Jubal nodded. “No other possible course. You were trapped and couldn’t run. Whereupon the best a man can do is try for a negotiated peace.” He added, “But I’m sorry that the civilized habits of my household caused the boy to fall afoul the law of the jungles of Baja California.”

“I don’t think he’s a boy any longer, Jubal.”



32

Ben Caxton had awakened not knowing where he was nor what time it was. It was dark around him, perfectly quiet, he was lying on something soft. Not a bed—where was he?

The night came back in a rush. The last he clearly remembered he had been lying on the soft floor of the Innermost Temple, talking quietly and intimately with Dawn. She had taken him there, they had immersed, shared water, grown closer—

Frantically he reached around him in the dark, found nothing. “Dawn!”

Light swelled softly to a gentle dimness. “Here, Ben.”

“Oh! I thought you had gone!”

“I didn’t intend to wake you.” She was wearing—to his sudden and intense disappointment—her robe of office. “I must go start the Sunrisers’ Outer Service. Gillian isn’t back yet. As you know, it was a fairly big class.”

Her words brought back to him things she had told him last night . . . things which, at the time, had upset him despite her gentle and quite logical explanations . . . and she had soothed his upset until he found himself agreeing with her. He still was not quite straight in his mind . . . he didn’t grok it all—but, yes, Jill was probably still busy with her rites as high priestess—a task, or perhaps a happy duty, that Dawn had offered to take for her. Ben felt a twinge that he really should have been sorry that Jill had refused, had insisted that Dawn get much needed rest.

But he did not feel sorry. “Dawn . . . do you have to leave?” He scrambled to his feet, put his arms around her.

“I must go, Ben dear . . . dear Ben.” She melted up against him.

“Right now? In such a rush?”

“There is never,” she said softly, “that much hurry.” Suddenly the robe no longer kept them apart. He was too bemused to wonder what had become of it.

He woke up a second time, found that the “little nest” he was in lighted softly when he stood up. He stretched, discovered that he felt wonderful, then looked around the room for his shorts. They were not in sight and no way for them to be out of sight. He tried to recall where he had left them . . . and had no recollection of ever having taken them off. But he certainly had not worn them into the water. Probably beside the pool in the Innermost Temple—He made a mental note to stop back there and pick them up, then went out and found a bathroom.

Some minutes later, shaved, showered, and refreshed, he did remember to look into the Innermost Temple, failed to find his shorts and decided that somebody, Patty maybe, had noticed them and put them near the outer door where apparently everybody kept what they needed for street wear . . . said to hell with it and grinned at himself for having made such a jittery old-maid issue last night out of wearing them or not. He needed them, here in the Nest, the way he needed a second head.

Come to think of it, he didn’t have the slightest trace of a head—a hangover head—although he recalled that he had had more than several drinks with Dawn. Hadn’t got drunk, as he recalled, but certainly more than he ordinarily allowed himself—he couldn’t sop up the stuff the way Jubal did without paying for it.

Dawn didn’t seem to be affected by liquor at all—which was probably why he had gone over his usual quota. Dawn . . . what a gal, what a gal! She hadn’t even seemed annoyed when, in a moment of emotional confusion, he had called her Jill—she had seemed pleased.

He found no one in the big room and wondered what time it was? Not that he gave a damn, except that his stomach told him that it was long past breakfast time. He went into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge.

A man in there looked up as he came in. “Ben!”

“Well! Hi, Duke!”

Duke gave him a bear hug and slapped him on the back. “Ben, you’re a sight for sore eyes! Gosh, it’s good to see you. Thou art God. How do you like your eggs?”

“Thou art God. Are you the cook?”

“Only when I can’t find somebody else to do it for me—such as right now. Tony does most of it. We all do some. Even Mike unless Tony catches him and chases him out—Mike is the world’s worst cook, bar none.” Duke went on breaking eggs into a dish.

Ben moved in on the job. “You look after toast and coffee. Any Worcestershire sauce around here?”

“You name it, Pat’s got it. Here.” Duke added, “I looked in on you a half hour ago, but you were still sawing wood. I’ve been busy or you’ve been busy ever since you got here—until now.”