"Not for me," Stipock said.

"When I sleep," Jazz said, "you sleep."

And Jazz had a needle in his hand. Stipock leaped to his feet, bounded away to comparative safety by the door to the storage room. "Don't come near me with that."

"You're afraid," Jazz said, "that once I have you asleep normally, I'll put you under somec. Well, I won't. When I put you under somec, you'll know it."

"I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Got any choice?"

There was a struggle anyway, a brief scuffle that Jazz won handily, and Stipock soon slept.

Lights up. Stipock opened his eyes. Jazz Worthing was leaning over the bed, and Stipock sighed in relief. Awake another day, with memory intact.

Breakfast out of the ship's paste. Taste foul. "Well, the ship has been out for over a thousand years," Jazz said, smiling pleasantly as Stipock grimaced and forced it down. "Usually they're refitted within a century. Time does things to flavor."

After breakfast, more reports, and Stipock began to get a feel for the community outside the starship. By lunchtime he had even conceded to himself that Jason had really done remarkably well, turning mindless infants into a functional, working society in only five decades — and without being there much of the time.

"I can see," he finally said, "that their worship of you served a real purpose for a time. Continuity. Their awe of you lent authority to the Warden, kept them together."

Jazz turned around in amazement. "Do I hear you, Garol Stipock, the perfect judge of right and wrong, actually commending me, the man who plays God, of doing something right?"

Stipock turned red and Jazz laughed. "I told you that before. But you wouldn't believe me. Just like a scientist. Perfectly willing to decide what's right and wrong without recourse to the evidence."

"When I saw the evidence," Stipock said grimly, "I changed my mind."

Suddenly more mild, Jazz said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to mock. And I'm glad you saw my point."

"Then I hope you'll see mine," Stipock said. "This God thing can't be forever. Let's make a bargain. Let me go out there, let me live there for at least a year. I'll be ‘inventive' or whatever you expect of me — I'll try to find ways to improve their lives with the limited resources. I'll help build up your colony. I'll obey all the laws."

"Bargain?" Jason asked. "And what will I do for you in this bargain?"

"You'll simply let me teach. I won't undermine the Warden's authority. I'll just try to wean them away from their belief in this God you've become to them."

"By teaching?"

"Persuading."

"You realize that if you try to teach them that I was a traitor to the Empire, which your little conspiracy believed, they'll either not understand, or they'll get very upset at you."

"I'm not a fool," Stipock said, "at least not usually. I know enough to avoid getting people angry. Peaceful means. Let me try to change their minds. Or do you like being God so much you won't even take a chance?"

Jazz cocked his head and looked intently at Stipock's eyes. "You mean you'd promise to obey all the laws, to build up the community in every possibly way, in exchange for my allowing you to teach people that I'm not God?"

"I promise it now."

"It must be worth a lot to you to unthrone God," Jazz said.

"If there were a God," Stipock said, "I wouldn't fight it. But when a normal man acts the role, then I'll unmake him the best I can."

"Well, then," Jazz said, "I think that's a fair enough bargain. If you can persuade them, then fine. But I warn you — I'll give the Warden power to imprison you if you incite or perform one act of violence. Even one. Agreed?"

Stipock hesitated, then nodded." But I won't be responsible if some crazy person takes an idea into his own head —"

Jazz laughed. "This isn't the Empire, Stipock. The Wardens are all just. They try to be fair. And usually succeed."

"Who's the Warden right now?"

"Hop Noyock," Jazz said.

"Your agent?"

"Was. But since I don't have any more income, his ten percent is gone, too."

Jazz held out his hand. Stipock took it, and they struck the bargain. Afterward Stipock laughed. "I can't believe making a bargain without lawyers and contracts."

"This isn't the Empire."

"Why are you trusting me?"

"Because," Jason said, "I have the foolish belief that I can see into people's hearts. I've looked into yours."

"A rather dismal place, wasn't it?" Stipock said, playing along with the joke.

"No more so than normal," Jazz said, smiling. "You still hate me. But I can trust you to keep your part of the bargain.

"And," Jason added, "you can trust me to keep mine."

10

NOYOCK LAID down the pen on the table and rubbed his eyes. He shouldn't have left the writing until the last minute. But the History had to be kept. Not since the first day of the first Warden, Kapock the Eldest, had any Warden failed to keep the History, and Noyock prided himself on being more thorough than any of them.

A rooster crowed, and then another, as if in answer. Noyock reached over and opened the shutter slightly. Still dark — someone must be walking the chickenyards, then. But perhaps it was nearly morning. Was the sky a little lighter? Had to sleep. Jason coming today, he muttered to himself. Yawned again. Jason today, and the History is ready.

Noyock stretched, and left the room he had set aside for his duties as Warden — his planning, the History, meetings with individuals and couples, when the problems or questions weren't appropriate for open discussion. This, too, was new, since Jason had left. He will be pleased, Noyock told himself. I hope he's pleased.

Below him, he could hear the clank of tin pans, the dull sound of a wooden spoon stirring rapidly in a clay pot. Who this morning? Riavain, Noyock's own wife? Or his daughter–in–law, Esten, Wien's eldest daughter, who had married Aven in a joyful ceremony — how many year ago? Thirty. Noyock chuckled. Poor Aven, he thought. My poor son, now more than fifty years old, while I look scarcely older than I did the day Jason brought me down from the Star Tower , they all tell me.

And Noyock paused to think about Jason for a moment, to think of the miracle of dwelling in the Star Tower , because no one who dwelt there with Jason ever aged. They could go in, as Noyock had done, leaving their children in their twenties, and come out to find that their children seemed to be older than they. Poor Aven. But no, aging was a part of life, the natural pattern of things. Like the cows and horses that grew old and died. It was not poor Aven. It was blessed, lucky, favored Noyock and Riavain and all the others who had been taken into the Star Tower; and thinking of Jason's goodness to everyone in Heaven City , Noyock's eyes filled with tears, and he wondered if he wasn't getting old after all, and just as he thought that, he heard a roar from downstairs.

"Lying to your father on top of disobedience! What kind of child have I brought forth!"

Aven, Noyock thought to himself, and doubtless poor Hoom was the object of Aven's wrath. Aven had always been obedient, deferent, careful. And now the poor man was cursed with a son who was wilful, forgetful, prone to disobey. But, Noyock remembered with a chuckle, the boy was a hell of a lot more fun to have around than his father had been. And Noyock had often spent hours with Hoom as he was growing up, teaching him, answering the boy's questions, asking his own. Bright boy.

The slapping sound of a leather strap. Ah, thought Noyock. This is a bad one, then. Noyock debated whether to go, for though he tried not to intervene in the way Aven raised the boy, he had often found that by simply appearing on the scene, Aven's anger was tempered, and Hoom was spared the worst.