He shouted hugely: "Bring back my two-faced god! Bring it back! It's not yours. It's not yours!"
They must have heard his voice booming at them. At any rate, the girl looked back once. The boy, intent on his effort, did not.
Brian roared: "Bring back my god! I want my little god!"
He was not gaining on them. They had a mission, after all. They had to find the right kind of Old Ones. But damn it, Brian thought, my world has some rights, hasn't it? We'll see about this.
He lifted the paddle like a spear and flung it, knowing even before his shoulder winced how absurd the gesture was. The youngsters were so far away that even an arrow from a bow might not have reached them.
The paddle splashed in the water. Not far away: a small infinity. It swung about to the will of the river, the heavy end pointing, obediently downstream. It nuzzled companionably against a gray-faced chunk of driftwood, diverting it, so that presently the driftwood floated into Brian's reach.
He caught it, and flung it toward the paddle, hoping it might fall on the other side and send the paddle near him. It fell short, and in his oddly painless extremity, Brian was not surprised, but merely watched the gray driftwood floating and bobbing along beside him with an irritation that was part friendliness, for it suggested the face of a music critic he had met in—New Boston, was it? Denver? London? He couldn't remember.
"Why," he said aloud, detachedly observing the passage of his canoe beyond the broad morning shadow of the Museum of Human History, "I seem to have made sure to die."
"Mr. Van Anda has abundantly demonstrated a mastery of the instrument and of the—" You acid fraud, go play solfeggio on your linotype! Don't bother me!—"and of the literature which could, without exaggeration, be termed beyond technique. He is one of those rare interpreters who at the last analysis—"