ENGINE SUMMER

For ""engine"" read ""Indian,"" a word no longer known to the dwindling knots of barely fertile humanity living out their own Indian summer among the scattered wonders--bits of stainless steel, plastic insulation sheets, engines of unknown purpose, a miraculously preserved Howard Johnson's--which are all that remain of the long-ago ""angels"" and their powers. The protagonist of this brief but remarkably rich narrative is Rush That Speaks, reared in the pueblo of the Truthful Speakers. Serene and dignified, they practice a mental and spiritual ""transparency"" that is light-years removed from the hidden, cat-like ways of their occasional trading-partners, the people of ""Dr. Boots' List."" Rush's quest for a girl who has run away to the List inadvertently leads him to the one legendary means for calling back the heirs of the angels. Crowley (The Deep, Beasts) has enough genuine imagination for ten ordinary science-fiction writers, and he never spends it on anything merely novel or showy.