Star quest

mat in the cool darkness of the hut
…
    He rolled over to kiss the lips that he knew to be street and soft and warm
…
    And she had no face
…
    It had not been torn off, ripped bloodily away in rage, but had simply faded out of existence. "Tarni—" He began to say. But her name was slipping away too, dissolving from his memory…
    He strained to remember the face
…
As if, by sheer power of the will, he could undo whatever the gods had done to their relationship
…
    For a moment, a mouth appeared with a greedy tongue. But that was worse than the blankness—that one, grotesque feature on the barren plain of the face. He stopped frying to remember. He simply ran .
. .
    He ran from the hut, weeping…
    He ran through the coolness of the night with the stars overhead…
    He ran with the booming of the surf in the distance…
    He ran beneath the moons, wishing he could howl…
    He ran through the bushes of amber leaves…
    He ran through orange flowers, stopping suddenly to listen to something. What? What was it? What had he heard?
    A hissing. An animal hissing in the bushes nearby
…
    "All right," someone said, shaking his shoulder. "No more time for naps."
    He pushed himself off the couch, wobbling as he stood.
    "We meet the Old Man in forty minutes on the edge of town. There is a passageway through the caves that will take us under the city wall." Corgi's eyes were still flushing with brilliant color. He was excited about the swift culmination of all their years of work, the finish line of their centuries-long race.
    Tohm stretched, blinked the last traces of sleep from his eyes. "I'm anxious to meet this Old Man of yours."
    "Quite a person, quite a person. Come along now. We mustn't be late."
    They entered the caves where he had first heard Mayna singing, where her hatred for him had bloomed, mushroomed into sight for a few short moments. She hadn't spoken a word to him since they had entered the hutch after escaping the Romaghin guards. She was perturbed, he was sure, by the fact that it had been her fault that Babe now wore his arm in a sling and had it patched with heavy heal-and-flex bandages. Corgi and Mayna took the lead, Fish guiding the Seer next, and Babe and himself with Hunk on his shoulder bringing up the rear. Moving past the lake, skirting its shores, they snaked downward for a time through phosphorescent corridors, then turned upward and finally struck out in a straight tunnel with no nonsense to it, Tohm estimated ten or twenty feet to the surface, perhaps as much as thirty.
    The weight of Hunk was already burdening him down, sending throbbing pains through his shoulder. There was no flybelt now to support them, and he was taking all of the Mutie's weight himself with no help from the limited de-grav and propeller plates in the magic waistband.
    "Not much farther," Hunk said, sensing his discomfort.
    "I can't believe it," Babe said, puffing away on his tobacco cylinder. "I can't believe we're finally ready for the big show."
    "I wish," Tohm said, "I understood what this big show is all about."
    "You will. In time, you will."
    Tohm tried to remember how long ago it had all begun. Strangely, he could not. Whether it had been a week or a month or a year, he did not know. All he knew was that he had come a long way, from hut to Jumbo to "pervert." He had crossed millions of miles of space and thousands of years of civilization. Somehow, his destiny had become linked with these semi-people. There had, in the beginning, been few people in his life. Parents, a girl whom he had loved—or thought, in his inexperience, that he had—and a few tribal friends. Now there were many people and semi-people in his life whom he had directly or indirectly affected for better or for worse for as long as all should live. He had killed, it suddenly came to him with a bittersweet shock, as many people in this week-month-year as he had known all together in his previous life.
    "Another half mile," Corgi said, calling back over his shoulder.
    Another half mile to what? What was going to happen when the Muties got together and did their thing? Who was the Old Man? What was the Fringe? Did he want to be a part of it, and would they let him even if he did? The last thought struck hard. He thought they liked him—aside from Mayna—but how could he be certain? Could one judge these people on normal human standards? Mayna herself had told him not to force his mores and values on her. Did they really want a peaceful world,