But first, you and I must come to an agreement. The last time I was here, you were not interested in talking about the future. Instead, you had me up in that hotel room for a...a business transaction. What I don't want is another situation like that. I prefer to enter a partnership, Mr. Black, not an appointment. Do you understand?" I nodded. I understood all right, even if I didn't care much for it. A partnership was the devil's own deal and as likely to be the end of you as to be the end of me. There were too many things that had happened since the last time I'd sat down with someone to just start playing games with their head. "Well, then," said Tailor, "all we have to do is figure out what kind of business we're going to do." He leaned forward. "What did you say your name was again?" "Black," I said. "Black," Tailor said. "A good name. It's just that I'm expecting a couple of associates to drop by at any moment." He leaned back. "It's all right. I understand. If I were an ordinary man I wouldn't be any better. I wouldn't understand. I'd just run, just like everybody else. I may be better than the rest, but I'm not better than the rest. I'm just like the rest. I can be bought and sold just like anybody else. It's just business." "Listen," I said, "I think maybe I ought to leave." I had seen too many killings over this deal I'd entered with Tailor. "There are some things happening I don't think you know anything about." "Don't you understand," said Tailor, "that my men will probably kill you when they get here?" "I hope they do," I said, starting to get up. "You said they might come," he said. "Didn't you say they might come?" I stopped. "All right," I said, "you get it. Now it's your turn. When I was here last, you were going to tell me about me and my family's future. You were going to show me how we could make our ways to a very different life. You'd been talking for almost three hours. What did you want with me?" "I want us to be partners," said Tailor. "All right," I said. "I'm not saying no. But you have to do the talking." "Let me show you something," said Tailor. "I'll show you something that'll help us to agree." He went into a small storage area and came out with a box, which he put down on the table in front of me. "Open it," he said. I opened it. There was nothing inside except some bits of leather—one piece large, one piece small, tied together with a thick string. "Open it," Tailor said. I opened it. A little leather ball sat there, resting on the string. I couldn't tell what was in it at first. It looked like there was a stone or a pebble of some kind in it. "Now hold it in your right hand." I held it, feeling the texture of it between my fingers, and then saw there was another one, sitting there, the little one in the middle of the big one. "You know what this is?" "Yeah," I said. "Now take the big one and put it into the small one. This has got to be your secret, you understand?" "Yeah," I said, "and I'm going to tell nobody about it." Tailor nodded. "Good," he said. "Now, what you're going to do is take this black one"—he held the stone out to me—"and give it to me. But you're going to take the white one yourself and put it in your pocket. And you can carry it with you and show it to whomever you please." "All right," I said. "I'll do it. But how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?" "I'll keep my end of the bargain," he said, "because we have an understanding. My men are going to enter the park, but you'll never be able to get away." "All right," I said, "I'll do it. But when you put that white stone into your pocket, you better know how to make it disappear. Otherwise, when you do it, you'll probably be in a grave." He smiled. "Well, let me tell you," he said, "the way I make them disappear is this. The minute they're in my hand, they're gone, and you never know where they've gone to." He reached across the table and took the stone from me. "All right," I said. "Now we can talk business." The little black stone felt smooth and cool in my palm. It was only when I felt it against my skin that I realized how hot the fire really was. "I suppose you're wondering how I got this stone," said Tailor. "Well, it's this way. About six months ago I happened upon a group of some of my people down south of here. They're the ones I was telling you about, the ones who don't follow my command. Now, there's a way that they can be made to become useful to me, but in order to know how to do it, they had to first get hold of the black stone. Only they don't know that the stone is the real thing. They were given the impression that it's some kind of a medicine stone. And even if they find out that it isn't, they're going to go on thinking it is. That's what I use to get a lot of people to go with me when I make my deals. And that's the way I got the black one. I traded it for them." I looked at him. He really was a good man. He had done it to keep his people loyal and to help him get rid of people who were trying to oppose him. But to have a chance of doing this, he had to do what he was doing to me. I'd never put any of this together before, but the only man with a deal like mine was my man. There was no way I was going to make him pay for it. I'd just have to watch out for myself and let the men he sent after me decide what to do. It was too bad I had to do this, but it didn't really matter. Tailor knew something I wanted, and he'd let me have it. As for the two stones, I'd still have mine in my pocket, and it wouldn't matter anyway. He wouldn't know that I still had the white one. Tailor was smiling at me. "It's okay," he said. "It's all right. I'm going to keep you here for about an hour." # CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR "WHEN I was a kid," Tailor said, "I wanted to be a doctor. In my tribe, the medicine men treated everybody. We believe in treating everything. I felt that if I treated things, I'd understand what they were all about, and I'd learn about the future." He looked at me, his eyes still far away in thought. "The doctors here act like they're going to be the king of the universe, when really the whole thing is nothing more than medicine. Everything that happens has already happened. If you understand that, you can see what's coming and take action accordingly. You can make plans. There's no way the doctors will understand that. They don't believe you can have a plan in your future, that all of these past things have all happened, all this has happened, and there's nothing you can do to change anything of it. That's what the doctors don't understand. They don't understand the future." "But you do," I said. "Yes," said Tailor. "I do." He looked at me. "I want you to know something about your future," he said. "I know how all this happened. I know everything that's been happening to you. And I know everything that's going to happen." He looked straight into my eyes, and I held his gaze. He said, "You'll find that I've got some things planned for you. You'll find that we've got a few things to work out between us. But when the time comes, we'll do them. I'll help you to get to where you want to go. All you have to do is do what I tell you to do. All right?" "All right," I said. I had no idea what was happening here, and I wasn't really that concerned. I had been through so many different kinds of situations. It was hard to feel more than one at a time. So I had no reason to believe that anything was going to happen to me that he might do. I had come into Tailor's business expecting this deal to go all right, and that was what it was going to do. It was all too late for me to turn back now. "Good," he said. He sighed. "Well,