"Ahead, you say? But where? Well, Nature abhors a void, and to fill it she's wasteful—wildly wasteful. In the abstract, my advice would be: follow her example. Be as wasteful as she is. Her darlings always are. Chase after one impulse and another; try your hand at this and that; let your masterpieces die off by the dozen without seeing the light … But what's the use of such talk nowadays? Besides, you've got to earn your living, haven't you? Well, that's not a bad thing either. You don't want to risk getting lost in the forest of dreams. It happens. And if you once went to sleep under the deadly Tree of Alternatives you might never wake up again. So—" He paused, relit his pipe, and blinked at Vance meditatively.

"As far as I can see, one trouble is this. The thing you've just done (yes, I've read it; Halo made me) well, it's a pretty thing, exquisite, in fact, and a surprise, a novelty nowadays, as its popularity has proved. But it's a thing that leads nowhere. An evocation—an emanation—something you wrought with enchantments, eh? Well, now take hold of life as it lies around you; you remember Goethe: 'Wherever you take hold of it, it's interesting'? So it is—but only in proportion as you are. There's the catch. The artist has got to feed his offspring out of his own tissue. Enrich that, day and night—perpetually. How? … Ah, my dear fellow, that's the question! What does the tortoise stand on …  ?"

Vance sat silent. Perhaps his adviser was right. Perhaps the only really fruitful field for the artist was his own day, his own town or country, a field into which he could plunge both hands and pluck up his subjects with their live roots. Instead had charmed his readers by its difference—charmed them because they were unconsciously tired of incoherence and brutality; but the spell would soon break because, as Frenside said, his tale had been an "emanation," not a reality. He had given very little of what Frenside called his "tissue" to its making. And now his thoughts reverted to Loot, the old theme which had haunted him since his first days in New York—it seemed a century ago—and his imagination instantly set to work on it.

"I suppose you go out a good deal these days—see a good many people? A novelist ought to, at one time or another," Frenside continued. "Manners are your true material, after all."

Vance hesitated. "I don't go out much." He could not add that Laura Lou made it impossible; but he said, with equal truth: "Fact is, I can't afford it. I mean, the time—or the money either … "