Isaac Asimov's Worlds of Fantasy. Book 6: Mythical Beasties

The Triumph Of Pegascis
by F.A. Javor

It was working out beautifully, just beautifully, and if Colin Hall had been a less dedicated young man he would have been rubbing his capable hands together and perhaps even pounding his equally young but no-so-sedate partner, Ed West, on his ample back.

Their entry in the jumper division of the horse show, Ato's Pride, so named from the initial letters of their fledgling company's name. Animals to Order, a gleaming black stallion with four perfectly matched white stockings and a diamondshaped blaze on his forehead, was just being led to the edge of the obstacle-planted ring and the roar of the crowd's approval was hackle-raising.

Instinctively Colin's eyes flew to the six-inch screen he*d jerry-rigged to monitor a select few bits of the information being sent by the dozens of micro-transmitters implanted under the skin, adjoining the organs, the nerves, even sampling the bloodstream of the animal waiting to go through its paces below them.

Information being transmitted and recorded on me slowly turning tapes to be fed later into the University's computer if they, he and Ed, wanted a more complete analysis and, more to the point, if they could scrape together the necessary service fee.

But me complex and shifting pattern of light on the jerryrigged screen, small though its sampling was, was enough to let Colin know how their animal was taking to what was by far the largest massing of people he'd ever been exposed to.

An emotional crowd that this, perhaps the greatest of the year's shows, never failed to attract.

A little loo much salivating… pain response a little high.

I told that rider he had a tender mouth. But all in all, Ato's Pride was taking this crowd's adulation as much in stride as he had that of the smaller shows around the country they'd had to enter him in to garner enough first ribbons to-allow him to qualify for this particular show.

This show that he and Ed had finally decided to aim at in a mixture of hope and desperation. Then the grinding press of work and doing without, in which the gingerly placing into its embryo tank of the cell that was to grow into the magnificent animal below them was almost an anticlimax.

An anticlimax to the arduous task of mapping its gene pattern and to the planning and the tailoring of the solutions that were to be so delicately, so precisely metered to it, but only a beginning of their gamble to save Animals to Order. their two-man partnership that gave promise but only of dying in the womb.

He had plucked the salmon-colored bank notice from the pile of due-chits that had just fallen from the vac-tube beside their office door.

"A lethal gene," he said wryly to Ed, sitting at what they'd hoped would be the desk of the receptionist they'd never been able to afford, straightening and rebending a paper clip. "A lethal gene. A fatal deficiency in the customerforming enzyme."

"I've been thinking about that," Ed said, his face deadly serious for once. "Animals to Order is basically a sound idea, but I think our trouble lies in the fact that nobody knows we're alive." He clenched his fist. "If we could only advertise."

The wryness in Colin's smile deepened. "It isn't ethical,'* Ed flung down his paper clip. "It isn't ethical," he parroted. "So we sit around and wait for recognition to come to us, and meanwhile we starve."

His voice went up a notch. "Ten seconds. Ten lousy seconds in the middle of somebody else's vid-cast. Ten lousy seconds."

"Relax," Colin said. "We couldn't scrape together the cash now even if we could advertise. Our equipment…"

Ed waved a hand. "You don't have to tell me how much the rental on our equipment is costing us- I signed the papers with you, remember?"

He stopped short and rubbed the back of his neck with his palm. "I'm sorry, Colin," he said. "I don't mean to snarl at you but it riles me. We've got a potentially great service here and the rules of our game make it something dirty for professional people like us to go out and holler in the crossroads for people to come buy it."

Ed held up a finger and went on talking. "One order. One solitary order all the while we've been in business. It'd gripe anybody.'* It was true. Although they'd been open for half a year, their business had produced little more than inquiries like the tentative one from a physician who was hoping they'd run across an enzyme, an acid, anything that might make the cells of an arm stump de-differentiate and then re-differentiate and grow to restore the amputated limb.

Sorrowfully, Colin had to tell him that, although they could grow an animal with short legs or long legs or even transplant a developing leg, their science could not yet do what he asked of it.

Then there was the usual scattering of requests from biology and genetics students for the results of their most recent work sent quickly, please, by return vac-tube because there was only this weekend coming up in which to get the papers completed and turned in.

And the one solid order Ed had mentioned. From a down-country milk manufacturer. Four heifers. All identical and matching perfectly their trademark. To be sent around to die various slate and bureau food exhibits to promote the name of their company and product. It was not a particularly difficult assignment. A great deal of research and gene mapping had already been done by associations and others interested in food animals so that it was chiefly a case of bringing together what he and Ed needed, and filling in the gaps to produce me animal they wanted. Matching an animal to one in the picture of a trademark was not difficult because you had only to look at it to know how well you'd succeeded. It was the intangible qualities that made for a challenge.

As for identical animals, nature had been producing them for centuries. It was simply a case of splitting the egg once, and then splitting each of the daughter halves again..

It was the heifer order that gave Colin his idea, and staring at the pile of due-chits on his desk made the tussle with his conscience a brief one. "Ed," he said, "we have to do something to call attention to ourselves."

"That's not hard. Let's go out and blow up the Sub-Capital building."

"I'm not joking. You remember the heifer people?"

"Of course. Our one solitary contact with that great world of commerce out there beyond the laboratory walls. We were going to sweep it off its collective feet with our brilliance- I remember.'' "They paid us for four animals whose only purpose was to promote their company name and advance the sale of their product. Right?"

"Yes, but that money is long gone and the rent is due in …" Ed counted on his fingers. "… four days. What are you getting at?"

"Simply this," and now Colin spoke slowly, the excitement in him growing. "What we did for them, we can do for ourselves."

"Build four heifers…?" Ed was patently puzzled.

"Of course not. I mean use our skills to build for ourselves an animal to do for us what the heifers are doing for the milk people. Call us to the attention of the public in general, and of our potential customers in particular.

Ed was pulling his lower lip. "An animal for the express purpose of getting publicity…" And then his head came up. "Hey, TV coverage, wire services, the sport commentators… the Sport of…"

Colin finished it for him. "Exactly, the Sport of Kings. A horse."

And now Ed's eyes were shining. "Great! We'll build the greatest, the fastest racehorse to come down the pike since…*' "No," Colin shook his head. "Not a racing horse."

"Not a racehorse?" Ed looked puzzled again.

"No. The people we want to notice us don't have racing connections- Besides," and he smiled wryly again, "we can't ethically afford to be that obvious. This has got to look like a labor of love. We'll build a horse to enter in the next international showing at the New Arena."

"Wait a minute." Ed said. "Doesn't the Dean's brother raise horses?"

Colin shook his head. "Not Harrison Bullitt… his wife.

But do you know who is honorary president of the horse show association?"

It was Ed's turn to shake his head. "No."

"Commodore Joshua E. Wall."

"Commodore Joshua E… Not Commodore Wall of NavAir?"

Colin nodded, the smile on his face broad now. "That's right. Commodore Joshua E. Wall, Chief of Procurement for NavAir… and the man we've been trying to get in touch with since we first started."

"Don't keep the club so exclusive. He's only one of a long roster of people who haven't responded to our maidenlike overtures."

"True, but if we can get him to give us a contract, then we don't need to worry about many of the others."

Ed pushed back his chair and stood up. "What are we waiting for then, let's get started… When is the next show scheduled for?" he added.

"Early November, but entries usually close in October."

"October! That's cutting it close for a full-grown animal."

"Closer than you think. We've got to get him out and picking up a fistful of first ribbons before that, else he won't be able to even qualify for the big show. But tell me, Ed, can we wait until next year?'' "My head can, but my stomach knows better. I repeat, what are we waiting for? There's only four days' rental left on the analyzer." The electron analyser. The rental on the unit dug deep into their credit fund, but it was indispensable in their work.

Offspring of the early instrument packets shot off to Earth's neighboring planets to analyze and report back by radio on their life forms, it had also done away with much of the time and tedious labor cost needed to map a gene pattern when all the researchers had to work with before its advent were bits of absorbent paper and a photographic plate exposed to a diffracted X-ray.

He and Ed might have used the University unit, but then its rigid rules would have compelled them to be researchers working for the University, and not the co-establishers of Animals to Order, their independent and commercial enterprise.

And now the months of work, of lost sleep, of going back to the making of tutor-tapes for the University to earn the money to live on, to keep open the skeleton of their office, to pay for the hauling of Ato's Pride from show to show around the country and the professional riders required, for fees; all of it looked now to have been worth it. From the sound of the Arena crowd's reaction to their first glimpse of the black stallion, it was plain that his snowballing reputation had reached here before him, and that their gamble was at long last about to pay off.

He fell Ed's elbow in his side, Ed's voice, over the sound of the crowd, excited in his ear. "The Commodore! Over there, on the other side of the ring. 1 think that's the Commodore coming toward us.** There were many figures in bright blue formal clothes below them across the arena, but Colin had no trouble making out the Commodore's white hair and beefy shoulders.

And it did look as though he was working his way through the assembled officials and others in their direction. Well beyond the Commodore, Colin noticed another man, also white haired but built small, like a jockey, who looked to be following the Commodore toward them.

He called him to Ed's attention. "The little man, just coming around the left side of the judge's table. Do you know him?"

"No…," Ed said after a moment, "but he seems to be trying to give the Commodore a race. 1 hope it's a tie."

"You hope it's a tie?"

"Right. If you've got something to sell, there's nothing wrong with having two bargainers on the grounds at the same time to sort of encourage each other to make you more and more extravagant offers. After all, who is the girl in town that everybody wants to date? Why the one who has the most boyfriends already, that's who."

The Commodore went out of Colin's line of sight, going underneath their overhang, and in a moment, the little man as well. If they really were coming to them then they'd be at the head of the ramp behind them in seconds. Colin forced himself to keep his eyes away from the spot, And then the Commodore was bearing down on them,

"Mr. Colin Hall?"

Colin turned his head toward the big, white-haired man.

"I'm Colin Hall," he said and did not go on to introduce Ed, stopped by a strangeness in the the Commodore's manner.

Somehow, the big man looked oddly embarrassed.

"Mr. Hall," the Commodore said, "there's been a question raised…"

"Hall? West?"

The voice, not loud, but penetrating, cut in on the Commodore. It was the small, white-haired man.

"Just a minute," Colin snapped, irked by the man's abrupt manner and anxious to hear what the Commodore had been about to say to him.

"You Hall or West?" the man said, still flatly.

Colin turned in his seat to look full at the little man. "I'm Hall," he said and wondered why, with all the noise of the crowd around them, he should suddenly get the feeling of being in the midst of an apprehensive silence.

"Mrs. Bullitt wants to see you. Now."

Annoyance flared inside Colin and he didn't try to hide it.

"Friend," he said to the little man who might have once been a jockey, "I don't know who you arc, but…" Colin stopped, suddenly rehearing what the man had said. "Did you say Mrs. Bullitt wanted to see me?" The man nodded. "Now."

Colin was torn. The Commodore was important to him and Ed, and added to this was the fact that some question had been raised important enough for him to seek them out at what must be, for him, a busy moment. But Ed and he frankly needed their jobs at the University and the wife of the Dean's brother was known to be an impatient and irascible woman.

The Commodore settled Colin's quandary for him. He spoke to Colin, but his eyes were on the little man. "Mrs. Bullitt has raised a question about the validity of your entry's breeding qualifications. There will have to be a hearing, of course, but for now tell me this. Was your jumper a…"He groped for the expression. "… a test-tube animal all through his gestation period?"

"No," Colin said. puzzled. "He's a replant. Why?" There was certainly nothing new about the technique of removing a potential egg from the dam of a desired animal, starting its growth in an embryo tank and then replanting it in a mother animal to complete its development. He and Ed had used the technique with Ato's Pride for the one compelling reason of its economy. It would have coat a great deal for the battery of technicians and equipment needed if they'd used a full-span series of tanks to bring their stallion to homing size. But to feed and control one pregnant mare…?

"In other words," the Commodore said, "your entry was natural-born."

"Yes," Colin nodded.

The Commodore spoke to the little man directly, his voice sounding to Colin unnecessarily defiant.

"Ato's Pride stays. And you can tell that to your employer."

The little man shrugged. "I'll pass the word. Commodore," he said, "but you'll forgive me if I remind you that it's the association's rules committee and not the president who must pass on a thing like this."

Colin thought he saw the Commodore's eyes on the little man's waver. "Wait a minute," he said, half wildly. Someone, and from the sound of things it was Harrison Bullitt's intransigent wife. was trying to keep his and Ed's one hope out of competition. "You can't pull our entry now. His event is about to start."

The Commodore turned away from the little man. "He's right, you know," he said to Colin. "I don't have the authority for this, but I can call together the rules committee and I will."

"But the event, it's starting."

"Not yet it isn't, and I'll have it held off for as long as the crowd will allow. Meanwhile," he indicated the small man with his head, "we'd better go along with him."

"Let's go," the little man said, not seeming to be the least bit abashed by the Commodore's obvious dislike of him.

And half seething, half numb, Cotin let him lead them to the Owner's Suite four levels below the arena floor, and eight levels below the street.

The room he ushered them into was large and brightly lit.

Neoplast walls niched and hung with award ribbons, platters, trophy cups. Antique photos of horses and behind the stylishly narrow afra-wood desk, a fleshly-faced man in the customary bright-blue formal jacket. Behind him a huge vistaphoto of open fields, fences, white clustered buildings, pasturing animals. ABBY BULLITT HORSE FARMS cut very large into the gateside panels. The size of the establishment startled Colin fleetingly. He had no idea that Mrs. Bullitt's interest, and investment, in horses was so great.

And standing beside the desk, thumping its top with a hard-sounding finger, a short woman, thick-bodied and dumpylooking even in the smart green-and-white-striped riding coat and sleek boots of a Major Hunt.

Harrison Bullitt Colin knew from having seen him in the Dean's office at the University; the woman turning pale eyes and a querulous mouth toward them as they entered, he assumed to be Mrs. Bullitt.

"Why didn't you knock," she began without preamble.

"Martin, you know I don't like people walking in on me without knocking."

The little man beside Colin made no answer, but Harrison Bullitt put a hand on his wife's pudgy arm. "We're not at home, dear. This is an office. It's all right for Martin to walk io here without knocking."

Mrs. Bullitt shook off her husband's hand.**I don't like people to walk in on me without knocking. Martin?" And there was venom in her took, all out of proportion to the incident that had sparked it.

"Yes ma'am," the little man said and his voice sounded sincere.

There was a long silence while Mrs. Bullitt continued to stare at her hireling, long enough for Colin to become conscious of his own heavy breathing. In a reflex of discomfort he cleared his throat and the woman's eyes snapped to his face.

"You," and again she spoke without preamble, "and you."

And her eyes shifted to the space behind Colin where he knew Ed stood, and back to his with a darting motion of her head that somehow made him think of a lizard he'd once seen catching flies.

"You are the two young men who call yourselves Animals to Order?"

It was a question, but to Colin it somehow sounded like an accusation. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Speak up, speak up," she said. "I can't hear you. I like people to speak up when they talk to me."

"Yes, Mrs- Bullitt, we are," Colin said, louder, more than a tittle annoyed with himself at the way her sharp tone had put him off balance. Angry also that she could bring disaster to his and Ed's long-held hopes if her objection to their entry in the arena above should stand.

"Good," the small woman in the striped riding jacket said.

The word of approval startled Colin. "Good? 1… I don't understand."

"What is there to understand?" and her voice was impatient sounding. "You say you can make animals to order.

Very well, 1 want you to make one for me. A horse… a special horse… and after you make it I want you to smash the mold or whatever it is you use. I want it to be unique… mine alone and no one else ever to have another like it.'* The light that had come into Mrs. Bullitt's eyes as she spoke made Colin think shiveringly of medieval princelings who would have a craftsman's hands cut off after he'd provided a work of art for them so that he could not surpass it for another, of architects blinded and put to death so that they could not build for another prince, in another place, a palace, a castle greater, or even the match of, the one possessed by their executioner.

Ed's voice in his ear, low, urgent. "Hey, a contract for an exclusive animal with Bullitt Farms. It may not be NavAir, but from the look of that vistaphoto behind the old man, it's no small-stake operation either. Don't haggle, man- After all, it's quick money and we've already done a lot of the groundwork with Ato."

Harrison Bullitt leaned forward. Even sitting he was a big man, and, although he bore no apparent physical resemblance to his wife, there was a certain flatness about the expression in his eyes that made the thought skim the surface of Colin's mind that here, Harrison Bullitt and his wife Abby, were two of a very unpleasant kind.

"Animals to Order," Bullitt said. "What is it that you do?"

Colin had answered that question dozens of times. He did not need to grope for an analogy to tell of his and Ed's work with the living germ plasm of animals; of the fascination and the monotony of charting gene positions; of converting desired qualities into intricately interacting enzyme patterns; of eliminating genetic loads, the stores of harmful genes carried by all sexually reproducing species.

Of their bio-solutions and the organism growing in its succession of tanks, of the enjoyable tension of watching it until it could emerge and survive without their direction in the open world and be, if they were as lucky as they were entitled to be for their chosen profession was still as much an art as it was a science, be exactly as they had envisioned it at the start.

But Colin's analogy was simple. "Think of a chromosome as a microscopically tiny string of beads present in every plant and animal cell. Now each head is a gene that determines or helps to determine some characteristic of its own animal or plant, like 6ie color of its eyes, the structure of its bones, the smoothness or roughness of its coal, everything about it.

"What we do is sort of rework the beads, repair any damaged ones, shape the string to grow into what we want it to be."

Harrison Bullitt shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Sounds cut and dried to me."

"I suppose it is, in theory. But we're dealing with a living organism. It can be killed, and quite easily… or just die. A temperature can get a shade too warm or a shade too cold … or a stray cosmic ray can strike it… and it turns out in a way we didn't predict. Just being alive, I guess, is enough for it to not always do what you expect it to.** "Sounds like pretty much of a slipshod operation to me,"

Harrison Bullitt said, and from his voice Colin didn't know if he was being talked to or if the big man was just thinking aloud and not particularly interested or caring if he was heard.

But Bullitt went on. "Can you switch parts around?"

Colin thought of fruit flies with misplaced wings, of experimental animals with third eyes, of two-headed dogs. The early researchers had produced all of these and more, and with modem pressor and laser beam techniques it would be even simpler to do. But it was one of those understandings that can exist between two men without ever having been mentioned or even thought of, that he and Ed would not debase their profession by peddling sideshow freaks.

"We can." Colin said aloud, "but we won't."

Mrs. BuUitt laughed shortly. "That's one of the stupidest expressions in the language. Young man, never say you won't do some particular thing. You'd be surprised at me things you'd do if the bind gets tight enough."

Colin had no answer for her except to hold his rising temper in check. What answer did anyone ever have for boors, particularly influential ones like these two?

Mrs. Bullitt dropped her heavy figure into the plastifonn visitor's chair beside her husband's desk, letting her booted heels fly out in front of her as she did so.

Colin noticed roweled spurs and was surprised. He didn't think anyone wore the spiked discs anymore, particularly to ride valuable animals.

There were other chairs in the room, two long sofas along opposite walls, but Mrs. Bullitt did not wave them to a seat.

Colin, Ed, and Martin off to one side of them now, remained standing. The Commodore settling deep in the chair dropped into when they came in.

"I want a horse," the sitting woman said matter-of-factly,

"with wings."

"A horse," Colin started to say and then did a mental double-take. "A what?"

"A great idea, isn't it?" A horse that can fly. Nobody, but nobody in the association, in me worid, will be able to top that."

Colin could only stare at the woman. She couldn't be serious, but from the set of her face it was plain that she was.

"It's impossible," he managed to say. "It's a physical impossibility."

Annoyance flared in Mrs. Bullitt's pale eyes. She struck the arm of her chair sharply with the flat of her hand. "Don't use that word," she said- "I don't like it. Do you hear? I don't like it."

"But it is impossible," Colin said and he didn't know if he was pleading for her to understand or to hold on to his own sanity. He had never before in his life met people like mis.

Beside him, Coiin heard Ed whistle through his teeth. softly to himself. "A Pegasus she wants. A flying, neighing, flaming Greek legend she wants."

"A flying horse is a physical impossibility." Colin said.

Harrison Bullitt seemed amused. "Everything is impossible… until the price gets right. All right," and he sat up in his chair, "let's stop this nonsense. How much is it going to cost me?"

Colin fell like a man trying to keep his footing on a mound of slippery sand. "You don't understand. It's not a question of money. It's not money at all."

Bullitt seemed to be getting annoyed. "I don't see that you should have any particular problem. You said that you could switch pans around. What's so tough about grafting a pair of wings onto a horse?"

The feeling of floundering on shifting sand deepened in Colin. "A wing isn't just something added onto the outside of an animal, and it's not an oversized shoulder blade. It's an integral part of the skeleton, it has a full system of muscles to support it, to move it. Look."

He held up his arm, his fingers extended, his hand bent downward at the wrist. "It's like an arm. The finger bones are long." He made the stretching gesture with his other hand, slapped his arm. "These bones are there, holding, supporting the tissues of the wing itself…"

"I never noticed much of a skeleton in a fly wing,"

Hamson Bultitt interrupted, not bothering to hide the growing of his annoyance.

The sand was beginning to have a sucking feel to it. "Yes, but a fly, any insect, has but the tiniest fraction of the weight of even a small bird. A bird," Colin said,, grasping at a fact that would convince these two that he was not merely throwing up phony obstacles to milk them of their money. "The largest bird. A condor. Ten feet across the wings. Weighs how much? Forty pounds.

"Now a horse. Even a lightly built saddle horse will weigh a thousand pounds, and you know better than I how large his muscles have to be just to move him around on the ground.

Even if we did…" he stopped himself. He was beginning to think like these people about the fantastic.

"Even if we could," he corrected himself and went on.

"Even if we could re-form his front tegs into some semblance of wings, the muscle structures needed to lift half a ton into the air would be so huge that the poor beast probably couldn't even stand under their weight. Then to support all that weight we'd have to make the bones thicker and sturdier and that would add to the weight and… don't you see?" he ended helplessly.

"Weight," Bullilt said. "Don't prattle about weight. Only last night on TriV we saw a… some kind of a flying dinosaur. Weight." He snorted.

"A reptile," Colin said, and it was quicksand he felt the suction of. "A pterodactyl. But even the largest of those had only a twenty-foot wing span."

Colin hadn't been watching Mrs. Bullitt particularly, but now she seemed to explode out of her chair. "You see," she flung at her husband. "I told you there was no point in trying to be nice to these people. They know only one kind of language. All right, if that's the way they want it."

Her eyes, flat and expressionless in spite of the anger in her voice, bored into Colin's. "Young man." she said, "I want a flying horse. Are… you… going… to… give … it… to… me? She spaced me words deliberately.

"I • -. I…" Coiin floundered and then was amazed to hear Ed's voice.

Calmly, rationally, Ed was saying, "Now let me understand this clearly, Mrs. Bullitt. You want us to recreate for you the legendary Hying horse Pegasus. Is that correct?"

Colin stared at Ed. Recreate… legendary… what had gotten into Ed?

And then he heard Mrs. Bullitt's voice. "Legendary. You mean someone has already had a flying horse?"

Colin's eyes snapped back to Mrs. Bullitt's face. Petulance seemed to be always in the set of her mouth, but was there something else there now? Did he see disappointment?

Hope flared up in Colin at the method he thought he saw in Ed's apparent madness. If Mrs. Bullitt became convinced that someone else had beaten her to me possession of a flying horse, even centuries removed in time, then maybe enough of the bloom would be rubbed off the idea of her to abandon it.

But he must have, couldn't have, but he must have misread Ed's intent because his partner's next words were, "Not exactly, perhaps, but 1 do believe that many legends, even the more fantastic, may well have a basis in fact."

Mrs. Bullitt took Ed's words for ammunition. "You see." she snapped at Colin. "Your partner admits that it can be done."

But Colin was staring at Ed. Unbelieving.

"What are you talking about?" he half shouted at Ed.

"What legends and what facts?"

And Ed was looking him right in the eye and saying, "Almost any legend… or folk saying. Like 'dumb blonde' for example. You know that every once in a great while someone comes up missing one of the pigment-forming enzymes.

Naturally, they can't help but be blonde. But they are also mentally retarded, and seriously. Somebody noticed the two conditions, jumped to a vastly broader conclusion than the observation warranted, and there you are. But there was.some basis in fact."

Colin could only stare at Ed. The enzyme was phenylalanmase and the mental condition phenylpyruvic oligophrenia.

But Ed couldn't be serious about a Pegasus.

Or could he? Ed was going on. "And you remember the zoo on the continent that was back-breeding legendary animals?"

"Backbreeding legendary animals? They took modem cattle and backbred them until they had a cow that looked like an extinct ancestor. Where," he demanded, "where are you going to get me the germ plasm of a demigod to repeat the feat for a flying horse?"

Taking firm hold of his voice because he didn't know whether to laugh or hit somebody or just bang his head on the paneled and trophy-hung walls, Colin said to the room in general, "Thank you very much for your confidence in our ability. It is very flattering, but very much misplaced. We cannot build a flying horse. Thank you again and goodbye."

And he put a hand under Ed's elbow and almost shoved him out of the room, and into the passageway, the angry voice of Mrs. Bullitt following them out.

"You'll be back, I promise you. You'll be back, and remember, I won't be as easy to get along with next time."

Controlling himself, Colin slid the door shut gently.

He turned to Ed. "What got into you? You know as well as I do that we can't give her what she wants. Nobody can.*' "Of course I know it," Ed said. "But that woman isn't rational. I was hoping to at least gain us a little time to figure out something, anything. The way it is now. Lord knows what she'll do."

"I… I'm sorry, Ed," Colin started to say, but he was interrupted by the opening of the door they'd just come through. The Commodore emerged and slid it shut again. He stood rubbing the back of his white hair with the flat of one hand. "A flying horse," he said and shook his head. "A flying horse."

He looked at Colin. "I suppose it's impossible."

Colin didn't feel like going through that one again. He nodded.

"Are you sure?" the Commodore persisted. "I don't want to quote an old saw, but the one about doing the difficult right now and the impossible taking a little longer has a good deal to it, I think. We are doing things today as a matter of course that we used to know were impossible."

He smiled. "It used to be an obvious fact that what went up had to come down." He paused and looked from Colin to Ed and back to Colin again. "Have you checked any of our satellites lately?"

It struck Colin that the Commodore was beginning to sound like Harrison Bullitt. "I think I get your point, sir," he said, not because he did, but because the quicksand feeling was back and he wanted to get away from it and Abby Bullitt's office.

"No you don't," the Commodore said, suddenly blunt. "I thought of buying Ato's Pride, looked him over very carefully. Then I realized mat if you can do for food animals what you did for him, then you've got something I can use. I could give you an initial contract and I could defend it, I'm sure.

But with Abby throwing her weight around there's more to it than being willing to justify your actions to an investigating committee. She's thorough and she's fast. You'd probably get hung up because one of your hogs dribbled on the sidewalk."

He shook CoHn's hand and then Ed's. "You think about it," he said. "And you look me up when you get Abby Bullitt off your back. Hear?"

And after the older man had left them to go back up the ramp, it was Ed who broke the gloomy silence that he'd left behind him. "You know," he said, "he might just be right."

"About getting Mrs. Bullitt off our backs? I'm convinced."

"No, about what we know is impossible. We know that a horse can't fly and we know why not. Maybe if we turn the 256 F.A. Javawhole thing upside down and start by assuming that a horse can fly. Now what can we come up with?"

But Colin's mind was numb. A horse can fly. Now the Bullitt virus was getting to Ed. A horse can fly. "Forget it," he said aloud. "Let's go secure Ato and then check out."

Their stallion was already in his stall when they got to the animal-quarters level just below the arena proper.

Slatted concrete floors, cushioned, with lagoons below to catch the droppings. Lagoons constantly running with their odor-controlling washes. Show feeds, specially formulated to inhibit the action of gas-forming bacteria. Everything doing its job of holding down, of elminating, the characteristic offal odor. Doing it well too, but when all was said and done, a stable still smelled like a stable.

More than once Colin had wondered why the whole problem couldn't be eliminated at the source, so to speak, by just not feeding the animals at shows in the usual way. Penetradermal units were standard items, available at any lab supply house. The concentrates were not expensive, and they need be used only during indoor shows and perhaps a short time before.

A unit to feed an animal the size and weight of a horse need use an area no larger than a man's palm. There was no pain reaction that he'd been able to detect; in fact, some of their lab animals even seemed to enjoy the warmed-air caress of a penetra-dermal feeding unit.

But. Coiin supposed, a practice taken more or less for granted in one field was too startling a break with the traditions of another to be even talked about, much less adopted.

Besides, from what he'd seen of horse fanciers in recent months, he was beginning to think they rather liked the smell of horses. He knew that for himself, he was beginning to find it not altogether unpleasant.

They rubbed their animal thoroughly behind his ears, accepted the condolences of the attendants for their hard tuck at his not being able to compete, showed their pass-out badges at the Manager's window.

He was a balding man behind the grilled opening. He ran a finger down the tally-board at his elbow, ticking off their badge numbers.

"Mr. Hall? Mr. West?" he said. And when Colin nodded, went on.

"Message for you to call this number." He passed a small folded slip through the bars of his grille.

"Thank you," Colin said and unfolded the paper. "It's the Dean," he said to Ed. "I wonder what he wants?"

"I can guess," Ed said, "and i don't think I'm going to like it."

Colin dialed the University and flipped the phone switch to muitispeak so that Ed could hear.

The Dean sounded embarrassed and he talked a great deal of the fine work Colin and Ed were doing. He made a passing mention of a board of trustees. He assured Colin and Ed of the warm personal regard in which he held both of them. But when he was through talking and the phone was back on its cradle his message was clear.

The University no longer needed their unique talents in the making of its tutor-tapes. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future.

"She moves fast," Ed said. "Fast."

"She said we'd be back. I guess we could have more or less expected her to do something, but 1 never thought that this was the kind of pressure she had in mind. It… it doesn't seem civilized somehow."

"Breaking a man's rice bowl seldom is," Ed said. "But cheer up, we still have an office with our name on the door."

He laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. "That is if the cleaning people haven't told the landlord we've been sleeping in it for the past three months."

The horse show ran from Tuesday of one week through Tuesday of the next and, surprisingly to Colin, Mrs. Bullitt did not appear to be put out when the rules committee found in their favor on the question of Ato's breeding raised by her.

"You know," Ed said, "I don't think she really wanted to win this one. After all, if she'd managed to get our entry disqualified this time around, then she couldn't very well have expected any animal we might build for her to be eligible, if she had in mind to enter it in the future."' "I think she might expect a special class, if not for her flying horse, then for her."

But Ed could be right. She meant only to keep their entry out, to give them a charge, to encourage them, she might say, to see things her way.

He and Ed had won in the committee room, but it turned out to be an academic victory. When they got down to the stable level they found the shield-shaped sheriffs notice taped to an upright of Ato's stall. Some confusion among their creditors, the bank being chiefest. Until it could be straightened out, their assets, Ato's Pride included, were being impounded.

Sudden, impotent, frustrated fury poured through Colin. It wasn't quicksand. It was a solid bnck wall and he was backed against it. He clenched and unclenched his fists… and felt completely helplessAto's Pride made a little dancing movement with his hoofs.

He tossed his head, his nostrils flaring.

"I'm upsetting our horse," Colin said. "Let's get out of here."

"Yeah," Ed said. "Yeah." And Colin noticed that his face was white and he too was shaking.

It was after they'd checked out and were striding up the ramp to the street that the thought hit Colin.

He caught hold of Ed's arm and pulled him to a halt.

"Ed," he said, "how do you know a horse is a horse?"

Ed pulled his arm away roughly. "I'm in no mood for jokes right now," he said, "so do me a favor and skip it."

"I'm not kidding. How do you know a horse is a horse?"

"All right, Mr. Interlocutor. How do I know a horse is a horse? Because it looks like a horse. That's how." Ed stopped.

"You can't mean…"

"That's exactly what I mean," Colin said. "Turn our problem inside out. Don't try to build a horse and make it fly, instead, take a creature that can fly already and make it took like a horse."

Ed was laughing. Colin thought he heard a hysterical note in the sound.

"A… a… thousand-pound bird."

"It wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds. Birds are built differently from horses. Hollow bones… Are you listening?"

But Ed was still laughing. "A… a horse with feathers."

"What is a feather if not a modified hair… and vice versa."

Ed was wiping his eyes. "Hollow bones. Did you ever heft the bones of a thirty-pound turkey? You build an animal as big as a horse, it's going to weigh like a horse. You've still got half a ton to lift into the air, and it doesn't much matter whether it's a horse muscle or a bird muscle that tries to do it.

It still is an impossible job."

Ed was right. To end up with what they wanted, they would have to start with something just as special. "I'm sorry," Colin said, "I… I'm Just not thinking straight."

They made their way on up the ramp and walked the not-so-great distance to their office buildings. Colin laughed shortly when they came in sight of it. "It's a cold night. I hope Mrs. Bullitt hasn't managed to have us locked out."

Colin thought he was making a bitter joke, but when they reached the door of their office, a small green placard hung on its knob. The terms of their lease clearly prohibited the use of the premises as living quarters. Would they kindly be ready to vacate in the required three days.

"She is a witch," Ed said, his eyes staring.

But all Colin could do was pound his clenched hand against the wall of the passageway until the pain of it brought him to some semblance of calm.

"We're going back," he finally said. "We're going back and we'll sign her contract. We'll give her something. I don't know what, but believe me, it will look like a horse… and I promise you… it will fly."

At the Arena they found Mrs. Bullitt in the Manager's office rattling a fistful of papers under the balding man's nose while the handful of clerks in the room made it plain that they were too deep in their work to see… or hear… what was going on. Fleetingly, Colin wondered if she wore those roweled spurs to bed.

She did not seem suprised to see them, nor did she seem inclined to take Colin and Ed to her own office- She halfturned away from the manager, the papers still clutched in a fist, to face them. "You're back," she snapped. "I told you you would be."

The waspish tone of her voice might have made Colin turn around and walk away from her only the day before. Now, in some perverse way, it made him stand his ground.

He was surprised at how quiet his voice sounded. "Yes, Mrs. Bullitt. i think we're ready to accept your assignment."

The woman in the striped coat and boots made an abrupt motion to one of the clerks and the girl came to her immediately. "There's a blue envelope on my desk. Get it," Mrs.

Bullitt snapped. The girl scurried out the door.

"I knew you'd be back," she said to Colin and Ed. "You see, it's all a question of understanding people. It always is.

People never know what they can really do until they absolutely have to do it or else."

She smiled and her face looked smug. "All I ever do is provide the 'or else.' " ^ Colin held his tongue, but beside him he could hear Ed t breathing heavily. H The girl clerk came back and Abby Bullitt took the long |1 blue envelope from her hand and dropped it on the Manager's I. counter in front of Colin.?

"Sign it," she said, leaving it to him to take out and! ^ unfold the long shape of the contract for himself. ^ Colin ignored the slight, but at his first glimpse of the $ printed form he looked up at Mrs. Bullitt, puzzled. "This ^ … this contract is with the University. I don't understand.

Yesterday your husband…"

"Yesterday's contract was with me. Today's is with the University."

She smiled and now she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. "1 told you then that I wouldn't be as easy to get along with again."

And suddenly Colin was aghast as the full implication of what she meant to do struck him. She meant to have her flying animal, and she meant to compel them to give it to her for nothing. Absolutely nothing… or elseUnder a University grant they could, of course, use its facilities, its equipment, but at no profit to themselves, not even a mention of their names if the University was not disposed to lift them from anonymity.

He ran his eyes down the page- It was the standard University form, printed, with the usual blank spaces for additional items left to be filled in.

But the items filled in were anything but usual.

"Sixty days," Colin gasped, his eyes, unbelieving and dazed, moving from the smiling woman, to Ed, and back again. "Sixty days?"

"A little added incentive to keep you from dawdling," she said. "I know how you people like to stretch things out when you think you have hold of someone you can take advantage of. Surely in sixty days you ought to have something to show me. Now sign."

Ed took the contract from Colin's nerveless fingers, it rustled loudly in his shaking hand as he glanced down it. "Sixty days and we guarantee results." He flung the contract on the counter. "The way that's phrased, we could go to jail for outright fraud if we don't deliver."

Abby Butlitt had her arms crossed in front of her, tight.

She said nothing.

Silence hung in the room.

Abruptly Ed snatched the Manager's chained-down pen from its stand and scribbled his name across the bottom of the stiff paper. He shoved contract and pen at Colin. "Here, sign this and let's get out of here."

Through a haze that was red and gathering, Colin signed and flung down the pen. "Would you like your horse to be of any particular color?" he said bitterly, and was aghast to see that Mrs. Builitt seemed to be taking the question seriously.

"Arnold." she said to the balding manager, "what is the name of that liqueur we had at me Hunt dinner last Wednesday?"

"Chartreuse, Mrs. Bullitt. Chartreuse."

"That's it," she said, and then to Colin. "Make it chartreuse."

And suddenly beside Colin, Ed was laughing and he didn't seem able to stop. "A chartreuse horse. A flying, flaming, chartreuse horse."

And in the open air of the street Ed was still gasping. "Oh, a chartreuse horse."

"Why not? A chartreuse horse is just as logical as a flying one."

Ed went off in another fit of laughter. "Logic. Oh, my aching… logic. He's talking about logic-'* But logic was what they used at first. Logic and Colin's wild idea to start with a living animal that already flew. "It's a cosmetic problem now. Not engineering. It doesn't have to be a horse, it just has to look like a horse."

Weight against size. Colin thought of fish that could distend themselves with air. There was large size with small weight. He thought of a litter of fox terrier pups he'd once handled. Ail were solid, chunky, heavy in the hand. All but one. The same size, but lighter than the others, so much so that his hand had come up unexpectedly when he'd picked it up- It died, but it had been lighter.

They slept in the University dorm, ate in the cafeteria, and they worked. Together at first, then, as time pressed them and there was stil! not a glimmer of success, they worked separately to spread their investigations.

They worked with the cells of birds. Searching for size without weight. Speeding the development of their dividing cells as much as they dared, projecting the rest of me development by computer when they had even a tentative pattern to program, guessing at more than they should have.

Anything, anything at all, that was large and could lift itself from the ground. That to start and the hope of plastic surgery, transplants, for the rest.

Nothing. Not a thing.

Sixty days. Mrs. Bullitt. A reckoning… and a reprieve.

Not of their asking, but of her brother-in-law's, the Dean's, pleading for them, for more time.

A reprieve. A reprieve and a new contract. A contract the Dean walked out of the room and would not watch them sign.

Sixty days- No more. And this time a cash penalty. Added.

If they fail, they must reimburse the University in full for the loss.

They seldom saw each other now, Colin and Ed. They slept when they could, worked when they could, ate if they could. Ed was trying irradiated cells now. Gathering them from wherever he could.

"Sure it's as subtle as a shotgun," he'd said, "but nothing alive today is of any help to us. We've got to come up with something new."

"That is a typical panic response," Colin said.

"What else have we got left but panic?" Ed wanted to know.

And then one bleary afternoon Colin came awake in the dorm to Ed's shaking him. "Wake up," Ed was saying, excited. "I think I've got a lizard that's trying to make like a bird."

Colin tried to shake the weariness out of his eyes. "A lizard?"

"Yes, I got to thinking about how birds and reptiles are distantly related, so I went over to the reptile house, picked up what ceils 1 could, brought them back and set them up to be bombarded. This one projected pretty light for its size so I let it develop. Just now it tried to attack me."

He held up a hand, the edge of it was bleeding. "It ran on its hind legs and took off right into the air at me, its front ones going like crazy. So help me, Cotin, I think it was trying to fly."

It was a lizard all right, nondescript brown, the size of a small dog, sitting on its haunches. And Ed was right, it did look as though it was trying to fly when it leaped for their throats and struck its teeth at their padded arms instead.

They took what cells they might need from it and, because it was so patently vicious, they destroyed it.

Cells died. That was expected. Others went awry and were destroyed. But one. One cell developed well and its tapes projected well. Sleek reptile head forming. Earless. No problem. Ears are easy to form and attach later. Front legs shaping up as true wings now, clawed toes long, well membraned. Transplant leg buds from another developing cell to chest of prime animal and hope musculature will develop enough to support them.

Compatability of tissue no problem. After all, aren't they actually all from the same animal?

Coloring a bonus feature, though. They did not work for it, did not plan it, but their animal seemed to be developing a greenish, golden cast to its sleek skin. Ed laughed. "She might have her chartreuse horse after all."

And the tension. The unholy tension. Out of its tank for days now, still won't eat, but seems to be doing well on penetra-dermal regimen. And as light, beautifully light as the tapes had predicted.

University gym. Transmitting implants in position, tapes set up, monitoring screen ready. Long tether. Running, on hind legs like predecessor, wings spread. Glide, not true flight, a glide. Too weak yet, too undeveloped. More plastic work needed on that reptile head. Teeth also, still too carnivorous-looking for a horse. Glad this one is docile, not like its pappy. Tushes- Remember tushes. After all. he is supposed to be a male horse, you know. Why won't it eat?

They were working together now, but exhilarated. Intuition mostly, no mapping. Pointless. To map, you needed the developed animal to see what its genes would become. And if they did manage to develop one to suit Abby Bullitt, what was the need for a map?

More trials. Flying now. Really flying, no tether, comes when whistled for, obeys hand signals too. Open air, too large for gym now, needs open air. Try it tomorrow. Call Mrs. Bullitt.

University Field. Clear, beautiful day. They'd produced a magnificent animal.

Golden green in color. Its natural position at rest seemed to be sitting on its haunches, front feet resting on the ground; the claws had fused into very acceptable-looking hoofs. Its great wings not folded flat and down against me body, but carried high so that their tops, the leading bony edges curving gracefully behind its head and high arched neck, gave it a remotely haloed look.

The tail, although Colin could not see it from this angle, was not like a horse's, and not like a lizard's either, but flat and used like an airfoil. A handsome beast, and, holding it by the bridle it had learned to wear, Colin was at once proud yet fearful of it. Made uneasy by the look in its eyes of waiting, of a biding of time. Where is thai Bullitt woman?

She came, and riding a horse, Ed swore and reached to help Colin hold their animal's bridle, but it did not shy. It had never seen any animal larger than a lab dog before, but it seemed no more than mildly interested and stayed sitting.

But not Abby Bullitt. She'd dismounted and stood in front of their animal now, hands clasped. "He's beautiful. He's beautiful," she repeated over and over, looking up at his great head towering above her.

Colin looked away from the light in her eyes. She looked hypnotized.

And now Colin felt his animal move. The biding eyes were looking down at Abby Bullitt, and slowly, magnificently, the great wings spread. Spread in a movement Colin had never seen before. Spread upward and outward until they seemed to blot out the whole of the morning's sun.

"Oh," the woman gasped. "Oh, I must ride him."

"No," Colin said. Something was going on here that he didn't understand and his feeling of uneasiness was deep. ' 'No, he's never been ridden before. Never even mounted."

But Abby Bullitt had her hand on the bridle. "Let go," she said. "I must ride him."

"No," Colin said and then his hand was bloody where she'd cut it with her riding crop and snatched away the bridle.

She flung herself onto the animal's shoulders, into the hollow between the high-carried wings, her sharp spurs gouging.

It screamed and it ran. On its hind legs as Colin had so often seen it do, its grafted front ones tucked in, birdtike, and then it was in flight. Again it screamed and now Abby Bullitt's voice was blended in the sound. Was it delight… or terror? Colin could not tell. The mount and ils rider climbed higher. The screams were fainter now, but the terror in Abby Bullitt's was plain.

Toward the nver and the tall cliffs beyond it the animal flew.

And then it and the screaming were gone. But, airborne, it had been seen and heard, and now the crowd was gathering.

On the rim of Colin's consciousness the voice of Ed was shouting.

"Now don't worry. We know exactly where they are. The transmitters, the police can home in on the data transmitters…"

But Colin wasn't really hearing him. Colin was staring at his jerry-rigged monitoring screen. The pattern of light darting and swirling across its face was a strange one for this particular animal, but one not strange at all to Colin. He'd seen it before, many times, constantly almost, with Ato's Pride, and he recognized it now with a growing horror.

Somewhere, greedily, slaveringly, the Bullitt beast was at long last feeding.

Hunched, wrapped in blankets, holding steaming mugs, Colin and Ed, in the cockpit of the patrol boat that had pulled them out of the river. Ed still shaking his head.

"It went for us. Did you see how it went for us?"

Colin didn't answer him, knowing that Ed wasn't looking for him to. Remembering the two of them in the police copter, with the pilot and the man with the heavy carbine.

Tracking their animal, homing in on the emitting signals of its data transmitters until, on the rocky face of the cliffs, halfway up, they caught the glint of the sun on its gold-green skin.

"There!" Ed shouted, pointing, and the copter hovered close.

Crouched it was, on the jutting shelf. The great wings half unfurled, opening, closing, twitching,

"Do you think she's still alive?" the man with the carbine said, then, "Forget it."

It rose to meet them. Hurling itself at them with a ferocity that brought to Colin's mind the vivid image of its dog-sized predecessor.

"Move!" the man with the carbine was shouting at the copter pilot. "Swing this thing around! Give me a clear shot!"

But the pilot had already swung his craft. Hanging on its screw, he'd fumed it like a pendant bubble and the man was firing.

Again and again Colin saw him jerk with the recoil of his heavy weapon, but the great flying animal was still airborne.

Upon them now it was. Circling around them, great wings flailing. Lips drawn back from its bloodied teeth.

Claws. It looks like it's got claws on those feet and not hooves.

And then it struck. Like the huge beast of prey that it was.

It struck, swooping down upon them from above and behind with a speed impossible to evade; with a whistling and a shrieking that Colin was sure he heard even above the clatter of their own copter blades.

And into those blades it plunged, and the impact was tremendous.

They hung there in the clear sky for a heart-stopping moment; the screaming animal and the maimed machine.

Then they fell. Fell the few hundred feel to the river and into its chilling waters.

Beside Colin the copter pilot shivering in his blankets called out to the man at the patrol boat's wheel. "See it yet?"

"No," someone called back to him, and the man who had lost his carbine pulled his blankets closer and said. "Forget it. He's not floating with all the lead I put into him."

They were waiting for them on the jutting dock when the patrol boat swept close. On the dock and coming oat to meet them in their hovering craft. The vidcasters, the reporters, the curious.

And after them the TriV coverage of the inquest, the investigations, the public's blatant, and their colleagues' more discreet, inquiries into how they produced their miracle, until at last even Ed turned to Colin in their office one morning and said in genuine dismay, "I know I wanted publicity to put us over the top, but enough is enough." Colin smiled and waved the pale blue vac-tube message his secretary had just handed him.

"The Commodore says thank you but he doesn't think he ought to accept Ato's Pride from us, not as a gift anyway."

"Why not?" Ed said. "It's the least we can do to show him our appreciation for the contracts he's wangled for us."

Colin laughed. "Those he says he doesn't need to defend, not any more. But he doesn't want to get fouled up with any committee investigating expensive presents to government people."

"Tell him to take the horse and stop worrying," Ed said, and from his expression Colin could not tell if he was kidding or not. "If they fire him, a growing organization like ours can always use a good man who knows his way around Procurement."