Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  “Swell. But what gave you the idea, in the first place, that I had this awful affliction?”

  Barbara paused reflectively. “Well . . . little Johnny down the street was over here the day before he came down with them. And you’re obviously not feeling well, your jaw is swollen, and you have a fever.”

  “Okay. So you took a group of particulars and worked them up into a general assumption. Right?”

  Right. I was reasoning inductively.”

  “That is absolutely correct. All right. Human consciousness evolves through the interplay of these two basic mental activities. The major thrust, though, toward higher knowledge, lies in the inductive function. We take note of particulars, and from these particulars we formulate a higher truth, a unity of understandings which, together, add up to quite a bit more than just the sum of the individual particulars. In other words, there is a sort of geometric progression in the direction of general assumptions. Now. As these higher truths continue to be formulated, they take on an identity of their own, a sort of self-propelled existence, to the effect that many of the particulars which were used in those formulations become lost, without identity. This is the real purpose behind all intelligent life forms, universally. We are building a field of knowingness, a general assumption type of knowingness, in our own particularized sphere of action.”

  Barbara looked confused. “Gosh, Pat, there’s nothing particularly original in that idea.”

  “I make no claim to originality. I only said that I am knowing. Let’s follow it through. Ask me something about it.”

  She wrinkled her forehead, moved carefully against him, and asked, “How does this concept tie in with the idea of a Rogue God?”

  “Uh-huh, that was the right question. It ties in because we’re all staggering around in the dark. We think of the universe as being out there. Well, okay, the material universe is out there. But, hell, that’s just a projection. The material world is not real. It’s a three-dimensional projection from the geometers, it’s a—”

  You’re losing me,” Barbara cried.

  “My gosh, Barb, it’s all there, in all the written religions of the world, and nobody ever tumbled to it. We stumble around with good and evil, sin and salvation, creeds and dogma, morality and immorality . . . and all the while it’s lying there, like my untapped pool of knowingness, just waiting to be discovered.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Reality, Barb. We’ve been hiding it from ourselves, down through the entire evolution of man, and building the Rogue in the process. Superstitious fears, irrational religions, then scientific pragmatism and geo-social ideologies . . . there’s the conspiracy, Barb, and we’ve all been party to it. My God, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful.”

  “Slow down,” Barbara pleaded weakly. “I can’t keep up with you.”

  “All the religions, sure, they got kicked off by guys who’d found out about the geometers—but nobody understood them, see. I mean, sure, those guys saw truth, but then somehow the human mind got hung up on the idea of the immutability of truth, and hell that’s just all wrong, Barb. Truth for Moses couldn’t have been truth for Jesus, because it’s constantly building, steadily rising to new levels of an evolving reality. . . hell. . . hell, that’s the answer, sure, that’s the whole damn thing. The religions aren’t wrong, they’re just not entirely right, hanging on for dear life to a chunk of frozen and no-evolving reality . . . and hell they won’t let it grow!”

  “Oh dear,” Barbara said with a sigh.

  “Like a kid, Barb. Is a kid for real? Sure, he's as real at age 6 as he is at age 60. But suppose we all became fixed at the age of 6! Hell, it’s so simple, it’s so . . . ”

  Honor had fallen off into a reverently silent introspection. Barbara shifted about uncomfortably and whispered, “But if you’re going to become a priest, what’s going to become of my sex life?”

  Honor laughed loudly. “A priest!” he howled. “Not on your life! That’s like being fixed at the age of 6. That’s part of the subconscious conspiracy, Barb. Hell, sex is the route to reality, I mean pure and loving and guiltless sex, not pornography, not the slimy ooze they’ve tried to foster and fix in our minds . .. that’s where they got off the track, the purity bit. Asceticism isn’t purity . . . it’s part of the slimy ooze reality. No wonder asceticism is ...” He stopped talking abruptly, his eyes widening in a startled inspection of Barbara’s face.

  “What is it?” she asked worriedly.

  “I just touched home base, Barb,” he replied, his voice hushed. “Yes, there it is, all laid out, placid and beautiful, the secret of the universes.”

  “What is?” Barbara whispered.

  “What is the one and only truly creative expression available to humankind?”

  “The sex act,” she breathed.

  “Exactly! From the geometer of geometers! That’s why it’s the route to freedom, when you leave the slimy ooze behind. That’s why there are male and female, throughout all creation. That’s why love and sex are continually building and reshaping our . . . yes, dammit, yes, that’s why the Rogue . . .” Honor’s face clouded and he again fell into dark speculation. “The hell of it is,” he muttered a few seconds later, “most people who think they’ve found the route to God have actually found only the Rogue. That’s why we’re so screwed up, so divided, so forever . . .”

  “Why is our God a rogue?” Barbara inquired meekly. “Is there that much evil in our world? Are you saying that the world is essentially evil?”

  “Get away from ideas of good and evil,” Honor murmured. “There is but truth and error. Truth is generalized into reality, through the geometers, back into the true infinity. Error, denied access into the general assumptions of reality, can arise nowhere but into the material universe. It hangs there, an oppressive cloud, ever growing, and ever increasing its corruptive influence in the world of men. It’s a Rogue! A runaway, homeless, and maddened beast!”

  “H-how can it wield influence?”

  Honor growled something beneath his breath. He fidgeted, sighed, and said, “The Rogue is our collective personality.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Go back to psychology, Barb. How do we characterize an individual human being? I mean, in trying to relate him to the world about? What is the term you use in psychology in describing the sum of a person.”

  Personality,” she sighed.

  “Exactly. What a person does, thinks and knows determines his personality. Conversely, his personality, or the thing which has arisen from these particulars, then has a great deal to say about how he will further do, think, and know. Isn’t that right?”

  Barbara nodded her head in mute agreement.

  “So . . .” Honor shrugged. Take if from there, Barb. The Rogue is our collective personality.”

  Barbara looked frightened. “We, uh, build a God who is in the image of our collective experiences. Then, uh, that image reflects back upon us to further, uh, influence, and uh . . . what is the word I’m searching for, Pat?”

  “Particularize, I guess. Whatever we give rise to, as a result of human activity, comes back to us at an inverse power and as modified by the general assumption already existing . . . the personality, in other words . . . and, also, as it has modified the personality. There is a constant interplay, you see, a continual change-off. The net effect, for humanity, is the condition you were stumbling toward, Particularization. The net relationship between God and man is a grand extension of the relationship existing between a man and his own personality.”

  Honor sorrowfully shook his head. ‘Tm afraid not. You’re forgetting reality. We have become immersed in the negative influences of the Rogue. Our geometers are closed by our own actions. Whatever truths we build seep through and adhere to the true God, or whatever’s behind there. Oh, there’s access to that, all right, and that’s what Wenssler stumbled onto, looking for psychic powers, but that isn’t where he wound up.”

  “But where?”

>   “Hadrin would call it the low band. Error.”

  “The Rogue?”

  Honor nodded his head. “Isn’t it strange,” he murmured. “Heaven is hell, and hell is heaven.”

  “What does that mean? Barbara asked in a shocked whisper.

  “Hell is out there” Honor replied, sweeping his hand toward the heavens. “The domain of the Rogue.”

  “Why is sex the route to heaven?” she whispered.

  “Not just sex,” he replied, smiling. “But knowing sex, the pure unity, the divine merging of male and female into a single statement in truth. In such a state, where else could you go? Back to the geometer of geometers, my dear.” He stroked her softly, lovingly. “The Rogue is utterly repelled by such energies.”

  “H-how are your tissues coming along?” she asked shakily.

  Honor smiled and gently slapped her hip. “I believe there’s been a miracle-healing,” he said.

  “Good. Let’s uh . . . let’s show the Rogue where he stands in our little reality.”

  Honor laughed and pushed her onto her back. “Stretch toward heaven, Barb,” he murmured.

  “I knew it couldn’t be bad,” she sighed, encircling his neck with her arms. “I just knew it.”

  And in the room directly above, Milton and Dorothy Clinton were taking a stretch of their own. Honor suddenly “knew” it. He chuckled and said, “I wonder how it would be to take Dotty and old Milt into our unity?”

  “Not this time,” Barbara moaned. “This time I want you all to ourselves.”

  Honor filed the idea away for future consideration and gave himself unrestrainedly to Barbara’s heavenly stretch. And, in a flash of understanding, Honor suddenly “knew” who Octavia was.

  2: The Image

  “This is freaky, Pat. Where are we?”

  “Infinity, Barb. Don’t be afraid. We are merely beyond the geometers.”

  “You keep using that word. I don’t understand it.”

  “Geometer? It’s the source of things, Barb. The material universe is a geometric progression of energy in motion.”

  “But what is a geometer?”

  “It is like a general assumption. In the divine mind. Looking at it from the energy universe, if we could, it would appear as a particularized point in nothingness. The heart, in other words, of the tiniest energy field. The geometer emanates from the causal field of creation and begins to assume geometric proportions, expressed as physical energy and as dictated inherently by the original geometer. A geometric progression is established and pretty soon, relatively, a geometric field is established.”

  “I guess I understand that.”

  “Very simple, really, as are all truths.”

  “How many geometers are there?”

  “Many. A geometer exists for each field.”

  “What is a ‘field’?”

  “You are one. I am one. Earth is one. Sun is one. See? There are many.”

  “A flea is a geometric field?”

  “Oh yes. And each has its geometer.”

  “The geometer is the creator, then. How does it work?”

  “No, it is the creative medium. And it works like, well, like a lens, through which is projected the divine idea.”

  “What is this projection? Is it energy?”

  “No. Think of it as a mental umbilical cord. One without substance, physical substance, in other words. Extending from the geometer, or warp of nothingness, into the geometric field-to-be. At a pre-ordained point of evolution, this umbilical is severed. It . . . I see it as . . . it isn’t severed at the field, but at the warp, and it . . . it flashed down like a beam of light and is absorbed at some particularized point within the geometric field. At that point, Barb, creation has manifested.”

  “You used the word ‘evolution’. Evolution is still a valid concept?”

  “Oh yes. Evolution is the out-picturing of the divine idea. Remember our discussion of deductive and inductive thought? Evolution is the particularization of divine mind, expressed deductively. The plan, in other words, falling into place.”

  “That sounds paradoxical. Evolution seems to be a ‘gathering together’, not a fragmentation.”

  “Yes, it is paradoxical. Remember, though, that the image was whole and complete, as formed in divine mind. In the out-picturing the image is broken down into particulars. Evolution is merely the struggle, you could call it an inductive struggle, to rebuild the particulars into the original general assumption.”

  “Adaptation of the species, survival of the fittest . . . all this is just a re-formation of something that has already been?”

  “A re-formation through energy, Barb. That is creation.”

  “Sounds frightening to me.”

  “Only until you fully understand. Then it is beautiful.”

  “I see a very giddy implication there, Pat. We can’t speak of ‘creation’ as though it were something already accomplished . . . as an historical event at some point in the past.”

  “You’re getting it.”

  “Yes. Our classic concept of creation is only a fragment of the truth. There has not been a creation. There is being a creation.”

  “You’re pounding down the stretch, gal.”

  “I have not yet been created!”

  “Welcome home, Barb. You’ve hit it. Your creation is merely ‘in-process’. You are a Godmaker, dear, building yourself.”

  “Beautiful . . . oh, beautiful. The pieces are coming together, Pat.”

  “Yes. As I knew they would. We are ready to go on now. Are you prepared to see your goal? Clear your vision now, Barb. What’s the matter?”

  “Something . . . is . . . I’m frightened, Pat.”

  “Don’t be. Look ahead. Up there. See the woman?”

  “Ohhh Pat, I . . . I . . .”

  “Go on, Barb. Go to her. She is the original image in divine mind.”

  “Octavia! It is Octavia!”

  “Names are only symbols, Barb. Go. Get acquainted with your true self.”

  Honor could not cease to marvel at the idea. Fantastic as it was, impossible as it seemed, still it was beautiful in its simplicity and intriguing in its logic. He watched Barbara and Octavia walking together across the lush meadow—a meadow which he realized was merely a fabrication of his own sense perceptions—and he knew that basic truth would forever be this way: beautiful and intriguing. He looked at Hadrin and felt the truth much closer to home, wondering if he could accept it as simply and naturally as he had in the impersonal.

  Hadrin laughed and returned the somewhat shy gaze. “You marvel,” he said. “Do you find so much difficulty with the image?”

  “I see the beauty of a divine idea,” Honor replied softly, “and yet . . . perhaps . . . like Barbara, I find it a bit frightening.”

  “You have come a long way in a short time. I am quite proud of you.”

  “How many lifetimes have I—have you lived, Hadrin?”

  The tall figure took Honor by the arm and walked with him, following the two women. “What is a lifetime?” he asked. “I live but one life, Honorkir, as do you. The individuations are . . .” He snapped his fingers. “From microbe to mollusk, even, and from mollusk to man .. . they are but fleeting frames in the divine projection.”

  Honor shivered. “We’ve come that far?” he asked weakly.

  Hadrin laughed and squeezed Honor’s arm. “Yes, taken together, it has been a long trail. But, in the overall . . .” He laughed again. “Well, you can see where you are headed now, Honorkir. That is quite an advantage for me. We will progress rapidly, now, if you remain true to the image.”

  “You mean, I might not?” Honor inquired.

  The beautiful man laughed again; it seemed to come easy for him, easily triggered, spontaneous. “The choice is always yours, Honorkir. Look at these about us.” He pointed out various faceless groups in the nearby shadows.

  “What’s the matter with them? Why can’t I see their faces?”

  “They have not become c
onsciously individuated. They cannot become delineated in divine mind until that time.”

  “Why not? I understand that the image was . . . ”

  “Fixed and eternal? Of course, but . . . well, think of a photograph, Honorkir. Is it not fixed? But then, was it not also fixed even as a negative? The non-individuated ones are negatives, Honorkir. We were once a negative.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? So why do you pity the unconscious ones? They, too, know their joys.”

  “Could we ever become a negative again?”

  Hadrin shot Honor a sharp glance. “Oh, we have been negatives many times, my brother.”

  “Damn!” Honor exclaimed.

  Hadrin’s booming laugh rolled across the meadow and stopped Barbara and Octavia. They looked back, waved, and continued on. “You thought you ‘had it made,’ eh?” Hadrin said, chuckling.

  “It looked that way,” Honor replied, grinning self-consciously. “How can I ever know for sure?”

  “You cannot,” Hadrin assured him, “until you have resolved geometrically.”

  “That’s reality-talk for ‘transfiguration’, isn’t it,” Honor growled.

  “You dislike the sound of that, eh?”

  Honor shrugged. “It seems so mystical, so ...”

  “And what does this seem?” Hadrin asked, smiling.

  It was Honor’s turn to laugh. “Okay,” he said. “Can I look into the future, then?”

  Hadrin looked surprised. “But you are doing so at this moment.”

  “No, I mean ...” A baffled frown crossed Honor’s face. “I mean the interim future.”

  “How can you see an interim that is not yet formed?”

  “You mean ... oh, I see. Damn! It’s all up to me, isn’t it.”

  “Of course.”

  “But if I had some guidelines, some idea of what—”

  Hadrin halted and spun Honor around. They stood face to face. “You are confronting the only guideline you shall ever know,” he said soberly. “It is enough. Do not be concerned with the interim. All paths lead inexorably to this image. Do you understand that?”