Now Kurtz spoke only in English. As before he seemed to be in desperate anguish, forcing the words out of some nightmare recess, with no perceptible accenting or punctuation: “Water sleep death save sleep sleep fire love water dream cold sleep plan rise fall rise fall rise rise rise.” After a moment he added, “Fall.” Then the flow of nonsense syllables returned and the fingers relinquished their fierce grip on Gundersen’s wrist.

Seena said, “He seemed to be telling us something. I never heard him speak so many consecutive intelligible words.”

“But what was he saying?”

“I can’t tell you that. But a meaning was there.”

Gundersen nodded. The tormented Kurtz had delivered his testament, his blessing: Sleep plan rise fall rise fall rise rise rise. Fall. Perhaps it even made sense.

“And he reacted to your presence,” Seena went on. “He saw you, he took your arm! Say something to him. See if you can get his attention again.”

“Jeff?” Gundersen whispered, kneeling. “Jeff, do you remember me? Edmund Gundersen. I’ve come back, Jeff. Can you hear anything I’m saying? If you understand me, Jeff, raise your right hand again.”

Kurtz did not raise his hand. He uttered a strangled moan, low and appalling; then his eyes slowly closed and he lapsed into a rigid silence. Muscles rippled beneath his altered skin. Beads of acrid sweat broke from his pores. Gundersen got to his feet shortly and walked away.

“How long was he up there?” he asked.

“Close to half a year. I thought he was dead. Then two sulidoror brought him back, on a kind of stretcher.”

“Changed like this?”

“Changed. And here he lies. He’s changed much more than you imagine,” Seena said. “Inside, everything’s new and different. He’s got almost no digestive tract at all. Solid food is impossible for him; I give him fruit juices. His heart has extra chambers. His lungs are twice as big as they should be. The diagnostat couldn’t tell me a thing, because he didn’t correspond to any of the parameters for a human body.”

“And this happened to him in rebirth?”

“In rebirth, yes. They take a drug, and it changes them. And it works on humans too. It’s the same drug they use on Earth for organ regeneration, the venom, but here they use a stronger dose and the body runs wild. If you go up there, Edmund, this is what’ll happen to you.”

“How do you know it was rebirth that did this to him?”

“I know.”

“How?”

“That’s what he said he was going up there for. And the sulidoror who brought him back said he had undergone rebirth.”

“Maybe they were lying. Maybe rebirth is one thing, a beneficial thing, and there’s another thing, a harmful thing, which they gave to Kurtz because he had been so evil.”

“You’re deceiving yourself,” Seena said. “There’s only one process, and this is its result.”

“Possibly different people respond differently to the process, then. If there is only one process. But I still say you can’t be sure that it was rebirth that actually did this to him.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

“I mean it. Maybe something within Kurtz made him turn out like this, and I’d turn out another way. A better way.”

“Do you want to be changed, Edmund?”

“I’d risk it.”

“You’d cease to be human!”

“I’ve tried being human for quite a while. Maybe it’s time to try something else.”

“I won’t let you go,” Seena said.

“You won’t? What claim do you have on me?”

“I’ve already lost Jeff to them. If you go up there too—”

“Yes?”

She faltered. “All right. I’ve got no way to threaten you. But don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“You’re just like him! Puffed up with the importance of your own supposed sins. Imagining the need for some kind of ghastly redemption. It’s sick, don’t you see? You just want to hurt yourself, in the worst possible way.” Her eyes glittered even more brightly. “Listen to me. If you need to suffer, I’ll help you. You want me to whip you? Stamp on you? If you’ve got to play masochist, I’ll play sadist for you. I’ll give you all the torment you want. You can wallow in it. But don’t go up mist country. That’s carrying a game too far, Edmund.”

“You don’t understand, Seena.”

“Do you?”

“Perhaps I will, when I come back from there.”

“You’ll come back like him!” she screamed. She rushed toward Kurtz’s bed. “Look at him! Look at those feet! Look at his eyes! His mouth, his nose, his fingers, his everything! He isn’t human any more. Do you want to lie there like him — muttering nonsense, living in some weird dream all day and all night?”

Gundersen wavered. Kurtz was appalling; was the obsession so strong in him that he wanted to undergo the same transformation?

“I have to go,” he said, less firmly than before.

“He’s living in hell,” Seena said. “You’ll be there too.”

She came to Gundersen and pressed herself against him. He felt the hot tips of her breasts grazing his skin; her hands clawed his back desperately; her thighs touched his. A great sadness came over him, for all that Seena once had meant to him, for all that she had been, for what she had become, for what her life must be like with this monster to care for. He was shaken by a vision of the lost and irrecoverable past, of the dark and uncertain present, of the bleak, frightening future. Again he wavered. Then he gently pushed her away from him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going.”

“Why? Why? What a waste!” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “If you need a religion,” she said, “pick an Earth religion. There’s no reason why you have to—”

“There is a reason,” Gundersen said. He drew her close to him again and very lightly kissed her eyelids, and then her lips. Then he kissed her between the breasts and released her. He walked over to Kurtz and stood for a moment looking down, trying to come to terms with the man’s bizarre metamorphosis. Now he noticed something he had not observed earlier: the thickened texture of the skin of Kurtz’s back, as if dark little plaques were sprouting on both sides of his spine. No doubt there were many other changes as well, apparent only on a close inspection. Kurtz’s eyes opened once again, and the black glossy orbs moved, as if seeking to meet Gundersen’s eyes. He stared down at them, at the pattern of blue speckles against the shining solid background. Kurtz said, amidst many sounds Gundersen could not comprehend, “Dance … live … seek … die … die.”

It was time to leave.

Walking past the motionless, rigid Seena, Gundersen went out of the room. He stepped onto the veranda and saw that his five nildoror were gathered outside the station, in the garden, with a robot uneasily watching lest they begin ripping up the rarities for fodder. Gundersen called out, and Srin’gahar looked up.

“I’m ready,” Gundersen said. “We can leave as soon as I have my things.”

He found his clothes and prepared to depart. Seena came to him again: she was dressed in a clinging black robe, and her slider was wound around her left arm. Her face was bleak. He said, “Do you have any messages for Ced Cullen, if I find him?”

“I have no messages for anyone.”

“All right. Thanks for the hospitality, Seena. It was good to see you again.”

“The next time I see you,” she said, “you won’t know who I am. Or who you are.”

“Perhaps.”

He left her and went to the nildoror. Srin’gahar silently accepted the burden of him. Seena stood on the veranda of the station, watching them move away. She did not wave, nor did he. In a little while he could no longer see her. The procession moved out along the bank of the river, past the place where Kurtz had danced all night with the nildoror so many years ago.

Kurtz. Closing his eyes, Gundersen saw the glassy blind stare, the lofty forehead, the flattened face, the wasted flesh, the twisted legs, the deformed feet. Against that he placed his memories of the old Kurtz, that graceful and extraordinary-looking man, so tall and slender, so self-contained. What demons had driven Kurtz, in the end, to surrender his body and his soul to the priests of rebirth? How long had the reshaping of Kurtz taken, and had he felt any pain during the process, and how much awareness did he now have of his own condition? What had Kurtz said? I am Kurtz who toyed with your souls, and now I offer you my own? Gundersen had never heard Kurtz speak in any tone but that of sardonic detachment; how could Kurtz have displayed real emotion, fear, remorse, guilt? I am Kurtz the sinner, take me and deal with me as you wish. I am Kurtz the fallen. I am Kurtz the damned. I am Kurtz, and I am yours. Gundersen imagined Kurtz lying in some misty northern valley, his bones softened by the elixirs of the sulidoror, his body dissolving, becoming a pink jellied lump which now was free to seek a new form, to strive toward an altered kurtzness that would be cleansed of its old satanic impurities. Was it presumptuous to place himself in the same class as Kurtz, to claim the same spiritual shortcomings, to go forward to meet that same terrible destiny? Was Seena not right, that this was a game, that he was merely playing at masochistic self-dramatization, electing himself the hero of a tragic myth, burdened by the obsession to undertake an alien pilgrimage? But the compulsion seemed real enough to him, and not at all a pretense. I will go, Gundersen told himself. I am not Kurtz, but I will go, because I must go. In the distance, receding but yet powerful, the roar and throb of the waterfall still sounded, and as the rushing water hurtled down the face of the cliff it seemed to drum forth the words of Kurtz, the warning, the blessing, the threat, the prophecy, the curse: water sleep death save sleep sleep fire love water dream cold sleep plan rise fall rise fall rise rise rise.