The Pritcher Mass

  "The basis," she said. "We ac­tually can do things. But we have to be emotionally convinced we can do them before our paranormal abilities will work. In fact, that's a sort of ba­sic law for all people with such abili­ties. Stop and think for a minute. Do you think you could use this chain-perception of yours if you suddenly started doubting you could?"

  "Hm-m-m. No," said Char, sud­denly reminded of what Waka had said about most candidates for work on the Pritcher Mass being self-con­vinced about their abilities.

  "Of course not." Eileen went on. "It's like anything above the normal. The creative frenzy of an artist. The way an athlete surpasses himself un­der pressure, it takes a complete, whole-hearted commitment to the idea that you can do what you want to do."

  She went on talking; but Chaz' at­tention slipped slightly from what she was saying. He had just become aware that the vibration of the belt beneath them had gradually in­creased, and the air coming through the crack in the carton was now a breeze moving fast enough to cause a whistle. Holding up a hand to in­terrupt Eileen, he leaned over to put his eye to the crack and look outside.

  What he saw were concrete walls now flickering past rapidly. The belt had increased its speed several times over. Just how fast they were going now, he had no way to estimate; but it was certainly enough that any at­tempt to get off the belt on to the narrow service walkway running along one of its sides would mean se­rious injury or even death. He brought his head back and looked at Eileen in the glare of the limpet light.

  "Where are we?" he asked,

  "Getting close to Central Dis­tributing," she said. "Almost to the place where we get off."

  "Get off?"

  "You'll see," she said. He thought, but could not be sure, that he caught the gleam of a secret satisfaction in her eyes at seeing him sweat out the descent from the belt, without know­ing how it was to be done. He clamped his own jaws shut; and for the next few minutes, neither of them said anything.

  Abruptly, she and Tillicum moved together, spreading the carton wide open, so that they sat exposed on the belt. Eileen rose from a sitting posi­tion into a crouch.

  "Get ready," she said. "There'll be an overflow belt swinging in along­side this one in a few seconds. When it's parallel, get ready to jump."

  "At this speed?" Char said. But she did not answer. He got into a crouching position himself; and a moment or two later saw a dark spot on the right side of the tunnel up ahead, which grew rapidly to reveal itself as the mouth of a connecting tunnel, A belt ran through this, too, curving in as Eileen had said, to paralell the one they were on. But it was several feet below the surface of their present carrier.

  "Ready . . ." said Eileen. They flashed toward the point where the two belts ran side by side. "Now!"

  Chaz jumped, a little behind Ei­leen. Behind him, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tillicum fly­ing through the air as gracefully as a cat. Then they hit.

  He had braced himself against the landing. But it was like coming down onto a barely-filled waterbed. There was none of the impact Chaz had ex­pected; and no tendency whatever for the momentum they carried from the former belt to send them sliding or rolling.

  It was then he realized that this second belt was also moving. Natu­rally, he thought, disgusted at his own lack of imagination, the speeds of the two belts had been matched—or almost—at the point where they changed over. They could possibly even have stood up to make the transfer . . .

  No, on second thought standing up might not have been so wise. Because, Char realized even as he was thinking this, the second belt was decelerating sharply. It had curved away from the main belt into a further tunnel; and now he saw the end of that tunnel, ex­panded into a fair-sized room half-filled with sorting tables leading to smaller belts disappearing off into further tunnel ports.

  "This is a secondary sorting cen­ter—for when the main belt gets overloaded," Eileen was saying; and then they reached the end of the belt where it turned down abruptly to disappear into a slot in the floor. It tumbled them gently onto the floor at a good deal less than slow walking speed.

  "A variable-speed belt," said Chaz, marveling, picking himself up. "How do they do that—"

  He broke off, having glanced back along the belt and seen how they did that. Every five meters or so they had been passed on from one belt to an­other, each traveling at a slightly slower speed.

  "However," Eileen was saying, now back on her feet also, "in sum­mer, like this, it never gets over­loaded. After holidays, when a lot of people come back to their apart­ments at once, is the only time you can be sure to find it working. So it's pretty safe here right now."

  "I'm supposed to hole up here?" Chaz asked, looking around him. "No," said Eileen. "Come along." She led the way, Tillicum beside her, past the sorting tables toward two doors, one marked Men and one Women. She beckoned Chaz to fol­low and led him through the door marked Women. The first room was a carpeted lounge. Within, along one wall was a long mirror, coming to within two feet of the floor and an equal distance from the three-meter­ high ceiling. Eileen touched the two bottom corners of the mirror lightly with the tip of her index finger, stood back and clapped her hands, once. The mirror pivoted about its mid­point, one end retreating into the wall, the other swinging out into the lounge to reveal a hidden room, about the size of the lounge. Eileen stepped over the low ledge of wall into this room. Tillicum followed with an easy leap, and Chaz stepped over after the wolverine.

  "Stand clear," said Eileen. Chaz moved aside and she touched the mirror. It swung back into place, shutting them in without visible exits.

  Chaz looked around. There was a dais at one end of the room, with an elaborate, high-backed chair of what looked like carved wood upon it. Folding chairs were scattered about the gray concrete floor, apart from the dais.

  "I thought you said you weren't a Satanist," he said to Eileen. "Isn't this one of their secret temples?"

  "No, it isn't," she said. "As a matter of fact, it's a witches' hole. But I don't expect you to know the difference."

  His conscience bit him--hard.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I really do appreciate what you're trying to do for me. I'm not trying to needle you. It just comes out that way, some­times."

  "I've noticed that," she retorted, then softened in her turn. "All right. Never mind. We might as well sit down now. We have to wait for someone."

  “Who?", he said. “Or should I ask?”

  "Of course you should ask," she Aid. "It's someone we call the Gray Man."

  "A warlock?"

  "Not a warlock. A male witch!" she said. "A warlock's—well, never mind. Actually, the old distinctions don't matter. He's just another one of us with paranormal talents; but in his case, he stands in a position which links the witch-group to the non-witch-group."

  Chaz frowned.

  "I don't follow you," he said. "All right, then," Eileen answered. "He's our link with the criminal un­derworld, the Citadel—I know, I told you we didn't have anything to do with the Citadel!" she added swiftly. "We don't, we full witches. But the connection has always been there, and sometimes it comes in useful for us. Like now. The Citadel can hide you until you can qualify for the Pritcher Mass. I can't."

  "What if this Gray Man doesn't go along with you?" Chaz asked, feeling for the rock in his pocket instinc­tively.

  "He will," her eyes flashed. "He gives away half his strength by mak­ing himself a servant of non-witches. Any one of us full witches is stronger than he is. I can make him do any­thing I want."

  "Anything?" said a voice that seemed to echo strangely about them, from no particular individual source. Chaz glanced in several di­rections before realizing that the or­nate chair on the dais was now occu­pied. The slim, wide-shouldered fig­ure sitting in it was dressed in a tight-fitting gray jumpsuit; but it also wore gray gloves and shoes, and its head and neck were completely cov­ered by an elastic gray mask that showed a bald, lashless, expressionless face of the sort that might
be found on an old-fashioned department store dummy. The figure looked small; but the size of the chair might have contributed to that. In addition, Chaz found, there seemed to be some distortion in the air about the gray figure, so that it was hard to keep it in focus for more than a few seconds without blinking.

  "Anything I really want and need!" Eileen was answering, fiercely. "Are you challenging me?"

  "Sister—dear sister—" said the voice that seemed to come from all around them as the lips of the mask stayed motionless, "let's not argue. Of course I'm happy to do what any one of you want. What is it this time?"

  "I want this man here kept safe from the law until he can qualify for work on the Pritcher Mass. He'll need to stay in the Chicago area."

  "Just that? Is that all, sister'?" The tone of the omnidirectional voice was ironic.

  "That'll do for now," her voice was hard.

  "It could be done. Of course," said the Gray Man. "I can do anything, let alone that. But should I? You've never been kind to me like some of the others, sister."

  "You know I don't have to be!" Eileen snapped. "I'm not one of the old ones who thinks she needs you. There's no covenant between us. So don't try to play one of your little games with me. You get paid by the Citadel for what we do for you when we feel like it. But you do what we say because you've got no choice."

  "No choice? How sad."

  "Stop wasting time!" said Eileen. "I've got to get back to my apart­ment. Have you got someplace in mind you can keep Mr. Sant, here, until he passes his Pritcher Mass test?"

  "Oh yes," said the Gray Man. "I've got a lovely place. It's in a big building but he won't mind that. It's very quiet and very dark, but he won't mind that. In fact, after awhile he won't mind anything."

  Eileen stared at him for a long sec­ond.

  "Have you gone completely in­sane?" she asked finally, in a low, cold voice. "Or are you actually chal­lenging me?"

  "Challenging you? Oh no, sister," said the Gray Man, spreading his hands. "I've just got no choice. It's the Citadel that wants Mr. Sant out of the way; and he wasn't cooperative enough to stay nicely outside where the train wreck put him. Of course, his coming back in put him on the wrong side of the law and that makes it easier for us."

  "Us? You class yourself all the way with criminals, now?" said Ei­leen. "Not that it matters. What's The Citadel got to do with him?"

  "That, they don't tell me, sister. They only told me to bring him to them just as soon as you brought him to me. And so I must, now."

  "Must? I've had enough of this!" Eileen said. "It's time you remem­bered who you're talking to. Tilli­cum—"

  The wolverine moved—and froze again, as Eileen suddenly flung out her hand to stop him. A hand laser had appeared in one of the gray gloves of the Gray Man on the dais. Holding the weapon, the Gray Man threw back his head; and his laugh­ter beat upon them from all sides.

  "Sister! Dear sister!" he said. "Do you think I'd risk anything like this unless I knew you were powerless? Stop and think. Has anything worked for you lately? Has even the smallest work of the Great Art suc­ceeded for you?"

  "What are you talking about?" said Eileen.

  "You know. You know!" the Gray Man crowed like a delighted baby. "You're in love, sister dear. You've done what no witch can ever do, and get away with. You fell in love and so you've lost your power!"

  "I told you I wasn't one of the old ones!" said Eileen, furiously. "I know what my powers are—natural paranormal talents. I can't lose them by falling in love, any more than I can lose an arm or a leg." Eileen glared at him.

  "Of course you can't! Oh, of course!" crowed the Gray Man. "You can't lose them—but you can't use them. Because you believed the old tales when you were a child; and the primitive part of your mind can't get rid of that belief, can it? Of course love didn't take away your talents, sister dear. But it gave you a psychological block that keeps you from using them. Doesn't it annoy you, sister, to—"

  Eileen stepped back a step and threw up her hands, crossing the first two fingers of the left hand over the first two fingers of the right, before her face, so that she looked through the square these fingers made, at the Gray Man. She spoke swiftly:

  "Light curses dark, and dark cur­ses gray.

  A tree, a rock, a shrieking jay,

  Will hear you moan at break of day.

  Pater sonris maleorum ..."

  "No use! No use!" shouted the Gray Man, rolling around in his seat in laughter. "Words, that's all you've got left now. Words! Now I'll take the man."

  He pointed a forefinger of his free hand at Chaz; and without warning sound and sight were cut off. Chaz found himself elsewhere.

  V

  His first thought was that the transfer had been immediate. But then the feeling followed that per­haps unconsciousness and some time had intervened between the last thing he remembered and this.

  This was nothingness. A dark, solid and endless, encompassed him. He seemed either fixed in it like the corpse of a fly in amber, or afloat in its infinite regions. He could feel nothing on his skin, not even warmth or coolness. He could not even be sure he breathed.

  About him there was absolute si­lence—or was there? He became aware then of a slow, very slow, sound repeated regularly. He was baffled for a moment, and then he recognized it as the beating of his own heart. For the first time a suspi­cion woke in his mind. He made a deliberate effort to turn his head to the right, then to the left. There was no way for him to tell that his head had actually moved; but, as he made the effort, he heard a grating sound that seemed to come from behind him. He knew then what his situation was, even if his knowing was little help.

  The grating sound was the noise of his neck vertebrae in movement. He must be hearing it by sound-con­duction through the bones of his spine and skull. So slight a sound could only be audible if he was in a total isolation chamber of some sort, possibly afloat in some liquid medium, restrained so that he could not feel the restraints; but held securely enough so that he could not free himself. The isolation chamber was an ancient sort of device, dating back into the twentieth century, but not therefore a harmless one. Enough hours in this situation with all sen­sory input cut off and he could lose his memory. Or his mind could be­come a blank page on which his cap­tors could impress any belief they wanted.

  He strained to reach out with both arms and legs, to touch something—anything. But he felt nothing. He could not even tell for sure if his arms and legs had obeyed him, except by the faint sound of creaking muscles that reached his ears. He stopped trying to touch his surround­ings and simply lay there. It was easiest just to lie still…

  He caught himself drifting off into sleep and struggled back to aware­ness on the body adrenaline released by his own alarm. He did not dare sleep. Somehow he had to stay awake and find some way of giving dimension to his situation. If he only had some way of simply measuring time, he could use that as a mental anchor. He thought suddenly of his heartbeats and began to count them. One . . . two . . . three . . . His nor­mal pulse, he knew, was around sixty-five beats per minute in a rest­ing state. Say that in this situation it was even slower, perhaps sixty a minute only. Sixty . . .sixty-one. . . .

  It was no use. He began to get the impression that he was no longer hanging motionless; but sliding off down some vast, lightless slope that went on to infinity. Faster he slid, and faster. He was rocketing through the darkness now, without feeling a thing, headed out toward the very end of the universe …

  He was far off in space, sliding be­yond alt galaxies at some immeasur­able multiple of the speed of light, and accelerating still. He was being carried along by a current, a swift river of nothingness cutting through the stationary nothingness that was the rest of the infinite. He was alone ... no, he was not completely alone. Two bright spots were barely visible, far off on either side of the invisible rushing river that carried him forward so swiftly. The spots grew into shapes and came closer, shining with their own light in the darkness,
until they placed him on either side of the river, traveling un­der their own power, but keeping level with him. They were two he had seen before. On his left was one of the massive snails he had dreamed about when he had been uncon­scious in his apartment, the other was the insectile, mantis-like alien to whom he had talked in the same dream.

  "Help me," he said to the Mantis, now.

  "Sorry," said the Mantis. "Ethics doesn't obligate us that far."

  He looked over at the Snail.

  "Help me!" he said to the Snail. But the Snail neither answered nor showed any reaction, merely kept moving level with him.

  "There's no point talking to him," said the Mantis. "When you talk to me, you talk to him, anyway. And when I talk to you, I tell you what he thinks, as well."

  "Why won't one of you help me?" Chaz said, desperately. "All you have to do is pull me out of this river. Just pull me to the side a little and I can stop."

  "True," said the Mantis. "But among other ethical laws, the one of hands-off forbids us to do that. You have to get a member of the union that unplugged you to plug you back in again. It's a breach of our own contract if we do it."

  The two of them began to angle off from him, dwindling into the black ness.

  "Wait!" Chaz called desperately. "What union is it that I have to get to plug me in again? Tell me the name of the union!"

  "There isn't any!" floated back the tiny voice of the now-distant Mantis. "It hasn't been organized yet."

  They disappeared, like pinpoints of light gone out. Left alone, acceler­ating on the river of darkness, Chaz felt his consciousness dwindling as the snail and mantis had dwindled, shrinking down to a candle-point, to a spark, almost ready to go out.

  If only he had his catalyst, he thought. If he could apply chain-per­ception to this situation maybe he could find a way out, even from this. If he had some alternatives to choose between . . . wait. He could still choose to turn his head, or not to turn his head. He could choose to move his arms or legs or not to move them. He could choose to move his right arm or his left . . .