"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what _kind_ of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks." "No, no. I mean, what's in it?" "Poetry." "Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book." Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest." The old man raised the gun. * * * * * "Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun." Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway." "I suggest we negotiate." "No." "Why not?" Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent. "Why not?" Michaelson repeated. "Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back. "Negotiate." "No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes. "All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that." Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun. "Wait!" "Now what?" "At least read some of the book to me before I die, then." The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said. Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book. "No, stay where you are. Throw it." "This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around." "It won't break. Throw it." Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong. * * * * * Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations. The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.