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vileness he averred were necessary for truth and brightness in the visions. A bit of wild dog hair. A
strip of flesh from the instep of a drowned child. Three drops of menstrual blood from a whore. The
circular sucker from the underside of a polyp’s tentacle. Other things. Unspeakable, nameless, foul-
smelling, terrible.
And then, strangely, he had said he would not tell the future of Berta...but of Niven.
There in the fetid closeness of a shop whose dimensions were lost in dusk, the old Mexican
said Niven was a man without belief, without faith, without trust, and so was damned; a man
doomed and forsaken. He said all the dark and tongueless things Niven had never been able to say of
himself. And Niven, in fury, in frenzy brought on by a hurricane of truth, smashed the old man,
swung across the little round table with all the strength in his big body, clubbed the old man, and in
the same movement swept the strange mixed ingredients from the filthy table, as Berta: screamed--
from somewhere far away.
And in that instant, a silent explosion. A force and impact that had hurled him out of himself.
In that timeless, breathless instant Niven had been there/not-there. He had somehow inexplicably
been moved elsewhere. In a bowl, in a valley, in a land, in a time or place or somewhere facing a
minotaur. A creature of mythology, a creature from the past of man’s fables.
Huaraches, the sign had said, and Serapes.
Facing a live minotaur just a moment ago. Facing the creature that had left the world before
there had been a name to fit the men that Niven had become. A god without worshippers, this
minotaur. In a world that did not believe, facing a man who did not believe.
And in that instant--like the previous instant of truth--Niven was all the men who had
forsaken their gods. Who had allowed the world to tell them they were alone; and believed it. Now
he had to face one of the lost gods. A god who now sought revenge on the race of Men who had
devised machines that would banish them from the real world.
Down and down and down into the waters of nowhere Niven plunged, all thoughts simply
one thought, all memories crashing and jarring, all merged and melded and impinging upon a dense
tapestry of seaweed images.
His breath seemed to clog in his throat. His stomach bulged with the amount of water he had
swallowed, with the pressure on his temples, with the blackness that deluged him behind his eyes.
Niven felt memory depart and consciousness at once returning--and leaving. He was coming back
from the past to awareness, only to let it slip away finally as he drowned.
He made feeble swimming motions, overhand movements of arms that had sensation only by
recall, not by his own volition. He moved erratically in the water, as thick as gelatin, and his
movement toward the bottomless bottom was arrested. He moved upward through the water now,
and saw a dim light, far ahead and above him.
An eternity. There. Toward it he struggled, and when he thought it was ended, he reached a
ledge. He pulled himself toward it, and the dark water seeped through him till he was limp and
dying. Then his head broke water. He was in an underground cavern. He spewed out mouthfuls of
warm, evil-tasting water.
For a very long time he lay half on the ledge, half in the water, till someone came and pulled
him up. Niven lay there on his stomach, learning to live again, while the one who had saved him
stood silently waiting. Niven tried to get to his feet, and he was helped. He could not see who the
man was, though he could feel a long robe in the dimness, and there was a light, a sort of corona that
seemed to come dimly from the man. Then together, with the man supporting him, Niven went away
from there, and they climbed for a long while between walls of stone, to the world that was outside.
He stood in the light, and was tired and sad and blinded by things he did not believe. Then
the man left him, and as he walked slowly away. Niven recognized the beard and the infinitely sad
eyes and the way he was dressed, and even the light.
