Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 12

—Pain multiform, unbearable, unending: a gale of knives slashing at helpless flesh, a grey pain-seared universe that bleeds. Daniel Dann is struggling to awake from another of his nightmares. A hell of alien torments assaults his own locked miseries, he is drowning in pain. Oh Christ, stop it!

He struggles up, finds himself in pallid dawnlight in the hot cubicle. The nightmare recedes, leaving him shaking. He tries to focus on the tacky maple chair, the plywood wall. Outside the window mist is wreathing the dim trees.

He is here in this improbable Deerfield, caught up in this insane experiment to take place today. He and the others, who are no longer safe, numbered phantasms but real living people, trapped in their individual predicaments. Oh, no, he doesn’t want this. His hands have found his bag, produced a capsule. Better make it two. Yes, and an antiemetic. Swallow, wait thirty minutes. Why doesn’t he go to the needle? But that he won’t, it’s his last self-respect.

He sits on the sweaty bed looking into the shrouded woods. Beautiful; concentrate on it. Like Oriental art.

But the faces of last night pour relentlessly through his mind. The girls frightened to rigidity, Winona crying bleakly, Costakis cursing and hitting the air with his little fists, Rick hysterical. Noah running about muttering, “A psychic storm, a psychic storm. We may have tapped forces beyond our control!” Only Ted Yost seemed relatively untouched; immunized by his private death perhaps. What the hell had they experienced— each other? The unknown minds in this place? Dann did not inquire but simply distributed phenothiazine shots. “Help us, help us,” Valerie kept whispering. Help us? Save us from this chintz, this plywood, which to her are the tentacles of hostile power. The tentacles perhaps of that Byzantine presence so aptly named Fearing. But what can be do?

He summons up sensible, soothing phrases, fending off a worse threat that he will not, will not think of. This place, this test is inducing mass delusion. Let’s get back to sanity. Since he clearly isn’t going to sleep any more, the thing to do is to get dressed.

But as he lifts a sock, memory bursts through him. Oh God, Margaret! He collapses on the bed, the sock clutched to his face; he is riven by the memory of helplessness and pain and shame! It happened to her. My father went crazy. To mutilate a child. His hand remembers the obscene wound his/her hand had touched. In his head are ghastly clinical photos of ritually mutilated girls. Clitoridectomy. Some tribes practiced it. They did that to her. Unspeakable, bestial.

His throat convulses, threatening nausea. He rubs his fists roughly across his face, thinking, to live on in so damaged a body. What her life must be, the never-ending tension. No relief, no release. I have nothing in common with women… But the beauty of her. The strength. I like cool things…

And Oh God, worse, she knows him now, his shame. I let them burn. The unending instant comes back to him: the smoke and turmoil, the hands gripping his arms that he could have pulled away from, the terrible pause, just long enough, if—if—

If I’d had the guts.

His heart is clenched around a knife-blade, he wishes only that it would finally burst and let him die. An aeon passes so… and then, incredibly, the anguish dims, the cutting edge slides away. The first pearly ease of chemical unreality is sliding into his brain.

His eyes water with gratitude, he takes long shuddering breaths. Presently he cautiously gets up and resumes dressing. Heaven for a shilling; de Quincy knew.

By the time he is splashing water on his face in the latrine he can wonder almost coolly, why, really, so much pain? Other doctors habituated. He never had quite; he has had to hide it and watch that his medical judgment wasn’t affected. But it seems to be worse now, much worse. As if he were some kind of a receiver. Crazy!

Safe in his chemical armor he goes back to his room, playing with the thought. He doesn’t believe it for a minute. But it’s a fact, he could fancy he can still feel them. From around him, emanations of Rick’s complex misery, Ted Yost’s steady grief, Costakis’ painful self-hatred. And from the barracks next door, Winona’s despair, the two girls’ fear-filled struggle in a world that doesn’t want them. Quiet desperation, Thoreau said. But it’s worse than that. These ordinary people hurt. They can’t bear their lives. And there’s no escape.

No escape either from the most hurtful life of all: Margaret. Even behind his magic shield he daren’t dwell on that. But it’s curious; he seems to understand certain things now, as if he’d shared—don’t think it. Yet he senses the answer to the puzzle of her child. She must have tried the one thing she could try. And it was no good. Dann can almost feel the intrusive physicality, the hurtful warmth and contact of the baby. Mother-love is sensual. She couldn’t take that. She can only bear distance, be like a machine. Even color is dangerous; those neutral clothes, that snow-bound apartment. And no reminders of Africa, never. To her, he thinks, neither white nor black is beautiful. To become a machine… hideous.

The sun is gilding the green leaves, people are stirring. In the world of dreams I have taken a part, to sleep for an hour and hear no word/Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art; only the song of a secret bird. Who, Swinburne? Dann wants no part of love nor secret birds, he hopes only for the world of dreams. He gets up and puts a couple of emergency capsules loose in his pocket. People are in the corridor; it’s time for breakfast.

The bus carries them through a meaninglessly beautiful morning. The others are strained and silent. At breakfast only Winona makes a brief try at normalcy. The two girls pick at their food, heads down. Ted and Rick say nothing. Little Costakis’ eyes keep up a wary vigil; he jerks his head cryptically and rearranges his knife and fork. Old Noah makes a hopeful reference to “last night’s psychic experience” and is met by heavy silence. What the hell visited them, what did they hallucinate?

It comes to Darin that he’s irrational. He accepts that he and Margaret experienced—something; but it hasn’t disturbed his conviction that this is all nonsense. The inconsistency amuses him in a remote way. He takes more coffee. All nonsense; hold onto that.

At the far end of the table is the still presence at whom he dare not look. To mutilate a child…

The doors bang and Lieutenant Kirk is with them, proclaiming the imminent arrival of the cable crew. He has had a bright idea. In lieu of the missing biomonitors, why can’t they use some of Deerfield’s polygraph equipment? “Really sophisticated stuff,” he grins significantly.

“No, no,” says Noah impatiently. “Quite unsuitable. Dan, tell him.”

Dann rouses and finds pleasure in explaining that security-type “sophistication” would not be comparable to the multichannel qualitative EEG feedback transcribers Noah has developed. Kirk frowns and goes off to institute another search. Dann winks at Frodo; how reassuring that Deerfield can’t keep track of a dozen crates.

As they get up he risks a glance down the table. Margaret’s gaze passes over him, severe, unchanging. The beauty of her. Does she despise him now? His own face changes uncontrollably.

When they get back to the barracks a Navy communications van and a cable trailer are pulling up. A pickup is parked nearby, holding what looks like a mobile transformer. Two men are hauling wire up the outside pole.

Dann wanders off, thinking; preposterous. God knows how many miles of cables, equipment, man-hours, money—just to isolate eight harmless Americans from setting eyes on the rest of Deerfield. And the whole fantasia is considered routine. There seem to be aspects of his country he had not encountered before. He shakes his head in genial wonderment, safe in his opiate cocoon.

And even more surreal—somewhere off Norfolk an actual submarine is moving out, containing Rick’s unhappy brother. Waiting for this absurd test. Surely he is privileged to view an epic madness. Poor Noah, when all this peters out. Enjoy it while it lasts.

But as he gazes at the limp volleyball net, some residue of last night, or perhaps a curious tension in the air, pierces him.

What if the tests—succeed?

The memory of a sliding glass of water erupts in his head, his knees feel weak. And last night—last night he actually, undeniably fell into another’s mind, and she knew his. A clammy coldness invades him. Is it now so inconceivable that these people could pull numbers out of a distant mind? And if they do? He has taken nothing seriously, he has never considered that they might be in real danger here in this paranoid place—He should—Traitorously his hand has brought a capsule to his lips. He swallows, waits.

“Dann! Dann!” Noah is shouting. The missing biomonitors have arrived.

Unreality closes back around him. He goes inside to find the dayroom in a tangle of wires and opened crates. Men are carrying the recorders into the cubicles which will serve as test stations. The new doors now close off the corridor.

“Help me get these right, Dann. I want the placement of everything as close as possible to the configuration we had. We don’t know what may be important.”

With Costakis’ help Dann goes from room to room, making the final adjustments, trying to remember relative positions of chairs, cabinets, walls. It’s surprising how well Noah has recreated the laboratory setup. “Get it right, Dann,” the old man urges. Dann has forgotten his cold moment and feels only a benevolent glow for the old maniac. Kendall Kirk is being obnoxiously helpful about getting the wires taped out of the way. His Labrador watches from outside the screen door.

Presently it’s time to call the subjects in for their base-line runs. Safe in his official persona Dann beams and nods, refusing to notice their tension, the arousal readings on the tapes. This is just another day in Noah’s fantasy-lab.

As Val goes out she whispers, “Remember.”

Remember what? He brushes it away.

When he is unhooking Rick the boy says suddenly, “Listen. I’m not going to tell them anything. They can shove it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Navy. That fucking Fearing. I tell you, Ronnie’s scared. I’m not going along.”

“But Noah Catledge isn’t in the Navy,” Dann says confusedly, still bemused by good will for the old man. “This is his test just like all the others. It would be a shame to let him down now.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Rick mutters. His tone sounds indecisive.

Dann forgets him. Margaret has come into the dayroom, where the teleprinter is being installed.

As soon as he can Dann hurries out and finds her alone except for an electrician finishing a junction-box by the door. She’s standing by the console, tapping out some message which produces mysterious blue symbols on the read-out screen.

“Testing?” Dann dares to ask.

To his delight she nods serenely. “Checking in.”

“You have a connection to our office computer from here?”

“I have access to the probability program. Your EEG correlations will have to wait till we get back.”

The teleprinter clacks extendedly. She takes the printout, frowns thoughtfully.

“What’s it telling you?” he asks like an idiot.

“Users’ advisory. There’s been some accident in the main banks at Holloway, a lot of cores got wiped. Suspected tampering, etcetera… It doesn’t affect us.”

Her tone is peaceful, quietly amused. The beautiful thing is back, the fragile link between her sad world and his. He stands there watching her ply her magic.

Suddenly she shakes her head at the screen. “Look at that.”

“Something wrong?” He peers at it, identifying what looks like an integral sign surrounded by a great many Ts.

“It keeps giving the date as plus or minus infinity. The ghost.” She chuckles. “I thought I had that fixed.”

She sits down at the console and starts incomprehensible rites.

Feeling marvelously better, Dann strolls back through the corridor and goes outside. Nobody in sight but Ted and Rick shooting baskets again. The sunlight on the greenery is pulsating, vibrant; there’s a brilliance to every outline. Dann hopes he hasn’t dosed himself into some kind of psychedelic domain. It’s after eleven. The first test starts at noon. It will run one hour, a letter every ten minutes. So slow; supposed to be safer in case the submarine group aren’t synchronized exactly. Fantastic…

“Ready, Dann? It’s time to set up.” Noah bounces by with file folders under his arm. Kendall Kirk starts shouting “Come on in, gang!” his voice ringing with false camaraderie.

Even Dann’s muffled senses can’t ignore the painful tension in the air when the subjects are finally in place and being connected up. Rick is dead silent, Ted Yost wears a weird little smile, Costakis is maniacally squaring off his pad into tiny grids. Even Winona is flinchy about her hair. Frodo’s cubicle is empty; she has to be coaxed to leave Valerie. Dann lets his hands work automatically, trying to stay numb. He is still seeing too many colors and he is feeling, or hearing, a peculiar silent humming in the air. It’s me, he thinks. I’ve overdosed.

“Eleven fifty-five!”

Noah takes up his usual place in midcorridor. Dann and Kirk go to the dayroom. Margaret is waiting at her console; she will have nothing to do until the run is over. Dann stands by the closed corridor door; it’s so thin he can hear chairs scrape in the cubicles. Kirk scowls at Margaret and Dann, and takes up a watchdog stance by the front door. Outside on the porch the real dog’s tail thumps. It’s growing hot in the barracks.

At eleven fifty-eight a car stops outside. Major Fearing comes in quietly and sits down by the desk where he can watch everybody. He nods minimally at Dann. Curious how obtrusive the covert style becomes, Dann thinks. There’s an envelope in Fearing’s pocket. Is that the “answers,” the list of numbers actually transmitted? Like a game.

Is there really a submarine lying underwater out at sea, with Ron in it waiting to be shown a card?

“Twelve o’clock!” Noah says briskly in the corridor. “First letter, go!”

Dead silence. The tension is a subsonic thrum, Dann can almost feel his fillings buzz. He will not let it remind him of last night.

Suddenly Rick’s voice bleats out a high-pitched laugh. Dann can hear Noah rushing in and shushing.

“Ronnie’s afraid to go to the can,” Rick says. “He’s so constipated, he’s afraid the water will run up his ass.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Says Noah. “Please try to concentrate. I’m sure he’s attempting to transmit a letter.”

“Oh, he’s attempting,” Rick says sarcastically.

The trembling silence closes back.

Sounds of movement in the cubicles. The subjects must be writing their imaginary letters. They do it differently, Dann knows; the girls produce big single letters ornamented with curlicues; Costakis writes a whole alphabet and circles one. Ted Yost scrawls and crosses out… Dann realizes he is trying to ignore the humming in the air. It’s like an itch, it has to be coming from outside him. His eye falls on the wires running along the walls. That’s it, he has heard about people feeling what is it, a sixty-cycle hum. He feels better.

“Second letter, start!” Noah calls out.

In that submarine, somebody has shown Ron a different card. Dann blinks, trying to suppress the colored haloes on the outlines of things. Scrapings and rustling from the cubicles. Ten minutes is an eternity to wait. Kirk shifts his feet, Fearing sits still. The Labrador’s tail thuds on the steps.

“Third letter, start.”

“Loud and clear!” Costakis calls out suddenly, startling everyone.

“Sssh, sshhh, Chris!”

The wait is excruciating, the room seems to be brimming with invisible energies. Have these crazy tests attracted some alien power, as Noah said? Is a monster forming itself back there in the corridor behind him? Dann can no longer keep himself from staring at Margaret. She looks composed, her eyes downcast; but there’s a line between her brows as if she is hearing something. Is she trembling or is it the quivering air.

“Fourth letter, start!”

Noah’s voice sounds miles away, like an echo chamber.

“Five by five!” Costakis calls out again, and then Winona exclaims in a strained voice, “Doctor Catledge, this is wild! I know we’re getting them.”

“Shshsh! Shsh!” Noah hisses desperately.

Kirk is glaring at the corridor door; Fearing has no expression. Dann sees Margaret shudder and put a hand out to grip the edge of her console. He is sweating in the thickening, pulsing air, he can no longer fool himself about sixty-cycle hums. This is the same terrible tension that surged through them last night, and he is scared to death. It strengthens, rises, as though the room was at the focus of some far-off nameless intensity—

“Fifth letter, start!”

—And at that instant he feels—feels— a presence as palpable as an animal’s nose poking at his mind. Terror spurts up in him, he jerks around to the wall expecting to see something unimaginable coming out, trying to enter his head. But there is nothing. He stares at the varnished wood, one hand frantically clasping his forehead, while under his fingers something— something immaterial—pushes into him.

Hallucination; he is going mad here and now. And then he becomes aware of the strangest fact of all—he is no longer afraid.

He stands dazed, all terror gone, aware only that the invisible intrusion in his head exudes a puppylike friendliness and harmlessness. A bright eager feeling washes through him, like a young voice saying Hello. Transfixed, astounded, he hears from a great distance meaningless words.

“Sixth letter, start!”

The push on him strengthens overpoweringly, the anchors of his mind yield, tear loose—and he is suddenly nowhere, whirling through a void that becomes delirium. For one vertiginous instant he rides an enormous whirlwind, is swamped in a howling, soundless gale above a dark-light world shot with wild colors that are sounds—he is aware of unknown presences in a gale of light that beats like music on his doubled senses, he is soaring in tempests of incomprehensible glory—

—And next instant he is telescoped back across limitless blackness into himself, Daniel Dann, his body striking hard surfaces by the familiar dayroom wall. His head is empty. He realizes he is down on one knee. Someone is calling his name.

He gets to his feet. There seems to be a commotion back in the corridor. Kirk gallops past. “Dann! Come back here!” Noah calls again.

But Dann cannot respond, he is staring at Margaret Omali.

She is holding herself braced upright, looking at Fearing. Her mouth writhes oddly, she swallows with a croak. Fearing watches her intently.

“Hello, hello…” The voice is coming from Margaret but it isn’t like anything Dann has heard before. “Hello? Char-les, yes? Charles Ur-ban Sproul.”

Fearing suddenly gets up. For a moment Dann thinks he is going to attack her, but he only goes to the corridor door, pulls it shut, and locks it, without taking his eyes off her. The room is like a humming vacuum. Dann takes a step toward Margaret and runs into Fearing’s arm.

“Lind-say?” says the weird voice from Margaret’s throat. “Lindsay Barr? Major Drew Fear-ing, yes.” Her mouth stretches in imitation of a smile. “I respect your culture, your concern. Ah, undertow.” The voice trails off in meaningless syllables.

Fearing stands motionless, studying her as if she were a wild animal.

Margaret takes an unsteady step away from the computer, looking around the room. Her gaze fixed on Dann, and she utters what sounds like “Tivel?”

The next second she is sagging, crumpling toward the floor.

Dann lunges just in time to save her face from the teleprinter bar. Her body slides away and hits the floor beside the couch. Dann starts toward her and has his breath knocked out by a solid blow from Fearing’s elbow.

“Keep away.” The feral intensity of the voice is as shocking as the blow.

“She—Miss Omali—has a cardiovascular history,” Dann gasps. It hurts him physically to see her on the floor, alone. He pushes futilely, caught between the console and the stronger, furious man. “Let me through, Major!”

Margaret is sighing shudderingly. Her eyes open, her head lifts and falls back.

“The wind,” she says faintly.

“It’s all right, Margaret,” Dann tells her across Fearing’s shoulder. “I felt it too. You’re here.”

“The wind” she repeats. Then her hand grasps the couch and she scrambles up and sits.

Fearing is instantly in front of her.

“Who sent you here? Where did you learn those names?”

“She’s had a shock, Major, for God’s sake stop this nonsense.” Dann moves, summons authority back to his voice. But it isn’t nonsense, he has a hideous suspicion what has happened.

Loud noises are coming from behind the locked door.

“Major Fearing!” Noah’s voice shouts. “We need your transcript at once, we’ve had extraordinary results!” He pounds harder, rattles the door. “Dann! What’s the matter?”

Fearing straightens up, suddenly calm. “Stand away from her, Doctor.” The tone is deadly. Imagining weapons, Dann lets himself be backed away. Fearing goes to the door and unlocks it. His cold, pleasant voice rides over Noah’s expostulations as he hands the envelope through.

“Doctor Catledge, a matter of concern to me has come up here. I would appreciate it if you will evaluate your results in the other section of the building. The doctor must remain here. Kirk, stay with them and see that this door stays closed.”

Margaret is whispering something. “I was… away.”

“I know. It’s all right,” he whispers back.

But it’s not all right. That gibberish she uttered, those names—they were meaningful to Fearing. Some of his secrets, like last night, she read things out of his mind. And Fearing, what can he think but that she’s some sort of spy? Oh God—the crazy bastard is dangerous—

The door is closed; Fearing is surveying them thoughtfully. “Doctor, I suggest you sit down.”

Still studying Margaret, Fearing straddles the computer chair and sits down facing her, apparently perfectly at ease.

“Look, Major—

Fearing holds up his hand, smiling. He seems to have dismissed Dann from some calculation. “Miss Omali, your approach puzzled me.” His face is a mask of patient sympathy. “I believe I understand. Please be assured that we have an excellent record of protecting people who come to us. Perhaps you’d like to meet one or two, to reassure yourself? I think that could be arranged.”

She stares at him. Her control is back. “I have not one idea what you’re talking about.”

Nor has Dann—and then suddenly he sees. This maniac Fearing has decided that Margaret is, what do they call it, a defector. Trying to defect to “our side.” He thinks her ravings were an attempt to signal him by revealing knowledge. Nightmare proliferates around him. What can he do to her, lock her up? Ruin her life? But she doesn’t know anything—

“You’re crazy,” Margaret is saying remotely. Dann can sense the fear under her calm. The air is flickering with tension.

Fearing smiles charmingly. “Perhaps you are concerned about your little boy? We could have him here with you in an hour or so.”

Oh God. Dann sees the cords in her neck spring out.

“Don’t you dare touch my son.”

“Look here, Major, as this woman’s doctor I’m telling you to stop this right now. You’re on the wrong track, you—”

Fearing doesn’t look at him, but goes on contemplating Margaret as if she were an algebra problem.

“This is not the appropriate setting, perhaps,” he says patiently. “You would feel more secure away from these people.” He touches his wristwatch.

“No!” Margaret cries.

Dann plants himself in front of her. “I tell you you’re endangering her heart. If you don’t believe me, get Harris over here to check.”

Footsteps outside. Dann swings around to see a heavy-set man in fatigues at the front door.

“An excellent idea, Doctor,” Fearing says unruffledly. “Deming, put in a call for the ambulance and tell Doctor Harris to meet us.”

“No!” Margaret jumps up. “I’m not going anywhere!”

Dann is struggling with horror, the room seems brimming with fear. How can this maniac have so much power? He’s so relaxed, he’s sure we’re helpless. But not Margaret, not unless they’re prepared to shoot me—I mean that, he realizes, hearing himself say “You will not—”

The front door opens again and Kendall Kirk bursts in saying urgently, “Sir! Excuse me, sir, but you have to know this.” He halts in back of the couch, behind Margaret. “They did it. I tell you those weirdoes picked up the whole six-letter group. They can do it, they can read your mind. They’re dangerous as hell. She’s reading your mind right now.”

Dramatically he points at Margaret.

“You’re out of your mind, Kirk,” Dann protests. “Miss Omali isn’t even one of Noah’s subjects.”

“She’s hiding it,” Kirk says savagely. “She’s one of the strongest psis in the bunch. I know.”

Fearing continues studying Margaret impassively. His nostrils are tightly curled in, as if there were a nasty odor in the throbbing, thickening air. Dann can guess the revulsion going through that secretive mind. But surely he will reject Kirk’s lunacy?

“Those, ah, terms you mentioned, Miss Omali,” Fearing says at last. “Am I to understand that you, ah, divined them from my mind?”

Oh God, paranoids accept magic. This is bad. And the damned humming feeling is worse every minute. He can’t get hallucinations now, he has to protect her—

“I don’t read minds,” says Margaret coldly. But she is shaking.

Fearing just goes on watching her. Maybe he has, what, psi powers himself, Dann thinks. Horrified, he feels the energy in the room building, pouring into him. The air resonates. Stop it, stop it.

The teleprinter suddenly clacks, making everyone start. Fearing didn’t change his level stare.

“Major, you have to believe it!” Kirk clamors. “They’re dangerous! Look—watch this!”

He lunges over the couch and lays desecrating hands on Margaret’s wrists, jerking them together behind her, prisoning them in one hand while his other hand goes high over her head. Fire spurts—a flaming butane lighter is falling straight into her lap.

Dann doesn’t know he has jumped until his fist connects with Kirk’s face. He hears Margaret make a dreadful sound. From the side of his eye he sees the lighter swerve in midair and fly at Fearing’s head.

And Margaret herself—goes away.

Staggering in abnormal dimensions in the pulsing room, Dann sees her go. Her bodily eyes roll up and pale complex fire streams out of her, an energy which he instantly understands is her, her life. He sees it form and shoot away meteorlike into a dark abyss of non-space which for an instant is open to his senses—she is going, going—

“Margaret!” he cries, or tries to cry out, knowing that he is losing her forever, feeling some unearthly focus of power brush him, unmoor him—

—And he wrenches free, breaks out, gathers himself and his fifty years and his wretched useless love and hurls his life wholly after her through the closing gap to nowhere.

An instant or eternity later he regains something like consciousness. He is hurtling through blackness that is empty of time or space, seeing only before him with what are no longer mortal eyes the pale fleeing spark that is her life. He tries to call out to her, having no voice but only his bodiless will to comfort her, to slow her terrified flight. He does not wonder, he knows only that his life continues, that he is able to race after her through dimensions of unbeing that may be, for all he cares, Hell or a dream or interstellar space. “Margaret!”

Far ahead, the living spark seems to curve course, and he swerves after. Is there some faint structure to this darkness? He cannot tell nor care. He is gaining, closing on her! “Margaret, love—”

But suddenly everything is gone—he has crashed into stasis, is assualted by light, colors, sensations. Floundering, he perceives dimly that this is embodiment. His naked life has become incarnated. A sense which isn’t vision is showing him the image of a landscape in which are immense, trembling globes. Utterly bewildered, he rolls or tumbles, his mind filled with jelly life. “Margaret!” he bubbles weakly, and then sees—knows— her radiance is there, flaring among the moving gelatinosities.

He tries to wobble toward her. But as he does, her pale light gathers itself and spins out and away to nowhere—and he wrenches his life free and follows, is again only a hunger in the void pursuing a fleeing star.

Hunter and hunted, their bodiless energies flash across blackness which is light-years, ricochetting down a filament of negative entropy which they cannot know supports their lives—interlopers on a frail life-beam extended toward Earth from a burning planet a hundred million million miles away. Of all this the essence that was Daniel Dann knows only that the spark of Margaret’s life is still there, still attainable if he can force his being to greater speed or whatever the unknown dimension is.

He is gaining again! The path through nothing has curved, he cuts the vector—and then with an inertialess crash he finds himself once more embodied in matter, stunned by the impact of alien senses.

This time it is all greyness, lit by a watery blue spear; he is in some sort of crowded cavern. “Margaret!” he whistles, or emits in molecules, striving to sense her. And yes. She is there too, her lacy living energy is springing out among a thicket of grey folds. He lunges toward her on nonlimbs.

But again she gathers herself, is gone—and he launches after her into unbeing, finding the impossible familiar now. This hallucinatory after-life seems to have some sort of regularity or dreamlike laws. Are they passing through real space, existing briefly on alien planets?

No matter; the chase accelerates, she caroms wildly down the structured lightlessness in which is nothing, not even a star. It comes to him with joy that he is holding out, can hold out. He will not lose her! But as he exults, he becomes suddenly aware that the void they fly in is not quite empty. Somewhere ahead or to one side, he cannot tell, lies a huge concentration of darker darkness—something blacker than mere absence of light, a terrifying vast presence colder than death. It is Death incarnate, he thinks, he is gripped by fear for her. With all his might he tries to send a voiceless warning to her frail flying star.

Next instant their flight bursts into stasis again. But this time it’s shockingly comprehensible. He is incarnated in a sunlit green world under a blue sky. Earthlike meadows are around him, a bird sings. He feels breath, muscles, heartbeat—yes, these are his strong gold-furred limbs. He is a big animal crouched in a small tree.

And there below him—so close!—a white deerlike creature is cropping the grass; pale energies are streaming about its silver horns.

It is she, he has caught her at last!

“Margaret!”

But to his horror he hears himself uttering a fanged roar, and feels his carnivore’s muscles-exploding him into a murderous leap. His huge talons are unsheathed, descending on her! He screams, trying to wrench himself aside in midair as her white head comes up. One glimpse of her dark eyes staring—and then she has gone out of that body, fled away on the wind of nowhere.

He flings his life free of the beast-form barely in time to follow her dwindling spark. She is doubly frightened now, in total flight from everything, from life itself. He must push all his waning strength to hold her in reach.

And closer now, too close, the huge eclipsing black dreadfulness he had sensed before is looming through the dimensions at them. Is she aware of it! Turn, turn away!” He tries to hurl warning, willing her to veer aside.

For an instant he thinks she has heard him, she is turning— but no; appalled he sees that she has turned not away but toward the deathly presence, is flying straight at it.

He throws himself after her, understanding that she has chosen. Too much pain, too much; she is fleeing from life forever, she wants only to cease.

“Margaret, don’t! Come back, come back!”

But the rushing life-spark does not turn, the great destroying blackness looms ahead. Desperately he tries to intercept her course, he is racing terrified in the icy aura of the thing. “Margaret!”

It is no use, he is too slow, too far behind; he sees the glimmering meteor that is her life plunge into black, be swallowed, and wink out. He has lost her. He is alone.

And at that instant the huge shadow before him changes subtly, takes on the semblance of raging lurid smoke—and he sees again the image burned across his life. The black flame-spouting walls, the walls into which he had not gone, in which he had once let perish all that he loved.

It is all there again, the burning darkness and the death; his being recoils in mortal fright. He cannot—

But her brightness has gone in there! He no longer knows who she was or what he is, but only that something intimately precious has again been devoured by evil—and this time he cannot bear to fail. He will follow, he will get her out or die trying.

He gathers every terrified shred of his existence and hurls himself at the blackness where she went, a mite of energy launching itself at the eater of suns.

For an instant he feels himself in black cold that burns horribly, and knows death is ahead. So be it. Then he smashes against negation, a mighty barrier of nothing that shatters him into a million fragments and hurls him back instantly away across frozen forever, a tiny blur of improbability smeared across the void—

—Which coalesces, unthinkably, into light and feeling, into what he finally recognizes as the old human body of Daniel Dann, lying propped up on a bare floor.

Machinery is humming near him. He isolates an active hammer at his sternum, and his human mind vaguely identifies an emergency cardiac stimulator. Did he dream? No; it was all real, only elsewhere. He is, he supposes, really dying now; he has received a mortal blow, though he is not in pain. He has lost something vital, lost it forever. Memory of black burning comes to him. But strangely it has no power. I tried, his failing mind thinks. Even if it was too late, I did try.

Movement is visible through his eyelashes, his lids are in terminal tremor. While he waits to die he lets himself look, identifies a moving whiteness as the legs of medics. Incredibly, he seems to be still in the dayroom at Deerfield, on the floor. No one is attending to him. At the end of his vision a figure suddenly rises away, revealing the side of the dayroom couch.

A long dark arm is trailing from it. The hand rests limp on the floor.

Her arm. She is here. His heart thuds against the mechanical stimulation.

“Sorry, Major,” says a voice. Dann recollects a white-haired blur: Doctor Harris. “We’re much too late,” Harris goes on. “She’s gone.”

Dann can feel nothing more, he is only dully grateful for a glimpse of her pure young profile, as they lift her onto the stretcher. The blanket drops. Touch her carefully, damn you, treat her with reverence. He remembers what he knows and wishes fiercely that he could protect her body from the obscene curiosity to come.

“Hey, the doc’s coming around,” says a loud voice over his head.

With horror Dann realizes that it is referring to him. Why isn’t he dead? Is it possible that he has to live? To go on and face the emptiness, the grief and wretchedness of his days? No. He wills himself to let go. Cease, heart.

But hands are moving him, medication is traitorous in his blood, he cannot slip away. And yet he can still feel the weird humming tension in the air. Is it possible somehow to wrench loose, to flee out of his body as he had before. Was that delirium, or his drugged cortex raving, a stroke? Whatever, he is too weak now, he cannot find the way. He is trapped here, to suffer the grey years. No way out.

Involuntarily he groans aloud, and a miracle happens.

The push that he had felt before presses into his mind—an invisible invading presence that somehow takes away all fear. But this time it is far stronger, more resolute. A real yet friendly power is thrusting him out of himself as a knife scoops out an oyster. Perhaps it is death; he feels only infinite relief as he lets himself be unbodied. And as he dissolves, a voiceless message seems to form in his mind: “Don’t be afriad, a short time only. I am Giadoc.”

Madness! But so real and warm is the presence that with his last human consciousness he feels sympathy for the alien thing, wishes to warn it. Then his life slides out of the world.

—Into darkness, bodiless speed; he is whirling instantaneously through a void he seems to have known before. But this is velocity so great it is simple being, he is only a vector hurtling somewhere, sucked to a destination—and then he is there, telescoping into some order of unreal reality.

As he coalesces into what might be existence, his vanished human senses form one last perception: he is falling into a world-wide inferno, lit by jagged radiance, a blizzard of radiance from an exploding sun: For a noninstant he is aware of great gales howling, of a storm inhabited by monster flying forms, great bats or squids that trail terrifying fires. He is collapsing or condensing into hell.

Next moment the vision is gone, he is in, is a corporeal something under peaceful daylight. But is is all too much, entirely too much, he is worn out. Something vital has gone, he does not recall what, only knows he can bear no more.

All but dead with grief and terror, the being that had been Daniel Dann abandons consciousness. His forty-meter vanes fan out in disarray, his jets are lifeless. He tumbles limply while the currents take hold and carry him helpless toward the lethal downfall of the eternal winds of Tyree.