The Dark Side by Damon Knight (ed.) Page A

mean?”
    “Why, simply this: that your Avatars are two hundred years apart from each other; and that they are night-prowlers.”
    “Two hundred years! and I have to find them?”
    “They are represented by simulacra in Outside. You must identify these simulacra and touch each one; this done, they will exchange again, and you will be rotated Inside. Have you seen any here?”
    A light burst in Hugh’s brain. “I saw a man from my own age who looked like a bona-fide night-prowler all right.”
    “You see?” The magician spread his hands expressively. “Half the work is over. Simply search for another night-prowler whose costume is two hundred years older—or, of course, younger—than the first. It’s very simple. Now, young sir—” The hands began to wash each other suggestively.
    Hugh produced a handful of coins. “That’s no good,” said the little man with a sniff. “I can make that myself. It’s the city’s principal industry. I don’t suppose you have any sugar on you? Or rubber bands? No? Hmm. How about that?”
    He prodded Hugh’s vest. “That” was Hugh’s Sigma Chi key, dangling from his watch chain. He had been elected to the honorary society by virtue of a closely reasoned paper on the deficiencies of current stellar evolution hypotheses. With a grin he passed it across the counter. “Thanks,” the thaumaturgist said, “I collect fetishes. Totem fixation, I guess.”
    Feeling rather humble, Hugh left the shop and started back toward Bell’s house by the most direct route his memory could provide. Now that he had begun to get his bearings, his stomach was reminding him that he had gone the whole day without food. On the way he saw the known Avatar half-way down a dark alley, contemplating a low doorway sorrowfully; but when he arrived, the top-hatted figure was gone. By the time he entered the house where he had had his first glimpse of Outside, he was decidedly discouraged, but the pleasant smell of food revived him somewhat.
    “Good evening,” Bell greeted him, though the ambiguous daylight was as unvaryingly bright as ever. “Find your astrologer?”
    “Yes. Now I have to find a night-prowler. You wouldn’t be one, by any chance?”
    The man laughed softly. “In a sense, yes, but I’m too old to be the one you want. You’re Avatar-hunting, I take it?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Well, I’m not a simulacrum. I’m a native here, one of the original settlers. Come on and eat, anyhow.” He led the way into the room which Hugh had first seen, and waved him to the table. On it was a platter bearing a complete roast hog’s head with an apple in its mouth and three strips of bacon between its ears, a pudding, a meat pie, a spitted duckling, three wooden trenchers—boards used as plates—and three razor-sharp knives. Obviously forks were not in style Outside.
    “Has Yero’s administration caused a potato shortage?” Hugh asked curiously.
    “Potato? No. You transportees have odd ideas; you mean potatoes to eat? Don’t you know they’re a relative of the deadly nightshade?”
    Hugh shrugged and fell to. There was bread anyhow. During the course of the meal the two pumped him about his experiences during the day, and he answered with increasing caution. They seemed to be up to something. He especially disliked young Martin, whose knowing smile when Hugh described his belief that Yero’s queen was in actuality his own wife irritated him. As the dinner ended Bell came to the point.
    “You’ve heard Yero spoken of as The Enemy? Well, his rule here is intermittent. He just pops up every fall season and takes the place of the Old One, who is the only rightful king, and a good one. It’s during Yero’s ascendancy that all the transportees show up—all the people who make mistakes during that period, if the mistakes are of a certain kind, get pivoted around here to correct them. It gets pretty nuisancy.
    “You can see what I mean. Here you come busting in on us and split our good