Darius went to the Cyng of Pwer. "What are my op -- tions?" he inquired.

"If you will not heed the wisdom of experience, you must leam in your own fashion," the old man said. "You may marry for love, but you can not keep her long. She will die if you do not let her go in time. I think you will find it better to marry for other than love."

"The Modes," Darius said. "What are my options there?"

"The Modes are dangerous," the man reminded him. "Of every ten folk who risk them, three do not return. Of those who do return, half do not achieve their desire. This leaves about one in three who is successful. I do not recommend this course."

"You would have me suck the joy from endless innocent women instead?"

The Pwer shook his head. "No one forces them. They do it to escape poverty, nonentity, or pointlessness. It is a good bargain for them. They do not die, and they recover slowly after you turn them loose. It is a feasible system."

"Not as I see it!" Darius retorted. "I see love and mar -- riage as ennobling."

"You are young."

"Tell me more about the Modes. What can I expect?"

"You can expect the unexpected. Do you understand the theory of it?"

"I understand only that when I appealed to the Cyng of Mngemnt, to provide me some better way, he sent me to you for the Modes. I never heard of them before."

"Then I will tell you in capsule what we know of them. As you surely do know, I handle the broadcasting of the magic power that enables all other magic to operate. That power must have a source. The first Cyng of Pwer found the source in the Modes. We have a number of what he termed Chips which enable us to relate to the realms beyond our own, and one of these has limitless raw power. He constructed mech -- anisms to harness this power and convert it to a form we can use. It is my special ability to channel it, and to keep the mechanisms operative. The Chips still relate to what seems to be an infinite number of other Modes. But we explore these others at our considerable risk. We conjecture that they are alternate realities, and that each Chip attunes to the spot where it would be in that other Mode. In many Modes that spot it empty, without even earth, water, or air, and whoever goes there immediately dies. In other Modes there is some --

thing there, but not what we like. We have brought back the bodies of those we have sent through, and they have been burned or dehydrated or mauled, as by some monster. But in some Modes there are worlds like ours, only different. By