Moonrise

'She's everything they wish were not…' Baj took care to look away, across the grass square, where the row of small wooden buildings stood. Intended, certainly, as Warm-time's store-department, a money bank, and littler shops and offices. Several were painted in tiny rectangles, as if made of baked red brick… The town's physician (scientific as possible) would have his place in that row of buildings. And the marshal-policeman also an office, with a prison cell at the back – and perhaps a false chair-electrical, with a poisoned needle in its frame to cause the correct shaking dying.

There was a small pole, striped red-and-white, set outside the fourth small building along the row. Baj saw one of the serfs, blind, naked but for boots, standing sexless and silent beside it, turning the pole with his hand so it slowly spun, the red-and-white stripes spiraling endlessly up.

Nancy sheathed her knife; her hand was trembling. 'Patience is what they wish were not?' Hot yellow eyes. 'Aren't we three also wished… not?'

'We four,' Baj said. 'And if they hadn't just burned the Robins defending this dreaming, then they might be burning us.'

'Oh, no. Burning us, Baj. But not you, who are as they are – a Sunrise-human and in love with wonderful Warm-times, when there were no Persons.' She looked around her. 'This, I think, is your dream as much as theirs.'

'Perhaps. But I wouldn't burn people for it.' Baj had spoken too loudly. A woman at a table nearby raised her head, startled, as if at a sound mysterious.

'Keep your voices down.' Richard looked at a last piece of mutton on his platter, but appetite gone, didn't eat it.

'No, Baj,' Nancy said, 'you wouldn't burn the tribesmen, or cut the sweat-slaves and take their eyes. But still you wish there was no cold, no Ice-wall… wish there were no Persons made with little bits of this animal or that added in them. Wish there was nothing new since everyone (so very long ago) smelled like owls, had ugly hot little houses and women who showed everything, and mechanical wars and were assholes!'

'Talking too loud,' Richard said.

'Nancy… I only understand them.'

'It's the same thing!'

'It is not!' And to Errol, who hearing anger, scrambled from under the table. 'Stay and be still!'

'You two are attracting these people's attention,' Richard said, '- which we do not want.'

'- And these Sunrisers, Baj,' Nancy said, 'these Believers and Burners so dear to you, do you think they have guest-honor? That because we 'apparent' ones have been given food, and eaten food, they won't decide to make engines of us?'

'What I think,' Baj said, and gripped Errol's arm to keep him sitting still, '- what I think is that you need to speak more quietly.'

'Ah. A Sunriser commands! The true-human, the Prince has spoken, and we're to wag our tails and obey!'

Several people near them now seemed puzzled by some odd disturbance, and turned to look this way and that.

Nancy drew a breath to say more, might have said more – but Richard, humorous as if it were all in play, reached over, took her by the nape like a kitten, and gripped her into silence before he let her go.

Then he stared at Baj. 'I'm tired of this conversation,' he said, quietly, '- which is dangerous, and not even about what it's about. Do you understand me, Prince?'

Baj said, 'Yes, sir,' since that seemed wise.

There was only the pleasant noise of others, enjoying themselves around them.

Then Nancy said, 'Uh-oh.' The second time she'd said it.

The young man who had welcomed them was walking toward their table, pausing to speak with others on his way… He came to stand by Baj, and looked down, but at none directly. 'Some have heard what might be questions, here,' he said.

'Questions of each other, only,' Baj said, '- not of what is real.'

The young man seemed to consider that. '… Always an interesting experience,' he said, 'if not lingered on, to stand near temporal error. Innocent error, of course, though still not to be allowed for long.' He looked at Baj. 'Did you know – by the way, my name is Louis Cohen – but did you know that all things are made of trembling tinies? Both the real, and the only-seeming? Did you know that?'

Baj cleared his throat. 'I have heard the… idea.'

'Have you?' Louis Cohen nodded. 'Well, it's a correct idea. All things are made of those vibrations, a sort of music our ears are too dull to hear, but which great men sense… and greater men act on.'

Baj smiled agreement, very content to keep his mouth shut.

'I have sharp ears,' Nancy said, and stared at Baj as if she spoke to him. 'Almost all Persons, Moonrisers, hear very well.'

'Yes,' Louis Cohen said, 'and many such Time-lost seem stronger than we, and some'- he smiled just past her – 'appear more beautiful. You… apparent people have a place, in this icy, dissolving world, and we do not grudge it. But Warm-time is still to be retrieved, and can be brought back by no lever or engine- motor, by no fiddling of the Boston Talents – but only by conviction.' He was no longer smiling. 'That alone makes the littlest things spin and tremble and fly the way they must to roll time's carpet up again.' He stood silent, then, and seemed abstracted.

'We must not interfere?' Baj said, then wished he'd said nothing.

Louis Cohen nodded. 'Just so. You've been our transitory guests – barely imagined by the well-taught, though dealt with decently by those wiser, able to see and hear you fairly well… You are, as all creatures out of place in time, interesting in your way.' He shook his head. 'But you will become more and more… weighty as you stay near us, and might tear the fabric that marches to perfection and Warm-times again. We cannot allow it.'

'Then our thanks to you and your father,' Baj said, 'for permitting a visit that has hardly happened. And since any… occurence here would be even more a disturbance, we are gone as if we'd never been…' He stood up from the bench, and bent for his pack, bow, and quiver, praying to every Jesus that Nancy and Richard would do the same. And, as though he'd drawn them with him, they did – even Errol, drowsy with feeding, stood, ready to go.

Baj didn't look at Louis Cohen again, said nothing more to him, but took hold of Errol and walked away through the crowded tables of people eating, families enjoying their sunny day despite the cold breeze blowing… He walked away, making a spirit of himself that did not see and was not seen – hoping that Richard and Nancy were following.

He crossed the grassy square, and kept on past the row of little buildings, copy-treasures he would dearly have loved to stroll through.

… Padding footsteps. Richard came up beside him. 'Middle-Kingdom,' he murmured, 'might have done worse than kept Bajazet-Baj a prince, for swift decision and common sense.'

'Don't run.' Nancy, behind them. 'Don't run…'

The buildings left behind, they passed a street of little houses, grass lawns, and shading trees. The copy driving-cars, so brightly painted, rested silent and forever still on gravel drives… A chill wind was gusting over distant harvested fields, breezing down from blue mountains, the Tuscaroras, that rose rank on rank, the northern gates of Pass I-Seventy.

Behind them, the musical band could be heard playing a cheery melody – from the very oldest copybooks of musical notation. An odd and ancient tune, but one Baj had heard before. '… Good Vibrations.'

* * *

They came over stubbled fields to the northern mountains' foothills in late after-noon, and climbed up into those forested slopes as if into their mothers' laps, for safety… By evening, high in a hemlock clearing, they settled to sleep, curled in cloaks and blankets, to no music but the wind's, sliding though evergreen boughs.

Baj lay awake awhile, saying a good-bye to the Bajazet of only Warm-time weeks ago. That prince uncertain,