The Pritcher Mass

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He paused, glancing at the image of the square below. Chaz also looked. Judging from the reaction of the crowd, most of them were paying attention. It was a good bet, thought Chaz absently, that all through the Chicago areas, most of the others there were listening as well.

  "These saboteurs," the Director went on, "have attempted to black­mail you all into exiling some per­fectly innocent and valuable members of the sterile community. Their aim in this was to cripple a scientific project which is dear to the spiritual and eth­ical hopes of all our people; in that it offers hope—not to us, but to some chosen few of our children—who with its help may one day find a new Earth on a clean, untouched world; and by avoiding the mistakes of our profli­gate ancestors, set the human race once more on its upward road.

  "But before I say any more, let me take a moment to reassure everyone that our police, acting on informa­tion supplied by citizens who were approached by the saboteurs but who took their information immedi­ately to the authorities, have located all four of the other explosion sites prepared by the saboteurs—"

  "That can't be right," said Chaz out loud, without thinking. "No one inside the sterile areas knew the number or location of the other sites; and only one man outside, besides myself, knew until three hours ago."

  "I will now give you Police Head­quarters on remote for a report by the Police General himself," said the Director hastily, and sat back in his chair, turning to Jai. "Did they hear him?"

  Jai looked past Chaz. Chaz, turn­ing, saw a red-haired, bulky man at a small table bearing commercial-sized broadcast recorders. The bulky man shook his head, and walked up, past Chaz, to the table.

  "No chance," he told Jai and the Director. "I've got his chair in a dead zone. I can feed him into the screen with a directional pickup any time you want; but outside of that, he's simply not here to the rest of the equipment."

  "How long are you giving the Po­lice General?" asked the Director, looking at his watch.

  "Four minutes," said the bulky man. "Then we return to you and you do the introduction to the Assis­tant Director from the Mass, here." He nodded at Jai. "While we've got a moment, though, Mr. Director, if you'd move your chair a little closer to the Assistant Director's, it'd help in the reaction shots. We want to close in on your face, looking con­cerned, when he makes his more im­portant points. He'll hold up one forefinger to signal us; then I'll sig­nal you, Mr. Director, and you listen for the line you want to react to . . ."

  Chaz let his attention drift from the conversation at the table. He looked at Eileen and smiled; and once more she managed a smile in return. The thin young man covering them with the laser continued alert.

  Chaz' mind had been working slowly with the situation, trying to lay out logic-chains on the possi­bilities. But he found himself unable to hold the chains in his mind. It was hard to concentrate in the face of the realization that everything was all over. For himself, he thought, it hardly mattered. Nobody would mourn him after he was dead; and as for the dying itself, that hardly mat­tered more to him than his death would to anyone else. He had been something like a cornered rat in his reactions all his life; and in a way he had always been prepared for the time when the rest of the world would turn on him and destroy him. He knew that whenever his own time came he would go out in a red rage, which was not the worst way to die, no matter what was being done to you at the time. But of course, there was Eileen. Jai was clearly planning that she should share whatever con­clusion was in store for Chaz; and she would not find dying such an in­different matter as he did—especially if it was some kind of prolonged death.

  He looked at the man with the la­ser and put his hand on the edge of the chairseat, under him. Maybe by throwing the chair at the thin young man he could distract the gunman long enough to reach him and get the weapon away. Then he might be able to live long enough to shoot Ei­leen. She would not be expecting it and from him; it would be mercifully swift. She would never know what hit her.

  ". . . Now that you have all heard what the General of Police has had to say," the City Director was talking again, "I want to introduce you to a man some of you may already have recognized in the group shots of this table—Jai Losser, Assistant Director on the Pritcher Mass. To those of you who are surprised to find the As­sistant Director of the Mass back here on Earth, I should explain something that has been a closely guarded official secret, and which is revealed now only because of the se­riousness of the situation. This build­ing, the Embry Tower, which the sab­oteurs would have had you believe contained the chief members of the reputed criminal organization popu­larly named the Citadel, is actually the confidential headquarters on Earth for work with the Pritcher Mass. Assistant Director Losser is now going to speak to you because the chief saboteur, whom we have under arrest here, together with the woman who was his first assistant, was himself a worker on the Mass. Mr. Losser."

  Jai leaned forward, smiling softly, as the City Director sat back in his chair.

  "I'm honored to speak to the citi­zens of Chicago District," he said pleasantly, "although I wish the oc­casion was a happier one. The chief saboteur the City Director men­tioned is a man named Charles Roumi Sant, formerly employed in this District. A man whom I regret to say I once liked, and of whom I had a very high opinion."

  He gestured with one hand toward Chaz. Chaz, watching the image be­tween the two upright antennae, saw his own face appear many times life-size on the south face of the Embry Tower. It showed there only a minute, then was replaced by a brief close-up of the District Director, showing concern on his features, fol­lowed by a return to a head-and-­shoulder shot of Jai.

  "Even now," Jai said. "I hate to condemn this man. Although tests show him to be completely sane and responsible, it is hard to believe that any sane man could plan on ex­posing hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents to the Rot, simply to gain a position on the Pritcher Mass that would insure his being one of those that would emigrate to a new world—once such a world had been found."

  He waved again at Chaz. Once more, Chaz saw his own face flashed on the building. The sound of the crowd voices mounted. Jai's features replaced those of Chaz.

  "The details are somewhat techni­cal," Jai said. "Briefly, however, Sant tried to gain a position of authority on the Mass by creating an illusion that he had contacted not only a habitable world, but one with intelli­gent aliens on it. This hoax was ex­posed when I went out with him dur­ing a shift of work on the Mass, and made mental contact with the illusion myself. While it first seemed to have some validity, a closer exam­ination showed nothing really new or alien about the world or its so-called alien inhabitants. Working with an artist, I have managed to produce actual-size representations of those aliens as Sant imagined them. I have those representations here; and you will be shown them. Notice how they are nothing but a common Earth insect, and an equally common Earth mollusk, en­larged."

  He waved his hand to the left side of the table, where Chaz saw two large two-dimensional cut-out sort of figures. One was very much like the Mantis and the other was very much like the large Snail from the cartoon world. He looked back at Jai.

  "I didn't know you were with me," he said to Jai. "You actually are good, aren't you? But why drag that part in—wait, I understand. You've got to find some way of justifying what happens to me to the non-Cita­del people back on the Mass. You've got to have some reason for shutting off contact with the cartoon world I added to the Mass."

  Jai did not answer. He had paused to let his viewers look at the repre­sentations. Now, he went on to his audience.

  "When I told Sant I knew this was a hoax," Jai said, "he admitted it; but he begged to be kept on the Mass. I was forced to refuse. He came back to Earth. Back here, he went outside the Chicago District and gathered a crew of saboteurs with the idea of blackmailing the citizens of Chicago into creating a threat to this building and its workers. It was his hope that he could use that threat in turn to blackmail us here into putting him back on th
e Mass in a position of author­ity."

  Jai paused and smiled across the table at Chaz. For a second Chaz saw his own face, looking oddly un­concerned, imaged on the building in the screen between the antennae. Then Jai was back on the screen.

  "But we," said Jai, "trusting in the good common sense of our Chicago citizens, decided to call his bluff; with the result that, as the Police General has explained, we have now nullified all his attempts at sabotage; and he, with the woman who abetted him, is now in custody."

  Another flash of Chaz' face on the side of the building below. The vol­ume of sound from outside was turned up; and the voice of the crowd was an ugly voice, becoming uglier at the sight of Chaz' image.

  "Sant and the woman will now be sent under police escort from this building through the streets to Police Headquarters," Jai said. "You may all return to your homes, satisfied that everything is secure and justice will be done. Please, I beg you, any of you who have strong feelings about what Sant might have suc­ceeded in doing, take my word for it that in our courts justice will indeed be done. Do not be tempted to take it into your own hands . . . "

  The crowd roared like a senseless beast.

  "I trust you," said Jai, with a sad smile, "your General of Police and your District Director trust you, to allow these criminals and the two police officers who will be escorting them, to proceed in an orderly man­ner from here to Police Headquar­ters—"

  Chaz rose with a great effort, and threw his chair at the young man with the laser, knocking him down. Following the chair as fast as he could—but it was almost as if he moved in slow motion—Chaz was on top of the gunman before he could recover and had his hands literally on the weapon. But before he could get to his feet a number of people were holding him. He was pushed to his knees and the laser wrested easily out of his grasp. He was hauled to his feet again by two men in police uniforms. They marched him back to his chair, shoved him down into it and let him go. He sagged there, feeling too heavy to move.

  "Not Eileen . . ." he said to Jai, in dull protest. The sound of his voice roared back at him from the screen; and he realized that he had probably been imaged there ever since he had picked up his chair to throw it at the man with the laser.

  Jai came around the table. The handsome face bent down to him; and Jai's voice also echoed from the screen, speaking not merely to Chaz, but to the crowd below as well.

  "I'm afraid so, Sant," said Jai, sadly. "Your accomplice, like you, will have to face justice for the way both of you have threatened in­nocent lives."

  Jai smiled gently, regretfully. One of the lines from Keats' poem came floating back into Chaz' mind, with changes: "Le Beau Jai Sans Merci hath thee in . . ."

  With that, at last, understanding broke through the thick pressure clouding Chaz' mind. Abruptly he realized what was happening; and on the heels of that realization came immediate reaction.

  So it was that the red fury he had expected at the end finally exploded within Chaz. It was then, in the ulti­mate moment, that he went berserk.

  XV

  But not by the simple, physical route alone. His causes had been larger than that.

  They were all he had suffered un­der, erupting within him at once. The sad hypocrisy of his aunt and cousins, the stifling closeness of domed streets and sealed buildings, the oppression of a race that seemed to sit with folded hands, waiting for its end. All this, plus his own loneli­ness, his own rebellion, his one gain of someone who actually loved him, in Eileen—whom Jai had been plan­ning to include in Chaz' destruction at the hands of a deluded mob, while Chaz sat by, bewitched out of cour­age and sense.

  Chaz reached for the Mass-on-­Earth, as he had found it when he had hung above the platform beyond Pluto, wanting to return to Eileen, on Earth. Once more he touched it and drew strength from it. With that strength, he threw off the dead weight of hopelessness that Jai's Craft had laid on him; as easily as a passing touch of drowsiness could be thrown off when there was work needing to be done. Almost, he had been ready to go to the mob like a lamb to the butchers.

  His head woke. It went light and clear; and suddenly things seemed very obvious and very easy to do. Ig­noring the thin individual who was again holding the laser on him, he got up once more from his chair—but this time it was everybody else who seemed to be in slow motion as they reacted to his moving—turned, and went back to the table with the cam­era and recording equipment. He brushed the bulky man there easily aside and spoke directly into the equipment.

  "Red Rover!" he said. "Blow the other explosive charges. Blow them all, now. Every one."

  He heard his voice thunder from the image between the antennae; and caught sight of the man with the laser coming at him, shoving the weapon almost in his face.

  "Don't be foolish," he said. "I know you've got orders not to shoot. They want the crowd to get me."

  He shoved the thin man away and turned back to the equipment.

  "Sorry, people," he said to the people of Chicago District. "But you'd have to face up to the Rot, sooner or later. There are more ex­iles outside all the time. How long do you think it would have been be­fore they began sabotaging the ster­ile areas on their own?"

  He turned away from the equip­ment and went back to the long table. It was full of people ignoring him; all talking on the phone, order­ing buildings to be sealed, rooms to be sealed, hovercraft to pick them up and carry them away from Chicago. Only Jai was not talking. He was watching the others instead, with a sad, dry smile. But he dropped the smile and turned to face Chaz as Chaz came up to him.

  "Why?" he said to Chaz. "What good did it do you? Once those other holes are blown in Chicago's sterile defenses nobody will be able to save you from the people, even if anyone wants to."

  "Never mind me," said Chaz. "Don't you understand it's all over? It'll never be business as usual for your group again. Didn't you realize how it was? I could lose; but there was no way your Citadel could win?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Jai.

  "The Pritcher Mass," Chaz an­swered. "It can't do you any good, no matter what happens to me. If you were there with me mentally when I went from the Mass to the cartoon world, you have to remem­ber they told us that."

  "They?"

  Chaz threw his arm out to point at the cut-out figures of the Snail and the Mantis.

  "Those?" Jai made a dismissing gesture. "We'll find some other world."

  "You'll find—" Chaz stared at him; and understanding, even of Jai, woke suddenly in him. "I'll be damned! You're self-brainwashed, too. In spite of all that paranormal talent and intelligence, you've been burying your head in the sand like the rest!"

  Jai looked back down at him with a closed face.

  "Let me show you something," said Chaz. He reached for the Mass beyond Pluto—and found the way blocked by Jai's mind and para­normal strength. "All right. We can do it right from here."

  Chaz turned his mind once more to the Mass-on-Earth, found it, and reached out through it to the cartoon world, to the Mantis itself and the Snail. He found them, feeling Jai's mind with him, watching.

  "They don't want to believe it," Chaz said, at once out loud to Jai and through his mind to the Mantis on the cartoon world. "Can I call on you once more to tell them your­selves that the road to any other world is closed? That there's no place we can escape to?"

  "This once more," said the Man­tis.

  The Mass-on-Earth stirred and shifted under the transparent bubble roofing over the top floor of the Em­bry Tower; and all over Chicago, reality changed. Not for Chaz and Jai alone, but for everyone there. It was a little change, and at the same time, a big change—as if an extra physical dimension had been added, so that there was no longer merely length, width, height and duration; but also away, binding Earth and the cartoon world together.

  The Mantis and a Snail appeared over the city along the "away" di­mension. In one sense they were the cardboard cut-out figures of them­selves, now become solid and alive. In a
nother sense they were enormous, standing in mid-air be­tween building tops and heavy cloud layer, visible to all of Chicago's ster­ile areas. But in a final sense they were even more than this, because they also stretched from Earth clear back across the unbelievable dis­tance of light-years to their own world, where in actuality they still were. And yet, these three things they seemed to be, were really only one. Topologically, in the "away" di­mension, all three manifestations were only aspects of single unity—like three views of a torus, the angle of viewing made them look to be one thing, rather than another.

  "It's quite true," said the Mantis to everyone in the Chicago District, while the Snail beside him, without moving, slid endlessly over a thin surface of eternally flowing liquid. "There are other worlds; but not for your race, until you can show your right to them."

  "You can't stop us," said Jai—and it was a brave statement. With the "away" dimension now visible around them, Jai's talent glowed vis­ibly, like a small sun among the feeble lamps of the other human beings around him. But that glowing was a tiny thing compared to the burning greatness of the Mantis and the Snail.