Now, for the first time in his life, he knew what passion could lead through, what it led to inexorably. And he knew he could never go back. He would stay here, in this terrible place, with these others who shared his lover, and this was all he wanted.

He fell away from the machine and lay on the rock Boor of the cavern. His breath had to be drawn in stages. His head reeled. His hand lay on his metal chest.

He wanted to sleep, but the sounds of conflict were louder now, insistent, crowding through the pain and satiation his body felt at one and the same time. He rolled over on his stomach, his chest clanking against the rock Boor. It was the best for you, too, he thought. The best you ever had, love-partner. You will never forget me. If I die today, you'll remember always, in every last memory cell.

At the base of the nearest ledge, the Catman's cheetahs were struggling with one of the love-partner's people. He was down and they were savaging him, but clearly trying to avoid killing him. The thief had seen the technique before. It was called putting, as in stay put. The rest of the colony had no part in the melee, and were, in fact, watching with some pleasure-if pleasure could be discerned on faces that were partially metal masks.

A tall, limping, old woman with copper legs came across from the crowd. She hobbled to Neil as the Catman commanded, “Heel!” and the cheetahs left their chewed and semi-conscious prey. The Catman joined the copper-legged old woman.

The falcon looked sleepy. It was an illusion.

“Will you can stay be here with love-partner?” the old woman said. There was a tone of pleading in her voice. “Tewsday,” she said, indicating the pile of worked-over flesh and metal the cheetahs had put, “he was for crazy of you with the love-partner. But I'm the saying one for your give machine love never before that fire hot. If you'll be stay this place us can make you what my is being, first lover.”

The Catman moved a step closer. “Neil!”

There was raw horror on his face. He had seen his son's body vanish into the machine, had seen the machine turn soft and swallow the thief, had seen the machine sweat and go mad with lust, had seen his son emerge with his parts altered. Neil Leipzig looked at his father, and at the old woman. “I'll stay. Now go and take Tewsday for repair.”

The old woman hobbled away, and the crowd went back into their rock-wall dwellings. Neil Leipzig stood facing the Catman.

“You can't. My God, Neil, look at you, and this is only the first time. That thing eats what it loves. Do you want to end up like”

He waved a hand at the retreating mob of half-humans.

“This is where I belong. I haven't belonged up there for a long time.”

“Neil, please, I'll do anything you want; resign my commission, we can go away to another city…”

“Dad,” he said, “I have always loved you. More than I've ever been able to tell you. I always wanted you to fight back. That's all I ever wanted.”

“You don't understand your mother. She's had bad times, too.”

“It's all in aid of nothing. Look at you. You haven't got a dream left in the world. We're killing you a little at a time. It's time I stopped contributing to it and did something final.”

“But not this, not down here, son…”

But the thief was gone. The air twittered with bright scintillas of fading light.

The first jump brought him back to the world imbedded in the earth a quarter of a mile beneath the arroyo. Had he made such a teleportational error earlier, he would have died. But mating with the machine had altered him. The love-partner had never known a teleport, and in the exchange of modes he had been made less than machine but more than mortal. He expanded his personal space and vanished again. The second jump took him to the surface, and he winked in, out in an instant-seen by no living thing, for even the guards were dead, having been pounded by Mr. Robert Mossman.

The night welcomed him, accepted his mote-outlined shadow, and took no further notice as he vanished again, reappeared, vanished, and in seconds materialized in his mother's bedroom high in London.

He leaned over and grasped her by the wrist, and wrenched her from the doze cocoon where she lay, supple and naked, the powder-white marks of the plasticwork making longitudinal lines on her breasts that glowed faintly in the night light. Her eyes snapped open as he dragged her free.

“Come along, Mom. We have to go now.”

Then, clutching her naked body to his naked body, he vanished.

Before merging with the machine, he could not have carried someone with him. But everything was changed now. Vastly changed.

The Catman was high on the ledge leading to the elevator when the thief reappeared with his mother. The cheetahs padded alongside and the falcon was on the wing. The climb was a difficult one for a man that age, even with unnumbered rejuvenations. The Catman was too far away to do anything to stop him.

“Neil!”

“You're free, Dad. You're free now. Don't waste it!”

The Catman was frozen for only a moment. And in that moment Neil Leipzig carried the semi-conscious body of his mother to the love-partner. The Catman screamed, a high and desolate scream because he knew what was happening. He began running down the ledge, screaming to his falcon to intercept, screaming to his cheetahs to get there before him, screaming because he could never make it in time.

The thief plugged himself in, his mother pressed flat between his naked metalflesh body and the fleshmetal north flank of his love-partner.

He flexed his thigh muscles, closed the contacts,..

…and offered himself and the suddenly howling woman as the ultimate troilism.

The machine flowed, the oscilloscope formed a design no living creature had ever seen in more than three dimensions, and then, in an instant, it was over. The machine absorbed what it could not refuse, and there was only the single point of green light on the screen, and endless silence once more beneath the earth.

The Catman reached the machine, saw the beads of sweat mixed with blood that dotted the north flank, and heard fading moans of brutality that repeated soundlessly.

The Catman sits alone in a room, remembering.

The child never knew. It was not the mother. The mother always loved, but had no way of showing it. The father had never loved, and had every way of reinforcing it, day after day.

The Catman sits and mourns. Not for the child, gone and without sorrow, For the woman.

For the bond of circumstances that held them together through days and nights of a special kind of love forged in a cauldron of hate.

He will never forgive the child for having destroyed that love out of hate.

He will sit alone now. He has nothing left to live for. He hopes the child burns in a terrible Hell, even as he burns in his own. And after a while, there is always the conversing waterfall.

Los Angeles, California;

Hanover, New Hampshire;

New York City;

Gull Lake, Hickory Corners, Michigan/1972