A Sense of Infinity

by Howard L. Myers

  Then why don't you unmate? he replied silently.

  "That's why I say the most mismated. It wouldn't be that bad if I could break it off."

  You're stubborn, or stupid, or a sucker for punishment.

  "All three. Also, I still love her, but maybe that's covered by 'stupid."'

  It is.

  Dellbar stood up, annoyed. These solo dialogues didn't accomplish anything.

  A drink? No. If he had a drink he would mope around all evening, feeling worse and worse. The only thing that would distract him, even a little, was work. So . . . get some supper, and then to the workshop.

  Something had spoiled in one of the kitchen bins, making a stink that killed what little appetite he had. He hunted around till he found what it was—a large paper bag containing one very rotten onion. He carried it out to the garbage can. Then he gulped down a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk.

  The sandwich felt heavy in his stomach as he went down the basement steps and into his workshop. For several minutes he perched motionless on the stool at his bench, gazing at the visualizer he had built while he tried to put thoughts of everything else out of his mind. That was hard to do. There was too much relating the visualizer and Margitte. He had built it for her, although she didn't know that. And it, like his marriage, was a failure.

  What was wrong with it? Was his idea that such a device could be made fallacious? Or was it something less basic? Maybe nothing more than a failure of one of the junk electronic components he used in building it? Or perhaps an overlooked imbalance in the circuitry? Intellectually, the visualizer was a strangely conceived device—half of it straight electronic engineering, and the other half modern-day witchcraft. Dellbar had, at first, been surprised after getting his degree and taking a job to learn of the "dark technology"—the weird and unexplainable effects that could be produced by such-andsuch arrangements of electronic gear. None of this was to be found in textbooks; it passed by word of mouth when engineers got together over a few drinks. It was the folklore of electronics technicians, unsupported by scientific theory, unannounced to the public, and spoken of among the engineers themselves in low voices, and seldom then until their tongues were loosened by drug or drink.

  Dellbar had listened, and disbelieved. Then after his wife had begun straying out and he needed business for lonely hands, he set up his basement workshop and tested the dark technology himself. After that, he believed.

  But so far, the visualizer had not worked.

  Could he, himself, be the faulty component? He grimaced. The visualizer was supposed to reveal, on its second-hand color-TV screen, whatever the user wanted to see—not necessarily his favorite TV show, but anything. That meant the user was, in truth, part of the visualizer circuit, the tuner, the channel selector.

  But that meant he had to want to see something. And the mood he had been in recently left him with very little desire to look at anything.

  Not that he didn't see the world around him; it was there, and he had no choice but to be aware of it. But to actually will to see something more than that, something he didn't have to see . . .

  He braced himself and turned on the visualizer. The place to attack this problem was at its root. He was afraid of the sight—and knowledge—of what Margitte was doing, what had stolen her away from him. Okay, what he had to do was face up to that sight squarely, painful though he knew it would be. Know and see the worst, and then he could look at other things without fear.

  I want to see Margitte.

  His heart thudded as he built this decision in his mind, and his eyes stared at the blank screen.

  But it was no longer blank. The image was foggy but her face was vividly clear.

  A hard shiver ran the length of his spine, and his hair stirred. His concentration skittered away and the screen was blank again.

  All he had seen, he realized, was the expression on her face. It was a look he had never seen her wear, not even when they were in bed together. To see that was plenty, without seeing the cause of it. He heaved a quaking sigh and turned off the visualizer.

  At any rate, he knew the device worked. Maybe it would give Margitte the sensual stimulation she seemed to live for while keeping her at home. Anything, real or imagined, that she wanted to see, without the bad-trip risk that went with acid of things she didn't want to see. The visualizer ought to work well for her, with her sensual hunger, though it hardly worked at all for him because . . . well, because he was too scared to look. The feeling he experienced when his concentration on her image shattered made that obvious.

  Still, there should be something he wanted to see, that wouldn't frighten him. Something intellectual instead of emotional. Something impersonal.

  Reality! That was it. Not the routine reality of daily life, of biology, of electronic theory, of the physical laws of the universe, but the underlying reality—the realm of basic cause, of which all things man knew were merely effects. The reality philosophers sought after . . .

  That he could look at, if it was there to see. He could face reality.

  He turned the visualizer on once more, and concentrated. The screen went jet black, then some formless thing swirled on it, nearly breaking Dellbar's concentration again, but he hung on grimly. The swirl steadied and shaped itself into a man's face.

  And the man was looking at Dellbar. He was aware of him.

  "Well!" the man chuckled with amusement. "One of you has penetrated! Very clever!"

  "Yes." That grunt was all the response Dellbar could make without breaking his concentration.

  "Oh, relax!" said the man. "I'll maintain the connection for you." Dellbar did so, feeling caved in. The image stayed solid.

  The man asked, "In what form do you see me?"

  "As a man. An older man, with white hair. Clean shaven."

  "That's appropriate enough, I suppose. Were you looking for God?"

  "I-I don't know. Maybe I was," Dellbar mumbled. Then he pulled his mind together and said, "I was looking for the underlying reality."

  "Aha! Why?"

  Dellbar hesitated. "Because . . . I want to understand."

  "I see. You think you can face understanding?"

  "I don't know. I'm willing to try. I need to know there's something more than . . . well, I need to know if there's a purpose."

  The image on the screen studied him with a slight smile. "There is a purpose, all right, but you flatter yourself if you think you can understand it. The closest you can come is to regard your reality as a combination kindergarten, campground, and insane asylum. It has features of each of these."

  Dellbar tried to find the significance of that. "Then it is in preparation for something else," he guessed.

  "Of course! How would you define 'purpose' other than as intention to prepare? But you want to know more than generalities. Here. Look at this and tell me what you see."

  The image changed. Dellbar squinted his eyes.

  "Boxes," he said. "Millions of boxes, stacked high, in rows. They look empty."

  "They are empty. Every one of them. So you see them as boxes. That's close enough. They are storage bins for what you think of as souls."

  "Oh." So souls were real. "Why are they all empty?"

  Dellbar asked.

  "Why do you think?" the voice chuckled. "Consider conditions in your world today."

  Dellbar did so, then hazarded, "The population explosion?"

  "Obviously! The demand for souls has far exceeded the supply."

  "But . . . but how can that be?" Dellbar protested.

  "How could there be more people than souls?"

  "Very simple. Billions of people don't have souls. It is an unusual situation, of course, but no reason for that alarmed expression you're wearing. Such conditions are self-correcting."

  "But that means a lot of people aren't human!"

  The boxes vanished and the face reappeared to say, "You could put it that way. Or you might say with more accuracy, a lot of people are not more than human."

/>   "They're not zombies?"

  "By no means. The unsouled are distinguishable from the souled by their lack of high purpose. Take yourself, for example. You wouldn't have been interested enough to ask about underlying purpose if you had no soul. And you wouldn't have dared ask the question unless you were unconsciously certain a purpose really existed. Right?"

  Dellbar nodded.

  "Thus, you have a soul. Now, you tell me, how would an unsouled person think and act, in contrast to yourself."

  "I suppose . . . without . . . without whatever purpose a soul has. Whatever a soul is supposed to do . . . "

  "The kindergarten, campground, insane asylum program," approved the image. "Correct. The unsouled person would find random motivation for activities—mostly based on exaggerations of the normal needs of the physical body. The acquiring of more territory or mates than can be used, the consuming of more food than the body can handle, the search for sensual pleasure . . . all these are symptomatic of the unsouled."

  "But there were people like that before the population explosion," Dellbar objected.

  "Yes. For various reasons, not all bodies are suited as habitats for souls. But normally the unsouled persons are a small minority of the population. If present growth trends continue, they will become a majority. But as I told you, the condition is self-correcting."

  "How so?"

  The image shrugged. "Who do you think is more likely to start a war, or to pollute your environment . . . the souled or the unsouled man?"

  "I guess the unsouled."

  "So, there you have it. A self-correcting condition." Dellbar remarked sharply, "You don't seem to care if we have a war. Are you so indifferent to human suffering?"

  The image laughed at him. "You're mistaking me for one of your legendary merciful gods. I'm really just an administrator. And the general happiness or unhappiness of humanity is neither here nor there, so far as basic purpose is concerned."

  "And you don't give a damn," grated Dellbar, "that I'm married to an unsouled woman—a sensual pleasureseeker—and she keeps me in continual torment."

  "Not the slightest damn," the image smiled. "However, that will change now, as a result of this conversation. Your soul is ready to move on. This doesn't mean death, so don't turn so pale. You will merely complete your existence as an unsouled person."

  "You mean I'm ready to . . . to graduate from this reality?" asked Dellbar in awe.

  "By no means! I mean that, having glimpsed as much of the underlying reality as you have, and as much as you can ever tolerate, you have exhausted the scope of purposive activity of your present personality. You, or rather your soul, will begin a new life in a new body. Graduation, as you call it, is several thousand lifetimes away for all you humans."

  Dellbar's mind was a frantic whirl. How much of him was soul and how much was unsouled human? What would be left of him if his soul were pulled away? Not much, he was sure. Could he actually go on living in such a condition?

  "What can I do with . . . " he began to protest, then he saw the screen had gone blank.

  He shrugged. What was the point of arguing, anyway . . . especially over some nonsensical business about a soul, and with a character who had to be a figment of his imagination?

  His trouble was that he had let that damned wench of his, Margitte, get him in such a stew that he was taking a bad trip without the benefit of acid. There were better uses for the visualizer than that. Why, hell, with this gadget he had invented he could become the richest man in the country! He could listen in on corporate board meetings, for instance, and get enough inside scoop to make countless killings in the stock market.

  And as for women, he would be able to buy any woman he wanted, so what the hell!

  But right now he was tired from working and worrying too hard. So, take it easy for a few days, and have some fun with his visualizer.

  Dellbar went upstairs, made a pitcher of martinis, and returned with it to his workshop. He pulled a comfortable chair around to face the visualizer screen, poured himself a drink, relaxed, and tuned in a pornographic movie.

  THE ULTIMO NOVO

  The Infinity Sense

  1

  The world opened for Starn of Pack Foser one day when he was eight years old.

  He had gone nearly a mile down the creek from the Compound, into a swampy tangle far from the farmed land and grazes, in hope of getting away from the other boys. Maybe Huill or Rob wouldn't bother to follow him so far, or, if they did, maybe he could guard his thoughts so they couldn't find him.

  The young telepaths seldom left him in peace. The fact that Starn was large for his age, and much taller and stronger than any other eightor nine-year-old in the Pack, seemed to give them all the more delight in their little tortures.

  Starn was not a telepath, or much of anything else. His father Virnce was a pretty fair perceptor, and his mother Becca premoted now and then, but Starn couldn't do hardly anything. His only trace of a Novo ability was a sense of danger that was too weak to amount to much. So he had to control his thoughts in the swamp if he wanted to avoid discovery. He had to think things that most anybody would think, and avoid thoughts that could be identified as coming especially from him. Adults were good at doing that, after years of experience, but it was exceedingly hard for Starn.

  So as he sat by the creek fishing he busied his mind by reading the book "Sacred Genetic Law" which his father had given him the year before. Lots of people read religious books if they had time to spare in the afternoons, so if he kept his mind on the book he figured he would be fairly safe. He would rather have thought about other things while he fished—of growing up to be a great raider, and leading unbelievably successful attacks on enemy Packs, and pillages of Olsapern trading posts, or even taking a whole army through the Hard Line and slaughtering hundreds of Olsapern infidels in their own country. But Huill or Rob would know if he thought things like that. So he read.

  Book-English, the language in which all writing was done, was a funny language. It left out a lot of r's, especially before n's where they most always came in common talk. And it put in a lot of d's, and used m's to begin many words that really started with an n sound. It seemed to Starn that it would be better to write BookEnglish the way people really talked, but the Pack teacher had explained that if that were done, the religious texts would have to be revised into the new writing or people would forget how to read them. And nobody would ever revise the religious writings.

  It was hard to believe the Olsaperns actually talked the way Book-English was written, but they did. All the kids laughed the time the teacher spoke some Olsapern to show them how it sounded. She had called Starn "Stan"—and that was something else Huill and Rob wouldn't let lie. They were always yelling "Stan, Stan, the Olsapan!" at him, and making like he really was an Olsapern because of his size and lack of Novo senses.

  Perhaps this identifying thought was what gave him away, but when he sensed trouble it was too late to escape. Huill, Rob, and another boy named Houg were almost upon him. They had sneaked through the bushes, and when he detected their presence and turned they were running at him full speed. It didn't take telepathy to know they meant to push him into the creek. Frantically Starn thought of using his fishing pole to punch them away, but that wouldn't work because they could read him and dodge the way they always did. Or he could grab a rock and . . . but that wouldn't work either. At the last split-second, without thinking about it, Starn flopped sideways to hug the ground. Huill stumbled over him and fell down the bank. He hit the cold water with a yell. Rob was also thrown off balance and skidded down the bank on his belly, managing to stop at the water's edge. He was liberally smeared with mud. Houg, who wasn't a telepath but a perceptor, was not caught so badly off guard. But when Starn sat up and glared at him, Houg backed off. Without the help of his telepathic buddies, he was no match for Starn and he knew it.

  "T-that was a dirty trick!" shivered Huill, climbing out of the creek with his buckskins dripping, and close t
o tears. "You done that and didn't think it!"

  Starn was as startled as they were. He wasn't sure just how it had happened, or if he could do it again, or . . .

  "Push him in, Houg!" yelled Rob. "I'll tell you what he's thinking!"

  Houg grinned and started toward Starn, who thought of flopping on his other side and jerking Houg past him, or getting up and fighting it out despite the coaching Houg would get. But Rob was spouting his plans faster than he could make them so . . .

  Without planning, Starn swished his pole back over his shoulder, as if landing a fish, and dealt Houg a lashing blow on the top of his head. Houg bellowed and hastily scampered away, feeling his stinging scalp for blood. Despite his size, Starn had never won a fight before. He felt confident and elated. "Come on! Just try something!" he challenged fiercely.

  "You wait till my mamma finds out!" whined Rob, trying to rub the mud from his clothing. "Look what a mess you made!"

  "Your ma'll just whip you for being a clumsy oaf!" retorted Starn, delighting in using the epithet that had so often been used on him.

  "I'm going home!" quavered Huill.

  "Me, too," said Houg.

  "O.K.," giggled Starn. "Huill, you're wet anyhow, so you carry my fish! And Rob . . . well, a little mud won't hurt my fish-pole. And Houg, carry my Book-English book!"

  "I ain't carrying your junk!" Rob yelled.

  Starn's fist flew up suddenly and hit him in the nose.

  "You take that pole!" he ordered.

  Rob sniffled, and obeyed, as did Huill and Houg.

  But Starn gave in to their pleas before they got back to the Compound, and did not force them to humble themselves by carrying his stuff in front of the adults of the Pack. But in an isolated community of less than two hundred souls, with one out of every half-dozen a telepath, the full story wasn't long in getting around. The fact that Starn had outmaneuvered two telepaths was widely discussed around many hearths that night. Such a deed was unheard of, and there was ample speculation on the nature of the sense Starn had suddenly learned to use.