“I’m sorry,” said Rod. “I haven’t had a minute to enjoy my money since I got it. People have been telling me that everybody is after it. I’m beginning to think that I shall do nothing but run the rest of my life…”

The E’telekeli smiled happily, the way a teacher smiles when a student has suddenly turned in a spectacular performance. “Correct. You have learned a lot from the Catmaster, and from your own self. I am offering you something more — the chance to do enormous good. Have you ever heard of Foundations?”

Rod frowned. “The bottoms of buildings?”

“No. Institutions. From the very ancient past.”

Rod shook his head. He hadn’t.

“If a gift was big enough, it endured and kept on giving, until the culture in which it was set had fallen. If you took most of your money and gave it to some good, wise men, it could be spent over and over again to improve the race of man. We need that. Better men will give us better lives. Do you think that we don’t know how pilots and pinlighters have sometimes died, saving their cats in space?”

“Or how people kill underpepple without a thought?” countered Rod. “Or humiliate them without notice that they do it. It seems to me that you must have some self-interest, sir.”

“I do. Some. But not as much as you think. Men are evil when they are frightened or bored. They are good when they are happy and busy. I want you to give your money to provide games, sports, competitions, shows, music, and a chance for honest hatred.”

“Hatred?” said Rod. “I was beginning to think that I had found a Believer bird… somebody who mouthed old magic.”

“We’re not ending time,” said the great man-bird. “We are just altering the material conditions of Man’s situation for the present historical period. We want to steer mankind away from tragedy and self-defeat. Though the cliffs crumble, we want Man to remain. Do you know Swinburne?”

“Where is it?” said Rod.

“It’s not a place. It’s a poet, before the age of space. He wrote this. Listen.

“Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble

Till the terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides crumble.

The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.”

“Do you agree with that?”

“It sounds nice, but I don’t understand it,” said Rod. “Please sir, I’m tireder than I thought. And I have only this one day with C’mell. Can I finish the business with you and have a little time with her?”

The great underman lifted his arm. His wings spread like a canopy over Rod.

“So be it!” he said, and the words rang out like a great song.

Rod could see the lips of the underpeople chorusing, but he did not notice the sound.

“I offer you a tangible bargain. Tell me if you find I read your mind correctly.”

Rod nodded, somewhat in awe.

“You want your money, but you don’t want it. You will keep five hundred thousand credits, FOE money, which will leave you the richest man in Old North Australia for the rest of a very long life. The rest you will give to a foundation which will teach men to hate easily and lightly, as in a game, not sickly and wearily, as in habit. The trustees will be Lords of the Instrumentality whom I know, such as Jestocost, Crudelta, the Lady Johanna Gnade.”

“And what do I get?”

“Your heart’s desire.” The beautiful wise pale face stared down at Rod like a father seeking to fathom the puzzlement of his own child. Rod was a little afraid of the face, but he confided in it, too.

“I want too much. I can’t have it all.”

“I’ll tell you what you want.”

“You want to be home right now, and all the trouble done with. I can set you down at the Station of Doom in a single long jump. Look at the floor — I have your books and your postage stamp which you left in Amaral’s room. They go too.”

“But I want to see Earth!”

“Come back, when you are older and wiser. Some day. See what your money has done.”

“Well—” said Rod.

“You want C’mell.” The bland wise white face showed no embarrassment, no anger, no condescension. “You shall have her, in a linked dream, her mind to yours, for a happy subjective time of about a thousand years. You will live through all the happy things that you might have done together if you had stayed here and become a c’man. You will see your kitten-children flourish, grow old, and die. That will take about one half-hour.”

“It’s just a dreamy,” said Rod. “You want to take megacredits from me and give me a dreamy!”

“With two minds? Two living, accelerated minds, thinking into each other? Have you ever heard of that?”

“No,” said Rod.

“Do you trust me?” said the E’telekeli.

Rod stared at the man-bird inquisitively and a great weight fell from him. He did trust this creature more than he had ever trusted the father who did not want him, the mother who gave him up, the neighbors who looked at him and were kind. He sighed, “I trust you.”

“I also,” added the E’telekeli, “will take care of all the little incidentals through my own network and I will leave the memory of them in your mind. If you trust me that should be enough. You get home, safe. You are protected, off Norstrilia, into which I rarely reach, for as long as you live. You have a separate life right now with C’mell and you will remember most of it. In return, you go to the wall and transfer your fortune, minus one-half FOE megacredit, to the Foundation of Rod McBan.”

Rod did not see that the underpeople thronged around him like worshippers. He had to stop when a very pale, tall girl took his hand and held it to her cheek. “You may not be the Promised One, but you are a great and good man. We can take nothing from you. We can only ask. That is the teaching of Joan. And you have given.”

“Who are you?” said Rod in a frightened voice, thinking that she might be some lost human girl whom the underpeople had abducted to the guts of the Earth.

“E’lamelanie, daughter of the E’telekeli.”

Rod stared at her and went to the wall. He pushed a routine sort of button. What a place to find it! “The Lord Jestocost,” he called. “McBan speaking. No, you fool, I own this system.”

A handsome, polished plumpish man appeared on the screen. “If I guess right,” said the strange man, “you are the first human being ever to get into the depths. Can I serve you, Mister and Owner McBan?”

“Take a note—” said the E’telekeli, out of sight of the machine, beside Rod.

Rod repeated it.

The Lord Jestocost called witnesses at his end.

It was a long dictation, but at last the conveyance was finished. Only at one point did Rod balk. When they tried to call it the McBan Foundation, he said, “Just call it the One Hundred and Fifty Fund.”

“One Hundred and Fifty?” asked Jestocost.

“For my father. It’s his number in our family. I’m to-the-hundred-and-fifty-first. He was before me. Don’t explain the number. Just use it.”

“All clear,” said Jestocost. “Now we have to get notaries and official witnesses to veridicate our imprints of your eyes, hands and brain. Ask the Person with you to give you a mask, so that the cat-man face will not upset the witnesses. Where is this machine you are using supposed to be located? I know perfectly well where I think it is.”

“At the foot of Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, in a forgotten market,” said the E’telekeli. “Your servicemen will find it there tomorrow when they come to check the authenticity of the machine.” He still stood out of line of sight of the machine, so that Jestocost could hear him but not see him.