He fell to hands and knees. Pain flamed along his nerves and his head seemed filled with a coruscating darkness. Yet one thought remained clear — he couldn’t go down. Too much depended on him. He had to keep Borchov from carrying out his plan.
With a tremendous effort of will Dunn pulled himself erect. Again the psychic club smashed at him—and again. It battered at consciousness and sanity with sadistic violence. Dunn reeled, fell. And then he was spinning, without thought or feeling, through a black infinity.
His astral form vanished from the dormitory room. For to this form only consciousness supplied reality. Walls were no barrier and floors gave support only because consciousness expected it. Without consciousness was . . . space . . . a drifting.
Light came mistily through the blackness around him and swiftly grew stronger. A distant murmur of sound swelled to a steady roar. Dunn was suddenly and sharply aware of motion all about him, of life. He brushed the last clinging tendrils of a black fog from his senses.
He stood at the edge of a busy city street bathed in afternoon light. Hurrying crowds thronged the sidewalks and the wide paved space between them was filled with a jerky stream of cars. The air throbbed with the deep rumble of the human current bustling through the city’s arteries.
Abruptly Dunn saw a car bearing down on him as it approached the curb. He leaped back instinctively—and found himself in the midst of the throngs hastening along the sidewalk.
Two men, striding hurriedly side by side, loomed up in front of him. He dodged to avoid a collision, found himself directly in the path of a woman approaching from the opposite direction. There was no time to avoid her. He stiffened for the impact.
Nothing happened. The woman passed through him as if he were not there at all.
That was strange, he thought. He groped for an explanation, tried fumblingly to fit together the jigsaw pieces of memory that tumbled through his mind.
There was a body in a bed, the body of a young man with tousled brown hair—a body which seemed queerly to belong to him, yet which was separated from him. There was the face of a man, a sharp, evil face with high cheekbones and slanting eyes—the face of a man he hated. There was a terrible urgency somehow connected with this face, a terrible pain and a drifting through black emptiness. Dunn did not know how long he had been drifting or how he had arrived here.
He strode aimlessly along the sidewalk. People kept getting in his way as if he were completely invisible to them. At first he avoided them out of sheer habit, but after several more experiences with individuals passing harmlessly through him he ignored the crowd. He walked through the thronging figures as if they and not he were phantoms.
The afternoon passed as Dunn wandered without destination or purpose through the maze of streets, often doubling back upon his tracks. His memories were still hazy, but it seemed to him that there was some warning he had to give about the man with the sharp face and the slanting eyes. There was some great danger connected with this man, a danger that appeared to explain the burning urgency he felt.
Once Dunn came across a uniformed patrolman and tried to speak to him. But neither his clutching hands nor his shouts were noticed. He continued on in despair. He felt lost and alone. A bitter sense of defeat, of utter hopelessness, weighted his mind.
People continued to pass through him, but now he accepted it as a matter of course. He did not exist for them. He was a mere wraith, an inarticulate, intangible nothingness.
When abruptly he came into solid contact with one of the hurrying figures he was completely stunned with surprise.
“Oh!” a soft voice said.
Dunn found himself staring down at a slim, pretty girl with ash-blonde hair and gray eyes. Her oval face seemed to reflect his own amazement.
“Why, you’re an astral!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, that’s it—an astral,” Dunn blurted. The word somehow made a few of the jigsaw pieces click together in his mind. The urgency in him flamed higher.
The girl was studying him puzzledly. “You seem to understand—about being an astral, I mean,” she said. “Most of them don’t.”
Dunn nodded, only half aware of her words. “I thought I was all alone here. I’d given up all hope of ever finding anyone I could talk to.”
The girl smiled. She had a wide full mouth and even white teeth. Her smile was pleasant to watch.
“I felt that way at first,” she admitted. “But we’re not alone here. You have some surprises coming.”
Dunn caught at her arms and shook them a little. “If there are others here—others like us—I’ve got to talk to them! There’s something I have to tell them. It’s terribly important. There’s a man, you see, an astral—a spy. I’ve got to warn people about him. He —”
Dunn released the girl and pressed his hands against his head. His face twisted as he nade a frantic effort to fit more of the jigsaw pieces together in his mind.
“I can’t seem to remember,” he groaned. “It’s all there—but I can’t get hold of it. He did something to me something that made me forget.”
“I think I can help you,” the girl said, her small face concerned. “There’s an astral aid station not far from here. The people there will have some idea of what to do.”
“Astral aid station?” Dunn echoed as the girl took his arm and set off up the street. “What’s that?”
“Sort of a public information bureau and receiving center all rolled into one,” she explained. “What is called the astral plane is quite well organized, you see. There are institutions, a government, laws. Things actually aren’t much different from what we’ve always known.
“But there are certain problems here. People arrive who refuse to believe they have become astrals and keep trying to return to their previous existence. They have to be found and educated. Others arrive in a psychopathic state from the shock and pain of accidents or fatal wounds on the battlefield. They have to be given special psychiatric treatment. Many who arrive are even quite unconscious. In fact, those who reach here as conscious and sane as you are the exception rather than the rule.”
Dunn nodded, interested despite the nagging urgency within him. “I guess the astrals have their job cut out for them, all right.”
“They have,” the girl assured him. “The biggest job is finding new arrivals and fitting them into things. Most astrals serve as guides or teachers. The guides patrol hospitals, battlefields and other places. They bring arrivals to astral aid stations and others take up from there. I, for instance, was brought from a hospital.”
“I see,” Dunn muttered. He glanced at the girl, liking what he saw and for this very reason feeling a pang of regret. “Then you—your physical body—died?”
She shook her ash-blonde curls and laughed a little. “That’s the funny thing about it. I was in an auto accident—not seriously damaged except for a brain concussion, it seems. My body’s in a coma. A couple of astral doctors are working on it—or, more exactly, working on the doctors who are working on it.”
Dunn peered at her questioningly and she explained, “You see, astrals play a bigger part in affairs on the physical plane than anyone there realizes. They watch over things. They guide and help—those who are specially equipped by nature or training to do it, that is. It’s a matter of being what is called psychic. Like telepathy, you know. That’s the only way astrals can get in contact with people on the physical plane—unless those there happen to be psychic also. People with psychic ability are all too few—and they’re badly needed here. There aren’t enough to go around for all that has to be done.
“Even having psychic ability doesn’t accomplish any miracles. Take the doctors working on the doctors who are working on my body. The astral doctors know what needs to be done. It’s a matter of removing a blood clot from certain nerve centers. The problem is to communicate that knowledge as an idea or a hunch to the doctors on the physical plane. There’s something about being physical that makes it difficult to to receive.
; “But that’s the way the astrals work—and they have enough success, accomplish enough good, to justify what they’re doing. They bring certain knowledge within reach of certain people. They guide people to certain books, or they bring certain people together. They cause certain people to have ideas, hunches, and in this way a lot of important discoveries are made on the physical plane. Actually, you see, the astrals are working out a great plan that extends far into what we call the future. But, of course, only the psychic among them can do anything and these naturally are limited to a small number of key people or key points on the physical plane.”
Dunn listened in fascination, glancing frequently at the girl’s solemn face. Her gray eyes were intent on her words.
“Knowing all this has changed me,” she went on. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again if I manage to to get back. And if I remember
“I used to wonder why people were so bad . . . why we had wars why there seemed to be so much stupidity and meanness. I used to wonder why the world was in such rotten shape. I’ve learned that’s just what we see on the surface—from the physical side, I mean. The world actually is not the way we have come to understand it and people are far more than most of us have suspected they were. There is order and system in nature. Nothing can exist without a definite function, without fitting into a definite scheme.
“But the most important thing I’ve learned is that people are not alone, whether they are physical or astral—two sides of the same coin, really. They do not exist completely by themselves, like children without parents. They are not neglected, not left to work out their destiny according to a blind, hit or miss system. Everyone belongs to a great partnership—a great co-operative. Nobody walks alone.”
Nobody walks alone nobody walks alone. The girl’s words rang like music in Dunn’s mind. Their message gave him a warm, exultant feeling. He had felt horribly alone, lost, marooned, shut away.
The girl was studying him. “How much have you forgotten?” she asked. “Do you remember your name? Mine is Alicia Taylor.”
Dunn made a frowning effort at recollection, but the memory he sought eluded him. All he obtained was the image of the man with the high cheekbones and slanting eyes. He felt a new surge of the urgency connected with that face.
He shook his head at Alicia. “I can’t recall my name—but I do remember some things.” He described the man with the slanting eyes. “He did something to me—something that made me forget. I know he’s a spy and that I have to warn the authorities about him.”
“Those at the station may be able to help you,” Alicia said. “We’re almost there.”
They reached a tall office building and Alicia led the way through the glass entrance doors. They passed impalpably through a crowd of business men and office workers emerging from an elevator. Alicia smiled impishly and beckoned Dunn into the car.
“This isn’t necessary—but it’s what I call carrying on in the old tradition,” she said. “We get off at the fifth floor—even if the car doesn’t stop there.”
It didn’t, but as it approached the specified floor Alicia pulled abruptly at Dunn’s arm. Without any sensation of shock or momentum he found himself in a long hall. Alicia led him to a pair of glass doors that bore the legend “North American Information Bureau.”
“This suite of offices is leased by a group of psychics,” Alicia remarked. “It’s the busiest place in the whole building, but the physical people here don’t know that.”
They entered a crowded reception room. All those present were astrals, Dunn saw. Alicia spoke to a woman at a desk, describing Dunn as “a special case.” A short time later they were ushered into the office of a gray-haired, athletic man named Bronson. Though he had the appearance of a top-flight business executive, there was a spiritual quality about Bronson that showed he was far removed from commercial matters.
Bronson listened with keen-eyed interest as Dunn told him of his fragmentary yet disturbing and urgent memories. When Dunn had finished he nodded slowly.
“It appears that you were subjected to a psychic assault by the man you describe,” Bronson told Dunn. “This evidently happened because you had discovered him to be a spy. It argues a high degree of psychic development in his case, but the fact that you withstood his assault so well indicates that you have a great deal of natural psychic strength yourself. This power could be developed.
“At any rate, your story certainly is something we must look into. It suggests certain illegal activities which we make every effort to stamp out. We do have our own particular laws, you know. And it seems that this spy is aware of them. He must have been operating very secretly for us not to have gotten wind of him sooner than this. But then the world is a big place and we can’t keep a constant check on everything that might be important or dangerous.”
Bronson became grimly purposeful. “The first thing to do is to restore your memories in full. I don’t think that will be difficult. Our psychiatrists know considerably more about the mind than those on the physical plane, since extrasensory perception works without hindrance here. In addition, our mental experts can use certain energies that generally are not available on the physical plane. These energies accomplish the so-called miracle cures of psychic healers We’ll begin at once!”
Dunn learned shortly that things could move with bewildering speed in the astral world. He was turned over to two psychiatrists named Kraus and Stephens, who examined and questioned him at length.
Dunn then allowed Kraus to place him in a trance and it seemed to him while in this state that he and the two psychiatrists moved through his mind, flashing from scene to scene, each as vivid and real as an actual experience.
Suddenly he stood in a familiar room. A lean, saturnine man faced him, a man with high cheekbones and slanting eyes. Behind him stood two other men. On a bed across the room lay the body of a young man with tousled brown hair—himself, Dunn realized.
The saturnine man abruptly extended his arms and dimly Dunn was aware of pain—and knowledge. The scene vanished. Other scenes followed in which the man with the slanting eyes was present, speaking, gesturing, smiling in mockery. Then Dunn found himself drinking with a stocky man with sandy hair cut close to his head. Halleck, Dunn remembered, and he knew that Halleck’s body was alienly tenanted.
Scene followed scene. It seemed to Dunn that he was moving back to his very childhood and even beyond that to an existence he could not quite comprehend. And then he was flashing back and there was light where there had been darkness, a knowing where there had been a forgetting. He awoke—and remembered.
Dunn reported back to Bronson. who listened with increasing gravity to the story Dunn told him out of his returned memories.
“The situation is even more serious than I thought it was!” Bronson exclaimed. “We must take immediate action against this man Borchov. What he’s planning to do will destroy everything which we on the astral plane have been working for.”
Bronson leaned forward, his face intense. “You’re the key to the whole thing,” he told Dunn. “I believe that in the final analysis the success or failure of our efforts against Borchov will depend on you. That’s because he is using your physical body and only you can obtain certain results where your own body is concerned.”
“I’ll do anything,” Dunn said grimly. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to give Borchov a dose of his own medicine.”
Bronson nodded his understanding. “You’ll need special training for the task ahead of you. The unusual psychic strength which you possess will have to be developed.”
“Let’s get started, then!” Dunn said.
Dunn went—to school. Not many years before, when attending college and faced with the approach of examinations, he had often wished it were possible somehow to compress into a few days or weeks the studies of an entire year. He found that on the astral plane it was quite possible. Time here—or rather the awareness of it—was different.
He learned amazing things a
bout-the mind and electromagnetic effects. The relationship between electromagnetic effects and gravitational effects already had been shown by one of the foremost scientists on the earthly plane. It now appeared, Dunn found, that there was a relationship between these effects and the mind, that all were merely different manifestations of a single, continuous field flowing like a mighty river through space-time. The effects operated to produce mind—and mind in turn operated to produce the effects.
Dunn learned mentally to manipulate small objects and to cause rapping noises—what on the physical plane were called poltergeist phenomena. He progressed in his mental operations until he could hurl huge rocks hundreds of feet into the air and shatter them with a single bolt of energy.
He spent almost all his leisure time with Alicia. The girl was going to school too, though for a different purpose. They took long walks through parks. They attended concerts or visited movie theatres. In this and other ways Dunn was reminded that life on the astral plane was not essentially different from the life he had always known. He heard casual remarks about other, higher planes, but it seemed that only a few highly developed astrals possessed detailed information about these.
Dunn felt that an ominous shadow lay over his jaunts with Alicia. He had no assurance that he would succeed in his efforts against Borchov and the thought of defeat weighed heavily on his mind. For among the consequences of defeat he now saw not only a kind of death for himself—a mental devastation which even experts like Kraus and Stephens could not repair—but also separation from Alicia.
Dunn reached a crucial point in his training. His instructors hurled the equivalents of lightning bolts at him—and he turned them aside. He graduated.
His graduation was something for which Bronson had been waiting impatiently. “Congratulations!” he said when Dunn reported to him. “Now we can go into action. Everything is ready. All our plans are laid. I’ve had investigators carefully scouting out conditions at Elm Center. As far as they could tell without risking detection, Borchov seems not to be up to anything unusual. It’s difficult to say just how highly developed his extrasensory faculties are, of course. But we’ve learned enough about his habits to have been able to calculate the exact moment to strike.”
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 40