“I could tell,” said the bird. It had stopped hopping and was watching him calmly. It was red, but sometimes blue. The colors wouldn’t remain fixed.

  He lowered the gun in defeat. He couldn’t kill a harmless creature just for the sake of killing. It hadn’t been responsible for this.

  “Don’t be so sure, Richel Alsint. Don’t be so sure.” The bird burst into a wild trilling song.

  He glared at it speechlessly. Bird it wasn’t. Either it could read his thoughts or it had been taught a patter that fitted his present situation with remarkable precision.

  “What do you think?” said the bird, cocking its head.

  He forgot about the bird. It was only a momentary diversion. “I’ve been marooned,” he said dully.

  “It’s happened before. It will happen again,” chirruped the bird. “Don’t worry, I’m here.”

  It was, but he wished it would go away.

  “There is a note. Why don’t you read, read, read?” sang the bird.

  He looked, catching a glimpse of sunlight on metal. They had left something. He ran over to it, a few hundred yards away.

  And there was a note. He seized it feverishly.

  I made them leave this. You may not need it, but you deserve to know the answers.

  Don’t you understand? You were infuriating everyone, even me, and I liked you better than anyone on the ship. You were always changing things for the sake of that damn plant! It was too dry, so we had to have more humidity than we liked. Or the pilot had to keep the drive from vibrating. Or this, or that, on and on and on! Who cares, really?

  A good plant mechanic ought to keep the plant alive for five months and then let it die. We can live the last month off the remains. We have to go back every six months for supplies anyway. It’s expensive, I know, but ’ until you can get a plant that reacts as we do, it will just have to die and be replaced.

  I thought of staying with you, but I couldn’t stand all those changes—rain and sun—all the things an uncontrolled planet has. And then there was that story of the bird. That was too much!

  Don’t think too badly of me. At least I kept them from killing you.

  There was no signature, but there was no doubt who had written it.

  “All of them,” he muttered. Not just one man. Everyone, from the captain down. Larienne too. And they were safe. Who would bother to look for him when the captain recorded in the log that Richel Alsint had deserted because his plant was a failure? And, of course, it was going to fail.

  “The crew of the craft was daft, and you were the only one who was sane?” said the bird. “Don’t you believe it. There are people on countless planets just like them.”

  It was true. The crew was part of die civilization. On those planets where it was possible to have parks, no one went to them. They stayed in the cities as the crew stayed in the ship. And on other planets—roofed over against poisonous gases, and inhabitants who never saw the sun—those planets . were not much better than spaceships. He was the one who was different, not they. They had a mechanical culture and they liked it.

  He could see how he had irritated the crew in ways he didn’t suspect. They had wanted to get rid of him and they had.

  He looked down at the machine they had left him, robbed, at Larienne’s insistence, from the major plant. Small, just large enough to supply one man, but containing all the necessary parts. A plant machine in miniature.

  She really hadn’t understood. He could live on the food this provided. But would he, on a world teeming with animals and covered with plants, real plants? He laughed bitterly.

  “Now you know,” said the bird. “In the past there were others marooned. Just like you. I came from them.”

  He looked up wonderingly. “Here? On this planet?” he asked eagerly.

  A brilliant butterfly wandered past. The bird eyed it longingly and shivered into a rainbow of colors and darted away after it.

  “Come back!” Alsint shouted. He couldn’t find them unaided. He had to have directions.

  The bird didn’t return immediately. It played with the butterfly, flashing around it. Presently it tired of the sport and came back to the branch it had perched on. “Pretty bit of fluff,” it said breathlessly.

  “Never mind that,” said Alsint impatiently. “What about those people? Are they on this world?”

  “Oh, not here,” said the bird. “A thousand planets away.” Alsint groaned. The bird had been trained by a madman and was alternately raising his hopes and crushing them.

  “Not so,” said the bird. “Here’s history: a hundred and forty years ago, a couple, plant mechanics, were marooned— for the same reason.” It flew from the perch and alighted on the plant machine, dipping its bill in a collecting tray. “Good stuff,” it said, clattering its beak.

  Alsint said nothing. It would tell him when it got ready, “The plant machine’s fine,” said the bird. “It’s a plant that’s been taken apart. Can you put it back together?”

  “No more than it is,” said Alsint. “No one can.”

  “No one you know,” said the bird. “Here’s more history: A hundred and forty years ago, this couple learned how to put it together—and it grew. A hundred and thirty years ago, they knew how to take an animal apart and keep it alive. A hundred and twenty years ago, they put the animal together and made it work in a new way.”

  The bird sidled along the branch. “What’s the difference between plant and animal?” it asked.

  There were countless differences, on any level Alsint wanted to think about. Cellular, organizational, whatever he named. But the bird had something simple in mind.

  “There are some plants which can move a little,” Alsint said slowly. “And there are some animals that hardly move at all. But the real difference, if there is any, is motion.”

  “Right. You’ll get along fine,” said the bird. “A hundred and twenty years ago, this couple—who by then had several children—put an animal together in a new way and got—pure motion.”

  That was what had been puzzling him, and now he knew. “Teleports,” he said. “They can teleport.”

  “They can’t,” said the bird. “The mind’s best for thinking —they say. And they’ve kept theirs uncluttered.” The bird cocked a glittering eye. “I don’t know about minds. I never had one.”

  If they couldn’t teleport, how had the bird got here?

  Alsint glanced at the bird. It wasn’t perched on the plant machine and the wings were folded. Six feet off the ground it hovered, and not a breath of air stirring.

  “Behind you,” said the bird.

  It didn’t twitch a feather, but it was behind him now and he hadn’t seen it move.

  “Teleports, yes,” said the bird. “But they can’t do it. We do it for them.”

  The bird had been outside the visionport of the spaceship. If it could teleport itself, why not air too?

  That was only part of it. The bird had followed him, but how had it foreseen this end?

  “Did you know this would happen?” he asked.

  “Plant mechanics are always getting marooned,” said the bird. “We’ve gathered up quite a few. They work with the plant and a plant belongs on a planet. The rhythm is different from that of a machine.”

  He knew that. He could feel it, though he had never put it into words. “Go tell them where I am,” he said. “I can live until they send a ship.”

  “A ship?” said the bird. “So slow? They don’t believe in waiting. They’ve got all the beautiful planets that men don’t want—just for the asking, though they don’t have to ask. They need the right kind of people to live on them.”

  They didn’t believe in waiting. A shadow fell across his face. Alsint looked up. Something was dropping down from the sky. Not a ship—not the conventional kind, anyway. It was the kind they would use. On planets on which all the food was grown naturally and no heavy elements were needed, what would be transported? People.

  Not moving a wing, it came down, first fast and then slow. It stood in front of him, towering, a giant abstract figure of a woman with wings. There was frost on it.

  He went to it and it covered him with wings.

  There was no sensation at all except cold, which lasted only a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, the strange, beautiful ship was dropping down on another planet, more pleasant than the last. Men and women were coming out of the houses to meet him. One of them looked something like Larienne.

  CINDERELLA

  STORY

  Alan Kim Lang

  The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of hound’s-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious bank indeed. “I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really swing,” said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. “Your last boss says you come on real cool in the secretary-bit.”

  “He was a very kind employer,” Orison said. She tried to keep from staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji’s costume, a pair of furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.

  Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. “What color bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?” he asked.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “What kinda salary you bucking for?” he translated, bouncing up and down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.

  “I was making one-twenty a week in my last position,” Miss McCall said.

  “You’re worth more’n that, just to jazz up the decor,” Mr. Wanji said. “What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?” He caught Orison’s look of bewilderment. “One each, a Franklin and a Grant,” he explained further. She still looked blank. “Sister, you gonna work in a bank, you gotta know whose picture’s on the paper. That’s a hunnerd-fifty a week, doll.”

  “That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji,” Orison said. It was indeed.

  “Crazy!” Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison’s right hand and shook it with athletic vigor. “You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell you, chick, it’s none too soon we got some decent scenery around this tomb, girlwise.” He took her arm and led her toward the bank of elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal than Mr. Wanji’s, being midnight blue in color. “Lift us to five, Mac,” Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison, “You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor and floor five. Basement and everything higher’n fifth floor is Iron Curtain Country far’s you’re concerned. Dig, baby?”

  “Yes, sir,” Orison said. She was wondering if she’d be issued earmuffs, now that she’d become an employee of this most peculiar bank.

  The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked “In” and “Out” basket. “Here’s where you’ll do your nine-to-five, honey,” Mr. Wanji said.

  “What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?” Orison asked.

  The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the “In” basket. “Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it,” he said. “When you get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to read. Okay?”

  “It seems a rather peculiar job,” Orison said. “After all, I’m a secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me with the Bank’s operation?”

  “Don’t bug me, kid,” Mr. Wanji said. “All you gotta do is read that there paper into this here microphone. Can do?”

  “Yes, sir,” Orison said. “While you’re here, Mr. Wanji, I’d like to ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union, coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take care of these details now? Or would you—”

  “You just take care of that chicken-flickin’ kinda stuff any way seems best to you, kid,” Mr. Wanji said.

  “Yes, sir,” Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft, Bank’s might explain why she’d been selected from the Treasury Department’s secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall, girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the “In” basket, unfolded it to discover the day’s Wall Street Journal, and began at the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk, nodding his head as he listened. “You blowing real good, kid,” he said. “The boss is gonna dig you the most.”

  Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-bye, then took off upstairs in the elevator.

  By lunchtime Orison had finished the Wall Street Journal and had begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a fantastic novel of some sort, named The Hobbit. Reading this peculiar fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her, the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a microphone for an invisible audience.

  Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with brief-cases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny into this curiousest of banks.

  Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude. Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together, eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed, finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book, reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed, silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.

  What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline,

  is a double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association. Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought. She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.

  Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day’s observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs, several didn’t. Item: the Vice-President’s name was Mr. Wanji: Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she thought.

  In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven o’clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results of her first day’s spying.

  No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock was set; the lights were out. Wasn’t Washington going to call her? Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs had her phone tapped.

  “Testing,” a baritone voice muttered.

  Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. “Beg pardon?” she said.

  “Testing,” the male voice repeated. “One, two, three; three, two, one. Do you read me? Over.”

  Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it

  The room was empty.

  “Testing,” the voice repeated.

  “What you’re testing,” Orison said in a firm voice, “is my patience. Who are you?”

  “Department of Treasury Monitor J-12,” the male voice said. “Do you have anything to report, Miss McCall?”

  “Where are you, Monitor?” she demanded.

  “That’s classified information,” the voice said. “Please speak directly to your pillow, Miss McCall.”

  Orison lay down cautiously. “All right,” she whispered to her pillow.

  “Over here,” the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow beside her.

  Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. “A radio?” she asked.

  “Of a sort,” Monitor J-12 agreed. “We have to maintain communications security. Have you got anything to report?”

  “I got the job,” Orison said. “Are you … in that pillow … all the time?”

  “No, Miss McCall,” the voice said. “Only at report times. Shall we establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time, every day?”

  “You make it sound so improper,” Orison said.

  “I’m far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall,” the monitor said. “Now, tell me what happened at the bank today.”

  Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. “That’s about it, so far,” she said.