The Fifth Head of Cerberus

V. R. T.

It was a brown box, a dispatch box, of decayed dark brown leather with brass reinforced corners. The brass had been painted a brownish green when the box was new; but most of the paint was gone, and the dying sunlight from the window showed dull green tarnish around the bright scars of recent gouges. The slave set this box carefully, almost soundlessly, beside the junior officer’s lamp.

“Open it,” the officer said. The lock had been broken a long time ago; the box was tied shut with hard-reeved ropes twisted from reclaimed rags.

The slave—a high-shouldered, sharp-chinned man with a shock of dark hair—looked at the officer and the officer nodded his close-cropped head, his chin moving a sixteenth of an inch. The slave drew the officer’s dagger from the belt over the back of his chair, cut the ropes, kissed the blade reverently and replaced it. When he had gone the officer rubbed his palms on the thighs of his knee-length uniform trousers, then lifted the lid and dumped the contents on to his table.

Notebooks, spools and spools of tape. Reports, forms, letters. He saw a school composition book of cheap yellow paper, the cover half torn off, picked it up. An unskilled hand had monogramed it: V. R. T. The initials were ornate and very large but somehow wrongly formed, as though a savage had imitated them from letters indicated to him on a sign.

Birds I have seen today. I saw two birds today. One was a skull-shrike, and the other was a bird that the shrike had…

The officer tossed the composition book to the back of the table. His eyes, straying, had identified amid the clutter the precise, back-slanted writing favoured by the Civil Service.

SIR: The materials I send you…

…is my own opinion.

…from Earth.

The officer raised his eyebrows slightly, put down the letter, and picked up the composition book again. At the bottom of the cover, in smudged, dark letters, he read: Medallion Supplies, Frenchman’s Landing, Sainte. Anne. Inside the back cover:

name: Rm E2S14 Seat 18

school: Armstrong School

city: Frenchman’s Landing

Taking up one of the spools of tape, he looked for a label, but there was none. The labels lay loose among the other materials, robbed by the humidity of their adhesion, though still neatly titled, dated and signed.

Second Interrogation.

Fifth Interrogation.

Seventeenth Interrogation—Third Reel.

The officer allowed them to sift between his fingers, then chose a spool at random and set it up on his recorder.

A: Is it going now?

Q: Yes. Your name, please.

A: I have already given you my name, it is on all your records.

Q: You have given us that name a number of times.

A: Yes.

Q: Who are you?

A: I am the prisoner in cell 143.

Q: Oh, you are a philosopher. We had thought you an anthropologist, and you don’t seem old enough for both.

A:

Q: I am instructed to familiarize myself with your case. I could have done that without calling you from your cell—you realize that? I am subjecting myself to the danger of typhus and several other diseases for your sake. Do you want to return underground? You seemed to appreciate the cigarette a moment ago. Isn’t there anything else you’d like?

A: (Eagerly) Another blanket. More paper! More paper, and something to write on. A table.

The officer smiled to himself and stopped the tape. He had enjoyed the eagerness in A’s voice, and he now found pleasure in speculating to himself about the answer A would receive. He rewound a few inches of tape, then touched the PLAY button again.

Q: Do you want to return underground? You seemed to appreciate the cigarette a moment ago. Isn’t there anything else you’d like?

A: (Eagerly) Another blanket. More paper! More paper, and something to write on. A table.

Q: We’ve given you paper, a great deal of it. And look at the use you’ve made of it: filled it with scrawlings. Do you realize that if the records in your case are ever forwarded to higher authority it will be necessary to have them transcribed? That will be weeks of work for somebody.

A: They could be photocopied.

Q: Ah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?

The officer touched the volume control, reducing the voices to murmurs, and poked at the litter on his table. An unusual and exceptionally sturdy notebook caught his eye. He picked it up.

It was perhaps fourteen inches by twelve, an inch thick, bound in stout canvas of a dun shade time and sun had turned to cream at the edges. The pages were heavy and stiff, ruled with faint blue lines, the first page beginning in the middle of a sentence. Looking more carefully, the officer saw that three leaves had been cut from the front of the book, as though with the blade of a razor or a very keen knife. He drew his dagger and tested its edge against the fourth. The dagger was sharp—the slave kept it so—but would not cut as cleanly as the edge someone had employed before him. He read:

…a deceptive quality even to daylight, feeding the imagination, so that I sometimes wonder how much of what I see here exists only in my own mind. It gives me an unbalanced feeling, which the too-long days and stretched nights don’t help. I wake up—I did even in Roncevaux—hours before dawn.

Anyway it’s a cool climate, so the thermometer tells me; but it does not seem cool—the whole effect is of the tropics. The sun, this incredible pink sun, blazes down, all light and no heat, with so little output at the blue end of the spectrum that it leaves the sky behind it nearly black, and this very blackness is—or at least seems to me—tropical; like a sweating African face, or the green-black shadows at noon in a jungle; and the plants, the animals and insects, even this preposterous jerrybuilt city, all contribute to the feeling. It makes me think of the snow langur—the monkey that lives in the icy valleys of the Himalayas; or of those hairy elephants and rhinoceros that during the glaciations held on to the freezing edges of Europe and North America. In the same way, here they had bright-colored birds and wide-leaved, red- and yellow-blossomed plants (as if this were Martinique or Tumaco) in profusion wherever the ground is high enough to free it from the monotonous grasp of the salt reeds of the meadowmeres.

Mankind collaborates. Our town (as you see, a few days in one of these new-built, falling-down metropolises makes you an old resident, and I was considered an Early Settler before I had transferred the contents of my bags to the splintering dresser in my room) is largely built of logs from the cypress-like trees that dot the lowlands around it and roofed with plastic sheet, corrugated—so that all we need is the throbbing of native drums in the distance. (And wouldn’t it make my job easier to hear a few! Actually some of the earliest explorers farther south are supposed to have reported signal drumming on the standing trunks of hollow trees by the Annese; they are said to have used no drum-sticks, striking the trunk with the open hand as if it were a tom-tom, and like all primitives they would presumably have been communicating by imitating, with the sound of their blows, their own speech—“talking drums.”)

The officer riffled the stiff leaves with his thumb. There were pages more of the same kind of material, and he tossed the notebook aside to take up a portion of a loose sheaf of papers bound at their point of origin (he glanced at the top of the cover letter—(Port-Mimizon) with a flimsy tin clasp which had now fallen off. These were in the neat writing of a professional clerk; the pages were numbered, but he did not trouble himself to find the first of them.

Now that I have paper again it has proved possible, just as I predicted, to decipher the tappings of my fellow prisoners. How? you ask. Very well, I will tell you. Not because I must, but in order that you may admire my intelligence. You should, you know, and I need it.

By listening to the tapping it was not difficult to separate code groups which, as I realized, each represented a letter. I was greatly helped, I admit, by the knowledge that this code was meant to be understood, not to baffle, and that it must often be employed by uneducated men. By marking tallies I could determine the frequency of use of each group; so much was easy, and anyone could have done as well. But what were the frequencies of the letters? No one carries that information in his head except a cryptographer, and here is where I thought out a solution I flatter myself you would never have arrived at if you had had to sit in this cell, as it seems I must, until the walls crumble away to sand: I analyzed my own conversation. I have always had an excellent memory for what I have heard said, and it is even better for what I have said myself—I can still recall, for example, certain conversations I had with my mother when I was four, and the oddity is that I comprehend now things she said to me which were perfectly opaque at the time, either because I did not know even the simple words she used or because the ideas she expressed, and her emotions, were beyond the apprehension of a child.

But I was telling you about the frequencies. I talked to myself—like this—sitting here on my mattress; but to prevent my unconscious favoring certain letters I wrote nothing down. Then I printed out the alphabet and went back, in my mind, over all that I had said, spelling the words and putting tallies beneath the letters.

And now I can put my ear to the sewer pipe that runs down through my cell, and understand.

At first it was hard, of course. I had to scribble down the taps, then work it out, and the fragment of message I had been able to record often conveyed no meaning: YOU HEARD WHAT THEY…

Often I got less than that. And I wondered why so much of what was being said was in numbers: TWO TWELVE TO THE MOUNTAINS… Then I realized that they, we, call ourselves usually by our cell number, which gives the location and is the most important thing, I suppose, about a prisoner anyway.

The page ended. The officer did not look for the next in sequence, but stood up and pushed back his chair. After a moment he stepped through the open doorway; outside there was a faint breeze now, and Sainte Anne, high over his head, steeped the world in sad green light; he could see, a mile or more away in the harbor, the masts of the ships. The air held the piercing sweet smell of the night-blooming flowers the previous commandant had ordered planted around the building. Fifty feet away under the shadow of a fever tree the slave squatted with his back to the trunk, sufficiently hidden to support the fiction that he was invisible when he was not wanted, sufficiently close to hear if the officer called or clapped his hands. The officer looked at him significantly and he came running across the dry, green-drenched lawn, bowing. “Cassilla,” the officer said.

The slave ducked his head. “With the major… Perhaps, Mattre, agirl from the town—”

Mechanically, the officer, who was younger than he, struck him, his open left hand smacking the slave’s right cheek. Equally mechanically, the slave dropped to his knees and began to sob. The officer pushed him with his foot until he sprawled on the half-dead grass, then went back into the small room that served him for an office. When he was gone the slave stood, brushed his threadbare clothing, and took up his station beneath the fever tree again. It would be two hours or more before the major was finished with Cassilla.

There was a native race. The stories are too widespread, too circumstantial, too well documented, for the whole thing to be a sort of overgrown new-planet myth. The absence of legitimate artefacts remains to be explained, but there must be some explanation.

To this indigenous people, humankind and the technological culture must have proved more toxic than to any other aboriginal group in history. From rather ubiquitous if thinly scattered primitives they have become something Jess than memory in a period of not much more than a century—this without any specific catastrophe worse than the destruction of the records of the first French landing parties by the war.

My problem, then, is to learn all there is to be learned about some very primitive people who have left almost no physical traces at all (as far as anyone knows) and some highly embroidered legends. I would be disheartened if it were not that the parallel with those paleolithic, Caucasoid Pygmies who came to be called the Good People (and who survived, as was eventually shown, in Scandinavia and Eire until the last years of the eighteenth century) were not almost exact.

How late, then, did the Annese hang on? Though I have been questioning everyone who will stand still for it, and listening to every tale they wanted to tell (thirdhand, n^thhand, I always think I might pick up something, and there’s no use making an enemy of anyone who might later direct me to better information), I have been especially alert for firsthand, datable accounts. I have everything on tape, but it may be wise to transcribe a few of the more typical, as well as some of the most interesting, here; tapes can be lost or ruined after all. I give all dates by local calendar to avoid confusion.

March 13. Directed by Mr Judson, the hotelkeeper, and bearing a verbal introduction from him, I was able to talk to Mrs Mary Blount, a woman of eighty who lives with her granddaughter and the granddaughter’s husband on a farm about twenty miles from Frenchman’s Landing. The husband warned me before I was taken in to meet the old lady herself that her mind sometimes wandered, and instanced, to prove his point, that she at times claimed to have been born on Earth, but at others insisted that she had been born aboard one of the colonizing ships. I began the interview by asking her about this; her answer shows, I fear, how little elderly people are listened to in our culture.

Mrs Blount: “Where was I born. On the ship. Yes. I was the first that was born on the ship and the last born on the old world—how d’you like that, young man? Women that was expecting wasn’t to come on board, you see, though lots of them did as it turned out. My Ma, she wanted to go, and she decided not to say anything about her condition. She was a heavy woman, as you may imagine, and I guess I was a small little baby. Yes, they had physical examinations for all that was going, but that had been months and months before, because the blasting-off was delayed, you see. All the women was to wear these coveralls that they called space clothes, just like the men, and Ma felt I was coming and told them she wanted hers loose, and the Devil take style. So they didn’t know. She was having pains, she said, when she come up in the gantry, but the doctor on the ship was one of them and didn’t say nothing to anybody. I was born and he put her and me to sleep the way they did and when we woke up it was twenty-one years afterward. The ship we come on was the nine-eight-six, which was not the first one, but one of the more earlier of them. I’ve heard that before they used to have names for them, which I think would be prettier.

“Yes, there was still quite a few French left here when we came, most all except the littlest children had their arms or legs gone or was scarred terrible. They knowed they had lost and we knowed we had won, and our men just took land and stock, whatever they wanted, that’s what Ma told me later. I was just small, you know, and didn’t realize nothing. When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to fight was growing up too, and weren’t they the cutest things? They got most of the handsome boys, you know, and all the rich ones. You could go to a dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in, just in rags you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and every boy’s head would turn.

“Annese? What’s the Annese?

“Oh, them. We called them the abos or the wild people. They weren’t really people, you know, just animals shaped like people.

“Of course I’ve seen them. Why when I was a child I used to play with the children, the little ones, you know. Ma didn’t want me to, but when I was out playing alone I’d go out to the back of our pasture and they’d come and play with me. Ma said they’d eat me,” (Laughs) “but I can’t say how they ever tried. Wouldn’t they steal, though! Anything to eat, they were always hungry. They got to taking out of our smokehouse, and one night Pa killed three, right between the smokehouse and the barn, with his gun. One was one I had played with sometimes, and I cried; that’s the way a child is.

“No, I don’t know where he buried them or if he did; just dragged them out back for the wild animals, I’d suppose.”

A brother officer came in. The officer laid the notebook aside, and as he did so a puff of wind swayed the pages.

“Feel that,” the brother officer said. “Why can’t we have that during the day when we need it?”

The officer shrugged. “You’re up late.”

“Not as late as you are—I’m going to bed now.”

“You see what I’ve got.” The officer’s lips bent in a small, sour smile. He gestured at the jumble of papers and tapes on the table.

The brother officer stirred them with one finger. “Political?”

“Criminal.”

“Tell them to knock the dust off their garrotte and get yourself some sleep.”

“I have to find out what it’s all about first. You know the commandant.”

“You’ll be ready for the spade tomorrow.”

“I’ll sleep late. I’m off anyway.”

“You always were an owl, weren’t you?”

The brother officer left, yawning. The officer poured a glass of wine, no cooler now than the room, and began to read again where the wind had left the book.

“I don’t know. Might be fifteen years ago, or it might not. Our years are longer here—did you know that?”

Self: “Yes, you don’t have to explain that.”

Mr D: “Well, those Frenchmen used to have all kinds of stories about them; most of them I never believed.

“What kinds of stories? Oh, just nonsense. They’re an ignorant people, the French are.”

(End of Interview)

I had been told that one of the last survivors of the first French settlers had been one Robert Culot, now dead about forty years. I inquired about him and learned that his grandson (also named Robert Culot) sometimes referred to stories he had heard Ms grandfather tell of the early days on Sainte Anne. He (Robert Culot the younger) appears to be about fifty-five (Earth) years of age. He operates a clothing store, the best in Frenchman’s Landing.

M. Culot: “Yes, the old one frequently told tales concerning those you call the Annese, Dr Marsch. He had many stories of them, of all the different sorts.

“That is correct, he felt them to be of many races. Others, he said, might think them to be all one, but the other knew less than he. He would have said that to the blind, all cats are black. Do you speak French, Doctor? A pity.”

Self: “Can you tell me the approximate date on which your grandfather last saw a living Annese, Monsieur Culot?”

M. C: “A few years before he died. Let me think… Yes, three years I think before his death. He was confined to his bed the year following, and his death took him two years after.”

Self: “About forty-three years ago, then?”

M. C: “Ah, you do not believe an old man, do you? That is cruel! These French, you say to yourself, cannot be trusted.”

Self: “On the contrary, I am intrigued.”

M. C: “My grandfather had attended the funeral of a friend, and it had depressed his spirit; so he went for a walk. When he had been but a little younger he had walked a great deal, you comprehend. Then only a few years before the last illness he ceased to do so. But now because his heart troubled him he walked again. I was playing draughts with my father, his son, and was present when he returned.

“What did he say his indigène looked like? Ah!” (Laughs) “I had hoped you would not ask that. You see, my father laughed at him as well, and that made him angry. For that to my father he spoke his bad English much, to make my father angry in return; and he said my father sat all day and consequently saw nothing. My father had both his legs gone in the war; it is fortunate for me, is it not, that he did not lose certain other things as well?

“I asked then that question you have asked me—how did it appear? I will tell you what it was he responded, but it will cause you to distrust him.”

Self: “Do you think he may have been simply teasing you, or your father?”

M. C: “He was a most honest old man. He would not tell lies to anyone, you understand. But he might—speak the truth in such a way as to make it sound impertinent. I asked him how the creature appeared, and he said sometimes likes a man, but sometimes like the post of a fence.”

Self: “A fence post?”

M. C: “Or a dead tree—something of the sort. Let me recollect myself. It may have been that he said: ‘Sometimes like a man, sometimes like old wood.’ No, I cannot really tell what he meant by that.”

M. Culot directed me to several other members of the French community around Frenchman’s Landing who he said might be willing to cooperate with me. He also mentioned a Dr Hagsmith, a medical doctor, who he understood has made some effort to collect traditions regarding the Annese. I was able to arrange an interview with Dr Hagsmith the same evening. He is English-speaking, and told me that he considered himself an amateur folklorist.

Dr Hagsmith: “You and I, sir, we take opposite tacks. I don’t mean to disparage what you’re doing—but it isn’t what I’m doing. You wish to find what is true, and I’m afraid you’re going to find damned little; I want what is false, and I’ve found plenty. You see?”

Self: “You mean that your collection includes a great many accounts of the Annese?”

Dr H: “Thousands, sir. I came here as a young physician, twenty years ago. In those days we thought that by now this would be a great city; don’t ask me why we thought it, but we did. We planned everything: museums, parks, a stadium. We felt we had everything we needed, and so we did—except for people and money. We still have everything.” (Laughs)

“I started writing down the stories in the course of my practice. I realized, you see, that these legends about the abos had an effect on people’s minds, and their minds affect their diseases.”

Self: “But you have never seen an aborigine yourself?”

Dr H: (Laughs) “No, sir. But I am probably the greatest living expert on them you’ll find. Ask me anything and I can quote chapter and verse.”

Self: “Very well. Do the Annese still exist?”

Dr H: “As much as they ever did.” (Laughs)

Self: “Then where do they live?”

Dr H: “What locality, you mean? Those that live in the back of beyond pursue a wandering existence. Those living about farms generally have their habitations in the farthest parts, but occasionally one or two may take up residence in a cowshed, or under the eaves of the house.”

Self: “Wouldn’t they be seen?”

Dr H: “Oh, it’s quite Unlucky to see one. Generally, though, they take the form of some homey household utensil if anyone looks—become a bundle of hay, or whatever.”

Self: “People really believe they can do that sort of thing?”

Dr H: “Don’t you? If they can’t, where’d they all go?” (Laughs)

Self: “You said most Annese live ‘in the back of beyond’?”

Dr H: “The wilderness, the wastelands. It’s a term we have here.”

Self: “And what do they look like?”

Dr H: “Like people; but the color of stones, with great shocks of wild hair—except for the ones that don’t have any. Some are taller than you or I, and very strong; some are smaller than children. Don’t ask me how small children are.”

Self: “Supposing for the moment that the Annese are real, if I were to go looking for them where would you advise me to look?”

Dr H: “You could go to the wharves.” (Laughs) “Or the sacred places, I suppose. Ah, that got you! You didn’t know they had sacred places, did you? They have several, sir, and a well-organized and very confusing religion too. When I first came I used to hear a great deal about a high priest as well—or a great chief, whichever you wanted to call him. At any rate, a more than usually magical abo. The railway had just been built then, and of course the game hereabouts wasn’t accustomed to it and a good many animals were killed. This fellow would be seen walking up and down the right-of-way at night, restoring them to life, so people called him Cinderwalker, and various names of that sort. No, not Cinderella, I know what you’re thinking—Cinderwalker. Once a cattle-drover’s woman had her arm cut off by the train—I suspect she was drunk, and lying on the tracks—and the drover rushed her to the infirmary here. Well, sir, they got a frozen arm out of the organ bank in the regular way and grafted it on to her; but Cinderwalker found the one she had lost and grew a new woman on that so that the drover had two wives. Naturally the second one, the one Cinderwalker made, was abo except for the one arm, so she used to steal with the abo part, and then the human part would put back what she’d taken. Well, finally, the Dominicans here got on the poor drover for having too many wives, and he decided that the one Cinderwalker made would have to go—not having two human arms she couldn’t chop firewood properly, you see…

“Am I surprising you, sir? No, not being really human, you see, the abos can’t handle any sort of tool. They can pick them up and carry them about, but they can’t accomplish anything with them. They’re magical animals, if you like, but only animals. Really,” (Laughs) “for an anthropologist you’re hellishly ignorant of your subject. That’s the test the French are supposed to have applied at the ford called Running Blood—stopped every man that passed and made him dig with a shovel…”

A cat leaped on to the splintering sill of the officer’s window. It was a large black torn with only one eye and double claws—the cemetery cat from Vienne. The officer cursed it, and when it did not go away, began reaching, very slowly and carefully so as not to disturb it, toward his pistol; but the instant the fingers touched the butt the cat hissed like a hot iron dropped into oil and leaped away.

M. d’F: “Sacred places, Monsieur? Yes, they had many sacred places, so it was said—anywhere a tree grew in the mountains was sacred to them, for example; especially if water stood at the roots, as it usually did. Where the river here—the Tempus—enters the sea, that was a very sacred spot to them.”

Self: “Where were some others?”

M. d’F: “There was a cave, far up the river, in the cliffs. I don’t know that anyone has ever seen that. And close to the mouth of the river, a ring of great trees. Most of them have been cut now, but the stumps are there still; Trenchard, the beggar who pretends to be one of them, will show you the place for a few sous, or have his son do it.

“Did you not know of him, Monsieur? Oh, yes, near to the docks. Everyone here knows him; he is a fraud, you comprehend, a joke. His hands” (Holds up his own hands) “are crippled by the arthritis so that he cannot work, and so he says he is an abo, and acts like a madman. It is thought to bring luck to give him a few coins.

“No, he is a man like you and me. He is married to a poor wretched woman one hardly ever sees, and they have a son of fifteen or so.”

The officer turned twenty or thirty pages and began to read again where an alteration in the format of the entries indicated some change in the nature of the material recorded.

One heavy rifle (.35 cal.) for defense against large animals. To be carried by myself. 200 cartridges.

One light rifle (.225 cal.) for securing small game for the pot. To be carried by the boy. 500 cartridges.

One shotgun (20 gauge) for small game and birds. Packed on the lead mule. 160 shells.

One case (200 boxes in all) of matches.

Forty lb. of flour.

Yeast.

Two lb. tea (local).

Ten lb. sugar.

Ten lb. salt.

Kitchen gear.

Multivitamins.

Aid kit.

Wall tent, with repair kit for, and extra pegs and rope.

Two sleeping bags.

Utility tarp to use as ground cloth.

Spare pair of boots (for myself).

Extra clothing, shave kit, etc.

Box of books—some I brought from Earth, most bought in Roncevaux.

Tape recorder, three cameras, film, and this notebook. Pens.

Only two canteens, but we will be traveling with the Tempus all the way.

And that’s everything I can think of. No doubt there are a great many things we’ll wish we had brought, and next time I’ll know better, but there has to be a first time. When I was a student at Columbia I used to read the accounts of the pith helmet and puttee expeditions of the Victorians, when they used hundreds of bearers and diggers and what not, and, filled with Gutenberg courage, dream of leading such a thing myself. So here I am, sleeping under a roof for the last time, and tomorrow we set out: three mules, the boy (in rags), and me (in my blue slacks and the sport shirt from Culot’s). At least I won’t have to worry about a mutiny among my subordinates, unless a mule kicks me or the boy cuts my throat while I sleep!

April 6. Our first night out. I am sitting in front of our little fire, on which the boy cooked our dinner. He is a capital camp cook (delightful discovery!) though very sparing of firewood, as I gather from my reading that frontiersmen always are. I would find him quite likeable if it were not for something of a sly look in those big eyes.

Now he is already asleep, but I intend to sit up and detail this first day’s leg of our trip and watch alien stars. He has been pointing out the constellations to me, and I think I may already be more familiar with Sainte Anne’s night sky than I ever was with Earth’s—which wouldn’t take much doing. At any rate the boy claims to know all the Annese names, and though there’s a good chance they’re just inventions of his father’s, I shall record them here anyway and hope for independent confirmation later. There is Thousand Feelers and The Fish (a Nebula which seems to be trying to grasp a single bright star), Burning Hair Woman, The Fighting Lizard (with Sol one of the stars in The Lizard’s tail), The Shadow Children. I can’t find The Shadow Children now, but I’m sure the boy pointed them out to me—two pairs of bright eyes. There were others but I’ve forgotten them already; I’m going to have to start recording these conversations with the boy.

But to begin at the beginning. We started early this morning, the boy helping me load the mules, or rather, me helping him. He is very clever with rop.es, and ties large, complicated-looking knots that seem to hold securely until he wants them loose, then fall apart under his hand. His father came down to see us off (which surprised me) and treated me to a great deal of untenanted rhetoric designed to pry me loose from a little more money to compensate him for the boy’s absence. Eventually, I gave him a bit for luck.

The mules led well, and all seem so far to be good sturdy animals and no more vicious than could be reasonably expected. They are bigger than horses and much stronger, with heads longer than my arm and great square yellow teeth that show when they skin back then—thick lips to eat the thorn beside the road. Two grays and one black. The boy hobbled them when we stopped, and I can hear them all around the camp now, and occasionally see the smoke of their breath hanging like a pale spirit in the cold air.

April 7. Yesterday I thought we were well begun on our trip, but today I realize that we were merely trekking through the settled—or at least half-settled—farmland around Frenchman’s Landing, and might, almost certainly, if we had climbed one of the little hills near last night’s campsite, have seen the lights of a farmhouse. This morning we even passed through a tiny settlement the boy called “Frogtown”, a name I suppose would not much recommend itself to the inhabitants. I asked if he weren’t ashamed to use a name like that when he is of French descent himself, and he told me with great seriousness that, no, he was half of the blood of the Free People (his name for the Annese) and that it was with them that his loyalties lie. He believes his father, in short, though he is perhaps the only person in the world who does. Yet he is a bright boy; such is the power of parental teaching.

Once we were beyond “Frogtown“, the road simply disappeared. We had come to the edge of “the back of beyond”, and the mules sensed it at once, becoming less obstinate and more skittish, in other words less like people and more like animals. We are cutting west as well as north, I should explain, on a long diagonal toward the river instead of directly toward it. In this way we hope to avoid most of the meadowmeres (at the hands of the old beggar I have already seen enough of them not to want to try and walk across them!), and strike the little streams that feed it often enough to satisfy our needs for water. In any event the Tempus, or so I am told, is too brackish to drink for a long way back from the coast.

I should have mentioned yesterday (but forgot) that when we set up the tent I discovered we had not brought an ax, or any other sort of implement with which to drive the tent pegs. I chided the boy about this a little, but he only laughed and soon set the matter straight by pounding them in with a stone. He finds plenty of dead wood for the fire and snaps it over his knee with surprising strength. To build the fire he makes a sort of little house or bower of dead twigs, which he fills with dry grass and leaves, doing the whole construction in less time than it has already taken me to write this. He always (that is, last night and tonight) asks me to light it for him, apparently considering this a superior function to be performed only by no less a person than the leader of the expedition. I suppose there is something sacred about a campfire, if God’s writ runs so far from Sol; but, perhaps so as not to overwhelm us with the holy mystery of smoke, he piously keeps ours so small that I am amazed that he is able to cook over it. Even so, he burns his fingers pretty often, I notice, and each time boylike thrusts them into his mouth and hops around the fire, muttering to himself.

April 8. The boy is the worst shot I have ever seen; it is almost the only thing I have found thus far he doesn’t do well. I have been having him carry the light rifle, but after watching him trying to shoot for three days I have taken it away from him—his whole idea seems to be to point the gun in the general direction of whatever animal I indicate to him, shut his eyes, and pull the trigger. I honestly think that in his heart of hearts (if the boy has such a thing) he believes it is the noise that kills. Such game as we’ve gotten so far I have shot myself, either snatching the light rifle away from him after he had fired once and making a second (running) shot before whatever he had missed was out of sight, or by using the heavy rifle, which is a waste of expensive ammunition as well as of meat.

On the other hand, the boy (I don’t really know why I call him that, except that his father did; he is nearly a man, and now that I come to think of it, only eight or nine years younger, physiologically at least, than I am) has the best eye for wounded game I have ever seen He ij. better than a good dog, both at locating and retrieving—which is saying a good deal—and has traveled often in the “back of beyond”, though he’s never been as far upriver as the (I hope not mystical) sacred cave we’re looking for. At any rate he seems to have lived in the wilderness with his mother for long periods—I get the impression she didn’t care much for the kind of life her husband made for them in Frenchman’s Landing, for which I can’t say I much blame her. However that may be, with the boy’s nose for blood and my shooting, I don’t think we’ll run short of meat.

What else today? Oh yes, the cat. One had been following us, apparently at least since we passed through Frogtown. I caught a glimpse of it today about noon, and (the sun-shimmer reinforcing the deceptive and fantastic quality extension has in the green landscape under this black-sky) thought for an instant that it was a tire-tiger. My bullet went high, naturally, and when I saw it kick up dust, everything snapped back into perspective: my “scrub trees” were bushes, and the distance which I had thought at least 250 yards away was less than a third of that—making my “tire-tiger” only a big domestic cat of Terrestrial stock, no doubt a stray from some farm. It seems to follow us quite deliberately, staying, now, about a quarter mile behind us. This afternoon I took a couple of rather long-ranged (200 to 300 yards) shots at it, which upset the boy so much that I regretted my felicidal intentions and told him that if he could get the animal into camp he could keep it as a pet. I suppose it is following us for the scraps of food we leave behind. There will be plenty for it tomorrow—I got a dew-deer today.

April 10. Two days of uninterrupted hiking during which we have seen a good deal of game but no sign of any still-extant Annese. We have crossed three small streams which the boy calls the Yellow Snake, the Girl Running, and the End-of-Days; but which my map tells me are Fifty Mile Creek, the Johnson River, and the Rougette. No trouble with any of them—the first two we are able to ford where we struck them, the Rougette (which painted my boots and the legs of the boy and the mules), a few hundred yards upstream. I expect to see the Tempus (which the boy calls simply “The River”) tomorrow, and the boy assures me that the Annese sacred cave must lie a good deal farther up; he says, indeed, that the banks we have bypassed by our route are mud, not stone, and could not hold a cave.

It finally occurred to me that if the boy has lived (as he says) a good part of his life in the wild Country, he may be—despite the corrupting influence of his father and his own consequent belief that he is himself partly Annese—an excellent source of information. I have the interview on tape, but as I have tried to make it a practice to do with the more interesting material, I transcribe it here.

Self: “You’ve told me that you and your mother have often lived, you say in spring and summer particularly, “in back of beyond”—sometimes for months at a stretch. I have been informed that fifty or more years ago Annese children often came to play with human children on the remote stock farms. Did anything of that sort ever happen to you? Did you ever see anyone out here besides your mother and yourself? After all, we’ve seen no one in four days.”

V. R. T.: “We saw a great many people almost every day, many animals and birds, trees that were alive, just as you and I have traveling, as you say for these four days—though this is still not the back of beyond where one sees gods come floating down the river on logs, and trees gone traveling, the gods with large and small heads, and blossoms of the water hydrangea in their hair; or the elk-men whose heads and hair and beards and arms and bodies were like those of men, whose legs were the bodies of red elk so that they needed to mate with the cow-women once as beasts and once as men do, and fought shouting all spring on the hillsides, then when the black mereskimmers flew back from the south were at once friends again and went away with their arms around each other and stole eggs from the pine-thrashers or kicked stones at me; and The Shadow Children of course came to steal by evening, riding up in the bubbles and the foam from the springs—then my mother would not let me go out from beneath her hair—this was when I was very small—after the sun set, but when I was larger I would go out and shout and make them run!—they believe—they always believe—that they’ll get all around, and then they’ll all run in at once, biting; but if you turn quickly and shout, they never do, and there are never as many of them as they think, because some are only in the minds of the others so that at the time to fight they fade back into each other and become one lonely.”

Self: “Why haven’t you and I seen any of these strange things?”

V. R. T.: “I have.”

Self: “What have you seen—I mean, while you’ve been with me.”

V. R. T.: “Birds and animals and trees living, and The Shadow Children.”

Self: “You mean the stars. If you see anything extraordinary you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

V. R. T.: (Nods)

Self: “You’re an unusual boy. Do you ever go to school when you’re with your father in Frenchman’s Landing?”

V. R. T.: “Sometimes.”

Self: “You’re almost a man now. Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do in a few years?”

V. R. T.: (Weeps)

There was no reply to that last question; the boy broke into tears, embarrassing me so acutely that after putting my arm around his shoulders for a moment, I had to walk away from the fire, leaving him there sobbing for half an hour or more while I blundered around in the brush where huge worms, luminous but of the livid color of a dead man’s lips, writhe underfoot at night. I confess it was a miserably stupid question; what is he going to do, a beggar’s son, no better than half-educated? He does read well—he’s borrowed some of my anthropology texts, and I’ve asked him questions and gotten better answers than I would have expected from the average university student; but his hand-writing is miserable, as I’ve seen from an old school notebook (one of his very few pieces of personal baggage).

April 11. An eventful day. Let me see if I can cure my habit of skipping back and forth and give everything of interest in the order in which it occurred. When I came back into camp last night (I see that at the close of yesterday’s entry I left myself blundering about in bushes), the boy was asleep in his bag. I put more wood on the fire and played back the.tape and wrote the stuff on the last page, then turned in. About an hour before dawn we were both roused by a commotion among the mules and went running out to see what the trouble was, myself with a flashlight and the heavy rifle, the boy with two burning sticks from the fire. Didn’t see anything, but smelled a stink like rotten meat and heard some big animal, which I really don’t believe could have been one of the mules, making off. The mules, when we found them, were covered with sweat, and one had broken its hobble—fortunately it didn’t go far, and as soon as it got light the boy was able to catch it, though it took him the best part of an hour—and the two that were still with us seemed very glad to claim the protection due domestic animals.

By the time we had thrashed around long enough to decide there was nothing to find, further sleep was out of the question. We struck the tent, loaded the mules, and then at my insistence spent the first hour in backtracking our path of the day before to see if we could turn up the spoor of any large predatory animal. We saw the cat (which growing bolder now that I’ve stopped shooting at it) and some tracks of what the boy calls a fire-fox and which, by comparing his description with my Field Guide to the Animals of Sainte Anne, I have decided is most probably Hutchesson’s fennec, a fox or coyote-like creature with immense ears and a liking for poultry and carrion.

After this little interlude of backtracking we made good progress, and about an hour before noon I made the best shot of the trip to date, dropping a huge brute—not described in the Field Guide—similar to the carabao of Asian Earth; this with a single brain shot from the heavy rifle. I paced the distance when the animal was down and found it to be a full three hundred yards!

Naturally I was proud as hell and carefully examined the result of my shot, which had struck the big fellow just in back of the right ear. Even there the skull was so massive that the bullet had failed to penetrate completely; so that the animal had probably been alive for a good part of the time while I was pacing off the distance to it; there seemed to have been a heavy flow of lachrymal fluid that left broad wet streaks in the dust beneath each eye. I lifted one of the eyelids with my fingers after I had looked at the wound and noticed that the eyes were double-pupiled, like those of certain Terrestrial fish; the lower segments of one eye moved slightly when I touched it with my finger, indicating that the animal may have been hanging on a bit even then. The double pupils don’t seem characteristic of most life here; so I suppose they must be an adaptation induced by the creature’s largely aquatic habits.

I longed to have the head mounted, but that was out of the question; as it was the boy was almost in tears (his own eyes, which are large, are a startling green), imagining that I would want to load the entire carcass, which must have weighed a good fifteen pounds, on to the mules, and assuring me that they could not be expected to carry so much. Eventually I was able to convince him that I intended to leave behind the entrails, the head (though how I regretted those horns!) and the hide and hoofs, as well as the ribs and, in fact, all but the choicest meat. The mules, even so, appreciated neither the added weight nor the smell of blood, and we had more difficulty with them than I had anticipated.

About an hour after we got them going again, we reached the bank of the Tempus. It is a very different river from the one I saw when the boy’s father showed me the Annese“temple”. There it was nearly a mile wide, brackish, and had hardly a trace of current, the mouth itself being not a single river but a serpent cluster of dull streams meandering through a choking delta of mud and reeds. Here everything is changed: the water has hardly any yellow coloration, and flows fast enough to whisk a stick out of sight in a few seconds.

The meadowmeres are entirely behind us now, and this new, swift, clear Tempus runs among rolling hills covered with emerald grass and dotted with trees and thickets. I see now that my original plan of ascending the river by boat was—as my acquaintances in Frenchman’s Landing warned me—completely impractical, no matter how convenient it would have been to search for riverbank caves that way. Not only is the water so swift even here that we would be spending most of our fuel just to fight the current, but the river shows every sign of falls and rapids farther up in the mountains. A hovercraft would perhaps be ideal, but with Sainte Anne’s small industrial capacity there are probably not more than two dozen on the whole planet, and they are (typically) the sacred prerogative of the military.

But I will not complain. In a hovercraft we might already have found the cave, but with what chance of making contact with any Annese who may yet survive? With our small and I hope not frightening party moving slowly and living off the country, we can hope for contact, if any Annese remain.

Besides, let me confess now, I enjoy it. When we had struck the river and gone a mile or so upstream the boy became very excited and told me we had reached an important point which he had often visited with his mother. It seemed to me to be in no way unusual—a slight bend with a few (very large) overhanging trees and a somewhat oddly shaped stone—but he insisted that it was a beautiful and special locality, showing me how comfortable the stone was, on which one could sit or lie in various positions, how the trees shaded the sun and would give protection from rain and even, covered with snow, form a sort of hut in winter. There were deep pools at the foot of the stone that always had fish—we could find mussels and edible snails (that French mother!)—along the bank here, and in short it was a veritable garden spot. (After listening to him talk in this way for a few minutes I realized that he looks upon the outdoors—at least on certain special areas or parts of it such as this—in the way that most people are accustomed to looking at buildings or rooms, which is an odd idea.) I had been wanting to be alone for a few minutes anyway; so I decided to pamper his harmless enthusiasm, and asked him to take the mules on ahead while I remained behind to contemplate the beauty of the wonderful place to which he had introduced me. He was delighted, and in a few minutes I was more utterly alone than it is ever given most of us born on Earth to be, with only the wind and the sun and the sighing of the great trees that trailed their roots in the murmuring water before me.

Alone I should say except for our camp-follower cat, who came meowing up and had to be chased after the mules with rocks. It gave me time to think—about that carabao-like animal I got this morning (which would surely be a record trophy of some sort if only I had been able to take the skull back to civilization) and about this entire trip. Not that I am not as eager as I was before to show that the Annese are not yet extinct, and to record as much as I can of their customs and mode of thought before they fade from humanity’s knowledge altogether. I am, but for new reasons. When I landed here on Sainte Anne, all I really cared about was acquiring by field work enough reputation to get a decent faculty post on Earth. Now I know that field work can be, and should be, an end in itself; that those highly distinguished old professors I used to envy for their reputations were not seeking (as I thought) to go back into the field—even if it were just to work over poor old played-out Melanesia once more—to enhance their academic dignity; but rather that their standing was a tool they employed to secure backing for their field work. And they were right! Each of us finds his way, his place; we rattle around the universe until everything fits; this is life; this is science, or something better than science.

By the time I caught up to the boy he had already made camp (early), and I think was rather concerned about me. Tonight he has been trying to dry a part of the carabao meat over the fire to preserve it, though I have told him we can simply throw aside any that spoils before we can eat it.

Forgot to mention that I got two deer while I was catching up to the boy.

The officer laid the canvas-bound notebook aside, and after a moment, rose and stretched. A bird had blundered into the room and he now noticed it for the first time, perched silent and bewildered on the frame of a picture high on the wall opposite the door. He shouted at it, and when it did not move, tried to strike it with a broom the slave had left standing in a corner. It flew, but instead of going out the open door it struck the lintel, fell half-stunned to the floor, then flopped past his face to resume its perch on the picture frame, brushing his cheek with the dark feathers of one wing as it passed. The officer cursed and sat down, picking up a handful of loose pages, these at least decently transcribed in good clerical script.

I should have an attorney—that much is clear. I mean, in addition to the one the court will assign. I feel certain the university will advance me funds to fee a private attorney, and I have asked my court-appointed one to contact the university and arrange the thing for me. That is, I will ask him.

It seems to me that the following questions are involved in my own case. I will write them down here and discuss the possible interpretations, and this will prepare me for the trial. First, then, is the question of the concept of guilt which is central to any criminal proceeding. Is the concept broadly valid?

If it is not broadly valid, then there will exist certain classes of persons who cannot under any circumstance be punished by reason of guilt, and a little reflection convinces me that such classes do in fact exist, viz.: children, the weak of intellect, the very rich, the disturbed of mind, animals, the near relations of persons in high positions, the persons themselves, and so on.

The next question, then, Your Honor, is whether I, the prisoner at the bar, do not in fact belong to one (or more) of the exempted classes. It is clear to me that I do in fact belong to all the classes I have designated above, but I will here—in order to conserve the court’s valuable time—concentrate on two: I am exempt by reason of being a child and by reason of being an animal; that is to say, by reason of belonging to the first and fifth of the classes to which you have just consented.

This leads us to the third question: what is meant (in terms of the exempted classes already outlined) by the designation “child”. Clearly we must rule out in the beginning any question of mere age. Nothing could be more absurd than to suppose a defendant innocent though he committed some abominable act on Tuesday, but guilty were he to have committed it Wednesday. No, no, Your Honor, though I myself am only a few years past twenty, I confess that to think in that way is to invite a carnival of death just prior to each young man’s or woman’s reaching whatever age you determine shall be deciding. Nor can childhood be based on internal and subjective evidence, since it would be impractical to determine whether such interior disposition existed or not. No, the fact of childhood must be established by the way society itself has treated the individual. In my own case:

I own no real property, and have never owned such property.

I have never taken part in, or even witnessed, a legally binding contract.

I have never been called upon to give evidence in a court of law.

I have never entered into marriage or adopted another child.

I have never held a remunerative position on the basis of work performed. (You object, Your Honor? You cite my own testimony with regard to my connection with Columbia against me? The prosecution cites it? No, Your Honor, it is a clever sophistry, but invalid; my tutorial position at Columbia was a manifest sinecure given me to enable me to complete my graduate work, and for my expedition to Sainte Anne I received my expenses only. You see? And who would know better than I?)

Then surely, Your Honor, it is clear from all these points—and I could make a thousand more—that at the time of the crime, if in fact I am charged with any crime, which I doubt, I was a child; and by these proofs I am a child still, for I have still not done any of these things.

As for my being an animal—I mean an animal as opposed to being a human being, an animal as a mere beast—the proof is so simple that you may laugh at me for troubling to present it. Are those who are permitted to run free in our society the animals? Or are they human beings? Who are confined in stalls, sties, kennels, and hutches? Which of the two great divisions sleeps upon bedding thrown upon the floor? Which upon a bed standing above the floor? Which is given bathing facilities and a heated sleeping compartment, and which is expected to warm itself with its own breath and clean itself by licking?

I beg your pardon, Your Honor; I did not intend to offend the court.

Forty-seven has been knocking on the pipe—shall I tell you what he said? Very well.

ONE FORTY-THREE, ONE FORTY-THREE, IS THAT YOU? ARE YOU LISTENING? WHO IS THE NEW MAN ON YOUR FLOOR?

I have filled in the punctuation myself. Forty-seven does not use punctuation, and if I have misrepresented his intention, I hope he will forgive me.

I sent: WHAT NEW? It would be very useful to have a stone—or a metal object as Forty-seven does (he says he uses the frames of his glasses) with which to tap the pipe. It hurts my knuckles.

I SAW HIM THIS MORNING THROUGH MY DOOR. OLD, LONG WHITE HAIR. DOWNSTAIRS TO YOU. WHICH CELL?

DON“T KNOW.

If I had a stone I could rap on the walls of my cell loudly enough for those on either side to hear. As it is, the prisoner to my left raps to me—I do not know with what, but it makes every sort of strange noise, not just a rapping or ticking—but does not know the code. The wall on my right is silent; possibly there is no one there, or, like me, he may have nothing with which to speak.

Shall I tell you how I was arrested? I was very tired. I had been to the Cave Canem, and as a result was up very late—it was nearly four. At noon I had an appointment with the president, and I felt quite certain I would be officially placed at the head of a department, and on very favorable terms. I intended to go to bed, and left a note for Madame Duclose, the woman at whose house I was lodging, to wake me at ten.

Forty-seven sends: ONE FORTY-THREE, ARE YOU CRIMINAL OR POLITICAL?

POLITICAL. (I wish to hear what he will say.)

WHICH SIDE?

YOU?

POLITICAL.

WHICH SIDE?

ONE FORTY-THREE, THIS IS RIDICULOUS. ARE YOU AFRAID TO ANSWER MY QUESTION? WHAT MORE CAN THEY DO TO YOU? YOU ARE ALREADY HERE.

I rap: WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU IF YOU DO NOT TRUST ME? YOU BEGAN. (Hurting my knuckles.)

OF THE FIFTH OF SEPTEMBER.

WHEN I GET ROCK. HAND HURTS.

COWARD! (So sends Forty-seven, very loudly. He will break his glasses.)

Where was I? Yes, my arrest. The whole house was quiet—I thought this was only because of the lateness of the hour, but I now realize that most of them must have been awake, knowing that they were waiting in my room for me, lying in their beds hardly daring to breathe while they waited for the shots or screams, Madame Duclose, particularly, must have been concerned for the large, gilt-framed mirror in my room, which she had cautioned me about repeatedly. (Mirrors, I have found—I mean good ones of silvered glass, not polished bits of metal—are quite expensive in Port-Mimizon.) And thus there was no snoring, no one stumbling down the corridor to the lavatory, no muffled sighs of passion from Mlle Etienne’s room while she entertained herself with the fruits of imagination and a tallow candle.

I did not notice. I scrawled my note (others think my hand very bad, but I do not think so; when I receive my appointment I will—if I have to teach classes at all—have my students write on the chalkboard for me, or distribute notes for my classes already printed in purple ink on yellow paper) for Mme Duclose and went up, as I thought, to bed.

They were quite confident. They had a light burning in my room, and I saw the stripe of radiance at the bottom of my door. Surely if I had in fact committed some crime I would have turned and fled on tiptoe when I saw that light. As it was, I thought only that there had been some letter or message for me—perhaps from the president of the university, or possibly from the brothelkeeper at the Cave Canem who had earlier that evening asked my help in dealing with his “son”; and I decided that if it were he, I would not answer until the evening following; I was very tired and had drunk enough brandy to feel let down now when it was flickering out, and I was conscious of the inefficiency of my motions as I got out my key and then discovered that my door was not locked.

There were three of them, all seated, all waiting for me. Two were uniformed; the third wore a dark suit which had once been good but was now worn and stained with food grease and the oil from lamps and, moreover, was a little too small for him, so that he had the appearance of the valet of a miser. He sat in my best chair, the chair with the needlepoint seat, with one arm hanging quite carelessly over the back of it, and the lamp with the globe painted with roses and the fringed shade at his elbow as though he had been reading. Mme Duclose’s mirror was behind him, and I could see that his hair was cut short and that he had a scarred head, as though he had been tortured or had had an operation on his brain or had fought with someone armed with some tearing weapon. Over his shoulder I could see myself in the tall hat I had bought here in Port-Mimizon after landing, and my second best cape and my stupid, surprised face.

One of the uniformed men got up and shut the door behind me, throwing the night bolt. He wore a gray jacket and gray trousers and a peaked cap, and around his waist a broad brown pistol belt with a very large, old-fashioned looking revolver in a holster. When he sat again, I noticed that his shoes were ordinary workmen’s shoes, not of much quality and already quite worn. The second uniformed man said, “You may hang up your hat and coat, if you like.”

I said, “Of course,” hanging them, as I usually did, on the hooks on the back of the door.

“It will be necessary for us to search your person.” (This was still the second uniformed man, who wore a short-sleeved green jacket with many pockets and loose green trousers with straps about the ankles, as though he were intended to ride a bicycle as part of his duties.) “We will do this in either of two ways, depending on your own preference. You may, if you like, disrobe; we will then search your clothing and allow you to dress yourself again—however, you must disrobe before us so that you have no opportunity to secrete anything you may have on your person. Or we will search you here and now, as you are. Which do you prefer?”

I asked if I were under arrest and if they were the police. The man in the needlepoint chair answered, “No, Professor, certainly not.”

“I am not a professor, at least, not at present as far as I know. If I am not under arrest, why am I being searched? What am I supposed to have done?”

The man who had shut the door said, “We’re going to search you to see if there’s any reason to arrest you,” and looked at the man in the black suit for confirmation. The other uniformed man said: “You must choose. How will you be searched?”

“And if I will not submit to being searched?”

The man in black said: “Then we will have to take you to the citadel. They will search you there.”

“You mean that you will arrest me?”

“Monsieur…”

“I am not French. I am from North America, on Earth.”

“Professor, I urge you—as a friend—not to force us to arrest you. It is a serious matter here, to have been arrested; but it is possible to be searched to be questioned, to be—as it may be—even held for a time—”

“Perhaps even to be tried and executed,” the man in the green jacket finished for him.

“—without having been arrested. Do not, I beg you, force us to arrest you.”

“But I must be searched.”

“Yes,” said both the uniformed men.

“Then I prefer to be searched as I am, without undressing.”

The two uniformed men looked at one another as though this were significant. The man in black looked bored and picked up the book he had been reading, which I saw was one of my own—A Field Guide to the Animals of Sainte Anne.

The man with the pistol belt came over, half-apologetically, to search me, and I noticed for the first time that his uniform was that of the City Transit Authority. I said: “You’re a horsecar driver, aren’t you? Why are you carrying that gun?”

The man in black said: “Because it is his duty to carry it. I might ask why you yourself are armed.”

“I’m not.”

“On the contrary, I have just been examining this book of yours—there are tables of figures penciled on the flyleaves in the back, you see? Can you tell me what they are?”

“They were left there by some former owner,” I told him, “and I have no idea what they are. Are you accusing me of being some sort of spy? If you’ll look at them you’ll see they’re nearly as old as the book and badly faded.”

“They are interesting figures; pairs of numbers of which the first is given in yards and the second in inches.”

“I’ve seen them,” I said. The man in the City Transit uniform was patting my pocjcets; whenever he found anything—my watch, my money, my pocket notebook—he handed it with an obsequious little gesture to the man in black.

“I am of the mathematical turn of mind.”

“How fortunate for you.”

“I have analyzed these figures—they approximate quite well the conic section called a parabola.”

“That means nothing to me. As an anthropologist I am more often concerned with the normal distribution curve.”

“How fortunate for you,” the man in black said, repaying me for my sarcasm of a moment before. He motioned to the two uniformed men, who came to him. For a moment the three whispered together, and I noticed how similar their faces were, all three with pointed chins, black brows and narrow eyes, so that they might have been brothers, the man in black the eldest and probably the cleverest as well, the City Transit man the least imaginative, but all three of a family.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“We were speaking of your case,” the man in black said. The City Transit man left the room, shutting the door behind him.

“And what were you saying?”

“That you are ignorant of the law here. That you should have an attorney.”

“That’s probably true, but I don’t believe you were saying that.”

“You see? An attorney would advise you against contradicting us in that tone.”

“Listen, are you from the police? Or the prosecutor’s office?”

The man in black laughed. “No, not at all. I am a civil engineer from the department of public works. My friend here,” he indicated the man in green, “is an army signalman. My other friend as you divined, is a horsecar driver.”

“Then why have you come to arrest me as though you were police?”

“You see how ignorant you are of our ways here. On Earth, as I understand, it is different; but here all public employees are of one fraternity, if you follow me. Tomorrow my friend the horse-car driver may be picking up garbage—”

The man in green interrupted to snicker, “You may say he’s doing that tonight.”

“—my friend here may be a crewman on one of the patrol boats and I may be an inspector of cats. Tonight we have been sent to get you.”

“With a warrant for my arrest?”

“I must tell you again that it is best for you if you are not arrested. I say to you frankly that if you are arrested it is very improbable that you will ever be released.”

As he completed this sentence the door opened behind me, and I saw in the mirror Mme Duclose and Mlle Etienne, with the horsecar driver standing behind them. “Come in, ladies,” the man in black said, and the horsecar driver herded them into the room, where they stood side by side in front of the washstand, looking frightened and confused. Mme Duclose, an old, gray-haired woman with a fat stomach, wore a faded cotton dress with a long skirt (whether because the horsecar driver had allowed her to put it on before summoning her or because she had been using it for a night-gown, I do not know). Mlle Etienne—a very tall girl of twenty-seven or -eight—might have been not the sister, but possibly the half-sister or cousin of the three men. She had the sharply pointed face and the black eyebrows, but hers had been plucked thin to form arches over her eyes, which were, mercifully, not the dark, narrow eyes of the men but large and blue-purple like the dots of paint on the face of a doll. Her hair was a mop of brown curls, and she was, as I have said, exceedingly tall, her legs stiltlike in their elongation, rising on thin, straight bones to hips broader than seemed consonant with the remainder of her physique, after which her body contracted again abruptly to a small waist, small breasts, and narrow shoulders. She boasted tonight a negligee of some gossamer fabric like a very thin cheesecloth, but this was gathered in so many layers and foldings and wraps as to be quite opaque.

“You are Mme Duclose?” the man in black asked that lady. “The owner of this house? You rent the room we presently occupy to this gentleman here?”

She nodded.

“It will be necessary for him to accompany us to the citadel, where he will converse with various officials. You will close this room and lock the door when we leave, do you understand? You will disturb nothing.”

Mme Duclose nodded, wisps of gray hair bobbing.

“In the event that the gentleman has not returned within one week, you will apply to the Department of Parks, which will dispatch a reputable man to this address. In his company you will be permitted to enter this room to inspect it for rodent damage and to open, the windows for the period of one hour, at the close of which you will be required to relock the room, and he will leave. Do you understand what I have just said?”

Mme Duclose nodded again.

“In the event that the gentleman has not returned by Christmas, you will apply to the Department of Parks as before. On the day following Christmas—or in the event that Christmas falls on a Saturday, on the following Monday—a reputable man will be dispatched as previously. In his company you will be permitted to change the bedding and, if you wish, air the mattress.”

“On the day after Christmas?” Mme Duclose asked in bewilderment.

“Or in the event that Christmas falls on Saturday, on the Monday following. In the event that the gentleman has not returned by one year from this date—which you may compute, for your convenience, as being the first of the current month, should you so choose—you may again apply to the Department of Parks. You may at that time—if you wish—place the gentleman’s belongings in storage at your expense, or you may store them elsewhere in your home if you wish. They will be inventoried by the Department of Parks at that time. You may then use this room for other purposes. In the event that the gentleman has still not returned at a date fifty years distant from the date whose calculation I have just explained to you, you—or your heirs or assigns—may again apply to the Department of Parks. At that time the government will claim any article falling under the following categories: articles made wholly or in part of gold, silver, or any other precious metal; moneys in the currencies of Sainte Croix, Sainte Anne, or Earth, or other worlds; antiques; scientific appliances; blueprints, plans, and documents of all sorts; jewelry; body linen; clothing. Any article not falling under these categories shall become the property of you, your heirs, and assigns. If tomorrow you find you do not clearly recall what I have just told you, apply to me at the Department of Public Works, Subdepartment of Sewers and Drains, and I will explain to you again. Ask for the assistant to the General Inspector of Sewers and Drains. You understand?”

Mme Duclose nodded.

“And now you, Mademoiselle,” the man in black continued, turning his attention to Mlle Etienne. “Observe; I hand the gentleman a visiting pass.” He took a stiff card, perhaps six inches long and two wide, from the breast pocket of his greasy coat and handed it to me. “He will write your name thereupon and give it to you, and with it you will be admitted on your own recognizance to the citadel on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month between the hours of nine and eleven p.m.”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “I don’t even know this young lady.”

“But you are not married?”

“No.”

“So your dossier informed me. In cases where the prisoner is unmarried it is the rule to give the card to the closest resident single woman of suitable age. It is, you will understand, based upon statistical probabities. The young woman may transfer the card to whomever you wish, who may then use it in her name. That will be something for you to discuss—” (he paused a moment in thought) “—ten days from now. Not now. Write down her name.”

I was forced to ask Mlle Etienne’s first name, which proved to be Celestine.

“Give her the card,” the man in black said.

I did so, and he laid one hand heavily on my shoulder and said, “I hereby place you under arrest.”

I have been moved. I continue this record of my thoughts—if that is what it may be said to be—in a new cell. I am no longer my old self, one forty-three, but some new, unknown 143; this because that old number was chalked upon the door of this new cell. The transition must seem very abrupt to you, reading this; but I was not actually interrupted in the task of writing, as it must seem. The truth is that I grew tired of detailing my arrest. I scratched. I slept. I ate some bread and soup the warder brought me and found a small bone—the rib bone, I suspect, of a goat—in my soup and with this held long conversations with my neighbor upstairs, forty-seven. I listened to the madman on my left until it almost seemed to me that among his idiot scratching and scrapings I could discern my own name.

Then there was a rattling of keys at the door of my cell, and I thought that perhaps Mlle Etienne was to be permitted to see me after all. I tried insofar as I could to make myself clean, smoothing my hair and beard with my fingers. Alas, it was only the guard, and with him a powerfully built man wearing a black hood which concealed his face. Naturally I thought I was going to be killed, and though I tried to be courageous—and really felt that I was not especially fearful—I found that my knees had become so weak that I could only stand with great difficulty. I thought of escape (as I always do when they take me to be questioned; it’s the only chance, because there’s no escaping from these cells), but there was only the narrow corridor to run in, as always, without windows and with a guard posted at every stair. The hooded man took my arm and, without speaking, led me through passageways and up and down steps until I was completely confused; we must have walked for hours. I saw any number of miserable dirty faces like my own staring at me through the tiny glassed Judas windows in the doors of the cells. Several times we passed through courtyards, and I thought I was to be shot in each; it was about noon, and the bright sunlight made me blink and my eyes water. Then in a corridor much like all the others we halted before a door marked 143, and the hooded man raised a concrete slab from the center of the floor, showing me a narrow hole from which a steep iron stair descended. I went down and he followed me; the distance must have been fifty meters or more, and at the bottom it was only with a flashlight that we were able to grope our way down a corridor stinking of stale urine, until we reached the door of this cell into which a push from him sent me sprawling.

At the time I was happy enough to sprawl, for I thought, as I have said, that I was about to be executed. I still do not know that it is not true; the man was certainly dressed as an executioner though that may have been merely to frighten me, and perhaps he has other duties.

The officer groped among the materials on his desk for the next page, but before he could locate it the brother officer entered the room a second time. “Hello,” the officer said, “I thought you were turning in.”

“I was,” said the brother officer. “I have; I did. I slept for a while, then woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s the heat.”

The officer shrugged.

“How are you coming with your case?”

“Still trying to catalogue the facts.”

“Didn’t they send a summary? They’re supposed to.”

“Probably, but I haven’t found it in this mess yet. There’s a letter, and a fuller summary may be on one of these tapes.”

“What’s this?” The brother officer had picked up the canvas-bound notebook.

“A notebook.”

“The accused’s?”

“I think so.”

The brother officer raised his eyebrows. “You don’t know?”

“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think that notebook…”

The brother officer waited for him to continue, but he did not. After a moment the brother officer said, “ Well, I see you’re busy. Think I’ll wake up the surgeon and see if he won’t give me something that will let me sleep.”

“Try a bottle,” the officer said as the brother officer went out. When he had gone he picked up the canvas-bound notebook again and opened it at random.

“No, he is a man like you and me. He is married to a poor wretched woman one hardly ever sees, and they have a son of fifteen or so.”

Self: “But he claims to be Annese?”

M. d’F: “He is a fraud, you understand. Much of what he says of the abos is from his own head—oh, he will tell you wonderful tales, Monsieur.”

(End of Interview)

Dr Hagsmith had also mentioned this beggar, and I have decided to find him. Even though his claim to be Annese is false—as I have no doubt it is—he may have picked up some real information in the course of his impersonations. Besides, the idea of finding even a counterfeit Annese appeals to me.

March 21. I have had a talk with the beggar, who calls himself Twelvewalker and claims to be a direct descendant of the last Annese shaman, and thus rightfully a king—or whatever distinction he may happen to covet at the moment. In my opinion his actual descent is Irish, very probably through one of those Irish adventurers who left their island for France at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. At any rate, his culture seems clearly French, his face certainly Irish—the red hair, blue eyes, and long upper lip are unmistakable.

Apparently even counterfeit Annese are elusive, and turning him up was more of a problem than I had anticipated; everyone seemed to know him and told me I could rind him in such and such a tavern, but no one seemed to know where he lived—and, naturally, he was not to be found in any of the taverns where he “always” was. When I discovered his hut at last (I cannot call it a house), I realized that I had passed it several times without realizing it was a human dwelling.

Frenchman’s Landing, as perhaps I should mention here, is built on the banks of the Tempus about ten miles upstream of the sea itself. The waterfront is thus the muddy shore of the river, looking across the yellowish, salt-tinged flood toward a huddle of even less presentable buildings—La Fange—on the bank opposite. Sainte Anne’s twin world of Sainte Croix creates fifteen-foot tides all over the planet, and these affect the river far upstream of Frenchman’s Landing. At high tide the water is completely undrmkable and marine fish—so I am told—may be caught from the ends of the docks. Then the decking of these docks is only a few feet above the water, the air is fresh and pure, and the meadowmeres surrounding the somewhat higher ground on which the town stands have the appearance of an endless lacework of clear pools fringed with the brilliant green salt rushes. But in a few hours the tide is gone, and all vitality seems drained from the river and the country around it. The docks stand twelve-feet high on stilts of rotting timbers; the river shows a thousand islands of muck, and the meadowmeres are desolate salt flats of stinking mud over which, at night, wisps of luminous gas hover like the ghosts of the dead Annese.

The waterfront itself is not too different, I suppose, from the waterfront of a similar rivertown on Earth, except perhaps for the absence of the robot cranes one expects to see and the use of native building materials in place of Earth’s all-pervasive compressed waste walls. Twelve years ago, I understand, old-fashioned thermonuclear ships were commonplace at the piers here, but now that the planet has been ringed with an adequate network of weather satellites, safe, modern sailing vessels are in use here as on Earth.

The beggar’s hut, when I located it at last, was an old boat turned upside down and propped above the ground with every sort of rubbish. Still doubting that anyone could actually live there, I rapped on the hull with the handle of my pocketknife, and a dark-haired boy of fifteen or sixteen thrust his head out almost at once. When he saw me he ducked under the edge of the boat, but then, instead of standing, remained on his knees with both hands outstretched and began a sort of beggar’s whine in which I could make out only occasional words. I assumed that he was mentally retarded, and it seemed possible that he could not even walk, since when I stepped away from him he followed me, still on his knees, with a sort of agile shuffle that seemed to imply that this was his normal gait. After half a minute of this I gave him a few coins in the hope of quieting him enough to ask him some questions, but the coins were no sooner out of my hand than the head of an older man, the red-haired beggar, as it turned out, appeared from under the boat (from where, I feel sure, he had been observing his son’s technique).

“Bless you, Monsieur!” he said. “I am not, you comprehend, a Christian, but may your generosity to my poor boy be blessed by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, or in the eventuality that you are Protestant, Monsieur, by Jesus only and by God the Father and the Holy Ghost. As my own ten-times decimated people would say, may the Mountains bless you and the River and the Trees and the Oceansea and all the stars of Heaven and the gods. I speak as their religious leader.”

I thanked him, and for some reason I cannot quite explain, gave him one of my cards, which he accepted with such a flourish that I felt for a moment that he had accepted with it the duty to second me in a duel or assist me in my love affairs. After glancing at it he exclaimed, “Ah, you are a doctor! Look, Victor, our visitor is a doctor of philosophy!” and held the card for an instant in front of the boy’s eyes, which were as large and sea green as his own were tiny and blue.

“Doctor, Doctor Marsch, I am not an educated man—you see that—but I yield to none in my respect for education, for scholarship. My house,” he waved toward the inverted boat as though it had been a palace and a quarter-mile distant, “is yours! My son and I are entirely at your service for the remainder of the day—or the remainder of the month, should you wish it. And should you be disposed to tender some small emolument for our services, let me assure you in advance of any possible embarrassment that we do not expect from the temple of learning the golden munificence of commerce triumphant; and we are well aware of that blessed natural law by which the townsman’s gilt buys more—more, haven’t I said, (giving the boy a push)”—than the merchant’s gold. How may we serve you?”

I explained that I understood that he sometimes guided visitors to locations nearby that were supposed to have been important to the prediscovery Annese, and he immediately invited me into his home.

There were no chairs under the inverted boat, there being insufficient headroom for them; but old flotation cushions and folded squares of sailcloth served for seats, and they had a tiny table (such as might have served a poor Japanese family) whose top was hardly more than a double-hand’s width above the tarpaulin that covered the ground. The older man lit a lamp—a mere wick floating in a shallow dish of oil—and ceremoniously poured me a small glass of what proved to be hundred-proof rum. When I had accepted it he said: “You wish to see the sacred places of my fathers, the lords of this planet! I can show them to you, Doctor—indeed no one but I can show them to you properly or explain their significations and enter you yourself into the very spirit of that departed age! But it is already too late today, Doctor; the tide is already past the flood. If you could come tomorrow, in the middle of the morning—not too late—then we will skim across the meadowmeres as cheerfully as a gondola. With no effort at all on your part, Doctor, for my son and I will paddle and pole you wherever you may wish to go and show you everything worth seeing. You may take photographs—or do whatever you please—my son and I will be glad to pose.”

I asked him what the cost would be, and he named a sum which seemed reasonable enough, adding quickly, “Remember, Doctor, you will be receiving the labor of two men for five hours—and the use of our boat. For a unique experience!—no one but myself can properly show you what you wish to see.” I agreed to the price, and he said: “There is one other thing—the lunch. We must have food for three. If you wish to leave funds with me, I will procure it.” I frowned at him, and he added at once, “Or you may bring it yourself—but remember, it is to be a lunch for three. Perhaps a bottle of wine and a bird.

“But now, Doctor, I have some very choice things to show you. Wait a moment.” He reached into a packing box which lay beside his seat and took out a tin tray, with its surface covered with red flock. On it were two dozen or so projectile points chipped and ground from every sort of stone, and several which I am fairly sure had been made from common colored glass, probably from pieces of broken whisky bottles. They were new, as was shown by their razor-sharp edges (genuinely old flint or volcanic glass implements have always lost their keenness by friction with soil grit); and from their fantastic shapes—extremely broad, doubly or triply barbed—as well as their general crudeness, it seemed certain they had been made for display rather than use.

“Weapons of the abos, Doctor,” the beggar said. “My son and I go looking for them when there’s no one will hire us and our boat. Irreplaceable, and genuine souvenirs of the Frenchman’s Landing country, where as you know the abos was found more thickly than anywhere else on this world, as it was my forefathers’ sacred place like Rome or Boston would be to you, and a paradise of fish and animals and all sorts of things to eat, which you will hear me tell about tomorrow when we go out upon the meadowmeres, and if we have luck, the boy will even demonstrate the catching of fish or animals in the abo manner, without even using such delicate and now valuable implements as these I offer for sale to you here.”