The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  A single light still burned somewhere in the ward room outside, and by it he could see to take his shoes and socks off and get into the bunk.

  He lay very quiet for a while, hearing only two sounds, both faint and seeming far away. Somewhere in another cubicle off the ward someone was singing quietly to himself, a wordless monody; somewhere else someone else was sobbing. In his own cubicle, he couldn't hear even the sound of breathing from his roommate.

  Then there was a shuffle of bare feet and someone in the open doorway said, "George Vine."

  He said, "Yes?"

  "Shhh, not so loud. This is Bassington. Want to tell you about that guard; I should have warned you before. Don't ever tangle with him."

  "I didn't."

  "I heard; you were smart. He'll slug you to pieces if you give him half a chance. He's a sadist. A lot of guards are; that's why they're bughousers; that's what they call themselves, bughousers. If they get fired one place for being too brutal they get on at another one. He'll be in again-in the morning; I thought I'd warn you."

  The shadow in the doorway was gone.

  He lay there in the dimness, the almost-darkness, feeling rather than thinking. Wondering. Did mad people ever know that they were mad? Could they tell? Was every one of them sure, as he was sure-?

  That quiet, still thing lying in the bunk near his, inarticulately suffering, withdrawn from human reach into a profound misery beyond the understanding of the sane—

  "Napoleon Bonaparte!"

  A clear voice, but had it been within his mind, or from without? He sat up on the bunk. His eyes pierced the dimness, could discern no form, no shadow, in the doorway.

  He said, "Yes?"

  VII

  Only then, sitting up on the hunk and having answered "Yes," did he realize the name by which the voice had called him.

  "Get up. Dress."

  He swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, stood up. He reached for his shirt and was slipping his arms into it before he stopped and asked, "Why?"

  "To learn the truth."

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  "Do not speak aloud. I can hear you. I am within you and without. I have no name."

  "Then what are you?" He said it aloud, without thinking.

  "An instrument of The Brightly Shining."

  He dropped the trousers he'd been holding. He sat down carefully on the edge of the bunk, leaned over and groped around for them.

  His mind groped, too. Groped for he knew not what. Finally he found a question-the question. He didn't ask it aloud this time; he thought it, concentrated on it as he straightened out his trousers and thrust his legs in them.

  "Am I mad?"

  The answer-No-came clear and sharp as a spoken word, but had it been spoken? Or was it a sound that was only in his mind?

  He found his shoes and pulled them on his feet. As he fumbled the laces into some sort of knots, he thought, "Who-what-is The Brightly Shining?"

  "The Brightly Shining is that which is Earth. It is the intelligence of our planet. It is one of three intelligences in the solar system, one of many in the universe. Earth is one; it is called The Brightly Shining."

  "I do not understand." he thought.

  "You will. Are you ready?"

  He finished the second knot. He stood up. The voice said, "Come. Walk silently."

  It was as though he was being led through the almost-darkness, although he felt no physical touch upon him; he saw no physical presence beside him. But he walked confidently, although quietly on tiptoe, knowing he would not walk into anything nor stumble. Through the big room that was the ward, and then his outstretched hand touched the knob of a door.

  He turned it gently and the door opened inward. Light blinded him. The voice said, "Wait," and he stood immobile. He could hear sound-the rustle of paper, the turn of a page-outside the door, in the lighted corridor.

  Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream. A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the sound of the scream. A door opened and closed.

  The voice said, "Come," and he pulled the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty chair that had been just outside the door of the ward.

  Another door, another corridor. The voice said, "Wait," the voice said, "Come"; this time a guard slept. He tip-toed past. Down steps.

  He thought the question, "Where am I going?"

  "Mad," said the voice.

  "But you said I wasn't-" He'd spoken aloud and the sound startled him almost more than had the answer to his last question. And in the silence that followed the words he'd spoken there came-from the bottom of the stairs and around the corner-the sound of a buzzing switchboard, and someone said, "Yes? . . . Okay, Doctor, I'll be right up." Footsteps and the closing of an elevator door.

  He went down the remaining stairs and around the corner and he was in the front main hall. There was an empty desk with a switchboard beside it. He walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted and he threw the heavy bolt.

  He went outside, into the night.

  He walked quietly across cement, across gravel; then his shoes were on grass and he didn't have to tiptoe any more. It was as dark now as the inside of an elephant; he felt the presence of trees nearby and leaves brushed his face occasionally, but he walked rapidly, confidently and his hand went forward just in time to touch a brick wall.

  He reached up and he could touch the top of it; he pulled himself up and over it. There was broken glass on the flat top of the wall; he cut his clothes and his flesh badly, but he felt no pain, only the wetness of blood and the stickiness of blood.

  He walked along a lighted road, he walked along dark and empty streets, he walked down a darker alley. He opened the back gate of a yard and walked to the back door of a house. He opened the door and went in. There was a lighted room at the front of the house; he could see the rectangle of light at the end of a corridor. He went along the corridor and into the lighted room.

  Someone who had been seated at a desk stood up. Someone, a man, whose face he knew but whom he could not—

  "Yes," said the man, smiling, "you know me, but you do not know me. Your mind is under partial control and your ability to recognize me is blocked out. Other than that and your analgesia-you are covered with blood from the glass on the wall, but you don't feel any pain-your mind is normal and you are sane."

  "What's it all about?" he asked. "Why was I brought here?,"

  "Because you are sane. I'm sorry about that, because you can't be. It is not so much that you retained memory of your previous life, after you'd been moved. That happens. It is that you somehow know something of what you shouldn't-something of The Brightly Shining, and of the Game between the red and the black. For that reason-"

  "For that reason, what?" he asked.

  The man he knew and did not know smiled gently. "For that reason you must know the rest, so that you will know nothing at all. For everything will add to nothing. The truth will drive you mad."

  "That I do not believe."

  "Of course you don't. If the truth were conceivable to you, it would not drive you mad. But you cannot remotely conceive the truth."

  A powerful anger surged up within him. He stared at the familiar face that he knew and did not know, and he stared down at himself; at the torn and bloody gray uniform, at his torn and bloody hands. The hands hooked like claws with the desire to kill-someone, the someone, whoever it was, who stood before him.

  He asked, "What are you?"

  "I am an instrument of The Brightly Shining."

  "The same which led me here, or another?"

  "One is all, all is one. Within the whole and its parts, there is no difference. One instrument is another and the red is the black and the black is the white and there is no difference. The Brightly Shining is the soul of Earth. I use soul as the nearest word in your vocabulary."

  Hatred was almost a bright light. It was almost something that he could
lean into, lean his weight against.

  He asked, "What is The Brightly Shining?" He made the words a curse in his mouth.

  "Knowing will make you mad. You want to know?"

  "Yes." He made a curse out of that simple, sibilant syllable.

  The lights were dimming. Or was it his eyes? The room was becoming dimmer, and at the same time receding. It was becoming a tiny cube of dim light, seen from afar and outside, from somewhere in the distant dark, ever receding, turning into a pinpoint of light, and within that point of light ever the hated. Thing, the man-or was it a man?-standing beside the desk.

  Into darkness, into space, up and apart from the earth -a dim sphere in the night, a receding sphere outlined against the spangled blackness of eternal space, occulting the stars, a disk of black.

  It stopped receding, and time stopped. It was as though the clock of the universe stood still. Beside him, out of the void, spoke the voice of the instrument of The Shining One.

  "Behold," it said. "The Being of Earth."

  He beheld. Not as though an outward change was occurring, but an inward one, as though his senses were being changed to enable him to perceive something hitherto unseeable.

  The ball that was Earth began to glow. Brightly to shine.

  "You see the intelligence that rules Earth," said the voice. "The sum of the black and the white and the red, that are one, divided only as the lobes of a brain are divided, the trinity that is one."

  The glowing ball and the stars behind it faded, and the darkness became deeper darkness and then there was dim light, growing brighter, and he was back in the room with the man standing at the desk.

  "You saw," said the man whom he hated. "But you do not understand. You ask, what you have seen, what is The Brightly Shining? It is a group intelligence, the true intelligence of Earth, one intelligence among three in the Solar system, one among many in the universe.

  "What, then, is man? Men are pawns, in games of-to you-unbelievable complexity, between the red and the black, the white and the black, for amusement. Played by one part of an organism against another part, to while away an instant of eternity. There are vaster games, played between galaxies. Not with man.

  "Man is a parasite peculiar to Earth, which tolerates his presence for a little while. He exists nowhere else in the cosmos, and he does not exist here for long. A little while, a few chessboard wars, which he thinks he fights himself-You begin to understand."

  The man at the desk smiled.

  "You want to know of yourself. Nothing is less important. A move was made, before Lodi. The opportunity was there for a move of the red; a stronger, more ruthless personality was needed; it was a turning point in history-which means in the game. Do you understand now? A pinch-hitter was put in to become Emperor."

  He managed two words. "And then?"

  "The Brightly Shining does not kill. You had to be put somewhere, some time. Long later a man named George Vine was killed in an accident; his body was still usable. George Vine had not been insane, but he had had a Napoleonic complex. The transference was amusing."

  "No doubt." Again it was impossible to reach the man at the desk. The hatred itself was a wall between them. "Then George Vine is dead?"

  "Yes. And you, because you knew a little too much, must go mad so that you will know nothing. Knowing the truth will drive you mad."

  "No!"

  The instrument smiled.

  VIII

  The room, the cube of light, dimmed; it seemed to tilt. Still standing, he was going over backward, his position becoming horizontal instead of vertical.

  His weight was on his back and under him was the soft-hard smoothness of his bunk, the roughness of a gray sheet blanket. And he could move; he sat up.

  He had been dreaming? Had he really been outside the asylum? He held up his hands, touched one to the other, and they were wet with something sticky. So was the front of his shirt and the thighs and knees of his trousers.

  And his shoes were on.

  The blood was there from climbing the wall. And now the analgesia was leaving, and pain was beginning to come into his hands, his chest, his stomach and his legs. Sharp biting pain.

  He said aloud. "I am not mad. I am not mad." Was he screaming it?

  A voice said, "No. Not yet." Was it the voice that had been here in the room before? Or was it the voice of the man who had stood in the lighted room? Or had both been the same voice?

  It said, "Ask, `What is man?' "

  Mechanically, he asked it.

  "Man is a blind alley in evolution, who came too late too compete, who has always been controlled and played with by The Brightly Shining, which was old and wise before man walked erect.

  "Man is a parasite upon a planet populated before he came, populated by a Being that is one and many, a billion cells but a single mind, a single intelligence, a single will-as is true of every other populated planet in the universe.

  "Man is a joke, a clown, a parasite. He is nothing; he will be less."

  "Come and go mad."

  He was getting out of bed again; he was walking. Through the doorway of the cubicle, along the ward. To the door that led to the corridor; a thin crack of light showed under it. But this time his hand did not reach out for the knob. Instead he stood there facing the closed door, and it began to glow; slowly it became light and visible.

  As though from somewhere an invisible spotlight played upon it, the door became a visible rectangle in the surrounding blackness; as brightly visible as the crack under it.

  The voice said, "You see before you a cell of your ruler, a cell unintelligent in itself, yet a tiny part of a unit which is intelligent, one of a million units which make up the intelligence which rules the earth-and you. And which earth-wide intelligence is one of a million intelligences which rule the universe."

  "The door? I don't-"

  The voice spoke no more; it had withdrawn, but somehow inside his mind was the echo of silent laughter.

  He leaned closer and saw what he was meant to see. An ant was crawling up the door.

  His eyes followed it, and numbing horror crawled apace, up his spine. A hundred things that had been told and shown him suddenly fitted into a pattern, a pattern of sheer horror. The black, the white, the red; the black ants, the white ants, the red ants; the players with men, separate lobes of a single group brain, the intelligence that was one. Man an accident, a parasite, a pawn; a million planets in the universe inhabited each by an insect race that was a single intelligence for the planet-and all the intelligences together were the single cosmic intelligence that was-God!

  The one-syllable word wouldn't come.

  He went mad, instead.

  He beat upon the now-dark door with his bloody hands, with his knees, his face, with himself, although already he had forgotten why, had forgotten what he wanted to crush.

  He was raving mad-dementia praecox, not paranoia-when they released his body by putting it into a strait jacket, released it from frenzy to quietude.

  He was quietly mad-paranoia, not dementia praecox-when they released him as sane eleven months later.

  Paranoia, you see, is a peculiar affliction; it has no physical symptoms, it is merely the presence of a fixed delusion. A series of metrazol shocks had cleared up the dementia praecox and left only the fixed delusion that he was George Vine, a reporter.

  The asylum authorities thought he was, too, so the delusion was not recognized as such and they released him and gave him a certificate to prove he was sane.

  He married Clare; he still works at the Blade-for a man named Candler. He still plays chess with his cousin, Charlie Doerr. He still sees-for periodic checkups-both Dr. Irving and Dr. Randolph.

  Which of them smiles inwardly? What good would it do you to know? Yes it was, is, one of those four.

  It doesn't matter. Don't you understand? Nothing matters!

  THE END

  Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.

  "And I have found
the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulate, even reverse, that field."

  Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.

  "Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I ma-chine this. Field a is time." Day one daughter his told he, "Equation key the found have I and."

  Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.

  KEEP OFF

  Daptine is the secret of it. Adaptine, they called it first; then it got shortened to daptine. It let us adapt.

  They explained it all to us when we were ten years old; I guess they thought we were too young to understand before then, although we knew a lot of it already. They told us just after we landed on Mars.

  "You're home, children," the Head Teacher told us after we had gone into the glassite dome they'd built for us there. And he told us there'd be a special lecture for us that evening, an important one that we must all attend.

  And that evening he told us the whole story and the whys and wherefores. He stood up before us. He had to wear a heated space suit and helmet, of course, because the temperature in the dome was comfortable for us but already freezing cold for him and the air was already too thin for him to breathe. His voice came to us by radio from inside his helmet.

  "Children," he said, "you are home. This is Mars, the planet on which you will spend the rest of your lives. You are Martians, the first Martians. You have lived five years on Earth and another five in space. Now you will spend ten years, until you are adults, in this dome, although toward the end of that time you will be allowed to spend increasingly long periods outdoors.

  "Then you will go forth and make your own homes, live your own lives, as Martians. You will intermarry and your children will breed true. They too will be Martians.