Mr. Ichino squinted up at Graves and tasted blood.

“Y’know, you think I’m so dumb I don’t see what’s goin’ on here. You and your”—casual wave—“friends here are gonna make a bundle outta this. That’s what you’re thinkin’, isn’t it? Or else you figure these things that damn near killed me deserve to live.” Graves’s pinched face seemed to fill the sky above him.

“They do. Please try to understand. I simply do not want them destroyed by the attention you would bring. In time they can be studied. But not by the methods you will bring about.”

Graves’s voice narrowed to a rasp. “You’re lyin’ again.”

time squeezes down to infinitesimal frozen moments, the rifle bears to the left as Ichino struggles up to lean on one hand braced behind him, the movement covered and Graves stepping back making a flicking gesture with a finger to the other man, the rifle butt rising as the sight focuses on Ichino’s left kneecap and the clearing is cloaked in layers of filled silence, waiting waiting “I think you’re in the wrong fairy tale” Nigel says for distraction, the first word beginning to register on the trigger finger which clenches slightly in the clear light, the man bracing his bones working like a lattice of calcium rods each muscle straining, as Nigel whips his right foot up into the man’s elbow feeling his bootheel catch the tip as his weight comes forward, the man’s hands clench at the sacred metal and momentum collapses his form, breath whistling from him through dry pipes as the rifle deflects in a scatter of light, Nigel’s heel slipping from the elbow and onto the gleaming brown wooden rifle stock as the man’s stem of a neck jerks to the side and his hands clutch for a last redeeming moment with the trigger which lurches back under the slipping finger and the muzzle spits a clap of bright noise into the crystalline space exhaling a blue cloud toward the trampled snow, burying a node of lead in the receiving earth

By the time Mr. Ichino had scrambled to his feet Nigel had the rifle and Graves was backing away, blinking, palms cupped toward Nigel.

The younger man was still face down in the snow, where he had fallen after Nikka tripped him. If she had not leaped forward, Nigel might not have had time to recover the rifle. Nigel cradled the weapon now, worked the bolt and left the breech open. The man got up on his hands and knees in the snow and looked around him, somewhat dazed, as though still unable to accept where he was. No one had spoken.

“I’d like a word,” Nigel said to Graves. He took the man by the arm and led him off a few meters.

They spoke, their words inaudible. Mr. Ichino watched Nigel, wondering at a facet he could not quite define. There was no hint of tension in Nigel, and in his relaxed manner was the very essence of his power. When Graves turned back from the conversation, Ichino was shocked by the change in the man’s expression. There was a new calm in the heavy-lidded eyes and at the same time the face carried a distant sadness, as though Graves had learned something he would rather have not known. Mr. Ichino knew they would not meet again. Nigel clapped the man on the back. Graves spoke haltingly to the younger man and together they trudged back to the copter. They climbed aboard and in a moment the rotors began to turn.

loved the lifting sweep as a misty dust of snow sprang up beneath the machine like chiming crystals attempting to fly anew—farewell—this unflagging energy of the mind he loved the most as each sense in turn made a fresh grab at the greased pig which was the world even as he waves upward at the veiled white faces receding, his gesture a line scratched across the space between them, Ichino beginning to speak but Nigel cutting him off saying no, he has work to finish, seeing though that later they would chew over this moment by a crisp fireside, crunching popcorn, drinking heated cider, for this instant it would be like a stomach irked by spent whiskey, no, later was soon enough and all in good solvent time smoothing the edges of events he leans back into the bracing air and takes the rifle by its long and ignorant snout flings it up butt cleaving the jeweled nitrogen into the trees where thunk it strikes an encrusted trunk deadening the sound, this motion releasing a merry oil that spreads across the faces of Nikka Ichino rising in concert to watch the stupid tube on its parabola its crash punctuating an end to their worry, Ichino turning to watch the dwindling copter as it thrashes through the brightening air Nigel murmuring the world sinking away as he listens to the fading chop with half an ear and a muzzy connection forms, a dawning realization humming, he feels the sentence leave him and in the saying knows it for the first time “Graves made his future before he came here” for indeed yes the man was free had been free the sum was his

“—before he came here,” made Mr. Ichino turn, in the midst of framing his thanks, turn and find the stirring dot as it skated over the tree tops toward the ridge. The puffy clouds had lifted and sunlight streamed fitfully through them. As the copter neared the ridge it entered a blade of sunlight. Tilting, a facet of its slick skin caught the light and there was an odd optical effect, a brilliant yellow twinkling. Mr. Ichino saw a burning spark leap up from the trees and envelop the copter in a sputtering orange globe. He blinked and the vision went away, leaving only a fuzzed afterimage on his retina. The copter was gone. He listened for its dull clatter. Nothing was audible above the sighing of wind in tree tops. Had the copter slipped over the ridgeline that quickly? He could not tell. He turned to ask Nigel but the other man had already.

above all Graves’s monomaniac insistence, the whole laughable business with the rifle, Graves’s last meeting with Bigfoot an eternal instant ago, recalled the poor dear desk calculator civilizations cowering up there amid the stars, afraid to use radio for fear the young organic races will seek them out and rip them up for scrap iron, yet even a desk calculator can turn vicious when cornered, destroy the suckling animal cultures before they develop, ah what an old sod of a galaxy this was pissing away its energy a kilobuck per nanosecond like poor gone Graves, right action in part but wrong sense of the warp of things, no feel for the joyful lofting song all this meant, so much like the old dimly remembered Nigel, so tied to events by ropes of care each sank him tugging him below the waves, Alexandria Snark dear dead Dad, yes Nigel sees how he felt that way but now he slaps his pockets in mock surprise, brings up his hands spread wide to the world, empty, his past pilfered from him, free of the baggage of what he was, it melts he laughs free and awash in this universe of essences and ready for Aquila yes he laughs—

As the two came back into the warm cabin, their boots making loud thumps in the room as they stamped away the snow, Nikka said, “I doubt you’ll be seeing more of that one.”

“No. Everyone learns from experience,” Mr. Ichino replied, thinking of Bigfoot. He went over to the window and saw Nigel through the square Western window. The crosshair of the four panes centered on him for a moment. Beyond Nigel was the opening bowl of the sky and the sun still hiding behind patches of haze. Nigel, hefting his ax, moved at the center of a round universe.

lungs panting with the effort he pauses and looks back toward the crosshair window and sees it as blowing him out, the inverse of the young lad’s leaden shot, out into a billowing swack the blade bites into a rotten seam, wood frags showering up around him tumbling faceted a crash of crystal orbiting asteroids carving the cold, muscles clenching melting, heels biting the compacted snow as earth holds him in its fierce ageless grip of which he himself is a part, he has his own gravitational field, and thoughts flit like summer lightning through the streaming wash of feelings that float him through each moment, melting. Above was the galaxy, a swarm of white bees, each an infinite structure of its own, a spinning discus slicing space with its own definition. Nigel unable to see who threw the discus and uncaring, for there was enough here at the fragile axis of earth, each new truth melting into the old as their fraction of the world flowed through him, le’s slide out of here one of these nights as continents butted against each other an’ get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns chopping wood, trisecting Andromeda over the territory Oregon to Aquila for a couple of weeks or two all moments going, as he touched them, to smash and scatteration and I says, all right, that suits me—