The Pritcher Mass

by Gordon R. Dickson

  The earphones of his suit spoke suddenly. But it was not a call for him. It was Lebdell Marti, speaking to Ethrya—he heard the call only be­cause of the open channel between the phones of his suit and hers.

  "Ethrya? This is Leb. Are you up on the Mass?"

  "Hello?" She answered immedi­ately, almost as if she had been wait­ing for the call, instead of out some­where on the forelimb of her bear. "What is it, Leb? I'm on the Mass with Chaz Sant. I thought it might help him if I took him out in part­nership for a try."

  Marti did not speak for a long sec­ond.

  "I see," he said then. "Well, I'm sorry to interrupt; but some of those supplies from the ship last week must have gotten stored in the wrong place. Either that, or they weren't sent. Can you break off and come down to the office to help me find out which?"

  "I'll be right down." There was a faint click in the earphones as Marti broke contact. The helmet of Eth­rya's airsuit turned toward Chaz in the cable car. "Sorry, Chaz. You're going in, too?"

  She had already touched the con­trols of the cable car and it was glid­ing along the silver catenary curve of the cable toward the nearest mast.

  "No," said Chaz. "As long as I'm suited up anyway, I think I'll stay up here a bit and go on trying."

  "Whatever you want." The car touched the mast and stopped. She got out. "Better keep your phones open on the general channel, though. If you should have another halluci­nation, you want somebody to hear you and get you down."

  "Right," he said, and watched her go. The cage she entered slid down the mast below him to the deck and he saw her shrunken, foreshortened, airsuited figure go across the deck to the nearest elevator housing.

  Left alone, high on the mast, he tongued his phone over to the gen­eral channel. He heard the hum of its particular carrier wave tone, and felt a sudden, gentle coolness against the skin inside his right elbow. For a second, he was merely puzzled—and then instinct hit the panic button.

  He flipped his phone off the gen­eral channel with his tongue, but the damage was already done. Some­thing had already started to take hold of his mind—something that was not the Mass, but a thing sick and chemical.

  "Help!" he thought, and for all he knew, shouted inside his airsuit hel­met. He reached out for aid in all di­rections—to the attic of his memory, to his own talent, to the Mass itself . . . "Eileen! Eileen, help me! They've . . ."

  His mind and voice stumbled at the enormity of what someone had done to him. He felt his con­sciousness begin to twist into night­mare.

  "Chaz! Is it you? Are you there?"

  "Eileen," he mumbled. "I've been drugged. I'm up on the Mass and they've drugged me . . ."

  "Oh, Chaz! Hold on. Hold on to contact with me. This time I won't lose you—"

  "No use," he muttered. She was still talking to him; but her voice was becoming fainter as the nightmare crowded in. "Starting to drift. Need help. Need Mass . . ."

  He thought longingly, with the little spark of sanity that was still in him, of the great silent symphony he had heard the first time he had been out here. Nothing could twist that rush of unconquerable majesty. Only, he could not find it now. He could not feel it when he needed it . . .

  But he could. His feeling for Ei­leen had triggered his demand for contact with it. After that the thrust of his desperation was sufficient. Far off through the gibbering craziness that had surrounded him and was carrying him away, he heard its first notes; the music of the Mass-force. It was coming. And there was nothing that could stand before it and bar its way.

  IX

  It came like an iron-shod giant striding through a nest of snakes. It came like all the winds of all the stars blowing at once upon the smog and fog and illness of little Earth. It came like the turning wheel of the universe itself, descending upon the eggshell of a merely man-made prison.

  The voice of the Mass, unbarred, unmetered, roared through Chaz' body and mind as it had roared once before; and the effect of the drug was swallowed, quenched and drowned utterly. Like a leaf in a tor­nado—but a clean leaf, now—Chaz was snatched up and whirled away.

  For a while he let the Mass-force fling him where it would. But, gradu­ally the memory of Eileen speaking to him returned, along with the de­sire and need to hear her speak again; and for the first time he began to try to ride the tornadic force that had saved him.

  It was like being an eagle whose wings had been bound from birth, and who was only now learning at last to soar, in the heart of a storm. There was no teacher but instinct; no guide but the waking of dormant re­flexes; but slowly these two took over. It was what the faculty of chain-perception had been meant to be all along—but what Chaz had not really understood it to mean until now. The true definition of the choosing by which useless and wrong actions were discarded, and the use­ful and true caught, to be linked to­gether into a cable reaching to a de­sired conclusion.

  So, finally, he came to control the force of the Mass—or at least, close enough to control so that he was able to form his own image of it. That im­age was of a massive dark mountain of whirling wind, emerging from the great crystal he imagined growing in the nutrient solution of the Mass it­self. He had ridden the various cur­rents of that wind, now safely up from its base where he might have been blown to tatters, or whirled away forever; and he still had a far way to climb to its peak. But the dis­tance yet to go did not matter. He was on the way; and by making use of as much of the Mass-force as he already controlled, he could reach Eileen easily.

  He rode the force, reaching out with his concern for her.

  "Eileen?" he called.

  "You're back! Chaz, are you all right?"

  He laughed with the exultation of riding the Mass-force.

  "I am now," he said. "I just got a good grip on the horse I'm riding, here. It almost bucked me off at first."

  "What? I don't understand you."

  "Didn't you ever read those old western—never mind," he said. "It doesn't matter. What matters is, we're back in touch."

  "But what happened, Chaz? You were in trouble, weren't you?"

  "Somebody rigged the airsuit I'm wearing out on the Mass. It gave me a shot of some hallucinogen. But the Mass helped me counteract it. I'm fine. What about you? Where are you, Eileen?"

  "In the Citadel. But I'm all right too. They're even going to let me go, soon, they say."

  "In the Citadel? You mean it's a place? I thought it was an organiza­tion."

  "It's both. An organization first, and a place second, even if the place is—well, never mind that, now. I've got something I want to tell you, Chaz—"

  "But just a minute. What did you start to say just now about the Cita­del, the place? Where is it, anyway? What's it like? Finish what you started to tell me about it."

  "I meant—even if it is something like a real citadel. I mean, a fortress. The name of it is the Embry Towers, and it looks like any big con­dominium-office building from the outside. Inside, it's different. And it's somewhere in the Chicago area, I think."

  "Where's Tillicum? Is the wolver­ine there with you? Have they got you locked up, or what?"

  "No, Tillicum's not here," her voice answered. "I could have him if I wanted him, but I don't. I've given him to another witch in my coven for a while. I said they were going to let me go. Now, Chaz, listen. Let me talk. This is important."

  "You're what's important," he said. "Anything else comes second—"

  "No, I mean it. I want you to know about me and the Citadel. Look, I told you the truth. I don't belong to it. But all the members of our coven did deal with it. The Citadel could help us stay hidden and be left alone by other people. We were always used to dealing with some kind of organization—well, never mind that. The thing is, the Citadel made a deal with me to do something for them. I was to move into your condominium, get to meet you, and try to block your talent with mine—put a hex on it, in the old terms—when you tried to use it to pass the test for work on the Mass."

  "You?" he sa
id.

  "Yes—I'm sorry, Chaz. I'm so sorry; but I didn't know anything about you, then. It wasn't until I ar­ranged to meet you that night in the party rooms, that I began to understand you, and what you believed in. You weren't drunk that night, really. I made you drunk—and not even with craft, but with drugs. I wanted you to talk, because the more you told me, the more hold I'd have on your talent. Dear Chaz, you shouldn't even tell a witch your name, don't you know that? Much less tell her everything you believe in."

  "It didn't do any harm," Chaz said. "I'm here on the Mass, any­way."

  "But I meant harm—then," she an­swered. "I wasn't any different from the people in the Citadel; I was just as deadly toward you as that sick, exiled man the Citadel must have bribed to blow up your train when I couldn't stop you. But never mind that. What I want you to know is that you didn't get away from the Citadel just because you were shipped out to the Mass. There're Citadel people there, too."

  "After what just happened," he said grimly, "you don't have to tell me. Who are they, out here? And what is the Citadel, anyway? Every­body talks about it as if it was a name and nothing else."

  "That's all it is," she said. "A name—for the few people on top of things, with a lot of power and a lot of connections. Does it really even mat­ter who they are? All through the cen­turies there's always been some like them, who took advantage of other people to get what they wanted for themselves. The Gray Man's the only one I know, and he can't be too im­portant. But there are others out there on the Mass."

  "What do they want from us, any­way?" he said. "What do they want from me? I've never bothered them."

  "Except by wanting to work on the Mass."

  "Lots of people want to work on the Mass. What happened? Did I take a job they wanted for one of their own people?"

  "No," she said, "but you're differ­ent. You're dangerous to them. I can't explain too well why, Chaz. But the Citadel has people with paranormal talents, and it's got computers. It can put the two together to get a rough forecast of what any person might do to its plans; particularly any person under captive conditions, the way you all are, out there on the Mass. They run a check automatically on anyone who tries to qualify for work on the Mass."

  "Why? What's the Mass to them?" he demanded. "There's no market for illegal goods and services here, is there?"

  "Of course not. But they want the Mass for themselves—what did you expect? They want to be the people, or among the people, who get a chance to emigrate to a clean world, if the Mass can find one."

  "And they think I'm going to stop them? What're they afraid of?" A wild thought struck him suddenly. "Eileen, do I have some special paranormal talent I don't know anything about? Or more talent than anyone else—something like that?"

  "Dear Chaz," she said, “You do have talent; but nothing like that. If my talent hadn't been greater than yours, for instance, I couldn't have blocked you on those early tests you took. It isn't paranormal abilities that makes you dangerous to them. It's the way the linked events work in a probability chain—the very thing chain-perception discovers. The alternatives anyone perceives are deter­mined by his own way of looking at the universe—his own attitudes. For some reason, your attitudes are differ­ent from other people's. All wrong—or all right—or something. From the Citadel's standpoint they could be all wrong; and the Citadel didn't want to take the chance."

  "The man you call the Gray Man was my examiner on the Pritcher Mass tests," Chaz said. "A man named Alexander Waka. He gave me a special test and made it pos­sible for me to be here."

  There was a second of no response from her.

  "Chaz?" she said then. "Is that right? It doesn't make sense."

  "It's a fact," he said grimly, "square that with the fact that, ac­cording to you, I've got no unusual talents."

  "Oh, Chaz!" There was a little pause, perhaps half a breath of pause. "How can I get the point over to you? It's you I'm worried about. I want you to take care of yourself and not let anyone hurt you. You've got to realize how it is. No, you don't have any unusual talents. If I hadn't—if I felt differently about you, I could have used my ability to make you do what I wanted almost without thinking about it."

  "Thanks," he said.

  "But you've got to face the truth! Talents are something else. Chaz, I want you to live, and the Citadel would just as soon you didn't—unless you can prove useful to them. That's the only reason they're holding off. You just might turn out to be useful. But the odds are against you. Can you understand that?"

  "That I can believe," he said, deeply, remembering back through the many schools, the different places, the childhood in his aunt's house—even when his uncle had been alive it had been his aunt's house. "All right, tell me what can help me, since there's nothing special about me."

  "All right," she said. "Chaz, to me you're more special than anyone I've ever known; but we have to face facts. You're talented, but there are more talented men and women, particularly on the Mass. You're bright, but there are brighter people. Everything you've got, other people have, and more. There's just one thing. You're unique. Oh, everybody's unique, but they don't operate on the basis of their unique­ness. They don't really march to the tune of their own distant drummer and stand ready to deal with the whole universe single-handedly if the uni­verse doesn't like it."

  "I don't know if I understand you," he said.

  "No," she said, `that's because you're on the inside looking out. But it's what makes you dangerous to the Citadel, as far as the Mass is con­cerned. The Mass is subjective—it can be used by anyone who can work with it; and you see things differently from anyone else, plus you've got this ter­rible drive to make things go the way you want."

  "Who said I had this terrible drive?"

  "I did. Remember I was the one who sat and listened to you for four hours that night in the game rooms, when you told me everything there was that mattered to you—"

  She broke off. Her voice fell silent inside him. The physical sound of a call buzzer was ringing in his airsuit helmet—the general call signal. An­grily, he opened the communications channel to his earphones.

  ". . . Sant? Chaz Sant!" It was the voice of Lebdell Marti. "Can you hear me? Are you all right up there?"

  "Fine," said Chaz.

  "You were told to keep your phones open on the General Chan­nel, but they weren't when Ethrya checked just now. Are you sure you're all right? You haven't been feeling any different from normal?"

  Chaz grinned wolfishly inside his helmet.

  "I had a little touch of dizziness just after Ethrya left," he said. "But it only lasted a second. Good news. I've made contact with the Mass. I'm ready to go to work on it."

  No answer came for a long second from the phone. Then Marti spoke again.

  "You'd better come in now," he said. "Yes, I think you'd better come down. Don't try to do anything with the Mass; just come in. Come right to my office."

  "If you say so," said Chaz. "I'll see you in a few minutes."

  He cut off communications on his phones again.

  "Eileen . . . ?" he said.

  But there was no response. Eileen was once again out of contact. It did not matter. He was sure now he could reach her any time he really wanted to do so.

  He went down into the platform, desuited, and descended to Marti's office. Waiting for him there was not only Marti and Ethrya—but Jai, also. Marti, at least, was in no good hu­mor. He questioned Chaz several times over about exactly what he had experienced after Ethrya left him. Chaz, a veteran of such inquisitions since he had been ten years old, calmly repeated that he had felt a slight dizziness after being left alone by Ethrya; but that this had cleared up immediately and afterwards he had made contact with the Mass. He was factual in his description of what it had been like, once contact had been made; except that he made no mention of his conversation with Ei­leen.

  The interview followed classical lines, according to Chaz' experience. Having failed to make any dent in Chaz'
story, Marti fell into a tempo­rary silence, drumming his fingers on his desk top.

  "Of course," he said at last, "we've only got your word for it that you made Mass contact. That, in itself, could be a hallucination like the hal­lucination you evidently had the first time you were up there with Jai. Don't you think so, Jai?"

  "I suppose," said Jai. The tall man looked, Chaz thought, somewhat un­comfortable.

  "In which case, with two halluci­nations in a row, we probably shouldn't let you up on the Mass again for fear you might hurt your­self permanently—"

  "Wait a minute!" said Chaz.Marti broke off, staring at him.

  "You may be Director here," said Chaff, grimly. "But maybe you'll tell me if it's normal practice to take a man off the Mass permanently be­cause of a first instance in which you only suspect he hallucinated, and a second instance in which he says he made contact. What did you do when the other workers first came down saying they'd made contact? Did you suggest they'd been halluci­nating? Or did you take their word for it? Should I ask around and find out, in case you've forgotten?"

  Marti's face went darkly furious. But before he could answer, Ethrya had stopped him with a small hand on his arm.

  "We're only trying to protect you, Chaz," she said. "Isn't that right, Jai?"

  "That's right," said Jai. "And Chaz, there are reasons other than hallucinations for barring people from the Mass. The Director has to have authority for the good of all the work being done here. On the other hand . . ." he looked at Marti, ap­pealingly.