He had hoped that she would thank him and plead for release; if she did either her voice was too faint for him to catch her words, this though it seemed to him there was a sound of some sort from the well, a faint, high humming. As he tramped back to the house, he decided that it had probably been an echo of the wind.

  The rest of that day he spent preparing her cellar room.

  He slept well that night and woke refreshed twenty minutes before his clock radio would have roused him. The three-eighths-inch rope he had bought two days earlier awaited him in the kitchen; he knotted it as soon as he had finished breakfast, spacing the knots about a foot apart.

  When he had wound it around his waist and tied it securely, he discovered bloodstains—small but noticeable—on the back of his barn coat. Eventually it would have to be burned, but a fire at this season would be suspicious in itself; a long soak in a strong bleach solution would have to do the job—for the present, if not permanently. Pulled out, his shirt hid the rope, although not well.

  When he reached the well, he tied one end of the rope to a convenient branch and called softly.

  There was no reply.

  A louder “Kiara!” brought no reply either. She was still asleep, the horror writer decided. Asleep or, just possibly, unconscious. He dropped the free end of the rope into the well, swung over the edge, and began the climb down.

  He had expected the length of his rope to exceed the depth of the well by three feet at least; but there came a time when his feet could find no more rope below him—or find the muddy bottom either.

  His pen light revealed it, eight inches, perhaps, below the soles of his shoes. Another knot down—this knot almost the last—brought his feet into contact with the mud.

  He released the rope.

  He had expected to sink into the mud, but had thought to sink to a depth of no more than three or four inches; he found himself floundering, instead, in mud up to his knees. It was difficult to retain his footing; bracing one hand against the stone side of the well, he managed to do it.

  At the first step he attempted, the mud sucked his shoe from his foot. Groping the mud for it got his hands thoroughly filthy, but failed to locate it. Attempting a second step cost him his other shoe as well.

  This time, however, his groping fingers found a large, soft thing in the mud. His pen light winked on—but in the space of twenty seconds or a little less its always-faint beam faded to darkness. His fingers told him of hair matted with mud, of an ear, and then of a small earring. When he took his hand from it, he stood among corpses, shadowy child-sized bodies his fingers could not locate. Shuddering, he looked up.

  Above him, far above him, a small circle of blue was bisected by the dark limb to which he had tied his rope. The rope itself swayed gently in the air, its lower end not quite out of reach.

  He caught it and tried to pull himself up; his hands were slippery with mud, and it escaped them.

  Desperately, almost frantically, he strove to catch it again, but his struggles caused him to sink deeper into the mud.

  He tried to climb the wall of the well; at his depth its rough stones were thick with slime.

  At last he recalled Kiara’s body, and by a struggle that seemed to him long he managed to get both feet on it. With its support, his fingertips once more brushed the dangling end of the rope. Bracing his right foot on what felt like the head, he made a final all-out effort.

  And caught the rope, grasping it a finger’s breadth from its frayed end. The slight tension he exerted on it straightened it, and perhaps stretched it a trifle. Bent the limb above by a fraction of an inch. With his right arm straining almost out of its socket and his feet pressing hard against Kiara’s corpse, the fingers of his left hand could just touch the final knot.

  Something took hold of his right foot, pinning toes and transverse arch in jaws that might have been those of a trap.

  The horror writer struggled then, and screamed again and again as he was drawn under—screamed and shrieked and begged until the stinking almost liquid mud stopped his mouth.

  On the Train

  When I look out the window, the earth seems to have become liquid, rushing to flow over a falls that is always just behind the last car. Wherever that may be. The telephone poles reel like drunks, losing their footing. The mountains, white islands in the fluid landscape, track us for miles, the hills breaking to snow on their beaches.

  The entire universe can be contained in three questions, of which the first two are: How long is the train? And from what station does it originate?

  I do not remember boarding, although my mother, who was here in the compartment with us until a moment ago, told me she recalled it very well. I was helped on by a certain doctor, she said. I would go up and down the cars looking for him (and her), but one cannot thus look for a doctor without arousing the anxiety of the other passengers or exciting their suspicions. Certainly, however, I did not get on at the station of origin; my mother told me that she herself had already been riding for over thirty years.

  The porter’s name is Flip; he was once my dog, a smooth fox terrier. Now he makes our berths and brings coffee and knows more about the train than any of us. He can answer all the unimportant questions, although his answers are so polite it is hard to tell sometimes just what he means. My wife and I (all the children we helped aboard have gone to other cars) would like to make him sit with us. But he threatens to call his uncle, the Dawn Guard.

  I have formed several conjectures concerning the length of the train. It is surely either very long or very short, since when it goes around a curve (which it seldom does) I cannot see the engine. Possibly it is infinite—but it may be of a closed as well as an open infinity. If the track were extended ever westward, forming a Great Circle, and all that track were filled with cars, would not the spinning earth rush past them endlessly? That is precisely what I see from the window. On the other hand, if straight trackage were laid (and most of it does seem to be straight) it would extend forever among the stars. I see that too. Perhaps I do not see the engine because the engine is behind us.

  At every moment it seems that we are stopping, but we continue and even pick up speed. The mountains crowd closer, as if to ram us by night. I lie in my berth listening to the conductor (so called because he was struck by lightning once) come down the car checking our tickets in the dark.

  Talk of Mandrakes

  The mons were not running. Peak coughed into his breather and turned aside shivering. What do you do when you have to be someplace? And can’t get there?

  The man beside him pulled car keys from a pocket.

  Beg. “You’re probably going to work,” Peak said. “I wasn’t. I was going to Skybase Five.”

  The owner of the keys turned to look at him. Both were breaking the great unwritten rule of the city: Do not make eye contact.

  “Here, sir,” Peak tried to make it smooth. “Let me show you.” His hand slid into his worn raincoat, past jacket and sweater, and unbuttoned his shirt. Slowly enough to let the owner of the keys see that it was not a weapon, he pulled out his wallet and punched the combination. The pass had come by unasked by e-secure and the picture was two years old, but it was still recognizable. “You can hold it if you want, sir. I trust you.”

  A thousand grumbling commuters swirled around them.

  “Admit John Michael Peak, Ph.D.” The owner of the keys moved his lips when he read. He skipped Peak’s number. “Thursday twenty-eight N eighty only, eleven hundred to thirteen hundred only. Building one-one-four.” He looked from the picture to Peak, then back at the picture. “Yeah. that’s you all right.”

  “I’m in xbio,” Peak told him. “Doctor Selim wants to see me.” He did not add that the mere fact might make his career.

  “Okay…” The owner of the keys said.

  “You’ve got a car, sir, and you could take me. Downtown will be gridlocked already, with the mons down.”

  The owner of the keys nodded slowly at first. “Yeah.” A more rapid nod. “I could call in from out there. If they checked on me it’d be on the scan.”

  “Sure.” Peak had struggled to keep his voice normal. It was going to work!

  “Naturally I can’t tell the bastards why. Confidential. Come on!”

  Together they left the station and rode the speedlator to the street. The car was yellow, and bigger than Peak had expected.

  “This Selim,” the owner said as they pulled into traffic, “he was one of them?”

  “The only xbiologist they had. They didn’t really expect to find life.”

  “You can turn off your breather,” the owner said. “My car’s got ox.”

  “Thanks.” Peak closed the valve. “Nice of you.”

  “Ram Boardman,” the owner said. He took a hand from the wheel.

  Peak shook it. “Mike Peak.”

  The wheel motors hummed as they whizzed past the stalled millions headed toward the city. It took twenty minutes to get to the wire; after that it was all clear. Tracking guns picked them up, and the owner slowed as he murmured, “Request egress,” into the dash fone.

  “Denied eight one seven H eight one JQ. Special circumstances?”

  “We have special circumstances. Gov hicomf. John Michael Peak.”

  “Yes, sir. Park space one-oh-eight, sir.”

  The owner grinned at Peak. Peak grinned back.

  The officer who showed Peak in wore cermet armor and carried a gun, but his expression was deferential behind his visor. He saluted when Peak showed his pass, and waved him through.

  Doctor Selim joined him in the lobby half an hour later and actually said, “It’s good of you to come, Doctor Peak.”

  “The greatest privilege of my life, sir.”

  “And good of you to say so. Get out this way much?”

  “You can’t.” Peak shook his head. “Not without a pass.”

  “So they tell me.” Selim sighed. He was middle-aged, short, slight, and dark. “Got it now? I want to show you my lab.”

  A new guard touched a button, and a light labeled SEC CHECK flashed green. The wall said, “Pleased to see you, Doctor Selim. Is this man with you?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  A second light shone, this one marked VOC CHECK. The wall opened along an invisible seam. When it had closed behind them, Peak said, “I suppose we’re still being monitored for our own safety, sir?”

  “We are, but not by human beings. Not unless the central processor tags the record. So they tell me, and I think it’s the truth. It would take a lot of people to listen to everything we say. I’ve looked for them, and they’re not here.”

  Peak made finger motions, waves flying along a wire.

  “Too vulnerable. Or anyway I hope so. I’m fifty years out of date, Doctor Peak. Do you realize that?”

  “I’m current, Doctor Selim. Just got my Ph.D. With your off-world experience and my knowledge we’d make an unbeatable team.” He hoped it sounded plausible.

  “Then tell me, what is it they’re so frightened by?”

  “Us.”

  “Extraterrestrial biologists?”

  “People who don’t work for them. You do, so they’re not afraid of you. I’d like to work for them too—I’d love to, in fact—but I don’t.”

  “We’re going to fix that.”

  Peak swallowed. It was a hundred strides and more down a wide corridor more modern than anything he had ever seen before he could talk again. “They think we hate them,” he said at last, “and it’s true for a lot of us. A lot of people hate science, any kind. Hate government. Not just ours, any government. They hold science and government responsible for…” His voice trailed off. “For everything,” he finished weakly. “For the way the world is.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Selim said. “A little of it at least.”

  “In the old days they had buildings downtown. Isn’t that right?”

  Selim nodded. “Fifty years here. It was only eighteen for me. Did I tell you?”

  “I read it.” Peak swallowed. “If people got angry back then they could demonstrate. Throw rocks, maybe. My granddad did some of that. So they moved everything out into the country and they keep everybody else inside. Now they do things out here, and most people don’t know what they are. I don’t know what you’re doing, Doctor Selim, and I’m dying to find out. And—and work with you on it, if you’ll give me a chance.”

  Selim nodded again.

  “But whatever it is, that’s one of them.”

  “I could tell you another, but the central processor might pick it up. Let’s just say they’re thinking of moving farther away.”

  Though tempted to nod, Peak was not sure he understood. “Today I was going to ride the mon to Urban Cee-Cee and try to get a ride from there to keep my appointment with you. I thought with the pass you sent me, one of the people working at Cee-Cee might take me. Only the mons are down, so I got a man named Ram Boardman to drive me. He’d like more than anything to get in here, just for a minute or two, so he could say he’s been inside. I promised I’d try.”

  “I assume he’s not involved in extraterrestrial biology?”

  “He’s an exec, I think. He’s got an exec car.”

  “I’ll tell the guards to admit him later. I doubt that we want him standing around while we talk shop. Have you read my report?”

  Peak shook his head. “They haven’t released it yet. Maybe they never will. There was a summary on the news, but I don’t know how good it was.”

  They turned a corner, and Selim opened a heavy metal door. “Welcome to my parlor,” he said.

  There were lab benches and scanscopes, things that looked like plants and things in rectangular temperglass cases that did not look much like animals. Dominating the laboratory was a wall of temperglass; behind it, a small heap of blue-gray matter that scarcely seemed alive.

  Selim led Peak toward it. “That is the focus of my collection, the most important specimen I brought back and a form of life more wonderful than anything Earth boasts. Do we begin with it or work up to it? You choose.”

  Desperately afraid they would be interrupted, Peak said, “Begin with it, please, Doctor.”

  “Good. I will begin by telling you that like many other things you see here it is neither plant nor animal as we understand those categories. Here’s a young one.” Selim pointed toward a plant that resembled an African violet, save that it was black. “It has leaves, as you see, spread areas for the absorption of sunlight. It even puts down roots for such moisture and nourishment as it can obtain from the exhausted soil in which it grows.”

  “I see.” Peak rubbed his chin.

  “But as it matures and stores enough energy to begin its reproductive cycle, its structure exhibits less and less organization. It now utilizes light only poorly. It is time for it to flower. You must see that for yourself. And for you to see it, it must see you and not see me. That glass is preventing it from seeing either of us. For the present, it perceives by ultraviolet, which is blocked by glass.”

  Selim walked to the edge of the temperglass wall and pressed a button. The wall rose swiftly and silently. “Go in, Doctor Peak. You’ll still be able to hear me in there.”

  “Is it safe to touch?” Peak asked.

  “Perfectly.”

  While the wall slid down behind him, he knelt before the blue-gray heap. It was pocked with pores a millimeter or two in diameter; its surface felt like a dry sponge. He said, “I suppose it must conserve water at this stage.”

  Selim’s voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. “Exactly. It has lost its root structure and is entirely dependent on the water, carbon, and nitrogen stored in what was once its stem. Now it must hope for a visit from some mobile creature if it is ever to become mobile itself.”

  Peak turned to stare at him through the temperglass. “There’s a mobile form?”

  “Yes, for the dissemination of seed. Even Earth has them, as you surely know. Tumbleweeds, to give one example of many, discard their roots and roll as they are driven by the wind, dropping seeds as they go. The remarkable thing about this—what shall we call it?”

  “Selimus, of course,” Peak said.

  “In all humility, there will be more than one creature that will bear my name. Selimus dryas, perhaps. At any rate, the remarkable thing about this dryad is that it has no fixed mobile form. It imitates, at least to a degree, the form of the first mobile life of sufficient size to approach it. Touch it again where you touched it before.”

  Peak did as he was told, and felt human skin. The pores had shrunk, and there were whorls in the skin, like fingerprints.

  “As it imitates you more exactly, it perceives you better. Look for the eyes. They should be appearing near the top about now.”

  They were brown, too close-set for human eyes, and nearly concealed by their single eyelid. As Peak watched, fascinated, they moved until there was five centimeters of rough brownish skin between them. The flap split, grew lashes of fine, black hair.

  “You see, by imitating the mobile form before her, the dryad not only becomes mobile herself, but insures herself from harm. Very few animals attack their own kind. We are one, but the dryad has no way of knowing it, no doubt fortunately.”

  Filled with wonder, Peak shook his head. “It’s intelligent?”

  “Not at all. Yet it will leave you in doubt about that for a long, long time. It senses your approval or disapproval, you see, and shapes its course accordingly.”

  A hand—nearly formless, like a rubber glove painted with nails and knuckles—lifted from the place Peak had touched, growing faster than any mushroom. “The mandrake,” he whispered. “The mandrake’s come at last. Or come back. I’ve never really been sure…”

  “That the mandrake was merely the plant we call by that name? Neither have I. The old herbalists said it shrieked when it was dragged, after all; but the man-shaped part was surely the root, so I prefer to talk of dryads. You will recall that dryads, crowned with appropriate leaves, appeared from the trunks of their trees.”