair that held hisemergency hag, the planes of her face all crimson andflickering shadow.

"I've hit upon a rather unusual subject and startedwith a piece of jobbery I eventually intend to writeabout."

"Unusual? In what way?"

"B ind from birth, for one thing."

"You're using the ONT&R?""Yes. She's going to be a Shaper."

"Verfluchteri—Are you aware of the possible repercussions?"

"Of course."

"You've heard of unlucky Pierre?"

"No."

"Good, then it was successfully hushed. Pierre was aphilosophy student at the University of Paris, and wasdoing a dissertation on the evolution of consciousness.This past summer he decided it would be necessary forhim to explore the mind of an ape, for purposes ofcomparing a moins-nausee mind with his own, I suppose.At any rate, he obtained illegal access to an ONT&R andto the mind of our hairy cousin. It was never ascertainedhow far along he got in exposing the animal to the stimuli"bank, but it is to be assumed that such items as would notbe immediately trans-subjective between man and ape—traffic sounds and so weiter—were what frightened thecreature. Pierre is still residing in a padded cell, and allhis responses are those of a frightened ape.