He drank in these impressions and savored them, treasured them, cherished them. He wanted the moment to last forever and to have that incredible, unutterable sweetness on his tongue.
But Kyr raised the second globe and it opened before him. He took the upper part of the globe and handed it to Adjani, and then handed one to Gita, and in turn to Spence. Spence saw that there were several of these bowls nestled inside one another and Kyr withdrew one for himself. Then he poured from the lower half of the globe a liquid that sparkled in the firelight.
When each bowl had been filled with the liquid Kyr raised his own bowl and began to speak once more. “All rivers run to the sea; all roads reach their destination. In every beginning lies the seed of the end. But in Dal Elna there is only Beginning. In the many there is One.”
Kyr brought the bowl to his lips and drank. Spence and the others followed his example.
The strange liquid had no taste that Spence could describe — not sweet, at least not as sweet as the first substance had been, but not bitter either. It touched his lips with a tingle like a mild current of electricity applied to his skin.
He rolled the effervescent drink on his tongue and felt as if he had tasted cool fire—the stuff seemed almost alive. He swallowed it and felt its playful sting all the way down. He drank again, more deeply this time and let the cool fire dance on his tongue. The effect made him want to laugh out loud or burst into song. He felt the inner fire seeping into his veins, quickening his heart. Suddenly he was more alert, more conscious than ever in his life.
He looked through new eyes at the world, and what a world he saw! Though it was night and dark he could see the tall slender ranks of bamboo all around, saw the firelight dancing on their thin shafts. He saw narrow, tapering shapes of the leaves with the delicate saw-toothed edge individually and precisely drawn and duplicated. Each was a thing of exquisite, inexplicable beauty.
Above the leaping flames of the fire he saw an insect. In his heightened vision it became suspended in motion, moving in slow, graceful sweeps as its tiny, transparent wings beat the air. He could see the glitter of light scatter across its multi-celled eyes, and the iridescent gleam of its carapace. He saw its legs dangling as fine threads beneath its sectioned body and the gentle curl of its antennae along its back.
Raising his eyes he saw the heavens, at first dark, now almost bursting with the light of countless stars—each star shining with clear, crystalline light, hard-edged and fine with beams piercing as needles.
Everywhere he looked he saw some new wonder, some commonplace revealed in a way he had never seen it before. The ordinary had been transformed into the extraordinary, the normal into the supernormal.
His friends still sat in the same positions as before, but he saw them wholly changed. He saw not their outward appearance only, but now he saw their inner selves unmasked. And each was larger, more fair and strong in every way. They sat wrapped in shimmering auras of gold and violet, as if clothed in living fire. In their faces he glimpsed unfathomable tenderness, and something he could only call wisdom burned out from their eyes, but a wisdom purer and finer than any born of Earth.
Spence looked at Kyr and saw not the elongated Martian but a creature not unlike himself and the others, resembling them and yet slightly different in subtle ways he could not name.
And where before Spence had felt radiant, he felt now as if he were throwing off sparks. He caught fleeting glimpses of the colored rays as they streamed from him to blend with the light of the others.
Spence felt full to overflowing with the joyous, scintillating, reverberating love he felt for his friends. He felt the power of their love for him and for one another, and it was a mingling of deep strong water which flowed out in all directions from the center, like a fountain or a spring with an endless source.
But he sensed another subtle yet still distinct presence too. This presence interwove all the others and even his own, to hold them and to overlay them at the same time without losing its own distinction. In that heightened awareness he sent out the fingers of his mind to examine this presence. He extended his mind toward it and tentatively touched it. Instantly his mind recoiled, staggered as if by a blazing bolt of lightning.
He knew then that he had touched the Source itself.
He felt dizzy and intoxicated, completely shattered by that single brief encounter. Then his mind began to fill with thoughts strange and wonderful and terrifying in their clarity and force.
He saw galaxies swinging in the frozen deeps of space, flung like pebbles on an endless beach; he heard the roar of silence drowned by the music of the galactic movement. The song of the stars—all heaven was filled with it!
He saw worlds upon worlds springing into existence before nameless suns. On each world life leaped, up, sprung from the voice that had awakened it. Plants of every variety, animals of every description, human creatures as different as could be imagined, yet all possessing the divine inner spark that was the immutable stamp of the Maker.
He saw his own world as one minute fleck against the darkness, and knew that his life, and the lives of every man who had ever lived, was but a single faltering step in the Great Dance of Heaven.
The Dance flowed and ebbed according to the will of the Maker, and all moved with him as he moved. There was not a solitary figure in the Dance that was not in his plan—from the seemingly random shuttling of atoms colliding with one another through the limitless reaches of empty night, to the aimless scrabblings of an insect in the dust, to the directionless meandering of a river of molten iron on a world no human eye would ever see— all was embraced, upheld, encompassed by the Great Dance.
In the many there is One. At last Spence understood.
One Dance, but it took all space and time to describe it. One life, but it took all living things to define it. One mind, but it took all thought to know it. And still it could not be described, defined, or known in its entirety. He knew why Kyr and his kind called it the All-Being, for it transcended all that it touched even as it stooped to create it.
And though it spawned a billion worlds, gave voice to a trillion celestial lights, directed the course of a quintillion lives, the All-Being was One: inseparable, indivisible, indissoluble, immutable. All-Wise, All-Merciful, All-Holy, All-Knowing. Infinite and eternal…
The rest went spinning by Spence in a dizzying flood of thoughts and feelings and images of power and grandeur untold. He was left gasping and breathless by his single fleeting contact with the God he had long denied, but could deny no longer.
Spence bowed down before the Presence in all humility and surrender, acknowledging it as the first spontaneous act of worship he had ever performed. As he did so he knew that it knew him as a friend and that he had nothing to fear from it now or ever. He felt loads of guilt and shame roll away from him and he heard a voice inside his mind say, “Hear me, son of dust. Why have you run so long and so hard? What were you trying to escape? Your running is over. Enter into my rest.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Spence heard his heart reply. “Please tell me how.”
“Trust me. Look for me, and then follow.”
Spence felt a rushing tide rise within himself flowing out toward the Presence, but still he knew the choice to be his alone. One word would halt the surge and stay it, or it would be released to flow forever without end.
“Yes,” said Spence. “I will follow. Lead on.”
23
RAMM STRODE PURPOSEFULLY INTO the room where his men were assembled and waiting. The talk in the room died as the chief of security glared coolly around him.
“All right,” he said. “This won’t take long. I have just received orders to proceed to phase two of Operation Clean Sweep. Therefore, the escapees must be apprehended at once. Squad leaders, you are to double your efforts. I want every sector double-checked. Work around the clock if you have to. I want them found now!—before they have a chance to stir up any trouble. Got it?”
There was a grumble of assent
. “What are you waiting for? Move out!” said Ramm. The security force rose at once and proceeded to file out of the briefing room. In the guardroom beyond he could hear the squad leaders calling their groups together and organizing for a renewed search. He glanced around the empty room and then left by a side door.
When he arrived at AdSec he pushed his way past the receptionist and went directly into the director’s office. Wermeyer’s puzzled face glanced up from the wafer screen he had been gazing into.
“Well?” the former assistant asked, leaning back in his boss’s chair.
“We haven’t caught them yet, but we will. It’s only a matter of time. After all, they can’t go far.”
“Yes, well… see that you take care of it.”
“I can handle it, don’t worry. How are things going on your end?”
“Running like clockwork. I was just looking over the projections for the completion of construction on the engine installation. We’re right on schedule. Hocking thinks of everything.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Wermeyer gave him a quick questioning look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I’m just a little nervous about this, you know. Taking over an entire space station … I mean, it’s never been done.”
“Relax and do your job and everything will go as planned. Did you get your orders?”
“Right. Phase two is in operation; I’ve already told my men. Any word when the machine will arrive?”
“Not yet. Hocking said to stand by. That’s what we’re doing.”
“How about the new master program?”
“Ready and waiting. MIRA won’t know what hit her. All communication and operation functions will be under our control as soon as we are given the word. If anyone has any thoughts about signaling for help there won’t be a thing they can do about it. As for resistance—”
“I’ll handle any resistance. I don’t expect there will be much. It’s awful cold and lonely out there …” He nodded past Wermeyer toward the huge observation bubble and the stars glowing brightly beyond.
“Yes, well, let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
Ramm turned to leave. Before he reached the door he stopped and said, “Let me know the minute Hocking checks in. We’ll want to secure the docking bay in case Packer and his pilot friend have any ideas.”
“You let me know the minute you find them,” returned Wermeyer tartly. “This has gone on long enough.”
HOW LONG THE VISION lasted, Spence did not know. When he came to himself again the fire had died down to glowing embers and the moon had lowered in the treetops. Crickets chirped their trilling nightsong and the breeze down from the mountain slopes had freshened to a chill.
Gita lay curled near the remains of the campfire sound asleep, his turban resting on his outstretched arm. Adjani sat with his knees drawn up, head nodding on his chest. Kyr, his long thin legs crossed and his long arms wrapped around his narrow chest, sat gazing into the glowing coals which reflected in his great yellow eyes.
The effects of the Essila still tingled in Spence’s limbs and pulsed in his brain; he still tasted a trace of sweetness on his lips. But the mingled rush of thoughts and emotions, of shared essences and spirits was gone.
“It is over,” said Spence quietly. The Martian turned his head to regard him intently.
“Yes, Earthbrother. All that remains is to thank the One who gave us the Essila that we might know each other more perfectly.”
“I will thank him the rest of my days,” said Spence. The memory of all that had taken place still burned within him, and he knew he would carry it with him always. “Does it always have such power?”
“Sometimes more than others. The first time is the most overwhelming, but each time is different …” Kyr ran out of words to explain and fell silent. Spence understood that it was not a thing discussed and analyzed, only experienced and accepted. He wondered if the others had undergone the same thing he had.
The wind shifted then and Spence heard a sound that tripped a warning in his mind. “Did you hear that?”
The alien cocked his head to one side. The nightsong continued to ripple through the forest undisturbed. “I hear a great many things—all of which are new to me,” replied Kyr at length.
“Perhaps it was nothing but the wind—” began Spence, but he heard the sound again, this time more distinctly: a faint whirring buzz like the rustle of dead leaves on a tree. He knew what it was; he had heard it before. “No! Not again!” he shouted, leaping up.
He stared up at the sky through the opening in the trees overhead and saw the outline of several black shapes sliding over them as the sound of those vibrating wings reached them with a dry hiss.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” cried Spence. “The Dream Thief has found us!”
“What is it? What’s happened?” Adjani sprang up at once.
“The demon is back—the Dream Thief’s demon. I think there’s more than one this time … Let’s get out of here!”
Spence turned to rouse Gita, but Kyr scooped him up in one effortless motion and began striding off into the clearing toward the spacecraft.
Spence and Adjani hurried after him through the tall grass, glancing skyward as the sound of the dreadful buzzing increased.
They reached the vehicle as the first of Ortu’s disciples swooped down. A voice in Spence’s head said. Stop! Don’t run!
Spence stopped and turned to see a creature touching down a few meters away. It looked at him with glowing green eyes and he saw its horrid, manlike face grimacing in the moonlight. It had huge membraned wings like a bat’s attached to a human-looking torso that sprouted four arms. The lower half of the body resembled a serpent’s—the thing looked exactly like the small charm Adjani had found.
Immediately another dark form came down behind it and another just off to one side. All stared at him malevolently with their hideous luminous eyes.
“Get in quickly!” Spence felt a touch on his shoulder and felt himself jerked around. “Spence!” Adjani cried. “Move!”
Adjani appeared before him, shouting at him, it seemed, from a great distance. He felt himself drawn toward the gruesome creatures with the glowing eyes. He wheeled around and started walking toward them; he could feel a will outside his own directing his steps.
“What am I doing?” he wondered.
Come here, directed the voices.
“Spence!” shrieked Adjani. “Come back!”
Spence stopped and shook his head. He was almost upon the wicked creatures when he felt himself lifted off the ground and carried bodily back toward the waiting vimana, now glowing bright red-orange. He twisted in the steely grasp and saw Kyr looking over his shoulder at the demons.
They had almost reached the spacecraft when he saw a glimmer out of the corner of his eye. One of the demons held a glittering thing in his hands which he aimed at them. In the same instant a mighty sound ripped through him—a sound which seemed to melt his bones and turn his bowels to jelly. Kyr stumbled and fell and Spence, in his grasp, was thrown to the ground.
Before he could think or move he felt icy fingers on him. He saw a thin, stick-fingered hand reach out for him, and the cold touch of those hideous hands on his flesh sent ripples of revulsion through him. Spence struggled weakly, but his will had abandoned him and he could not break the grasp. At the same moment he sensed his consciousness leaving him. Dark clouds seemed to gather before his eyes and it was as if his skull was being opened and his brain plucked from its cavity. He was powerless to stop it.
He teetered on the edge of consciousness and saw Kyr laying next to him, eyes open and staring up at the star-spattered sky. Then a grotesque face was peering into his own and Spence looked into the cold green eyes of one of the creatures. In its hands it held a silver sphere which it lowered toward him.
Spence sensed that when the sphere touched his head he would be completely under their control.
The sphere came nearer, bare
centimeters away from him now. He squirmed on the ground, but the effort was futile and absurd. He lay still and closed his eyes.
Even as he did so, a piercing, ruby light flashed out and struck the sphere; the object shattered in the creature’s grasp, and disintegrated.
He was released from the spell. He jumped to his feet and tore the clutching hands of the awful creature from him, lashing out at it with his feet.
He heard a shout and saw Adjani rushing up beside him with a long rod in his hand—the thing flashed in the moonlight and Spence recognized it as the weapon Kyr had used to save them on the road earlier that afternoon. The air smelled of scorched metal and Spence’s head throbbed with a booming ache. His ears roared with the sound of a distant ocean. But he was free.
Adjani took the end of the object in his hands and swung into the foremost of the creatures. They all lurched away out of range, and Adjani grabbed Spence by the sleeve of his jumpsuit and pulled him back toward the spacecraft.
“Wait! Kyr is hurt,” said Spence. “We’ve got to get him on board. Gita! Lend a hand! Hurry!”
They bent over the alien’s body and lifted it, slinging it between them as they made for the ship. Spence heard the air buzz above his head and saw one of the demons dart past him. Two more stood between them and the Martian spacecraft. “They’ve got us cut off!”
The airborne naga swooped at them from above. Adjani spun and raised the rod in his hand and once more the ruby beam split the night. The shot hit the monster in the chest as it swung down toward them, grotesque hands outstretched and grasping. There was a bright flash and Spence saw the being jerked back through the air as if it had been yanked by an attached wire. An agonizing scream gurgled from its inhuman throat and the thing fell to earth. But to everyone’s surprise, the creature climbed back onto its legs and rejoined the others.
“We can’t stay here. We’ve got to run for it.” Spence looked at the still-unconscious body of the alien at his feet. “I’ll carry him. You cover our retreat. Let’s go!”
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