aloney trying
to be any decent kind of Demon, even a good Entertainer. Then I tell
myself, "That's life, Greta. You've got to love through it somehow." But
there are times when some of these cookies are not too easy to love.

Something brushed the palm of my hand again. It was Illy's tentacle,
with the tendrils of the tip spread out like a little bush. I started to
pull my hand away, but then I realized the Loon was simply lonely. I
surrendered my hand to the patterned gossamer pressures of
feather-talk.

[Illustration]

Right away I got the words, "Feeling lonely, Greta girl?"

It almost floored me, I tell you. Here I was understanding feather-talk,
which I just didn't, and I was understanding it in English, which didn't
make sense at all.

For a second, I thought Illy must have spoken, but I knew he hadn't, and
for a couple more seconds I thought he was working telepathy on me,
using the feather-talk as cues. Then I tumbled to what was happening: he
was playing English on my palm like on the keyboard of his squeakbox,
and since I could play English on a squeakbox myself, my mind translated
automatically.

Realizing this almost gave my mind stage fright, but I was too fagged to
be hocused by self-consciousness. I just lay back and let the thoughts
come through. It's good to have someone talk to you, even an underweight
octopus, and without the squeaks Illy didn't sound so silly; his
phrasing was soberer.

* * * * *

"Feeling sad, Greta girl, because you'll never understand what's
happening to us all," Illy asked me, "because you'll never be anything
but a shadow fighting shadows--and trying to love shadows in between the
battles? It's time you understood we're not really fighting a war at
all, although it looks that way, but going through a kind of evolution,
though not exactly the kind Erich had in mind.

"Your Terran thought has a word for it and a theory for it--a theory
that recurs on many worlds. It's about the four orders of life: Plants,
Animals, Men and Demons. Plants are energy-binders--they can't move
through space or time, but they can clutch energy and transform it.
Animals are space-binders--they can move through space. Man (Terran or
ET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a time-binder--he has memory.

"Demons are the fourth order of evolution, possibility-binders--they can
make all of what might be part of what is, and that is their
evolutionary function. Resurrection is l