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wrist a feverish, scaly red, ending in fingers that were stumpy and clubbed—to pat the horse, but when Gaited Amble snorted nervously, he withdrew it quickly.
    “Would you have some soup left, captain?” His glance pleaded.
    Fabian backed off Gaited Amble, turning as if to leave. “Come and see me at home,” he said.
    The man followed Fabian and his horse unsteadily across the lot, sweating as he tried to keep up with them. He hesitated at the door of the VanHome as Fabian tied Gaited Amble alongside Big Lick.
    “I don’t visit often,” he said, peering suspiciously through the door. “You won’t kidnap me, captain?”
    “Kidnap you? What for?”
    “To experiment,” he whispered. “To try things on me: drugs, a beating, a torching. Guys do things like that to people like me, you know.”
    “I don’t deliberately hurt people,” said Fabian. “I like them. I play with them.”
    They were now inside the VanHome. The man looked about curiously. “Mind if I see the rest, captain?”
    Clutching his raincoat, deference mingled with caution, he followed Fabian to the galley, where he carefully examined the power generator and the microwave oven, jumped back in alarm as Fabian set in motion the compactor, and smiled with faint puzzlement as Fabian explained to him the self-timing automatic trouser-press. He was fascinated by the bathroom, a Fiberglasmodule containing a sink, toilet and built-in whirlpool bathtub. He nodded with approval at the medicine chest. Trotting in Fabian’s footsteps, he peeked into rooms stored with polo gear and tack and equipment for the schooling of horses. The saddle and boot racks as well as Fabian’s clothes and riding apparel did not interest him at all, but he was taken aback by the sight of the fully rigged practice horse. Made of wood and set on springs, the fifteen-hands-high horse was enclosed within a vaulting cage of chicken wire; astride its immobile bulk, Fabian would stick-and-ball, his shots recoiling from the wire mesh of the cage.
    In the galley, as the man slurped the soup Fabian had heated and served him, his eyes kept darting to the row of bottles at the bar. When he finished, he asked for a drink, and Fabian fixed it for him. They moved into the lounge.
    “Some home to have,” the man exclaimed. “Some have no home,” he mused, looking around. “In a pawnshop, any gizmo like this could keep my kind for a whole year,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on the TV console. “It’s a nice home, captain,” he said finally. “Really nice. How do you keep it?”
    “I fight for it,” said Fabian.
    “You fight for it?”
    Fabian nodded.
    The man moved closer. “Dangerous? Can you be killed?”
    Fabian nodded again.
    “Why do you fight like that?”
    “Because of you,” said Fabian, pouring him another drink.
    The man reached for it eagerly, his hand trembling. “Because of me? How come, captain?” A sudden glint in his eyes showed that he sniffed some reward.
    “I fight for this home so I won’t become what you are,” said Fabian.
    The man lowered his head. Without a word, as if absorbed in solitary thought, he slowly sipped his drink.
    Fabian had a fear of inordinate skill. He felt awed—and troubled—by his aim, the elusive interplay of muscle, vision, brain, the rippling fusion of reflexes, the constellation and apparatus of impulse, knowledge, will that invested him, mounted on a horseat swiftest gallop, with the power to hit a polo ball, lying seven feet from his shoulder, with a precision that would reach a target no larger than a player’s helmet and forty yards or more away, and to maintain that precision for at least sixty strikes out of a hundred. He knew that such skill carried with it a state of uncertainty, a mood of apprehension: the possibility of failure. The man who attained a pitch of skill in sport or trade, in some profession or in his intimate relations with other men and women, had undoubtedly found the most direct path to his goal.