**Good. You have time to listen to a record while Idress."

He switched on his stereo and selected an album.

I shifted uneasily.

// it isn't too long....

He regarded the jacket.

"Five minutes and eight seconds. I've always maintained that it is music for the last hour of Earth."

He placed it on the turntable and set the arm.

"If Gabriel doesn't show up, this will do."

He reached for his tie as the first notes of MilesDavis* Saefa limped through the room, like a wounded thingclimbing a hill.

He hummed along with it as he reknotted his tie and'combed his hair. Davis talked through an Easter my witha tongue of brass, and the procession moved before us: Oedipus and blind Gloucester stumbled by, led byAntigone and Edgar—Prince Hamlet gave a fencer'ssalute and plunged forward, whUe black Othello lumberedon behind—Hippolytus, all in white, and the Duchess ofMalfi, sad, paraded through memory on a thousandstages.

Phillip buttoned his jacket as the final notes sounded,and shut down the player. Carefully rejacketting the record, he placed it among his others.

What are you going to do?

**Say good-bye. There's a party up the street I hadn*tplanned on attending. I believe I'll stop in for a drink.Good-bye to you also.

"By the way," he asked, "what is your name? I'veknown you for a long time, I ought to call you somethingnow.'*

He suggested one, half-consciously. I had never reallyhad a name before, so I took it.

Adrastea, I told him.

He smirked again.

**No thought is safe from you, is it? Good-bye."

Good-bye.

He closed the door behind him, and I passed throughthe ceilings and floors of the apartments overhead, thenup, and into the night above the city. One eye in thebuilding across the street winked out; as I watched, theother did the same.

Bodiless again, I fled upward wishing there was something I could feel.

This is the original novella for which they gave me aNebula Award at that first, very formal SFWA banquet at the Overseas Press Club, and which I expandedat Damon Knight's suggestion into the book The DreamMaster. The novel contains some material which I amvery happy to have written, but reflecting upon thingsafter the passage of all this time I find that I prefer this,the shorter version. It is more streamlined and as suchcomes closer to the quasi-Classical notions I had inmind, in terms of economy and directness, in describinga great man with a flaw.

Lovely as it was, with the blood and all. Render couldsense that it was about to end.

Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as aminute, he decided—and perhaps the temperature shouldbe increased ... Somewhere, just at the periphery ofeverything, the darkness halted its constriction.

Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders,was arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillateof shame and pain and fear.

The Forum was stifling.

Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His forearm covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, notthis time.

The senators had no faces and their garments werespattered with blood. All their voices were like the criesof birds. With an inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen figure.

All, that is, but Render.The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen.His arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical regularity and his throat might have been shapingbird-cries, but he was simultaneously apart from and apart of the scene.

For he was Render, the Shaper.

Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed hisprotests.

"You have slain him! You have murdered MarcusAntonius—a blameless, useless fellow!"

Render turned to him and the dagger in his handwas quite enormous and quite gory.

"Aye," said he.

The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascinated by the sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.

"Why?" he cried. "Why?"

"Because," answered Render, "he was a far noblerRoman then yourself.**

"You lie* It is not sol"

Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.

"It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not truel"

Render turned to him again and waved the dagger.Puppetlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.

"Not true?" smiled Render. "And who are you toquestion an assassination such as this? You are no one!You detract from the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"

Jerkily, the pink-faced man rose to his feet, his hairhalf-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. Heturned, moved away; and as he walked, he looked backover his shoulder.

He had moved far from the circle of assassins, butthe scene did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made him feel even further removed, evermore alone and apart.

Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner andstood before him, a blind beggar.

Caesar grasped the front of his garment.

"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"

"Beware!" jeered Render.

"Yest Yes!" cried Caesar. "'Bewarel' That is good!Beware what?"

"The ides—"^Yes? The ides—?-

"—of Octember."He released the garment.

"What is that you say? What is Octember?"

"A month."

"You liel There is no month of Octemberi"

"And that is the date noble Caesar need fear—the"non-existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."

Render vanished around another sudden corner.

"Wait! Come backl"

Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him.The bird-cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.

"You mock me!" wept Caesar.

The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formedlike a glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharpnose and chinless jaw.

"I want to be assassinated tool" he sobbed. "It isn'tfairl"

And Render tore the Forum and the senators and thegrinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed theminto a black sack—with the unseen movement of a singlefinger—and last of all went Caesar.

Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons andthe two red ones, not really looking at any of them. Hisright arm moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-levelsurface of the console—pushing some of the buttons, skipping over others, moving on, retracing its path to press thenext in the order of the Recall Series.

Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing,Representative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.

There was a soft click.

Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottomrow of buttons. An act of conscious intent—will, if youlike—was required to push the red button.

Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair leads and microminiature circuitry. He slidfrom behind his desk-couch and raised the hood. Hewalked to the window and transpared it, fingering forth a cigarette.

One minute in the ro-womb, he decided. No more.This is a crucial one... . Hope it doesn't snow till later—those clouds look mean....

It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassyand gray, all smouldering into evening under a shalecolored sky; the city was squared volcanic islands, glow-ing in the end-of-day light, rumbling deep down underthe earth; it was fat, incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.

Render turned away from the window and approachedthe great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from his nose, turned his eyes to gray saucers,transformed his hair into a light-streaked skyline; hisreddish necktie became the wide tongue of a ghoul.

He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed thesecond red button.

With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and ahorizontal crack appeared about its middle. Through thenow-transparent shell. Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes tight, fighting against a returnto consciousness and the thing it would contain. Theupper half of the egg rose vertical to the base, exposinghim knobby and pink on half-shell When his eyesopened he did not look at Render. He rose to his feetand began dressing. Render used this time to check thero-womb.