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I knew that he was laughing, laughing at my weakness
and ignorance and fear.

And even though the only thing I wanted to do was run away I yelled and leaped forward. I didn't care if I broke
every bone in my body, I would still stop Wall from steal
ing my brother's Sun Ship.

A voice in my head said, "Good-bye, Forty-seven. What
I do now will give you the time to prepare for Wall's final
attack. And remember, if you think of me I will be there."

Wall must have heard the voice in my head because he
screamed then and flew high in the air. He was trying, it
seemed, to free his tentacles from the golden ball...

... and then they both exploded in the air like a thou
sand sticks of dynamite.

I was thrown to the ground, and for a long time there
was nothing but darkness.

25
.

When I came to I was on my back, looking up at the sky. I
got up on one shoulder to see if Mr. Stewart was still where
he had fallen. He was gone but a little way beyond I saw
the prone body of my brother in light
Tall John from be
yond Africa.

I tried to make it to my feet but I was too groggy from
the explosion. After trying to get up and falling five or six
times I settled on crawling to my friend's side.

He was in a bad way. Both his arms and both of his legs
were broken. There were a dozen cuts on his face and one deep gash in his chest.

His glassy eyes stared up at nothing. I was sure that he
was dead, but I couldn't believe it.

"Where's yo yellah bag, John?" were the first words I
said.

Then I put my face on the ground, suddenly made even weaker at the loss of my friend.

"There's no healing this body again, Forty-seven,"
he said.

I looked up to see him turn slightly in order that he
might see me.

"John!" I shouted. "You're alive!"

"Would you please hold up a hand to block the sun from
my eyes," he said weakly, and then added, "my friend."

I held my hand to shield his eyes and asked, "What can
I do, John?"

"Listen," he said. "I am going to the Upper Level now."

"Where that?"

"It is the river of dreams where we all flow together."

"Like heaven?"

John nodded and coughed and then he said, "I will come
to you many times over your life, Forty-seven. I'll come
and help you when I can .. . with your fight against Wall."

"Ain't he dead?" I asked, feeling a prickling along my
spine as if the evil one-eyed monster were staring at me at
that moment.

"No," John said. "He survived the explosion but he's
very weak and will not appear to you again for seventeen
years at least. But when you see his evil plans imprinted on
the world you must stand against him, even though you
will feel small and weak compared to his power."

"How do you know what he'll do if you dyin'?" I asked,
even though the question hurt my heart.

"I will come to you," he whispered. "You will be a great
hero and I will be the hero's friend."

"You gonna be a ghost?" I asked, fearful of being haunted
but even sadder over the loss of my friend.

"No," he hissed. "Do you remember the crystal ma
chine that I told you about?"

"Queziastril," I said, remembering the word through the
light in my mind.

"Through her I have spoken to you many times."

"I don't remember those talks, John."

"That's because you haven't had them yet...," he said,
and then he took a deep and painful breath. He coughed
and moved his head and neck like he was going to get up
but instead he fell back, and I knew that Tall John was dead.

When I could stand I dragged John's body down to the pit
where Wall and his ghoul had dug up the Sun Ship. I low
ered my friend into the grave and used the spade Stewart
had used to cover him.

My right foot hurt me some. I guess I must have
sprained it running away from Stewart's blasts. So I used the green stem as a walking stick and made my way back
toward my friends.

Near the ledge, where we first spied Stewart and Pike,
I found John's yellow sack.

Because of my limp the trek took me many hours.

That was the saddest journey of my young life. I was
free but my friend was dead. And his passing left a void in
my heart where I never knew I had something to lose. At times along the way I'd fall down on my knees and yowl
some incomprehensible words to try and express the loss
of my pal
Tall John from beyond Africa.

I reached the flat rock at just about sunset.

I was sad about the death of John and Mud Albert,
about the slaves running in the wilderness and being
hunted down by dogs. I even felt sorry for poor Eloise and
the death of her father, my one-time master. But the hard
est thing would be to tell Eighty-four, Tweenie, that the
man she loved was dead.

She cried and caterwauled like a deep forest creature,
and her grief called mine forward and I fell to the ground
and wept bitterly with her. My friend was dead. He died, I
knew, saving all the peoples of Earth.

When night came we moved north into a wood that I knew
was uninhabited.

I could tell that the wood was safe because when I
gazed hard at the valley of pines a soft gray light washed
the images in my mind. I knew somehow that the gift of light that John had given me was telling me that no one
would molest us in that pleasant vale.

There we found a cave that we used as a shelter. We
stayed for a fortnight, until we were all healed and rested.

There was a rill not far from the mouth of our shelter. In
the early morning and late at night Champ and I would
steal down there and catch fish with a net I found in John's yellow bag. We had to eat the fish raw because none of us
knew if John's little disk machine would keep the slave
hunters from smelling smoke.

One afternoon I stole away from the cave and climbed way
up into a willow tree. There I sat and thought about my
friend.

"Hello, boy," a small, squeaky voice called.

Hearing those words I was so startled that I almost
lost my balance and fell from the branch where I was
sitting.

"Who?" I said, looking all around.

"Up here," the little voice said.

I looked up and there, standing on nothing but air, was
a tiny little person who had orange and purple skin and a
fire, like a candle's flame, hovering above his head.

"John!" I cried. "It's you!"

"I'm sorry," the true form of my friend said, "but you
are mistaking me for someone else. My name is N'clect.
Have you met someone else of my race?"

"No," I said. "You are looking into the future through
Queziastril. You sail across the universe using suns as your
propellers to come and find me."

"How do you know about Queziastril?" Little John
asked. "It is the most closely guarded secret of my people."

"I know you think so," I said. "But someday soon the
Calash are going to break into your hive an' break that
crystal ball to pieces."

"You know about the Calash and the Talam?" Little
John was amazed.

I was surprising him as much as he did me when we first
met (was that only a week before?) on the path between
the slave graveyard and the slaves' quarters.

"I know a lot about you, Neglect," I said, mispronounc
ing his Talamish name. "You are my best friend and my brother. You came to Earth to find me and to tell me that I,
Forty-seven, will fight a war against a creature of the Calash called Wall."

"Wall is their greatest warrior," John said. "Surely you
must be what you say. Tell me more of the future, my
friend."

And so I began the long story of the past week or so that
I had shared with the little being who didn't remember
any of it because for him none of it had happened yet. It
started much as this book did. I had to explain the concept
of slavery very carefully because he had never heard of
such a thing. When I told him that white people owned
everything, even the ground and the trees, and saw all
other colors of people as inferior, he was doubly amazed.

"But that seems so silly," N'clect, who was destined to
become Tall John, said.

We talked for hours. Sometimes I would say things that
he didn't seem to hear. For instance, when I tried to explain why we were thrown into the Tomb the words came
out all garbled so neither one of us understood. After I
tried to explain two or three times John seemed to think
that he knew why the words got confused.

"Queziastril must be interfering with the transmission,"
he said. "Tell me something else."

He became very somber when I told him about his
death. I was about to explain the particulars on how he died when he interrupted me.

"I don't think I want to know how I die," he said. "It
might sadden me too much."

I understood how he felt and resolved never again to
tell the story of Tall John's death. I have been true to that
resolution until writing this story.

"You must never tell anyone on your planet about these amazing experiences or about your mission," John said to
me at one point in our talk.

"Why?" I asked. "Maybe somebody like Champ could
help me."

"If people were to learn about your powers before
they're ready, they might hurt themselves or you in the at
tempt to steal them."

I promised that I wouldn't tell, but that reminded me of something else.

"There's a lot I don't understand myself," I said to the
floating elf.

"What?"

"I have this yellah bag," I said, holding up John's treasure.

"Oh that's grand!" the tiny elf shouted. "All you have to
do is reach in and close your hand and you will, most likely,
grab onto something that will help you in your mission.
And over the days that come if you keep the object in your
hand or pocket it will speak through the light I gave you,
and you will come to know how to use it."

We talked through the night. Me sitting on that high
branch and John standing on air thousands of years before
and a universe away.

Toward dawn I asked, "You know, John, sometimes all
you have to do is walk from the house out to the fields and
you find people who speak the same tongue as you but
they talk so different that you can't hardly understand a
word they say."

"Yes," he said.

"So how do I know what you're saying when you're so
far away an' you haven't even heard about me yet?"

"Queziastril," John said simply, and I understood everything.

The crystal translated our thoughts and so we under
stood each other.