“Indeed—but we don’t speak about that in their presence. I was raised on a farm and let me tell you, my only friends were our herd of porcuswine. Ahh, here’s the boar now!”

I shouted joyous greeting to the immense and deadly form that lumbered out of the forest. He glared at me with red and swiney eyes. Grunted aloud with pleasure as the end of my stick scratched and scratched at his hide. I grunted with the effort—and pleasure as well.

“Where did they come from?” Sybil asked.

“The forest,” I said scratching away.

“That’s not what I mean. What kind of a place is this with volcanoes, lava flows, gravity waves—and these creatures?”

“A planet that had to have been settled by mankind. We’ll find out soon enough. But first let us follow the pigpaths into the forest and find some water. Drink first, cogitate later.”

“Agreed,” she said leading the way. I followed her and our newfound porcine friends followed me. Grunting expectantly for more delicious scratching attention. We lost them only when the path led through a clearing surrounded by storoak trees. The boar slammed his tusks into the trunk of one heavy—laden tree and shook it mercilessly. Acorns as big as my head rained down and the little family munched on them happily. We emerged from the forest into a water meadow that had been stirred up muddily by sharp hooves. It bordered a small lake, The far side was shielded in mist that obscured any details. We left the muddy path and found a shelf of rock that led to the water. Sat at the water’s edge and drank cupped handfuls of the clear and cool water until we had drunk our—fill. “Find a few dry sticks, rub them together and it could be pork for dinner,” Sybil said, smacking her lips. “Never! They’re friends.” My stomach rumbled enticingly. “Well maybe later, much later. And only if we can’t find another source of food. I think a little exploring is in order. This is—or was—a settled world. Mankind took the mutated porcuswine and storoak to the stars. There should be farms here.”

“I wouldn’t even know what one looked like. I was a city girl, or rather a small—town girl. Food was something that you bought in the Shop. My mother and father—everyone thereworked at teleconferencing or programming or computing or whatever. No factories, no pollution, that sort of thing was confined to the distant robot construction sites. Our town was just low and ordinary, just a lot of landscaped buildings and green parks. Utterly and totally boring.”

I squinted across the lake where the mist appeared to be clearing. I pointed. “Like that place over there?”

Chapter 6

“What place?” she asked, standing and shielding her eyes with—her hand. I pointed in silence.

“Seen one, you’ve seen them all,” she muttered, frowning. “They must be factory—produced, stamped out like cereal packages. Fold the thing and glue it and plop it down, hook up the electricity and it starts to work. I couldn’t even bear to go to school in Hometown—that is really what it was really called, would you believe it? I graduated first place in my kiddy class, got a scholarship, went away to school and never came back. Knocked around a bit, got involved with police work, liked it. Then I was recruited by the Special Corps and the rest is history.”

“Do you want to take a look at this hometown?” “No, I do not.”

“It might be fun—and there should be food there. Unless you want a pork roast so badly that you want to kill a porcuswine with your bare hands?”

“No jokes, please. We’ll take a look.”

It was not a large lake and the walk was a short one. Sybil who had started out in good spirits, grew quieter and quieter as we approached the low buildings. She finally stopped.

“No,” she said firmly.

“No, what?”

“No it’s not a place I really want to visit. They all look exactly alike, I told you, central design, central manufacture. Plug the thing in and watch it go to work. I hated my childhood.”

“Didn’t we all? But the porcuswine, they were the best part of it. Probably the only part that I remember with any feeling.

Now let’s go see if we can find a McSwineys and get a sandwich in this bijou townlet.”

There was nothing moving in the streets or the buildings ahead. A single road came out of the hamlet and ended abruptly in the grass. There was a billboard sign of some kind beside it, but it was end on and we couldn’t read it until we got closer. We walked at an angle as we approached so we could see what it said. Sybil stopped suddenly and clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were closed.

“Read it,” she said.

“I did.”

’What does it say?”

“Just a coincidence…”

Her eyes snapped open and she bit out the words. “Do you believe that? What does it say?” “It reads, in serifed uppercase red letters on a white foreground, it reads———

“’Welcome to Hometown. ’ Are we mad or is this whole planet mad?” “Neither.” I sat down and pulled a blade of grass free, chewed on it. “Something is happening here. Just what we have yet to discover.”

“And we are going to discover what by sitting on our chunks and chewing grass.”

She was angry now—which was much better than being frightened or depressed. I smiled sweetly and patted the grass beside me. “To action, then. You sit and chew the grass while I scout out the scene. Sit!”

She sat. Because of the force of my personality—Or because she was still tired. I climbed to my feet creakily and wearily and strolled forward into Hometown.

Found out everything I needed to know in a very short time and went back to join her sitting and chewing.

“Strangest thing I have ever seen,” I said. “Jim—don’t torture me!”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to—just trying to come to grips with this particular reality. Firstly, the town is empty. No people, dogs, ears, kids. Anything. One of the reasons that it is empty is that everything seems to be in one lump. As though it was made that way. The door handles don’t turn and the doors themselves appear to be part of the wall. The same with the windows. And you can’t look in. Or rather it looks like you’re looking in but what is inside is really in the glass of the window. And nothing really seems right or complete. It is more like an idea of Hometown instead of being Hometown itself.”

She shook her head. “I have no idea of what you are talking about.”

“Don’t worry! I’m not so sure myself. I’m just trying to pick my way through a number of very strange occurrences. We arrived here in a sort of a cave. With volcanoes and lava streams and no grass or anything else.” I glanced up at the bloated red sun and pointed. “At least the sun is the same. So we went for a walk and found green grass and porcuswine, the porcuswine of my youth.”

“And the Hometown of mine. It has to mean something..

“It does!” I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth in a brain—cudgeling pace. “Slakey knew where he was sending us and it wasn’t to Heaven he said. So he must have been here before. Not quite Heaven, that’s what he said. Maybe he thought he was sending us to Hell. And the spot where we arrived was very Hellish what with the red creature, the volcanoes and lava and everything. Could it have been Hellish because he expected it to be? Because this Hell is his idea of Hell?”

“You lead, Jim—but I just can’t follow you.”

“I don’t blame you, because the idea is too preposterous. We know that someplace named Heaven exists someplace, somewhere. If there is one place there could be others. This is one of the others. With certain unusual properties.”

“Like what?”

“Like you see what you expect to see. Let us say this planet or whatever it is was a place that was just a possibility of a place—until Slakey arrived. Then it became the place he was expecting to find. Maybe the red sun got him thinking about Hell. And the more he thought the more Hellish it became. Makes good sense.”