onderful about that around here?" he asked, but not with
much interest. With the world going to pot and only a few days left, the
girl's face and the slim young body under it were about all the reality
left worth thinking about. He grabbed for her, pulling her to him.
Bertha had never made him feel like that.

She managed to avoid his lips and slid away from him. "But they used the
snetha-knife! Dave Hanson, you never died! It was only induced illusion
by that--that Bork! And to think that I nearly died of grief while you
were enjoying yourself here! You ... you mandrake-man!"

He grunted. He'd almost managed to forget what he was, and he didn't
enjoy having the aircraft worker find out. He turned to see what the
reaction was, and then stared open-mouthed at his surroundings.

There were no lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane
factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone.
No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling
in the middle of empty acres.

"What happened?"

Nema glanced around briefly and sighed. "It's happening all over. They
created the plane plant by the law of identities from that little plane
tree sapling, I suppose; it is a plane plant, after all. But with the
conjunctions and signs failing, all such creations are returning to
their original form, unless a spell is used continually over them. Even
then, sometimes, we fail. Most of the projects vanished after the sun
fell."

Hanson remembered the man with whom he'd been talking before Nema
appeared. He'd have liked to know such a man before death and
revivification had ruined him. It wasn't fair that anyone with character
enough to be that human even as a zombie should be wiped out without
even a moment's consideration. Then he remembered the man's own estimate
of his current situation. Maybe he was better off returned to the death
that had claimed him.

Reluctantly, he returned to his own problems. "All right, then, if you
thought I was dead, what are you doing here, Nema?"

"I felt the compulsion begin even before I returned to the city. I
thought I was going mad. I tried to forget you, but the compulsion grew
until I could fight it no longer." She shuddered. "It was a terrible
flight. The carpets will not work at all now, and I could hardly control
the broom. Sometimes it wouldn't lift. Twice it sailed so high I could
hardly breathe. And I had no hope of finding you, yet I