A little geological turnover, a swampy land bridge formed in the right spot, and the lizards began to wander up Beacon Valley. And found religion. A shiny metal temple out of which poured a constant stream of magic water–the reactor-cooling water pumped down from the atmosphere condenser on the roof. The radioactivity in the water didn’t seem to hurt the natives. If anything it caused mutations that bred true.

  A city was built around the temple and, through the centuries, the pyramid was put up around the beacon. A special branch of the priesthood served the temple. All went well until one of the priests violated the temple and destroyed the Holy Waters. There had been revolt, strife, murder, and destruction since then. But still the Holy Waters would not flow. Now armed mobs fought around the temple each day and a new band of priests guarded the sacred fount.

  And I had to walk into the middle of that mess and repair the thing.

  It would have been easy enough to do if we were allowed a little organized violence. I could have had a lizard fry, fixed the beacon, and taken off. I could not do this since all native life-forms were quite well protected. There were spy cells on my ship, all of which I hadn’t found, that would cheerfully rat on me when I got back.

  Diplomacy was called for. I sighed and dragged out the plastiflesh equipment.

  Working from 3-D snaps of Grandson, I modeled a passable reptile head over my own features. It was a little short in the jaw, me not having one of their toothy mandibles, but that was all right. I didn’t have to look exactly like them, just something close. To soothe the native mind. It’s logical. If I were an ignorant aborigine of Earth and I ran into a Spican, who looks like a two-foot gob of dried shellac, I would immediately leave the scene. However, if the Spican was wearing a suit of plastiflesh that looked remotely humanoid, I would at least stay and talk to him. This was what I was aiming to do with the Centaurians.

  When the head was done, I peeled it off and attached it to an attractive suit of green plastic, complete with tail. I was really glad they had tails. The lizards didn’t wear clothes, and I wanted to take along a lot of electronic equipment. I built the tail over a metal frame that anchored around my waist. Then I filled the frame with all the equipment I would need and began to wire the suit.

  When it was done, I tried it on in front of a full-length mirror. It was horrible but effective. The tail dragged me down in the rear and gave me a duck-waddle, but that only helped the resemblance.

  That night I took the ship down, into the hills nearest the pyramid. An out-of-the-way dry spot where the amphibious natives would never go. A little before dawn the Eye hooked onto my shoulders and we sailed straight up. We hovered above the temple at about two thousand meters, until it was light, then dropped down. It must have been a grand sight. The Eye was camouflaged to look like a flying lizard, sort of a cardboard pterodactyl, and the slowly flapping wings obviously had nothing to do with our flight. But it was impressive enough for the natives. The first one that spotted me screamed and dropped over on its back. The others came running. They

  milled and mobbed and piled on top of one another, and by the time I had landed in the plaza fronting the temple the priesthood arrived.

  I folded my arms in a regal stance. “Greetings, O noble servers of the Great God,” I said. Of course I didn’t say it out loud, just whispered softly enough for the throat mike to catch. This was radioed back to the MT, and the translation shot back to a speaker in my jaws.

  The natives chomped and rattled, and the translation rolled out almost instantly. I had the volume turned up and the whole square echoed to my amplified machine voice.

  Some of the more credulous natives prostrated themselves, and others fled screaming. One doubtful type raised a spear, but no one else tried that after the pterodactyl Eye picked him up and dropped him in the swamp. The priests were a hard-headed lot and weren’t buying any lizards in a poke; they just stood and muttered. I had to take the offensive again.

  “Begone, O faithful steed,” I said to the Eye, and pressed the control in my palm at the same time.

  It took off straight up a bit faster than I wanted; little pieces of wind-torn plastic rained down. While the crowd was ogling this ascent, I walked through the temple doors.

  “I would talk with you, O noble priests,” I said. Before they could think up a good answer, I was inside.

  The temple was a small one built against the base of the pyramid. I hoped I wasn’t breaking too many taboos by going in. Since I wasn’t stopped I was all right so far. The temple was a single room with a murky-looking pool at one end. Sloshing in the pool was an ancient reptile who clearly was one of the leaders. I waddled toward him and he gave me a cold and fishy eye, then growled something.

  The MT whispered into my ear, “Just what in the name of the thirteenth sin are you—and what are you doing here?”

  I drew up my scaly figure in a noble gesture and pointed

  toward the ceiling. “I come from your ancestors to help you. I am here to restore the Holy Waters.”

  This raised a buzz of conversation behind me, but got no useful response out of the chief. He sank slowly into the water until only his eyes were showing. I could almost hear the wheel turning behind that moss-covered forehead. Then he lunged up and pointed a dripping finger at me.

  “You are a liar! You are no ancestor of ours! You will—”

  “Stop!” I thundered before he got so far in that he couldn’t back out. “I said your ancestors sent me as emissary—I am not one of your ancestors. Do not try to harm me or the wrath of those who have Passed On will turn against you.”

  When I said this, I turned to jab a claw at the other priests, using the motion to cover my flicking a coin grenade toward them. It blew a nice hole in the door with a great show of noise and smoke.

  The First Lizard knew I was talking sense then and immediately called a meeting of the shamans. It, of course, took place in the public bathtub and I had to join them there. We jawed and gurgled for about an hour and settled all the major points. I found out that they were all new priests; the previous ones had all been boiled alive for letting the Holy Waters cease.

  Cheered by this information, I explained that I was there only to help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this, tentatively, and we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy paths across the floor. There was a bolted and guarded door that led into the pyramid proper. While it was being opened, the First Lizard turned to me.

  “Undoubtedly you know of the rule,” he said. “Because the old priests did pry and peer, it was ordered henceforth that only the blind could enter the Holy of Holies.” I would swear he was smiling; if thirty teeth peeking out of what looked like a crack in an old suitcase can be called smiling.

  He was also signaling over an underpriest who carried a brazier of charcoal, complete with red-hot irons. All I could do was stand and watch as he stirred up the coals, pulled out the ruddiest iron and turned toward me. He was just drawing a bead on my right eyeball when my brain got back in gear.

  “Of course,” I said. “Blinding is only right. But in my case you will have to blind me later, before I leave the Holy of Holies, not now. I need my eyes to see and mend the Fount of Holy Waters. Once the waters flow again, I will laugh as I hurl myself on the burning iron.”

  He took a good thirty seconds to think it over and in the end had to agree with me. The local torturer sniffled a bit and threw a little more charcoal on the fire. The gate crashed open and I stalked through; then it banged to behind me and I was alone in the dark.

  But not for long—there was a shuffling nearby and I took a chance and turned on my flash. Three priests were groping toward me, their eye sockets red pits of burned flesh. They knew what I wanted and led the way without a word.

  A crumbling and cracked stone stairway brought us up by a solid metal doorway labeled in archaic script mark III beacon—ENTRANCE TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The overly

  trusting builders had counted on the sign to do the whole job, for there wasn’t a trace of a lock on the door. One lizard merely turned the handle and we were inside the beacon.

  I unzipped the front of my camouflage suit and pulled out the blueprints. With the faithful priests stumbling after me I approached the antique machinery. There was a residue of charge in the emergency batteries, just enough to give a dim light. The meters and indicators looked to be in good shape; if anything, unexpectedly bright from constant polishing. I checked the readings carefully and found just what I had suspected. One of the eager lizards had managed to open a circuit box and had polished the switches inside. While doing this, he had thrown one of the switches and that had caused the trouble.

  Rather, that had started the trouble. It wasn’t going to be ended by just reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only for repairs, and then only after the atomic pile had been damped. When the water was cut off with the pile in operation, it had started to overheat and the automatic safeties had dumped the whole works down into the pit.

  I could start the water again easily enough, but there was no fuel left in the reactor.

  But I wasn’t going to play with the fuel problem at all. It would be far easier for me to install a new power plant. I had one in the ship that was about a tenth of the size of the ancient bucket of bolts. Before I sent for it, I checked over the rest of the beacon. In two thousand years there should be some signs of wear, tear, and fatigue.

  The old boys had built well, I’ll give them credit for that. Ninety percent of the machinery had no moving parts and had suffered no wear whatever. Other parts they beefed up figuring they would wear, but slowly. The water-feed pipe from the roof, for example. The pipe walls were at least three meters thick—and the pipe opening itself no bigger than my head. There were some things I could do, though, and I made a list of parts.

  The parts, the new power plant, and a few other odds and ends were sorted into a neat pile on the ship. I checked all the parts by screen before they were loaded into a small metal crate. In the darkest hour before dawn, the heavy-duty Eye dropped the crate outside the temple and darted away without being seen.

  I watched the priests through the Pryeye while they tried to open it. When they had given up, I boomed orders at them through a speaker in the crate. They spent most of the day sweating the heavy box up through the narrow temple stairs, and I enjoyed a good sleep. It was resting inside the beacon door when I woke up.

  The repair didn’t take long, though there was plenty of groaning from the blind lizards when they heard me ripping the wall open to get to the power leads. I even hooked a gadget to the water pipe so their Holy Waters would have the usual refreshing radioactivity when they started flowing again. The moment this was all finished, I did the job they waited for.

  I threw the switch that started the water flowing again.

  There were a few minutes while the water began to gurgle down through the dry pipe. Then a roar came from outside the pyramid that must have shaken its stone walls. Shaking my hands once over my head, I went down for the eye-burning ceremony.

  The blind lizards were waiting for me by the door and looked even unhappier than usual. When I tried the door, I found out why—it was bolted and barred from the other side.

  “It has been decided,” a lizard said, “that you shall remain here forever and tend to the Holy Waters. We will stay with you and serve your every need.”

  A delightful prospect, eternity spent in a locked beacon with three blind lizards. In spite of their hospitality, I couldn’t accept.

  “What! You dare interfere with the messenger of your ancestors!” I had the speaker on full volume and the vibration almost shook my head off.

  The lizards cringed, and I set my Solar for a narrow beam and ran it around the doorjamb. There was a great crunching and banging from the junk piled against it, and then the door swung free. I threw it open. Before they could protest, I had pushed the priests out through it.

  The rest of their clan showed up at the foot of the stairs and made a great ruckus while I finished welding the door shut. Running through the crowd, I faced up to the First Lizard in his tub. He sank slowly beneath the surface.

  “What lack of courtesy!” I shouted. He made little bubbles in the water. “The ancestors are annoyed and have decided to forbid entrance to the Inner Temple forever. Though, out of

  their eternal kindness, they will let the waters flow. Now I must return—so on with the eyeball ceremony!”

  The torture-master was too frightened to move, so I grabbed his hot iron out of the coals. A touch on the side of my face dropped a steel plate over my eyes, under the plasti-skin. Then I jammed the iron hard into my phony eye sockets and the plastic gave off an authentic odor.

  A cry went up from the crowd as I dropped the iron and staggered in blind circles. I must admit it went off pretty well.

  But enough was enough. Before they could get any more bright ideas, I threw the switch and my plastic pterodactyl sailed in through the door.

  I couldn’t see it, of course, but I knew it had arrived when the grapples in the claws latched onto the steel plates on my shoulders. I had got turned around after the eye-burning and my flying beast hooked onto me backward. I had meant to sail out bravely, blind eyes facing into the sunset; instead, I faced the crowd as I soared away, so I made the most of a bad situation and threw them a snappy military salute. Then I was out in the fresh air and away.

  When I lifted the plate and poked holes in the seared plastic, I could see the pyramid growing smaller behind me, water gushing out of the base and a happy crowd of reptiles sporting in its radioactive rush. I counted off on my talons to see if I had forgotten anything.

  One: The beacon was repaired.

  Two: The door was sealed, so there should be no more sabotage, accidental or deliberate.

  Three: The priests should be satisfied. The water was running again, my eyes had been duly burned out, and they were back in business. Which added up to—

  Four: The fact that they would probably let another repairman in, under the same conditions, if the beacon conked out again. At least I had done nothing, like butchering a few of

  them, that would make them antagonistic toward future ancestral messengers.

  I stripped off my tattered lizard suit back in the ship, very glad it would be some other repairman who would get the job.

  BRAVE NEWER WORLD

  Livermore liked the view from the little white balcony outside his office. Even though the air at this height, at this time of year, had a chill bite to it. He was standing there now, trying to suppress a shiver, looking out at the new spring green on the hillsides and the trees in the old town. Above and below him the white steps of the levels of New Town stretched away in smooth elegance. A great A in space with the base a half-mile wide, rising up almost to a point on top. Every level fringed with a balcony, every balcony with an unobstructed view. Well designed. Livermore shivered again and felt the loud beat of his heart; old valves cheered on by new drugs. His insides were as carefully propped up and as well designed as the New Town building. Though his outside left a lot to be desired. Brown spots, wrinkles, and white hair; he looked as weathered as the homes in Old Town. It was damned cold—and the sun went behind a cloud. He thumbed a button, and when the glass wall slid aside, went back gratefully into the purified and warmed air of the interior.

  “Been waiting long?” he asked the old man who sat, scowling, in the chair on the far side of his desk.

  “Well, you asked, Doctor. I was never one to complain, but …”

  “Then don’t start now. Stand up. Open your shirt. Let me have those records. Ahh, Grazer, I remember you. Planted a kidney seed, didn’t they? How do you feel?”

  “Poorly, that’s the only word for it. Off my feed, can’t sleep. When I do I wake up with the cold sweats. And the bowels! Let me tell you about the bowels… . Hey!”

  Livermore slapped the cold pickup of the stethoscope against the bare skin of Grazer’s chest. Patients liked Dr. Livermore but hated his stethoscope, swearing that he must keep it specially chilled for them. They were right. There was a thermoelectric cooling plate in the case. Livermore felt that it gave them something to think about. “Hmmrr …” he said, frowning, the earpieces in his ears, hearing nothing. He had plugged the stethoscope with wax a year earlier. The systolic, diastolic murmurs disturbed his concentration; he heard enough of that from his own chest. Everything was in the records in any case, since the analysis machines did a far better job than he could ever do. He flipped through the sheets and graphs.

  “Button your shirt, sit down, take two of these right now. Just the thing for this condition.”

  He shook the large red sugar pills from the jar in his desk drawer and pointed to the plastic cup and water carafe. Grazer reached for them eagerly: this was real medicine. Livermore found the most recent X rays and snapped them into the viewer. Lovely. The new kidney was growing, as sweetly formed as a little bean. Still tiny now beside its elderly brother, but in a year’s time they would be identical.

  Science conquereth all, or at least almost all; he slammed the file on the table. It had been a difficult morning, and even this afternoon surgery was not as relaxing as it usually was. The old folks, the AKs, his peer group, they appreciated one another. Very early in his career he had taken his M.D.; that was all that they knew about him. A doctor, their age. He sometimes wondered if they connected him at all with the Dr. Rex Livermore in charge of the ectogenetic program. That is, if they had ever heard of the program.

  “I’m sure glad for the pills, Doc. I don’t like those shots no more. But my bowels—”

  “Goddamn and blast your bowels. They’re as old as my bowels and in just as good shape. You’re just bored, that’s your trouble.”