During the previous month they had scouted the grove several times, enough to know it well. Celery had been able to identify the exact place for them, within a few feet. Between the eleventh and twelfth rows of trees from a certain fence, between the fifteenth and eighteenth trees in the row. When the thing showed up, they were to place the device at the edge of it, at the bottom, fitting its concave sides between two protrusions.
By a quarter to eleven, they were in place. They had brought a couple of folding stools to sit on, and Bertran had the device in his shirt pocket. They wore their favorite leisure clothing: sneakers—Bertran’s made especially for him, with lifts, to raise his shoulder over Nela’s—and dark-colored sweat suits, the ample material Velcroed together to hide their mutual flesh.
At precisely eleven o’clock the fragrant air among the trees wavered with a coruscating oval. Irresolute, it glimmered for some time before solidifying into a lopsided plane of fire, a slightly warped screen of light. The twins got up from their stools and walked around the thing. It was the same on both sides. Close up, they could see the twisted loop of dark metal that framed the fire, the whole upon a solid base of the same material. The protrusions they had been told to look for were duplicated on both sides. Simultaneously, they shrugged. Presumably, either side would do. They knelt at the base. Bertran handed Nela the device, Nela leaned forward and positioned it as they had been directed to do, hearing it click into place. She shut her eyes, murmured a few words of prayer remembered from childhood. If this was the reason for their existence, she wanted to accomplish it with some sense of divine purpose.
Bertran, however, was struggling to his feet, and she, perforce, came up with him, still leaning slightly forward. Nela put one foot out, off balance….
She felt something move under her foot and looked down to catch a glimpse of a dark ovoid. Bertran, also looking down, saw the same shape. It might have been Bertran’s arm that pushed Nela, for he had put out his right hand to catch himself and it had gone through the plane of fire into nothing. He fell forward with Nela inevitably beside him. They went on falling. A moment later the screen of fire disappeared, together with its frame and base, just as the Celerian had said it would. The Celerian had not said, of course, that the Zy-Czorsky twins would disappear with it, though the strong probability of that event had been foreseen.
Their car was found at the edge of the grove. Two parallel sets of footprints led partway into the grove and then vanished. Two canvas stools sat side by side. The only living animal creature found in the grove was a small tortoise, staggering laboriously along beneath the trees. The disappearance became, like the twins themselves, a purely temporary wonder.
The world had, in fact, been saved, though no Earthian knew it at the time. Afar, in other places, the Celerians conducted a chaste and tasteful celebration. The likelihood that the twins would fall through the gate had been accepted as an appropriate risk: the twins had, after all, been honored in the saving of their world. A shortened time upon that world was a small price to pay for such honor. In terms of total life loss, the Earthian Boon was at the extreme low end on the scale of Celerian Boons. Other Boons had resulted in enormous, though always justifiable, death tolls.
Celery and his age and aggregation mates were proud of their prognostication. Even they admitted, however, that foretelling had its uncertainties. This seldom kept them from changing the immediate future, even though the Great Aggregations among them, who reviewed those changes, were occasionally moved to comment on what had been done.
So, following the departure of the twins, a Great Aggregation came before the assembled crew of the ship(?) and announced with comfortable asperity that the Earth Boon had shaken the very fabric of time! “Look here,” it/they said to the younger, smaller, and more facile aggregations, “look here! If the Boon had been provided in a different manner, none of this would have happened. Look here at the place called Grass. Look at this place called Hobbs Land. Look at this place called Elsewhere. Look at these humans, Danivon Luze and Zasper Ertigon. Look at this human girl called Fringe. Look at this old, old woman who calls herself Jory now, and this old, old man who calls himself Asner! See what they portend! See here, how our journey will be altered, our future interrupted as we are called away from our proper pursuits, all for naught? All to no point, for we will be able to do nothing!
“See how the great concession we have so lately earned, with what enormous effort, is threatened by the way in which you have granted this Boon!”
TWO
4
Tolerance on Elsewhere: the Great Rotunda, where, on the upper balcony, Boarmus the Provost sits thoughtful. His companion, Syrilla, is unaware of his thoughts. In Boarmus’s opinion, Syrilla may be unaware of any thoughts at all. Though a longtime member of the Inner Circle, she seems incapable of connecting cause and effect. Her forte is hysteria; her singularity to freight even the most irrelevant remarks with enormous import.
As now, when she dilates beaky nostrils and cries dramatically, “I cannot understand why Danivon Luze would have done such a thing.”
“You know why,” Boarmus says lazily, without stirring. His
