How? Well, how had he gotten on in the first place?

  He didn’t know! The “incarnations” camouflaged that last segment of his life. Ye gods and witches, was he doomed to repeat death in one lunatic world after the next, until at last he actually did go mad?

  Think, he thought with growing desperation, Think hard. What is it you do that catapults you from here into a different pseudo-existence?

  “One thousand one hundred eleven.”

  You consider where you were last. You see what was wrong with their way of handling the situation. You believe you see a better way. Then God says click, and you’re in business at a new stand, and you find that it doesn’t pay either.

  For instance, take this last world. They did have the germ of an idea. Remove the pressures that make the weaker personalities buckle. Trouble is, society won’t function without some measure of intolerance and compulsion.

  At least, this one won’t. Technological, city-dominated, rationalism-oriented society has to put strains on people, and maybe those strains will always be too brutal for some. But how about an altogether different culture? Not Noble Savages, of course, but…well, post-technological man, who uses machinery only for the hard, dull, dangerous tasks, who has otherwise rid his world of ugliness and overcomplexity, who’s gone back to a nature made safe and clean, so that while satisfying his animal instinct he also cultivates his intellectual, spiritual, uniquely human capabilities—

  Click. The womb of time was impregnated.

  No! cried Douglas Bailey in horror. I didn’t mean that!

  He was too late.

  Fate the Fifth

  The area-maintenance robot had broken down beyond its capacity for self-repair. Bailey sent for an Engineer. The man couldn’t come for several days. Bailey wasn’t annoyed at keeping house in the meantime. In fact, he usually did his gardening himself. To cut and split wood, cook, make minor repairs on the plumbing and the sun-power unit, by hand, constituted a pleasant change of pace. It was a joy to work outdoors. These hills above the bay, on which he and the robot had raised the cabin, had never been more beautiful.

  But no one man could patrol and entire region. And Bailey had no neighbors. (He wasn’t a hermit by any means; he had simply withdrawn for a while from his community, in order that he might develop certain aspects of a philosophical idea.) If nothing else, fire was an omnipresent menace in the dry season. He couldn’t risk that, when the forest was making such a promising comeback. Besides, he’d hate to see Sausalito ruined, whether by conflagration or neglect. The deserted town had a curious, melancholy charm for him.

  Thus he activated his radiophone and called Fairfax. Avis Carmen, who directed cooperative activities this year, happened to take the message in person. “Why, certainly Doug,” she said. “You ought to have notified us earlier. I’ll get you a crew in—well, a lot of the boys went boating in the Delta, so we may not be able to spare enough here. But I can ask for volunteers from elsewhere. How many do you estimate we’ll need? Twenty? Okay, we’ll be at your place day after tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Thanks a lot, Avis,” he said.

  “Why, what’s to thank for? It’s our plain duty to the land. Besides, a joint job like that is fun.”

  “I’ve kept the habit of thanking people for kindness. Guess I’m old-fashioned.”

  “You are that, dear.” Her voice got huskier. “Tell you what. I’ll delegate the organization to Jim Wyman, and come today by myself.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary. I’m not in any trouble yet.”

  “I know. but wouldn’t you like a helping hand? And some companionship and sex? You’ve been alone for weeks.”

  Bailey hesitated. “To be quite honest, yes,” he said. “I’m sufficiently worried that I can’t maintain deep serenity. Which means I’m not accomplishing anything in the insight line anyhow. But can you leave on such short notice?”

  Avis laughed. “Relax! You must try to overcome those geases. I swear, if the Change hadn’t occurred, you’d eventually have fretted yourself into a nervous breakdown. It won’t hurt a thing if I don’t lead the folk dances and community sings and handicraft classes for a bit. My only vital obligation is the training in gentleness, and I’m sure Roger Breed will take charge of my six-year-olds while I’m gone. If you insist on being stuffy and self-righteous, I could say that my most urgent task is you. You sound as if loneliness has stimulated your aggressions.”

  “ ‘Make love, not war,’ ” he quoted with a chuckle.

  “Isn’t that the basic principle of the modern world?” she replied soberly. “Not that you’d ever hurt anyone else, dear. But that means that any undischarged tensions are turned inward.”

  Bailey broke the connection as soon as decently possible, which wasn’t very soon, given a canon of leisureliness and sociability. Avis Carmen talked too much, and was a little too bustlingly sincere, for his entire liking.

  Nevertheless, he looked forward to her arrival.

  That was in in late afternoon. Being in a hurry, she didn’t walk, bicycle, or ride horseback the fifteen or twenty miles. After making sure no one else needed it, she took one of the village’s hovercars. The vehicle set down in a soft whirr outside the cabin. Bailey ran to meet it. Avis climbed forth. She was a big woman, her blonde hair a startling, sun-bleached brightness against the tanned unclothed skin. When they embraced, she was warm and smooth and smelled of summer.

  “Hey big boy,” she said, “are you in that urgent a case?”

  He nuzzled the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “Now that you bring it up,” he said, “yes.”

  “Well…all right. I’ve missed you too, Doug.”

  Afterward they stepped back outdoors to fetch her suitcase. But she halted, and whispered with shaken, unaffected reverence, “My God, have you got a view here!” and they opened their awareness and knew themselves one with the world.

  The sun was westering behind the live oak and eucalyptus that crowned this ridge. From its great golden shield there streamed spears, which flamed where they struck. The cabin walls, the surrounding trees, the air itself were saturated with light. Ahead, the ground rumbled steeply, down into woods, until at last the bay shone blue, mile after calm mile to the tawny eastern hills. Southward lay San Francisco, towers lifting elfin out of luminous mists. Silence brimmed the sky.

  Bailey was the first to return to his isolated self. He saw tears on Avis’s face and said, “But what’s wrong?”

  She came back slowly, with some reluctance, from her communion. “Nothing,” she answer him. “The loveliness. And the pity.”

  “Pity?”

  “For everyone who lived before the Change. Who never knew this.”

  “Now, now, we weren’t that miserable, sweetheart. And why make me feel ancient? You were born in the prior civilization too.”

  “I don’t remember much, though,” she said gravely. “I suppose the…the judgment time made such an impression on me that I forgot a great deal of childhood. Same thing for nearly all the survivors. You seem to recall the old days better than most. The rest of us, well, you might say the judgment scrubbed us clean.”

  He guessed that she wanted to expel whatever sorrow had brushed her, for she went on almost fiercely: “It had to be. We had to be shaken loose from the ways of our fathers. Then we saw what the unnaturalness, the compulsions, the dirty little inhibitions, had done to the earth and mankind. We were liberated from the past and really could start afresh.”

  “I’m not sure we’re all that liberated,” Bailey said.

  “Oh, we’ve kept what was good.” Avis glanced at San Francisco. “Take the city, for instance. It does add a magic to the scene. I’m glad it’s there, glad the machines keep it up, glad children get taken on visits as part of their education. But live there?” She grimaced.

  “I liked it,” Bailey said.

  “You didn’t know any better. Did you?”

  “N-n-no.” His memories demanded release. “But I had friends. They died. Everyone I knew. What’s the estimate? The plague killed ninety-five percent? Of the whole world’s population—in months! Even you have to weep for them once in a while.”

  “For their poor, wasted lives,” Avis said. “Not their deaths. Death was a release, I’m sure. And what other way was there out of the trap man had built around himself? Now we have room to breathe, and the wealth and resources and knowledge to do anything we like, and we’re turning our planet into paradise.”

  “Are we?” Bailey wondered. “We know the Bay Area. We make occasional radio contact with a few other fragments, here and there around the world. But otherwise—okay, suppose you tell me what’s happening as close to us as the Russian River.”

  “Probably nothing,” Avis said. “No people. We’ll expand and occupy the empty lands. But not in haste.” Her fist thudded on the soil. “And we’ll never breed, and build, and mine and log and pollute and destroy, in the old obscene fashion. Never! We’ve learned our lesson!”

  Bailey decided the conversation had grown depressing and should be changed. He laid an arm around her waist. “You’re a sweet girl,” he said, as much to calm her as because he meant it. “If jealousy were permitted, I’d be jealous of your other lovers. Think you might like to be a parent with me?”

  She eased her tautness, kissed his cheek and nestled close. “I’m young yet,” she said. “Not ready to assume the ultimate responsibility. But someday…yes, Doug, if you still want, I think I’ll want to. You must have very good chromosomes, and you’d play the father role well—and, aw, I’m fond of you.”

  Their talk wandered off into amiable nonsense until twilight and hunger drove them inside. After dinner, on a synthetic bearskin rug (although bears were coming back, so far the species was protected), before the flames that danced in a genuine stone fireplace, they made love again, to the accompaniment of Ravel’s Bolero played on a rustic stereo hi-fi. That was such fun that they repeated with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and Beethoven’s Ninth, and finally something by Delius. The modern way of life did wonders for that particular capability.

  The next afternoon a dozen of their friends arrived from Fairfax with a carrier load of gear. Toward evening, a contingent from across the bay moored their yawl and hiked uphill. They were made welcome as new acquaintances always were. The total force was greater than needed or expected, because several girls had come along to help cook. But everyone carried food­—venison, wild pork, smoked fish, dried fruit, nuts, raisins, honey, stone-ground bread—which went into the common stock. One man had thoughtfully added a case of Livermore wine. That night saw a great party. No one got drunk—you never got drunk in this culture—but they grew mellow, sang songs, danced, swapped partners, vied in athletic feats, extended invitations to come visit.

  There followed two days of earnest effort. The men ranged widely on foot, checking potential trouble spots, clearing deadwood from firebreaks, eradicating poison oak, medicating for plant diseases, maintaining trails and roads, everything the robot had handled. At night, they were too tired to do more than eat and sleep. But the sense of comradeship and accomplishment was precious.

  Finally the Engineer arrived. The sunpower unit was giving new trouble, so Bailey happened to be at the cabin with the women when the hovertruck descended from heaven. They bowed their heads respectfully as the tall, saffron-robed figure emerged, followed by his bell-ringing acolytes.

  The Engineer lifted his slide rule. “Peace be upon you, my children,” he intoned. “I pray you, lead me to the sufferer.”

  “Will you not take refreshment first, Doctor?” Avis asked.

  The feather bonnet bobbed and swayed with head-shaking. “My daughter is gracious. Later we will avail ourselves of her hospitality in the spirit in which it is proffered. But first we must, if naught else, inspect the robot. To the degree that anything, aye, even a machine, is not in harmony with itself, unto that degree are the world and the starry universe awry. All malfunction is evil, all evil is malfunction.”

  “The Doctor has instructed me, his chela,” Avis said humbly.

  Bailey led the Engineer and the acolytes to the shed where the robot was kept. They took off their robes, broke out their tools, and went quite matter-of-factly to work. Bailey watched. He had no further call on his services. Once the robot was fixed, it would repair everything better and quicker than he could.

  “You must forgive the delay, my son,” the Engineer said while he unscrewed a cover plate. “I have so many calls over so wide an area. Would that more people would enter the Profession.”

  “Well, it’s a hard one,” Bailey said. “I don’t think the younger generation has incentive to undergo years of intensive training.”

  “You’re probably right. Let’s hope we succeed in instilling the true cooperative spirit.”

  “Uh, don’t you think the Profession could be made less difficult? If nothing else, couldn’t the ceremonial duties be omitted? I’ll bet you spent months learning the Mass of Matter, for instance.”

  Again the Engineer shook his grizzled head. “The spirit of the times requires it,” he stated. “I suspect you remember pre-Change conditions quite well. So do I. We can both look at our present environment with some objectivity. Don’t you agree, one of the best features about it is this rite, pageantry, desire to give a religious meaning to every act we perform? I think the spiritual barrenness of the old world was one reason the judgment destroyed it so thoroughly. What did most people have to live for? Lacking the will, they lacked resistance to the plague.” He returned to this job. “Of course,” he said, “that worked out for the best.”

  “What?”

  “Why, sure. Without a really clean sweep, how could we have been free to develop as we have?”

  The trouble with the robot was nothing serious, a burned-out circuit that was soon replaced. The Engineer did not stay longer than necessary for a cup of coffee and the briefest thanksgiving song. He was expected in too many other places.

  When the men came back at dusk, they felt something more was needed. They must celebrate, not only the end of the their work, but the fact that the land had escaped harm. It was decided that next day they’d hike to Muir Woods.

  That was a gorgeous tramp, sometimes along the crumbling road, sometimes straight across the huge, windy, poppy-flaming hills. They sang, talked, jested, laughed, or simply took joy in the sunshine and air that enveloped them. Bailey found himself most of the time walking beside Cynara. She was one of the Eastbay crew, a small, fine-boned, red-haired girl with the most magnificent large eyes he had ever seen. And he liked her conversation, too; she had a puckish humor that Avis lacked. Toward the end, she went hand in hand with him.

  Having started early and being in top condition, the party reached their goal not long after noon. They meant to enter the great redwood grove and commune with its awesomeness. Later they’d have a picnic supper, spend some mirthful hours like their first night together, spread sleeping bags, and rest beneath the stars. In the morning they’d wend their separate homeward ways.

  “But the first order of business is lunch,” Cynara declared. Several others nodded agreement.

  Avis frowned. “I don’t know, my friends,” she said. “We came here for sanctification.”

  “Not on an empty stomach, please,” Cynara answered.

  Avis unbent. “Very well. I suppose holiness is a little difficult under those circumstances.” She genuflected to the trees that rose sheer beyond the Custodian’s house.

  The sun gave benediction. The earth breathed incense. A lark chanted.

  They opened their packs and built sandwiches ad libitum. Bailey and Cynara were thigh by thigh, resting their backs against a solitary oak, when Avis happened past. “Well, well,” she smiled. “A developing relationship, hm?”

  “Do you mind?” Bailey asked.

  She rumpled both their heads. “Of course not, sillies.”

  Having eaten, the group laid prayer cloaks over what clothes they did or did not happen to wear and approached the grove. The Custodian emerged from his house. They knelt, the old man blessed them, they passed in under the silent, sun-flecked shadows.

  Bailey’s eyes kept straying from the cathedral archways that reached before him, to Cynara at his aide. Well, he thought, what’s wrong with that? Even in today’s religion. Especially in today’s religion. What higher purpose does man have than to give and receive happiness, to care for the land and be cared for by it, and know that he is one with the cosmos?

  Oneness, yes, also with our fellow human beings. When I am with this girl, I will also somehow be with Avis; and when I am with Avis or any other I will also somehow be with Cynara, and thus we cannot ever be unkind or unfaithful. A tune lilted through Bailey’s mind, something from old times, or had it been a poem, or both? He couldn’t quite remember.

  But I’m always true to you, Cynara, in my fashion.

  Yes, I’m always true to you, Cynara, in my way—

  A woman shrieked.

  The noise went like a buzz saw in this hush. Bailey leaped backward. Cynara choked on her own scream. Their companions who had preceded them retreated, halted, stared out of eyes in which there was no belief.

  All save one man. He sprawled on the path, face down, in a puddle of blood that was impossibly brilliant scarlet and that spread and spread and spread without end.

  Above him grinned his killer. The creature was huge, burly, dressed in stinking skins. Through a greasy thicket of hair and beard could be seen the smallpox scars. A crude machete dripped in his hand.

  Bailey reacted with an instinct he had not known remained to him. He grabbed Cynara, threw her and himself into the hollow that a fire had made in a vast bole, and stood before her with his hands crooked for battle.

  Others loped into view, as filthy as the first. They howled and yelped in what might once have been English. A couple of Bay Area men bolted. One went down, his skull split by an ax blow. His comrade fell with a spear through him, lay there and ululated in agony. The killer laughed.