nothing."

"In that case, get out of my court and come back when there's something to do."

Mayron laughed, throwing his head back, the laughter high and insolent. "How like a god! How very like the real thing."

Greaves frowned. "If you were a man, once, you might remember how that feels." But the laugh had bothered him.

"Oh, I remember, I remember. And tomorrow we fight, man." Laughing, Mayron bent and picked up the skin he had discarded. He crumpled it by the waist in one fist, and brandished it negligently at the worshippers. They shrank back with a moan of horror as he strode toward the far wall. At the wall, he flipped the white, fluttering thing over, and as a cloud passed through the stone. Perhaps on the other side he put on his human form again. Greaves could not tell. The sun was down, and only a little light glowed on the far horizon. The torches guttered in the court of monsters, and the worshippers were hurrying up the steps, out through the temple and away.

III

Greaves, Adelie and Vigil stood beside the beast-couch. "All right," Greaves said. "Now there are things I want to know, and I want no quarrels, Vigil."

"And by what right do you order me around?" the old man growled. "You may be a god to some, but you are not my god."

"You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn't. You kept me asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you owe me."

The old man grunted. "You're brave with Mayron and brave with me. But all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods."

"But you have one."

Adelie touched his arm. "You have lived from the beginning of human history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You were braver than any man, and for your bravery, you could not die. While other heros conquered the stars and, in their time, died, you lived on. While enemy after enemy was beaten by Man, and the victorious men died, you lived on. The stars and all worlds became ours. Men loved and begat, and men died, but you lived on. It seemed to us that as long as you lived, all men would have something to remember—how great Man is; what the reward of courage can be. It seemed only fitting that we should bring to 

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