47

I reached the flat rock at just about sunset.

I was sad about the death of John and Mud Albert, about the slaves running in the wilderness and being hunted down by dogs. I even felt sorry for poor Eloise and the death of her father, my one-time master. But the hardest thing would be to tell Eighty-four, Tweenie, that the man she loved was dead.

She cried and caterwauled like a deep forest creature, and her grief called mine forward and I fell to the ground and wept bitterly with her. My friend was dead. He died, I knew, saving all the peoples of Earth.

When night came we moved north into a wood that I knew was uninhabited.

I could tell that the wood was safe because when I gazed hard at the valley of pines a soft gray light washed the images in my mind. I knew somehow that the gift of light that John had given me was telling me that no one would molest us in that pleasant vale.

There we found a cave that we used as a shelter. We stayed for a fortnight, until we were all healed and rested.

There was a rill not far from the mouth of our shelter. In the early morning and late at night Champ and I would steal down there and catch fish with a net I found in John's yellow bag. We had to eat the fish raw because none of us knew if John's little disk machine would keep the slave hunters from smelling smoke.

One afternoon I stole away from the cave and climbed way up into a willow tree. There I sat and thought about my friend.

"Hello, boy," a small, squeaky voice called.

Hearing those words I was so startled that I almost lost my balance and fell from the branch where I was sitting.

"Who?" I said, looking all around.

"Up here," the little voice said.

I looked up and there, standing on nothing but air, was a tiny little person who had orange and purple skin and a fire, like a candle's flame, hovering above his head.

"John!" I cried. "It's you!"

"I'm sorry," the true form of my friend said, "but you are mistaking me for someone else. My name is N'clect. Have you met someone else of my race?"

"No," I said. "You are looking into the future through Queziastril. You sail across the universe using suns as your propellers to come and find me."

"How do you know about Queziastril?" Little John asked. "It is the most closely guarded secret of my people."

"I know you think so," I said. "But someday soon the Calash are going to break into your hive an' break that crystal ball to pieces."

"You know about the Calash and the Talam?" Little John was amazed.

I was surprising him as much as he did me when we first met (was that only a week before?) on the path between the slave graveyard and the slaves' quarters.

"I know a lot about you, Neglect," I said, mispronouncing his Talamish name. "You are my best friend and my brother. You came to Earth to find me and to tell me that I, Forty-seven, will fight a war against a creature of the Calash called Wall."

"Wall is their greatest warrior," John said. "Surely you must be what you say. Tell me more of the future, my friend."

And so I began the long story of the past week or so that I had shared with the little being who didn't remember any of it because for him none of it had happened yet. It started much as this book did. I had to explain the concept of slavery very carefully because he had never heard of such a thing. When I told him that white people owned everything, even the ground and the trees, and saw all other colors of people as inferior, he was doubly amazed.

"But that seems so silly," N'clect, who was destined to become Tall John, said.

We talked for hours. Sometimes I would say things that he didn't seem to hear. For instance, when I tried to explain why we were thrown into the Tomb the words came out all garbled so neither one of us understood. After I tried to explain two or three times John seemed to think that he knew why the words got confused.

"Queziastril must be interfering with the transmission," he said. "Tell me something else."

He became very somber when I told him about his death. I was about to explain the particulars on how he died when he interrupted me.

"I don't think I want to know how I die," he said. "It might sadden me too much."

I understood how he felt and resolved never again to tell the story of Tall John's death. I have been true to that resolution until writing this story.

"You must never tell anyone on your planet about these amazing experiences or about your mission," John said to me at one point in our talk.

"Why?" I asked. "Maybe somebody like Champ could help me."

"If people were to learn about your powers before they're ready, they might hurt themselves or you in the attempt to steal them."

I promised that I wouldn't tell, but that reminded me of something else.

"There's a lot I don't understand myself," I said to the floating elf.

"What?"

"I have this yellah bag," I said, holding up John's treasure.