"Then let us choose another subject for conversation."

"I do look upon you, though, and say, 'He is Death.'"

Yama did not reply.

"Odd ruling passion. I've heard that you were old before you were young . . ."

"You know that is true."

"You were a mechanical prodigy and a weapons master. You lost your boyhood in a burst of flame, and you became an old man that same day. Did death become your ruling passion in that moment? Or was it earlier? Or later?"

"It does not matter," said Yama.

"Do you serve the gods because you believe what you have said to me—or because you hate the larger portion of humanity?"

"I did not lie to you."

"Then Death is an idealist. Amusing."

"Not so."

"Or could it be. Lord Yama, that neither guess is correct? That your ruling passion—"

"You've mentioned her name before," said Yama, "in the same speech wherein you likened her to a disease. You were wrong then and you are still wrong. I do not care to hear that sermon over again, and since I am not at the moment sinking in quicksand, I will not."

"Peace," said Sam. "But tell me, do the ruling passions of the gods ever change?"

Yama smiled. "The goddess of dance was once the god of war. So it would seem that anything can change."

"When I have died the real death," said Sam, "then will I be changed. But until that moment I will hate Heaven with every breath that I draw. If Brahma has me burnt, I will spit into the flames. If he has me strangled, I will attempt to bite the executioner's hand. If my throat is cut, may my blood rust the blade that does it. Is that a ruling passion?"

"You are good god material," said Yama.

"Good god!" said Sam.

"Before whatever may happen happens," said Yama, "I have been assured that you will be permitted to attend the wedding."

"Wedding? You and Kali? Soon?"

"At the full of the lesser moon," Yama replied. "So, whatever Brahma decides, at least I can buy you a drink before it occurs."

"For that I thank you, deathgod. But it has always been my understanding that weddings are not made in Heaven."

"That tradition is about to be broken," said Yama. "No tradition is sacred."

"Then good luck," said Sam.

Yama nodded, yawned, lit another cigarette.

"By the way," said Sam, "what is the latest vogue in celestial executions? I ask purely for informational purposes."

"Executions are not held in Heaven," said Yama, opening a cabinet and removing a chessboard.

From Hellwell to Heaven he went, there to commune with the gods. The Celestial City holds many mysteries, including some of the keys to his own past. Not all that transpired during the time he dwelled there is known. It is known, however, that he petitioned the gods on behalf of the world, obtaining the sympathy of some, the enmity of others. Had he chosen to betray humanity and accept the proffers of the gods, it is said by some that he might have dwelled forever as a Lord of the City and not have met his death beneath the claws of the phantom cats of Kaniburrha. It is said by his detractors, though, that he did accept these proffers, but was later betrayed himself, so giving his sympathies back to suffering mankind for the rest of his days, which were few...

Then, as so often in the past, her snowy fur was sleeked by the wind.

She walked where the lemon-colored grasses stirred. She walked a winding track under dark trees and jungle flowers, crags of jasper rising to her right, veins of milk-white rock, shot through with orange streaks, open about her.

Then, as so often before, she moved on the great cushions of her feet, the wind sleeking her fur, white as marble, and the ten thousand fragrances of the jungle and the plain stirring about her; there, in the twilight of the place that only half existed.

Alone, she followed the ageless trail through the jungle that was part illusion. The white tiger is a solitary hunter. If others moved along a similar course, none cared for company.

Then, as so often before, she looked up at the smooth, gray shell of the sky and the stars that glistened there like shards of ice. Her crescent eyes widened, and she stopped and sat upon her haunches, staring upward.

What was it she was hunting?

A deep sound, like a chuckle ending in a cough, came from her throat. She sprang then suddenly to the top of a high rock, and sat there licking her shoulders. When a moon moved into view, she watched it. She seemed a figure molded of unmelting snow, topaz flames gleaming beneath her brows.

Then, as before, she wondered whether this was the true jungle of Kaniburrha in which she sat. She felt that she was still within the confines of the actual forest. But she could not really know.

What was it she was hunting?

Heaven exists upon a plateau that was once a range of mountains. These mountains were fused and smoothed to provide a level base. Topsoil was transported from the verdant south, to give it the growth that fleshed over this bony structure. Cupping the entire area is a transparent dome, protecting it against the polar cold and anything else unwanted within.

Heaven stands high and temperate and enjoys a long twilight and long, lazy days. Fresh airs, warmed as they are drawn within, circulate through the City and the forest. Within the dome itself, clouds can be generated. From within the clouds rains can be called forth, to fall upon almost any area. A snowfall could even be brought down in this manner, although this thing has never been done. It has always been summer in Heaven.

Within the summer of Heaven stands the Celestial City.

The Celestial City did not grow up as the cities of men grow up, about a port or near to good farmland, pasturage, hunting country, trade routes or a region rich in some natural resource that men desired and so settled beside. The Celestial City sprang from a conception in the minds of its first dwellers. Its growth was not slow and haphazard, a building added here, a thoroughfare rerouted there, one structure torn down to make way for another, and all parts coming together into an irregular and unseemly whole. No. Every demand of utility was considered and every inch of magnificence calculated by the first planners and the design-augmentation machines. These plans were coordinated and brought to fruition by an architectural artist without peer. Vishnu, the Preserver, held the entire Celestial City within his mind, until the day he circled Milehigh Spire on the back of the Garuda Bird, stared downward and the City was captured perfect in a drop of perspiration on his brow.

So Heaven sprang from the mind of a god, its conception stimulated by the desires of his fellows. It was laid by choice, rather than necessity, in a wilderness of ice and snow and rock, at the timeless Pole of the world, where only the mighty might make their home.

(What was it she was hunting?)

Beneath the dome of Heaven there stood, beside the Celestial City, the great forest of Kaniburrha. Vishnu, in his wisdom, had seen that there must be a balance between the metropolis and the wilderness. While wilderness can exist independent of cities, that which dwells within a city requires more than the tamed plants of a pleasance. If the world were all city, he had reasoned, the dwellers within it would turn a portion of it into a wilderness, for there is that within them all which desires that somewhere there be an end to order and a beginning of chaos. So, within his mind there had grown up a forest, pumping forth streams and the smells of growth and decay, uttering the cries of the uncitied creatures who dwelled within its shadows, shrugging in the wind and glistening in the rain, falling down and growing up again.