A flicker of her old temper burned at me: “How do I know you two won’t break your word and fight on?”

  “I’d never do that to you, Kit,” I whispered.

  “And they’d find out anyway,” she cried. “They’d know that one of us was still loose, when they questioned you—”

  “They would not kill Alice on that account,” said Regelin. “They are not fiends, in spite of all they have done.”

  “I can’t,” she croaked. “I can’t go and leave her.”

  Regelin looked at me. “Then one of us can,” he said. “You are the logical one, David. You are uninjured, and also would be less conspicuous on Earth. You could perhaps reach this Torreos.”

  “It seems to be the only way,” I answered dully.

  “Dave—no!” Kit’s protest was wild.

  “Yes,” I said, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry, but there’s no choice.”

  She looked at me for a very long while. Then she turned and went away from us, into the kitchen, and closed the door behind her. I have not seen her since.

  —It is now, I think, almost midnight. Regelin will soon make a rush into the woods, firing, drawing attention to himself, and while he is cut down I will try to slip past the besiegers. It is so thin a hope that it is no hope at all, but we must try. Kit can wait here and surrender to them when they come. I hope they will not harm Alice on my account, and that Kit will not think too harshly of me.

  I want to finish this record and leave it here. I have loosened a floorboard and will slip the book underneath and fasten the board again. Perhaps some many years hence will stumble across it. Perhaps—

  The gods must be laughing now. But a man has to keep trying.

  Epilogue

  Intelligence Prime laid the stained, tattered book aside. It was late. There was silence all around him.

  He got up and glided to the window. The high tower of Mars’ Earth Headquarters looked dizzily down onto the nighted reaches of São Paulo. Here and there a dim light glittered, and the land curved darkly away over the rim of the world. His own secret office was a very tiny thing, perched above immensity.

  Yes, he thought, we shall have to nab Torreos. I will give the orders tomorrow morning.

  He sighed. War was a cruel and senseless business. Sometimes he wished his fathers had not decided on it. But now the feet of the Tahowwa race were set on that road and there was no turning back. He could only guide his people as best he was able.

  I would have liked to know Arnfeld and Regelin, he thought briefly. As friends. I wonder what was in their minds, there at the end?

  For that matter, what had been in the mind of Christine Hawthorne? She had loved both of them. And yet she had taken a disintegrator and stolen out of the kitchen and destroyed them before they could leave her. Afterward she had run weeping and shrieking out to the Tahowwa, raising a clamor which drew them from all around to look at her with a creeping horror.

  Well, there must have been horror enough in her own heart—must still be. There had been little left of her husband and her comrade: the shattered faces were just barely recognizable, the rest not pleasant to think about. But she had saved her child.

  I imagine the kindest thing to do is to put the girl in an orphanage, and then kill the mother some night when she is asleep. 1 don’t know. Maybe I should ask her.

  Well—victory. The book had done little except confirm the woman’s story. The fact of the Tahowwa’s existence was thoroughly stamped out now, the hunt was over, it was time to resume work. First the Martians to reduce Earth, and then the plan for wrecking Martian industry, and then the open declaration, the Tahowwa riding in as overlords. Intelligence Prime reflected sardonically that the future would make him a great hero. How many other conquerors had felt his doubts and fears and guilt, alone with their own souls at night?

  The soft chime brought him jerking to full awareness. He cursed his overstrained nerves. “Mu-afeen chelbakeesh!” Then, with a return of control: “Houn.” Come in.

  The door opened. He looked down the barrel of a gun.

  Slowly he raised his eyes. The face behind the gun was human—gaunt, burning-eyed, unkempt hair and savagely twisted mouth. The heart of Intelligence Prime leaped against his ribs. He backed against the farther wall, raising his hands before his breast.

  “Where is she?” said David Arnfeld. “Where is my wife?”

  Others were behind him, uniformed Martians and armed humans, a small force that peered into the office and then flowed quietly on down the corridors. Arnfeld took a closer step, jabbing his gun at the Tahowwa. “Where is Christine Hawthorne?”

  “You’d better tell him,” said Regelin dzu Coruthan. “He is not in a mood to play games.”

  “Cell—Cell 27,” gasped Intelligence Prime out of nightmare. “She—the child—they have not been harmed.”

  “Come on,” said Arnfeld curtly to a Martian staff officer. “You can guide me.” They vanished down the hall.

  Others entered, Yoakh Dzugeth ay Valkazan, undercommandant of Earth, who had always been considered safe, stalked over to the communicator. He began at once to call sections of the great building and give orders.

  Intelligence Prime crouched in a corner, looking with blurred vision at Regelin. “How did you do it?” he whispered.

  The Martian didn’t answer immediately. One hand held a gun on the Tahowwa, the other, still bandaged, flipped through Arnfeld’s book. “I see you found this,” he said at last, idly. “Interesting souvenir. Hm—yes, it carries the story almost to the end. And, incidentally, it tells the truth. When David wrote those last lines, he was indeed desperate. So the book is true enough as far as it goes.”

  Dzugeth looked up with satisfaction. “I think we hold the entire building now,” he said. “And the Commandant is on his way—I told him it was an emergency.”

  Mars’ Supreme Commandant of Earth, Darheesh of the Tahowwa, on his way to an ambush! Intelligence Prime fought not to shriek.

  “You, of course, will send messages for us to the continental HQ’s,” Regelin told him. “It should not take us many weeks to organize the overthrow of your rule on Earth and Luna, without any of your folk on Mars being aware of it. Then we can think about the next step.”

  “How did you do it?” The voice was dead.

  “Oh, that!” Regelin chuckled. “A bit of complicated thinking. David told us his plan, in whispers, then he and I went back to our posts. Kit, who was hidden from either of us by the kitchen doors, opened the shed and talked to Radeef and—what was his name?—oh, yes, Naseer. She told them that, she had to betray us, lest our recklessness bring the death of her child. She couldn’t bring herself to shoot us, she said, but she released the aliens and gave them guns, warning them that we were alert and suspicious. Naturally, they assumed David’s and my shapes and whatever appropriate clothes they had; then each of them went to his opposite number, my duplicate to David through the one bedroom, his to me through the kitchen door, so neither he nor I would suspect anything. However, we were prepared, you see. They were armed and ready to kill us, so when they came to us, we shot, with no special compunctions. The disintegrators left a mess!

  “Kit went into her hysterical act, running out and screaming and drawing attention. David and I used the time to hide ourselves well in the dark shed. We waited while they came in and verified what she had told them; then, at the first chance, we slipped away.

  “Being in possession of our ‘bodies,’ you, of course, called off the hunt, which made things fairly simple for us. David went to Duluth and hid, while I bluffed a ride to São Paulo on an official jet. Once here, I was soon in touch with Torreos and, through him, Dzugeth; we kidnapped an obscure Tahowwa officer for proof and interrogation, fetched David, and organized this mutiny.”

  Intelligence Prime, lord of the Solar System, raised his head, and his eyes pleaded for the life of his people.

  The Three-Cornered Wheel

  “No!”

  Rebo Legnor’s-Child, Marchwarden of Gilrigor, sprang back from the picture as if it had come alive. “What are you thinking of?” he gasped. “Burn that thing! Now!” One hand lifted shakily toward the fire in the great brazier, whose flames relieved a little the gloom of the audience chamber. “Over there. I saw nothing and you showed me nothing. Do you understand?”

  David Falkayn let fall the sheet of paper on which he had made the sketch. It fluttered to the table, slowly through an air pressure a fourth again as great as Earth standard. “What—” His voice broke in a foolish squeak. Annoyance at that crowded out fear. He braced his shoulders and regarded the Ivanhoan squarely. “What is the matter?” he asked. “It is just a drawing.”

  “Of the malkino.” Rebo shuddered. “And you not even belonging to our kind, let alone a Consecrate.”

  Falkayn stared at him, as if anyone of Terrestrial descent could read expressions on that unhuman face. Seen by the dull red sunlight slanting through narrow windows, Rebo looked more like a lion than a man, and not very much like either. The body was only roughly anthropoid: bipedal, two-armed, but short and thick in the torso, long and thick in the limbs, with a forward-leaning posture that reduced a sheer two meters of height to approximately Falkayn’s level. The three fingers had one more joint than a man’s, and narrow black nails; the thumbs were on the opposite side of the hands from those of Genus Homo; the feet were digitigrade. Mahogany fur covered the entire skin, but each hair bore tiny barbs, so that the effect was of rough plumage. The head was blocky and round-eared, the face flat, noseless, with breathing apertures below the angle of the great jaws and enormous green eyes above an astonishingly sensitive, almost womanlike mouth. But whatever impression that conveyed was overwhelmed by the tawny leonine mane which framed the countenance and spilled down the muscular back, and by the tufted tail that lashed the ankles. A pair of short scaly trousers and a leather baldric, from which hung a wicked-looking ax, enhanced the wild effect.

  Nevertheless, Falkayn knew, inside that big skull was a brain as good as his own. The trouble was, it had not evolved on Earth. And when, in addition to every inborn strangeness, the mind was shaped by a culture that no man really understood…how much communication was possible?

  The boy wet his lips. The dry cold air of Ivanhoe had chapped them. He didn’t lay a hand on his blaster, but he became acutely aware of its comforting drag at his hip. Somehow he found words: “I beg your pardon if I have given offense. You will understand that foreigners may often transgress through ignorance. Can you tell me what is wrong?”

  Rebo’s taut crouch eased a trifle. His eyes, seeing farther into the red end of the spectrum than Falkayn’s, probed corners which were only shadows to the visitor. No one else stood on the floor or behind the grotesquely carved stone pillars. Only the yellow flames acrackle in the brazier, the acridity of smoke from unearthly wood, stirred in the long room. Outside—it seemed suddenly very far away—Falkayn heard the endless wind of the Gilrigor uplands go booming.

  “Yes,” the Marchwarden said, “I realize you acted unwittingly. And you, for your part, should not doubt that I remain friendly to you—not just because you are my guest at this moment, but because of the fresh breath you have brought to this truly stagnant land of ours.”

  “That we have perhaps brought,” Falkayn corrected. “The future depends on whether we live or die, remember. And that in turn depends on your help.” Well put! he congratulated himself. Schuster ought to have heard that. Maybe then he’d stop droning at me about how I’ll never make merchant status if I don’t learn to handle words.

  “I will not be able to help you if they flay me,” Rebo answered sharply. “Burn that thing, I say.”

  Falkayn squinted through the murk at his drawing. It showed a large flatbed wagon with eight wheels, to be drawn by a team of twenty fastigas. All the way from the spaceship to this castle, he had been aglow with visions of how awed and delighted the noble would be. He had seen himself, no longer Davy-this-and-Davy-that, hey-boy-c’mere, apprentice and unpaid personal servant to Master Polesotechnician Martin Schuster, but Falkayn of Hermes, a Prometheus come to Larsum with the gift of the wheel. What’s gone wrong? he thought wildly; and then, with the bitterness common to his seventeen years: Why does everything always go wrong?

  Nevertheless he crossed the floor of inlaid shells and cast the paper into the brazier. It flared up and crumbled to ash.

  Turning, he saw that Rebo had relaxed. The Marchwarden poured himself a cupful of wine from a carafe on the table and tossed it off at a gulp. “Good,” he rumbled. “I wish you could partake with me. It is distressful not to offer refreshment to a guest.”

  “You know that your foods would poison my race,” Falkayn said. “That is one reason why we must transport the workmaker from Gilrigor to our ship, and soon. Will you tell me what is bad about the device I have illustrated? It can be easily built. Its kind—wagons, we call them—were among the most important things my people ever invented. They had much to do with our becoming more than—”

  He checked himself just before he said “savages” or “barbarians.” Rebo’s hereditary job was to keep such tribes on their proper side of the Kasunian Mountains. Larsum was a civilized country, with agriculture, metallurgy, towns, roads, trade, a literate class.

  But no wheels. Burdens went on the backs of citizens or their animals, by boat, by travois, by sledge in winter—never on wheels. Now that he thought about it, Falkayn remembered that not even rollers were employed.

  “The idea is that round objects turn,” he floundered.

  Rebo traced a sign in the air. “Best not to speak of it.” He changed his mind with soldierly briskness. “However, we must. Very well, then. The fact is that the malkino is too holy to be put to base use. The penalty for transgressing this law is death by flaying, lest God’s wrath fall on the entire land.”

  Falkayn struggled with the language. The educator tapes aboard the What Cheer had given him fluency, but could not convey a better idea of semantic subtleties than the first expedition to Ivanhoe had gotten; and those men hadn’t stayed many weeks. The word he mentally translated as “holy” implied more than dedication to spiritual purposes. There were overtones of potency, mana, and general ineffability. Never mind. “What does malkino mean?”

  “A…a roundedness. I may not draw it for you, only a Consecrate may do that. But is something perfectly round.”

  “Ah, I see. A circle, we would call it, or a sphere if solid. A wheel is circular. Well, I suppose we could make our wheels slightly imperfect.”

  “No.” The maned head shook. “Until the imperfection became so gross that the wheels would not work anyway, the thing is impossible. Even if the Consecrates would allow it—and I know quite well they will not, as much from hostility to you as from dogma—the peasants would rise in horror and butcher you.” Rebo’s eyes glowed in the direction of Falkayn’s gun. “Yes, I realize you have powerful, fire-throwing weapons. But there are only four of you. What avail against thousands of warriors, shooting from the cover of hills and woods?”

  Falkayn harked back to what he had seen in Aesca, on his westward ride along the Sun’s Way, and now in this stronghold. Architecture was based on sharp-cornered polygons. Furniture and utensils were square or oblong. The most ceremonial objects, like Rebo’s golden wine goblet, went no further than to employ elliptical cross-sections, or mere arcs of true circles.

  He felt ill with dismay. “Why?” he choked. “What makes a…a figure…so holy?”

  “Well—” Rebo lowered himself uncomfortably to a chair, draping his tail over the rest across the back. He fiddled with his axhaft and didn’t look at the other. “Well, ancient usage. I can read, of course, but I am no scholar. The Consecrates can tell you more. Still…the circle and the sphere are the signs of God. In a way, they are God. You see them in the sky. The sun and the moons are spheres. So is the world, however imperfect; and the Consecrates say that the planets have the same shape, and the stars are set inside the great ball of the universe. All the heavenly bodies move in circles. And, well, circle and sphere are the perfect shapes. Are they not? Everything perfect is a direct manifestation of God.”

  Remembering a little about Classical Greek philosophy—even if the human colony on Hermes had broken away from Earth and established itself as a grand duchy, it remained proud of its heritage and taught ancient history in the schools—Falkayn could follow that logic. His impulse was to blurt: “You’re wrong! No planet or star is a true globe, and orbits are ellipses, and your little red dwarf sun isn’t the center of the cosmos anyway. I’ve been out there and I know!” But Schuster had drilled enough caution into him that he checked himself. He’d accomplish nothing but to stiffen the enmity of the priests, and perhaps add the enmity of Rebo, who still wanted to be his friend.

  How could he prove a claim that went against three or four thousand years of tradition? Larsum was a single country, cut off by mountain, desert, ocean, and howling savages from the rest of the world. It had no more than the vaguest rumors of what went on beyond its borders. From Rebo’s standpoint, the only reasonable supposition was that the furless aliens with the beaks above their mouths had flown here from some distant continent. Reviewing the first expedition’s reports of how upset and indignant the Consecrates at Aesca had gotten when told that its ship came from the stars, how hotly they had denied the possibility, Schuster had cautioned his fellows to avoid that topic. The only thing which mattered was to get off this planet before they starved to death.

  Falkayn’s shoulders slumped. “My people have found in their travels that it does not pay to dispute the religious beliefs of others,” he said. “Very well, I grant you wheels are forbidden. But then what can we do?”

  Rebo looked up again with his disconcertingly intelligent gaze. He was no ham-headed medieval baron, Falkayn realized. His civilization was old, and the rough edges had been worn off its warrior class, off peasants and artisans and traders, as well as the priest-scribe-poet-artist-engineer-scientist Consecrates. Rebo Legnor’s-Child might be likened to an ancient samurai, if any parallels to human history were possible. He’d grasped the principles of the wheel at once, and—