Isle Of The Dead   ::   Zelazny Roger

Below me lay the Bay, with its condoms, its driftwood, its ropes of seaweed, empty dories, bottles and scum. I could hear its distant splashing, and it splashed so high that it kept striking my face. There it was, life, slopping, smelling, chilly. I had had a real wild romp through its waters, and now as I looked down upon it I felt myself falling once more, falling back toward its shallows. Maybe I heard bird-cries. I had walked to the Valley and now I was returning. With luck I would evade the icy fingers of the crumbling hand once more. I fell, and the world twisted about me, resolved itself into what it had been when I left it.

The sky was bleak as slate and streaked with soot. It oozed moisture. The rocks dug into my back. Acheron was pocked and wrinkled. There was no warmth in the air.

I sat up, shaking my head to clear it, shivered, regarded the body of the green man that lay beside me. I said the final words, completing the rite, and my voice shook as I said them.

I rolled Green's body into a more comfortable-looking position and covered it with my flimsy. I picked up the tapes and their bio-cylinders which he had been concealing beneath him. He had been right. They were ruined. I placed them in my knapsack. At least Earth Intelligence would be happy with this state of affairs. Then I crawled on to the power-pull and waited there, raising a screen of forces to attract the T, and watching the sky.

I saw her walking, walking away, her neat hips sheathed in white and swaying slightly, her sandals slapping the patio. I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility? There had been giants and dwarves, toads and mushrooms, caves full of jewels and not one, but ten wizards...

I felt the _Model T_ before I saw it, when it locked with the power-pull.

Ten wizards, financial ones, the merchant barons of Algol ...

All of them her uncles.

I had thought that the alliance would hold, sealed as it was with a kiss. I had not been planning a doublecross, but when it came from the other side something had to be done. It was not all my doing either. There was a whole combine involved. I could not have stopped them if I had wanted to.

I could feel the _T_ homing in now. I rubbed my leg above the break, hurt it, and stopped.

Business arrangement to fairy tale to vendetta... .