kindergartners never make it through their first year. A real live ZAPT is so much fun when you first get it.' 'You mean everyone you know is as bloodthirsty as you are? That you kill because someone's in front of your ZAPT thing? There must be dead people all over the place! Wall-to-wall corpses!' 'If I had an operational `ZAPT thing,'' he burlesqued my phrase savagely, his face harshly distorted, 'you'd be cindered by now for your obscene speech!' He was white with anger and disgust. 'Kill and dead and blood and corpse?' I questioned, laying out before him again the words that had stung him. 'Obscenities? But you apparently kill as casually as you breathe-' 'There are acceptable terms,' he insisted. 'Only the unTech have such limited vocabularies that they have to resort to such language-' I shook my head, wonderingly, and decided to change the subject. 'I want to know,' I started. 'What good would it do?' asked the savage. 'Why bother?' asked the other fellow. 'I want to know,' I insisted, 'how we got here. I was going to town-' 'I was trying to find refuge,' said the other fellow, his face bending again, 'I get so tired of trying to stay alive-' 'I was hunting,' said the savage. 'This water hole-' We all looked at the quiet water in silence, then 'But I still want to know,' I persisted. 'How come we landed here together? We don't belong together. What's happened to us?' The two looked at me warily, and then at each other. 'And I want to know why your gun couldn't singe me.' The other fellow's eyes fell to his battered weapon and he muttered sullenly. 'And why my gun couldn't hurt you.' I nodded at the savage. 'But it blasted his ZAPT.' I waved my chin at the other fellow. 'And why your arrows nearly got both of us.' The savage and I exchanged looks. Before any of us could open his mouth there came the twisting and the dragging again. The three of us were tumbled together and shaken thoroughly together. I grabbed at memory as I hunched myself trying to avoid flying elbows and heels. Mom's voice was calling to me out of the darkness-'If you kids don't stop fussing, I'll put you all in a sack and shake you up and see which one comes out first!' We all three came out together. There I was, face down in the edge of the water hole across the back of the savage's legs, holding him down effectively and murderously, the other fellow lying across the small of my back, holding me down. I humped and sent the other fellow sprawling. I grabbed the savage out of the water. He sputtered and spewed and gasped deeply a couple of times between spouting water as I thumped him on the back. Then he scuttled away warily and paused within hiding distance of a goodsized boulder. Then I saw! There were two more! About my age! They were standing patiently, waiting to be noticed. They looked to me like telephone linemen, or maybe highway surveyors, except that their edges shimmered and crinkled-at least to me. I wondered what they looked like to the savage and the other fellow. 'Okay now?' My ears heard the easy colloquialism, but my eyes saw mouth-movings that didn't equate. We all three nodded. Well! We did share something in common! We could all indicate no! 'Catch you, too?' I half-asked, half-stated. 'Whatever it is' 'No. We came,' said the one whose edges crinkled faintly cerise, 'to uncatch you.' 'What-?' I gulped. I must know these fellows! There was a familiarity I couldn't understand-a sudden awe- full feeling clogged my throat. 'Why-' 'If you'd finish a question,' suggested the Crinkle-green one. 'Who are you?' I asked. Crinkle-green shot a side glance at Crinkle-cerise. 'I knew it'd catch up with me. I never did learn my era- terminology tables very well. Who are we here?' Crinkle-cerise grinned. 'He asked you. It's your answer. Go on, tell the man!' 'Well,' said Crinkle-green. 'I did learn this terminology table once on a bet-the whole thing though, without the eras. So here goes. We're-' And he started doggedly down a list of terms, none of which made any sense to me. But about six terms down, the savage gasped and staggered back against a boulder. He groped under his garment's shoulder fastening and fumbled out a small, knobby package. He clutched it in his shaking hand as he slid down slowly to the foot of the boulder, his eyes so wide they must have ached him. Crinkle-green smiled reassuringly, said, 'Don't be afraid,' and went on with his catalog. Suddenly a hint of familiarity caught me, then another, then'Angels!' I gasped. 'You're angels?' 'Apparently in your era,' said Crinkle-green and went on for several more phrases until the other fellow jerked and let his jaw fall stupidly. 'But you don't exist!' he gulped. 'It's just un-Tech folklore!' 'We're here,' said Crinkle-cerise gravely. The other fellow turned a sickly yellow-white. 'Then it's possible that what the un-Techs say about something existing higher than Tech-that we're responsible to someone-' You could see the nausea sweep over his face and he turned away retching deeply, as though physical vomiting could rid him of an intolerable idea. 'Actual messengers from God?' I gasped, still trying to take in the idea. 'Among other things, messengers,' said Crinkle-green. 'Which brings up the matter in hand. It's your era that's the trouble spot,' he said to me. 'Building traffic exchanges all over the place. Unfortunately, some of the best designs for them are patterns that will penetrate. And when they puncture through, they drag all the other linearities out of line, and we end up with this kind of confrontation. We've come to mend this penetration and to seal it against a repetition. 'First, we have to restore order-' Crinkle-cerise was up in the air, pushing against the nose of the vehicle hanging in the sky. With his feet braced lightly against nothing and the flat of his hand up against the vehicle, he pushed back and back until there was a slow sloooop, and the vehicle was gone. The sky curved scarlessly blue above us. Crinkle-cerise bounced lightly down to the sand by the water hole. 'Where-where-' The other fellow came staggering on rubbery legs toward Crinkle-cerise, the back of his hand trying to erase the awful taste of useless retching from his mouth. Crinkle-cerise held out his cupped hands, brimming with water, to him. 'Don't touch me!' The other fellow edged around him. 'You don't exist! You're nothing but a four-letter obscenity to anyone who's Tech! You can't be true, because then, senior to you there would be-' He bogged down in the enormity of the ideas assailing him. 'Well, you're Tech,' suggested Crinkle-cerise. 'If you see us and know we exist, then we must exist. You could tell the others-' 'Tell the others!' yelped the other fellow. 'I know lapse-fatigue when it hits me! Tell them? And be euthanized?' Crinkle-cerise shook his head with a sigh and picked up the other fellow's damaged weapon. He ran his finger the length of it and held it out, as complete and mutedly bright as it had been before my bullet hit it. The other fellow snatched it in one feverish lunge and backed away, the muzzle of the weapon swinging in a small, deadly arc to cover us all. 'Now!' he gritted, visibly trying to force the nausea back behind his teeth, 'Now!' Echoes, rainbows, lights! Everything was gone except the fireworks that bathed me all over. The two angels were gone-disappeared into a vast silvery reflection that stood squarely up to the sky before it shimmered and slid back down to the quivering glitter of the water hole. The other fellow was sobbing over his clenched hand and his weapon. The savage, backed against his boulder with his arms curved tightly back against it, his head strained back, rolled large white eyes at me. With a deep sense of deprivation, I blinked toward the spot where the angels had stood. There they were! As though they had never moved! Crinkle-cerise flicked his fingers. The other fellow was gone, his departure marked by a slight kishshsh. 'Poor, stormy, aimless era.' Crinkle-green shook his head wonderingly, then looked at Crinkle-cerise. 'Say, no one told us this was a changing point! I suppose this is where the awakening started, because he will tell, you know, and try to teach. And they will euthanize-' He squatted down on the sand and ran his fingers over the area, somehow covering the whole place without moving from his position. Then he was inspecting the cupped palm of his hand. 'Four hairs, one fingernail and two drops of blood from the scratched cheek. He never did quite manage to up-chuck his revulsion. That's the lot.' He stirred his other forefinger around his palm and there was a sudden intensified green crinkle. After it flicked out, he dusted his palms together briskly.
