And babies, she thought, as the flapple carried her toward the New New York offices of Lies, Incorporated, are discovered under cabbages.
Sure, Mat; you keep on believing.
EIGHT
To the pleasant, rather overextensively bosomed young female receptionist, Rachmael ben Applebaum said, “My name is Stuart Trent. My wife was teleported earlier today, so I’m anxious to slip in under the wire; I know you’re about to close your office.”
He had planned this for some time. It was his top card, to be played—hopefully to the surprise of everyone.
The girl glanced searchingly at him. “You’re certain, Mr. Trent, that you desire to—”
“My wife,” he repeatedly harshly. “She’s already over. She left at five.” He added, “I have two suitcases. A leady is bringing them.” And into the office of Trails of Hoffman, strode the robot-like machine, bearing the two imitation cowhide bulging suitcases.
The consummately nubile receptionist said, “Please fill out these forms, Mr. Trent. I’ll make certain that the Telpor techs are ready to receive one more, because as you say, we are about to close.”
The entrance gate, in fact, was now locked.
He made out the forms, feeling only a coldness, an empty mindless—fear. Lord, it really was fear! He actually, at this late moment, when Freya had already been teleported across to Whale’s Mouth, felt his autonomic nervous system secrete its hormones of cringing panic; he wanted to back out.
But this was too well-planned. If they were expecting anyone they would be expecting Matson Glazer-Holliday. No one would expect him.
However, despite his panic, he managed to fill out the forms. Because, higher than the autonomic nervous system, was the frontal lobe’s awareness that the moment Freya crossed over, it was decided.
In fact, that was the reason for sending her in advance; he knew his own irresolution. Freya had been made the cat’s paw of that irresolution; by having her go he forced himself to complete this.
And, he thought, for the best; we must find some way, in life, to overcome ourselves . . . we’re our own worst enemies.
“Your shots, Mr. Trent.” A THL nurse stood by with needles. “Will you please remove your outer garments?” The nurse pointed to a small and hygienic back chamber; he entered, began removing his clothing.
Presently he had received his shots; his arms ached and he wondered dully if they had done it already. Had this been something fatal, administered over the cover of prophylactic shots?
Two elderly German technicians, both as bald as doorknobs, all at once manifested themselves, wearing the goggles of Telpor operators. The field itself, if viewed too long, caused permanent destruction of the retina. “Mein Herr,” the first technician said briskly, “kindly, sir, remove the balance of your garb. Sie sollen ganz unbedeckt sein. We wish not material, no sort, to impede the Stärke of the field. All objects, including your parcels, will follow you within minutes.”
Rachmael finished undressing, and terrified, followed them down a tiled hall to what suddenly loomed as a mammoth chamber, almost barren. He saw in it no elaborate Dr. Frankenstein hodgepodge of retorts and bubbling cauldrons, only the twin perpendicular poles, like the concrete walls of a good tennis court, covered with circular cup-like terminals. Between the poles he would stand, a mute ox, and the surge of the field would pass from pole to pole, engulfing him. And he would either die—if they knew who he was—or if not, then he would be gone from Terra for the balance of his life, or at least thirty-six years.
Lord God, he thought. I hope Freya got by all right. Anyhow the short encoded message signifying everything all right had arrived from her. He knew that.
Abba had told him. Abba reborn—in Rachmael’s own mind. Abba immortal and discorporate, to bond with one of the believers.
“Mr. Trent,” a technician said (he could not discern which one it was; they looked the same), fitting his goggles in place. “Bitte; please look down so that your eyes do not perceive the field-emanations; Sie versteh’n the retinal hazard.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding, and looked down, then, in almost a gesture of modesty. He raised one arm, touched his bare chest with one hand, as if concealing himself—protecting himself against what suddenly became a stunning, blinding ram-head which butted him simultaneously from both sides.
The forces, absolutely equal, made him freeze, as if poured as a polyester as he stood. Anyone watching would have thought him free to move. But he was ensnared for good by the surge passing from anode to cathode, with himself as—what, the ion ring? His body attracted the field; he felt it infuse him as a dissolving agent.
And then the left surge stopped. He staggered, glanced up involuntarily. And thought, Abba, are you with me?
No answer from within his mind.
The two bald, goggled Reich technicians were gone. He was in a far smaller chamber, and one elderly man sat at a desk, an old-fashioned desk, carefully logging from numbered tags a huge mound of suitcases and wrapped, tied parcels.
“Your clothing,” the official said, “lies in a metal basket to your right marked 121628. And if you’re faint, there’s a cot; you may lie down.”
“I’m—all right,” Rachmael said. Abba! he thought in panic. Did they destroy you within me? Are you gone? Do I have to face this alone, now?
Silence within him.
He made his way unsteadily to his clothing. Hands shaking, he dressed, then stood uncertainly.
“Here are your two items of luggage,” the bureaucrat at the desk said, without looking up. He seemed like some ancient nodding sheep, drowsing away at his chores. “Numbers 39485 and 39486. Please arrange to remove them from the premises.” He then brought out an old golden pocket watch on a fob, flipped it open to read the dial. “No, excuse me. No one will be following you from the New New York nexus. Take your time.”
“Thanks.” Rachmael picked up the heavy suitcases, walked toward a large double door. “Is this,” he asked, “the right direction?”
“That will indeed take you out on Laughing Willow Tree Avenue,” the clerk informed him.
“I want a hotel or a motel.”
“Any surface vehicle can transport you.” The clerk returned to his work, broke contact. He had no more info to offer.
Pushing the door open, Rachmael stepped out onto the sidewalk. And stopped dead in his tracks.
Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils. He bent in a reflexive half-crouch. Then, here now on the far side, on the ninth planet of Fomalhaut, Rachmael ben Applebaum fingered relentlessly the meager flat tin, the container in his trouser pocket: this was the wep-x that the Advance-weapons Archives had at last provided him—radically disguised as well as radically beyond anything in the standard arsenals of the UN. The camouflage of the hyper-miniaturized time-warping construct had seemed to him, when he first viewed it, the sine quo non of misleading packages: the weapon appeared to be a bootlegged tin of prophoz from Yucatán, fully automated, helium-battery powered, guaranteed for five-year operation and gynetropic.
Briefly, he huddled in the safe shadow of a wall, the weapon out, now, visible in the palm of his hand. Even the gaily painted half wit-ted slogan of the Central American factory had been duplicated, and, at a time like this, on a stranger-planet in another system, he read the quixotic words familiar to him since adolescence:
MORE FUN
AFTER DONE!
And with this, he thought, I’m going to get Freya back. In its witless, gaily colored way the camouflage-package of the weapon seemed more of an insult, a quasi-obscene commentary on the situation confronting him. However, he returned it to his pocket; sliding upward to an erect position he once again viewed the nebulous rolls of particles in suspension, the cloud masses derived from the molecularization of the nearby buildings. He saw, too, dim human shapes that sped at ludicrously accelerated speed, each in its own direction, as if some central control usually in operation had, at this dangerous time, where so much was at stake,
clicked off, leaving each of the sprinting figures on its own.
And yet they all seemed to understand what they were doing; their activities were not undirected, not random. To his right a cluster had gathered to assemble a complex weapon; with industrious, ant-busy fingers they snapped one component after another into position in expert progression: they knew their business, and he wondered—he could not, in the erratic light, make out their uniforms—which faction they represented. Probably, he decided, better to conclude they belonged to THL; safer, he realized. And he would have to assume this, until otherwise proved, about each and every person whom he encountered here on this side, this Newcolonizedland which was no—
Directly before him a soldier appeared whose eyes glowed huge and unwinking, owl eyes which fixed on him and would never, now that they had perceived him, again look away.
Diving to the ground, Rachmael fumbled numbly for the prophoz tin; it had happened too soon, too unexpectedly—he was not ready and the weapon which he had brought here to use for Freya was not even positioned to protect him, let alone her. His hand touched it, buried deep within his pocket . . . and at that moment a muffled pop burst near his face as, above him, the THL soldier twisted to re-aim and fire once more.
A high-velocity dart waggled its directing fins as it spun at him. It was, he realized as he watched it descend toward him, an LSD-TIPPED dart; the hallucinogenic ergotic alkaloid derivative constituted—had constituted ever since its introduction into the field of weapons of war—a unique instrument for reducing the enemy to a condition in which he was absolutely neutralized: instead of destroying him, the LSD, injected intravenously by the dart, destroyed his world.
Sharp, quick pain snuffed at his arm; the dart had plunged into him, had embedded itself successfully.
The LSD had entered his circulatory system. He had, now, only a few minutes ahead; that realization alone generally took the target out: to know, under conditions such as these, that very shortly the entire self-system, the structure of world-character which had developed stage by stage over the years from birth on—
His thoughts ceased. The LSD had reached the cortical tissue of his frontal lobe and all abstract mentational processes had instantly shut down. He still saw the world, saw the THL soldier leisurely reloading the dart-releasing gun, the rolling clouds of A-warhead-contaminated ash, the half-ruined buildings, the ant-like scampering figures here and there. He could recognize them and understand what each was. But beyond that—nothing.
Color, Rachmael thought as he saw the transformation in the THL soldier’s face; the color-transformation—it had already set in. Swiftly, the drug moved him to ruin; in his bloodstream it rushed him toward the end of his existence in the shared world. For me, he knew, this—but he could not even think it, carry out the steps of a logical thought. Awareness was there, knowledge of what was happening. He watched the lips of the THL soldier become bright, phosphorescent, shiny-pink pure luminosity; the lips, forming a perfect bow, then floated off, detached themselves from the soldier’s face, leaving behind the ordinary colorless lips: one hemisphere of Rachmael’s brain had received the LSD and succumbed, undoubtedly the right, he being right-handed, the hemisphere on that side therefore being the undifferentiated of the two. The left still held out, still saw the mundane world; even now, deprived of abstract reasoning, no longer capable of adult cerebral processes, the higher centers of the left hemisphere of his brain fought to stabilize the picture of the world as he knew it, fought knowing that within seconds, now, that picture would give way, would collapse and let in, like some endless flood, the entirety of raw percept-data, uncontrolled, unstructured, without meaning or order, each datum unrelated to the others: the portion of his brain which imposed the framework of space and time onto incoming data would not be able to carry out its task. And, with the ringing in of that instant, he would plunge back decades. Back to the initial interval after birth— entry into a world utterly unfamiliar, utterly incomprehensible.
He had lived through that once. Each human, at the moment of birth, had. But now. Now he possessed memory, retention of the disappearing usual world. That and language; that and realization of what ordinary and expected experience would presently become.
And how long, subjectively, it would last. How long it would be before he regained—if he did regain—his customary world once more.
The THL soldier, his weapon reloaded, started away, already searching for the next target; he did not bother to notice Rachmael, now. He, too, knew what lay ahead. Rachmael could be forgotten; even now he no longer lived in the shared world, no longer existed.
Without thought, prompted by a brain-area silent but still functioning, Rachmael raced after the THL soldier; with no lapse of time, without a sense of having crossed intervening space, he clutched the soldier, dragged him aside and took possession of the long-bladed throwing knife holstered at the man’s waist. Choking him with his left arm Rachmael yanked the blade backward in an arc that reversed itself: the blade returned, and the THL soldier followed its reverse trajectory as it approached his stomach. He struggled; in Rachmael’s grip he strained, and his eyes dulled as if baked, dried out, without fluid and old, mummified by a thousand years. And, in Rachmael’s hand, the knife became something he did not know.
The thing which he held ceased its horizontal motion. It moved, but in another direction which was neither up nor forward; he had never seen this direction and its weirdness appalled him, because the thing in his hand moved without moving; it progressed and yet stayed where it was, so that he did not have to change the direction of his eye focus. His gaze fixed, he watched the shining, brittle, transparent thing elaborate itself, produce from its central column slender branches like glass stalagmites; in a series of lurches, of jumps forward into the nonspacial dimension of altered movement, the tree-thing developed until its complexity terrified him. It was all over the world, now; from his hand it had jerked out into stage after stage so that, he knew, it was everywhere, and nothing else had room to exist: the tree-thing had taken up all space and crowded reality-as-it-usually-was out.
And still it grew.
He decided, then, to look away from it. In his mind he recalled in distinctness, with labored, painstaking concentration, the THL soldier; he noted the direction, in relation to the enormous, worldfilling tree-thing, along which the soldier could be found. He made his head turn, his eyes focus that way.
A small circle, like some far end of a declining tube, opened up and unveiled for him a minute portion of reality-as-it-usually-was. Within that circle he made out the face of the THL soldier, unchanged; it stabilized in normal luminosity and shape. And, meanwhile, throughout the endless area which was not the distant circle of the world, a multitude of noiseless, sparklike configurations flicked on and achieved form with such magnitude of brightness that even without focussing on them he experienced pain; they appalled the optic portion of his percept-system, and yet did not halt the transfer of their impressions: despite the unendurable brilliance the configurations continued to flow into him, and he knew that they had come to stay. Never, he knew. They would never leave.
For an almost unmeasurable fraction of an instant he ventured to look directly at one unusually compelling light-configuration; its furious activity attracted his gaze.
Below it, the circle which contained unaltered reality changed. At once he forced his attention back. Too late?
The THL soldier’s face. Swollen eyes. Pale. The man returned Rachmael’s gaze; their eyes met and each perceived the other, and then the physiognomic properties of the reality-landscape swiftly underwent a crumbling new alteration; the eyes became rocks that immediately were engulfed by a freezing wind which obliterated them with dense snow. The jaw, the cheeks and mouth and chin, even the nose disappeared as they became lesser mountains of barren, uninhabited rock that also succumbed to the snow. Only the tip of the nose projected, a peak presiding alone above a ten-thousand-mile waste that supported no life nor anything that mov
ed. Rachmael watched, and years lapsed by, recorded by the internal clock of his perceiving mind; he knew the duration and knew the meaning of the landscape’s perpetual refusal to live: he knew where he was and he recognized this which he saw. It was beyond his ability not to recognize it.
This was the hellscape.
No, he thought. It has to stop. Because now he saw tiny distant figures sprouting everywhere to populate the hellscape, and as they formed they continued the dancing, frenzied activities familiar to them—and familiar to him, as if he were back once more and again witnessing this, and knowing with certitude that he would, within the next thousand years, be forced to scrutinize.
His fear, concentrated and directed in this one field, superimposed like a dissolving beam over the hellscape, rolled back the snow, made its thousand-year-old depth fade into thinness; the rocks once more appeared and then retreated backward into time to resume their function as features of a face. The hellscape reverted with awful obedience to what it had been, as if almost no force were needed to push it out of existence, away from the stronghold of reality in which it had a moment before entrenched itself. And this appalled him the most of all: this told him dreadful news. The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known. And this meant that not long ago, when the hellscape first formed, he had been without any life, any at all. Not an enormous force from outside breaking in—that was not what confronted him. There was no adversary. These, the terrible transmutations of world in every direction, had spontaneously entered as his own life had dwindled, faded, and at last—for a moment, anyhow—entirely shut down.