He had a few other things to tell me, such as, several of his people were tracking down suppliers of large apes because that’s what sloks were. When taken from D to Earth they became their former docile selves. The process was like ducks and imprinting. Accompany an ape into D and he became your fierce slave and he was also more intelligent than in his own dimension.
After spending much time looking at color cards I selected a blue one and told Solvo where he could find the bodies of the twins. I carefully described the cavern where they were hidden. It wasn’t long before his people reported back. The twins couldn’t be reached because of the heavy concentration of sloks and hostile goths in the area. Pat and Mike would have to stay dead a while longer.
In the meantime, Gorwyn had escaped in spite of the large number of hunters combing the desert.
“Where do you think he would go?” Solvo said to me, but I had never successfully second guessed my insane acquaintance and said as much.
Solvo flew home in the jet with me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Not about anything. But don’t mute for a little while longer.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Everyone has superiors. Mine forbade me to lock you up for the duration of this situation, otherwise I’d have done so without a qualm. You were the honey that attracted the first real flies, and so you were left to continue.”
“What about now?”
“Don’t mute and you’ll be all right. We’ll get them. Another thing I regret is that you can’t direct us to the oil camp.”
His advice about my not muting wasn’t bad but neither was it good. If I muted, the oil camp would be my destination while as long as I roamed Earth I stood in danger of being grabbed by the enemy. No matter what I did, short of staying in jail, I was in some kind of jeopardy. Solvo might not think so but then he had never met Erma.
I presumed he muted to New Mexico after he parked the jet on American soil. As for me, I took a bus to the nearest express office and bought a ticket east.
Croffs niece didn’t seem surprised to see me, might even have been pleased. She was feeling talkative and in a good mood and told me all about the earthquake at a nearby shopping center the day before. She was convinced the world was coming to an end.
“What do I care, really?” she said. “They’re a trifle. Go ahead and take them, though I can’t imagine what you want with them. Don’t tell me a girl your age rides a motorcycle.”
“Do you hear a copter?”
“Why, yes, I believe I do. It sounds quite close, as if it’s right above the house.”
A heavy hand was already rapping at the front door as I pulled the goggles over my eyes, which was just as well since it drew the woman’s attention away from me and spared her the trauma of seeing me vanish.
Like a wraith I faded into an obscurity so total I might even have lost some of my substance. It was difficult to say. The feeling of solidity was still there but I moved so effortlessly and rapidly I didn’t want to take the time to check myself out. It seemed that seeing was indeed believing. In the universe through which I traveled, nothing was stationary but all was in motion. Little bits of matter were as significant as worlds because I could discern them and comprehend the service they rendered.
Here the planets spun so fast they resembled flat disks falling like a never ending row of dominos. The colors of the rainbow were everywhere around me, pastel and glittering, flashing past me like an assembly line of fragile pieces of light. Earth was a revolving coin that enveloped me, appeared to flash on over my head and then was gone as the disk that was Gothland dropped over me only to make way for Waterworld. Nothing on the planets touched me. They moved too quickly, or my molecules dodged too agilely, or it could have been that I had become something other than human.
I saw reality descend like sprinkling rain, scatter like disturbed dust, zoom from an invisible cannon to spread until the infection of tangible things was a milling crowd. Not a creator, but not an intruder either, I drifted through chaos, accepted the proposition that it was sometimes better to take situations as they seemed to be and never mind their actuality. If I could scrutinize a small bit of the impossible, why not go ahead and do it, and if my purpose in putting on the glasses in the first place had been to escape my enemies, did that mean I was bound to do nothing more?
My subconscious must have been overly active because I couldn’t make a fast decision as to where I would go first That I knew the way to everywhere was an understatement Like a miniature tornado I whirled in space while my thoughts took me first one place and then another, and in the meantime I looked about me.
I saw Lamana and Tedwar in the clinic in New Mexico and Doctor Oregon was standing behind Tedwar’s chair while Chameleon bedazzled the boy with her diamond eyes. They were safe and so I looked elsewhere and even moved a millimeter or two but no more because then I would have left the boundaries within which I wished to remain. I could have gone vast distances with a few steps. Now I merely leaned forward a little to see that strange planet where Orfia Kint and her two associates were voluntary captives.
Behind the green double ring was the usual brief oasis leading to a piece of ground enshrouded in what looked like a cumulus cloud. Within the cloud, in a cleared area, stood two men and a blonde woman. The planet wasn’t fit for habitation and wouldn’t be for eons and so the oasis provided a way station for intruders where they might linger untouched and unchanged. The three were also unknowing. Deep in suspended animation—a condition of the cloud—they stood in relaxed stances and waited. No matter what happened outside their tiny reality, they would go on waiting until someone came and drew them out Three sleeping beauties whose last thought had probably been an anticipation of the touch that would bring them to wakefulness. As I looked at the woman I experienced an unwelcome flood of resentment.
I didn’t enter the double ring but diverted my glance, sought out less threatening objects, located Kisko and Wheaty. To my astonishment I found they were almost like myself.
“Hi, kid,” said Kisko. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“At least!” I said. “Is this what being nutty has done to you?”
“It was there in my mind all the time but I just wouldn’t look. You should know. There’re none so blind, etcetera.”
“Why should you have such special vision?”
“Jealous because I don’t need glasses?” he said.
“Sort of.” I gestured toward Wheaty. “What about him? Don’t try to tell me he has super vision too.”
“I can speak for myself, if you don’t mind,” said Wheaty. “If you’ll notice, I’m tromping on the boss’s heels. He’s doing everything and I’m just skinning along in his treads. Me, I can’t see much no matter where I am.”
To Kisko I said, “I assume you could have come out of D long ago. Why didn’t you?”
“Actually I haven’t had my head together for very long, but I’ve done considerable observing and now I think it’s about time we cleaned up.”
Looking askance at Wheaty, I said, “I could have trusted you, couldn’t I? It was Deron all along.”
“You did what you had to do and you did me a favor. Getting back on the job was the medicine I needed. And we know all about Deron.”
We stood almost literally in the middle of nowhere and conducted our chat and by and by we left off remarking about how unusual, sterling and priceless we were and got down to serious subjects. It seemed Kisko had a yen to get into the pipe at the place in Gothland where I found the invisible shield.
“We can’t get in,” he said. “That shield keeps us out.”
“Is that all that’s bothering you?” I said and led them straight to the spot. “They added this elbow later,” I said, pointing at the inner section of pipe. “The oil flows through it while in this other section they have machinery and weapons. It’s probably heavily guarded.”
“What good can we do in there as goths?” asked Wheaty.
“Then don’t change when
you go in,” I said.
Kisko looked at me with a jealous expression. “Can you do that? Do you have that kind of control?”
“I think so, with these glasses on.”
“But we’ll fry like eggs if we go in there as people!” said Wheaty.
“Just copy everything I do,” I said. “Stay behind me and take part of the universe with you as protection. See? Pick it up in your hands.”
“It’s like trying to grab fog!”
“Gently,” I said. “Put your hand out and hold it still. Feel that? It’s light but it’s there. Now hang onto it. Spread it all around your body. Got it? Okay, let’s go in now.”
They read us coining in. One of them was watching a blinking red light, growling and snarling as he tried to adjust his chest holster in order to get off the first shot at us. Our appearance in human form didn’t give them too much pause. They were afraid of what would happen to them if they were apprehended. Every goth was ticketed for a long stay behind bars, so they reacted quickly when Kisko, Wheaty and I drifted through their shield and settled down onto our feet on the floor of the compartment as though we were perfectly solid. The sloks knew only that they were being attacked by strangers. Eventually they would be mutated to their less intelligent, original forms and be returned to the zoos, labs and jungles from which they had been taken.
The enemy complement was about half goth and half slok, sixteen or eighteen in all, and each got their shots, slashes and swipes off before we three made a move. It didn’t matter. Nothing they did could touch us because though we seemed substantial we were in another field of space. However, we could make contact with their dimension by using the strange matter around us. One by one their weapons were taken up and tossed through metal walls that might as well have been made of air. It was all in the seeing. There were plenty of ways to think and move and we had our choices. If, for instance, I desired to pick up a gun and send it floating through a bulkhead, all I had to do was aim it along a myriad of obvious tracks or courses boring straight through three-D matter. Since there was nothing in its way the gun went into the wall and out the other side.
That didn’t make the sloks and goths timid. Probably with visions of Earth prisons in their heads, they attacked us in full force only to end up bruised and battered on the floor and against the walls as we allowed them to move through us. They didn’t surrender until we finally ignored them and started doing things with the knobs and dials on their machinery. We left a little bit of our uncanny traveling atmosphere upon each object we touched so that their positions were sealed.
Meanwhile regulators, pumps and gauges in the main pipe ceased operating. Airtight doors slid shut preventing the contents of Waterworld from coming through. The oil flow stopped, at least for a while. No doubt Gorwyn had an emergency backup unit planted somewhere that could open the doors and start the pumps again. The last thing we did before leaving was to place a seal on all the walls and floor.
“See how I do it?” said Wheaty. He made motions with his hand as if he were shoving something invisible away from him, and it probably looked that way to the sloks and goths, but I could see filmy matter depositing itself firmly against a bulkhead. Kisko and I helped him finish the rest of the compartment after which we exited and closed up the seal.
“That ought to hold them until we can send some law in here after them,” said Kisko. “I’ll get Solvo onto it right away. Oh, yes, I know him. West of the Mississippi there’s no bigger or better government outfit.” He dusted his hands. “Okay, that’s one good deed done. Now what’ll we do?”
He couldn’t leave 4-D, as he called his present habitat, and expect to get back into it. “It was only a fluke that I got here in the first place,” he said as we drifted and observed what went on in that small portion of reality. “My mind was so fractured I was able to sneak in. I felt as if I was about half a centimeter wide so it was like I slid in under the door. But being here was good therapy and it wasn’t too long before the illogic of the place made the reality of 3-D turn right side up. Things finally started looking normal again.”
“How long was it before you could have come out?” I said.
“A few weeks after I entered, but I didn’t because I knew I couldn’t accomplish much back home on Earth so I stayed to see if anything would turn up here. Once in a while I slipped back into dementia and did a little raving, but now I’m all cured.”
We went to Gorwyn’s mansion and there was no problem involved in our finding it since great and small things sailed under and past our scrutiny as slowly or as rapidly as we desired. In all the memorabilia and forgettable items that we noted, I spied the mansion and suggested we see if Solvo’s men or the Egyptian police had put Gorwyn’s machines out of commission. I doubted if they had. Solvo would want to save them for later study.
There were guards all around the outside of the house but nothing had been done inside so we floated into the heavily locked laboratory, placed a seal upon everything mechanical after which we headed west once more. I would know how to find the place again if ever I wished to. There was a blue haze across the desert that was easily discerned as I wore the goggles Orfia Kint had devised. It would be easy to find a ring leading here.
It was early evening when we came to rest on slippery ground above the oil camp in Pennsylvania. The pipe still dumped black gold into the tub below which meant that either the last of the oil was running out or Gorwyn had used another energizing unit to continue production. In no way could he have cleared away the seal we placed in the junction in Gothland.
“Let me try something,” I said and attempted to pull the big blue ring that trembled and vibrated as it was held in place by the metal pipe. I pulled gently and although the ring didn’t come to me it shifted several meters so that the pipe was diverted from the tub and poured its contents down toward the barracks. The workers came running outside only to be caught in the deluge. A dozen or so lost their footing and were swept on down into the valley where they managed to crawl out of the flow and lay panting and gasping on the saturated ground.
“See if you can do that again,” said Kisko. “Give it another nudge.”
I tried but the pipe was wedged in a shallow indentation in the ground and the ring didn’t seem to be able to lift it. “I need Lamana,” I said. “She’s a friend and an agent and—”
“We know,” said Wheaty. “Remember, we kept our eye out for you.”
“Uh, oh, look who just came out of the barracks,” said Kisko.
Wheaty nodded. “You know, in all our wanderings this is the first real glimpse we’ve had of him.”
Deron had probably been on the defensive most of his life. Maybe psychoanalysis would have divulged the reason for his cowardice, maybe not, but whenever he had a weapon to hand he would most likely use it at the slightest provocation. Today he seemed to prefer an old police revolver that made so much noise when he fired it that those who weren’t caught in the flow of oil were petrified with shock. Or their behavior might have been caused by the sight of me and my two friends standing untouched in the middle of the muck with a hazy glow around us.
Adding to their fear was the fact that Deron fired his gun straight at us with no effect. He was too far away to recognize us but, since we kept rising a few centimeters off the ground and then descending, he probably knew we were good targets. As he fired, he came closer, side-stepping independent flows of oil, leaping over or wading through others until at last he was near enough to really see us.
He didn’t care about me, gave me no more than a flickering glance, but when he recognized the curly haired man behind me and the hound-dog visage of the last of our trio he suddenly stopped and reacted. His fingers opened and the gun fell to the ground.
Kisko didn’t mean to leave 4-D. Perhaps thoughts of the past became too painful for him too quickly. It could have been that the desire to lay hands on the traitor was all at once overwhelming. An expression of longing on his face, he dropped everything that held him
out of Earth, took a stumbling motion forward and fell all the way onto the ground of the camp. Wheaty could do nothing but follow him and in another moment both were lying and looking up at me.
“I didn’t mean to leave you alone,” said Kisko.
“I can bring you back in,” I said, and tried, but he wouldn’t come no matter how strongly I pulled.
“I guess I don’t really want to go back in,” he said. “It was a fine place to take the cure and now I’ve got business here.”
“Okay, at least let me help put you a step ahead.” I picked up the gun Deron had dropped. I smiled at him as I did so and he gave a squawk of fear and headed down into the valley at full speed.
“Let’s get him,” said Wheaty, accepting the gun when I handed it to him.
“You’re not going to use that,” said Kisko.
“On him? No, but I’ll use it on any of the others who try and interfere. He’s going to sweat it out in a cell before the law gives him what’s coming to him.”
They didn’t need me, particularly after I floated inside the barracks, gathered up all the weapons and threw them in the oil tub. I was grieved that neither Erma nor Gorwyn was there. The last thing I did before leaving was to heave as much electronic equipment as I could into the strongest oil flows and the rest was rendered inoperable by a 4-D seaL
23
I moved out of view of the camp, drifted a few dozen kilometers and then stepped onto a highway in normal D. Putting the goggles in the back pocket of my jeans, I started walking toward an overpass beside which bobbed a few friendly looking rings. I would discover later that four or five hours in 4-D was my limit. If I wanted to stay longer I’d have to become utterly fractured in the head as Kisko had been. Now he was sane and out of the dimension and could never return unless I loaned him the glasses.
Lamana wasn’t too surprised to see me. Eating dinner in the clinic’s cafeteria, she nodded to me and continued as if nothing unusual had happened or ever would happen. “I made it easy for you to locate me by coming here and staying,” she said.
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