On the white expanse of paper shown, the title leaped at him once again.
DESTRUCT, by Walter Blunt
Paul turned the page. He found himself looking at the first page of an introduction written by someone whose name he did not recognize. Paul skimmed through its half-dozen pages.
Walter Blunt, he read, was the son of rich parents. His family had owned a controlling interest in one of the great schools of bluefin tuna that followed the circle migratory route between North and South America and Japan. Blunt had grown up brilliant but undisciplined. He had lived the life of the wealthy who have nothing important to do, until one day when with thousands of other hunters he had been caught in an uncontrolled freak early-whiter blizzard, while out stalking deer in the Lake Superior Range.
Four others in Blunt's party had died of exposure. Blunt, equally city-bred and unprepared, had in a wry moment conceived of the Alternate Forces of existence, and offered to trade them his life's service for the protection of his life itself. Following this, he had walked unerringly out of the woods to safety and arrived warm and unexhausted at shelter, in spite of the sleeting wind, the dropping temperature, and the fact that he was wearing only the lightest of hunting clothes.
Following this experience, he had dedicated himself to the Alternate Forces. Over a lifetime he had created and organized the Chantry Guild, or Société Chanterie, composed of students of, and graduate workers with, the Alternate Forces. The aim of the Chantry Guild was universal acceptance of the positive principle of destruction. Only by destruction could mankind signify its adherence to the alternate Laws, and only the Alternate Laws remained strong enough to save mankind from the technical civilization that was now on the verge of trapping mankind like a fly in amber.
The delicate chime of a response counter drew Paul's attention to the screen before him. He looked at a double list of names, addresses, and call numbers. He turned his attention to the typewriter-like keyboard below the screen and tapped out a message to all the names on the list
My left arm was amputated slightly over seven months ago. My body has to date rejected three attempts to graft on a replacement. No reason for the intolerance can be discovered in the ordinary physiological processes. My physicians have recommended that I explore the possibility of a psychological factor being involved in the causes of the intolerance, and have suggested that I try my case among psychiatrists of this area, where a large amount of work with amputees has been done. Would you be interested in accepting me as a patient? Paul Allen Formain. File No. 432 36 47865 2551 OG3 K122b, Room 1412, Koh-i-Nor Hotel, Chicago Complex.
Paul got up, took the book he had just purchased, and headed back toward the hotel. On the way back and after he had returned to his room, he read on into Blunt's writing. Sprawled out on his hotel-room bed he read a collection of wild nonsense mixed with sober fact, and an urgent appeal to the reader to enlist himself as a student under the instruction of some graduate Chantry Guild member. The reward promised for successfully completing the course of instruction was apparently to be a power encompassing all wild dreams of magical ability that had ever been conceived.
It was too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
Paul frowned.
He found himself holding the book gingerly. It did not stir in a physical sense, but a vibration came from it that seemed to quiver deep in the marrow of Paul's bones. A singing silence began to swell in the room. One of his moments was coming on him. He held himself still as a wolf come suddenly upon a trap. About him the walls of the room breathed in and out. The silence sang louder. The place and moment spoke to him:
DANGER.
Put the book down.
Louder sang the silence, blinding the ears of his sensing....
Danger, said the invincible part of him, is a word invented by children, and is essentially meaningless to the adult.
He pressed the button to turn the page. A new chapter heading looked up at him.
ALTERNATE FORCES AND REGROWTH. THE REPLACEMENT OF MISSING LIMBS, OR EVEN OF THE BODY ENTIRE.
The reparative regeneration of parts of the human body by epimorphosis, or regrowth beginning from a regeneration bud or blastema formed at the wound surface, is a property capable of stimulation by the Alternate Forces. It has its justification and instigation in the intended action of self-destruct. Like all use and manipulation of the Alternate Forces, the mechanism is simple once the underlying principles are grasped. In this case, they are the Non-Evolutionary (blocking to the Natural Forces) and the Regressive (actively in reversal of the Natural Forces). These principles are not merely statically negative, but dynamically negative, so that from the fact of their dynamism derives the energy necessary for the process of regeneration....
The call note on Paul's room telephone chimed, breaking the spell. The room fled back to naturalness and the book sagged in Ms hand. From the bed he saw the screen of the phone light up.
"A Directory report on your query, sir," said a canned voice from the lighted screen.
The screen dissolved into a list of names with medical and mental science degrees after them. One by one the names winked out until only one was left Paul read it from the bed.
DR. ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
A moment later the word accept was printed beside it. Paul put the book aside where it could be picked up later.
Chapter 4
"...How do you feel?"
It was a woman's voice. Paul opened his eyes. Dr. Elizabeth Williams was standing over the chair in which he sat. She put the hypodermic spray gun down on the desk beside him, and walked around to take her seat behind the desk.
"Did I say anything?" Paul sat up straighter in his chair.
"If you mean, did you reply to my questions? no." Dr. Williams looked across the desk at him. She was a small, square-shouldered woman with brown hair and an unremarkable face. "How long have you known about this strong resistance of yours to hypnosis?"
"Is it resistance?" asked Paul. "I'm trying to co-operate."
"How long have you known about it?"
"Since the sailing accident. Five years." Paul looked at her. "What did I say?"
Dr. Williams looked at him.
"You told me I was a foolish woman," she said.
Paul blinked at her.
"Is that all?" he asked. "I didn't say anything but that."
"That's all." She looked at him across the desk. He felt curiosity and a sort of loneliness emanating from her.
"Paul, can you think of anything in particular that you're afraid of?"
"Afraid?" he asked, and frowned. "Afraid . . . ? Not really. No."
"Worried?"
He thought for a long moment
"No—not worried, actually," he said. "There's nothing you could say was actually worrying me."
"Unhappy?"
He smiled. Then frowned, suddenly.
"No," he said, and hesitated. "That is, I don't think so."
"Then why did you come to see me?"
He looked at her in some surprise.
"Why, about my arm," he said.
"Not about the fact that you were orphaned at an early age? Not that you've always led a solitary life, with no close friends? Not that you tried to kill yourself in a sailboat five years ago, and tried again in a mine, less than a year ago?"
"Wait a minute!" said Paul. She looked at him politely, inquiringly.
"Do you think I arranged those accidents to try and kill myself?"
"Shouldn't I think so?"
"Why, no," said Paul.
"Why not?"
"Because ..." A sudden perfect moment of understanding broke through to Paul. He saw her sitting there in complete blindness. He stared at her, and before his eyes, looking back at him, she seemed to grow shrunken and a little older. He got to his feet. "It doesn't matter," he said.
"You should think about it, Paul."
"I will. I want to think over this whole business."
"Good," she said. She had not moved
out of her chair, and in spite of the assurance of her tone, she did not seem quite herself since he bad looked at her. "My receptionist will set up your next time in."
"Thanks," he said. "Good-by."
"Good afternoon, Paul."
He went out. In the outer office the receptionist looked up from a filing machine as he passed.
"Mr. Formain?" She leaned forward over the machine. "Don't you want to make your next appointment now?"
"No," said Paul. "I don't think so." He went out.
He went down a number of levels from Dr. Williams' office to the terminal in the base of the building. There were public communications booths nearby. He stepped into one and closed the door. He felt both naked and relieved. He dialed for a listing of the Chantry Guild members in the area. The screen lighted up.
Walter Blunt, Guildmaster (no listed phone number) Jason Warren, Necromancer, Chantry Guild Secretary, phone number 66 433 35246 Kantele Maki (no listed phone number) Morton Brown, 66 433 67420 Warra, Mage,
(The above list contains only the names of those requesting listing under the Chantry Guild heading.)
Paul punched 66 433 35246. The screen lighted up whitely, but it was half a minute before it cleared to show the face of one of the people Paul remembered from the television broadcast in the mine a year before, the face of a thin, black-haired young man with deep-set, un-moving eyes.
"My name is Paul Formain," said Paul. "I'd like to talk to Jason Warren."
"I'm Jason Warren. What about?"
"I've just read a book by Walter Blunt that says the Alternate Forces can grow back limbs that are missing."
Paul moved so that the stub of his left arm was visible to the other.
"I see." Warren looked at him with the movelessness of his dark eyes. "What about it?"
"I'd like to talk to you about it."
"I suppose that can be arranged. When would you like to talk to me?"
"Now," said Paul.
The black eyebrows in the screen went up a fraction.
"Now?"
"I was planning on it," said Paul.
"Oh, you were?"
Paul waited.
"All right, come ahead." Abruptly the screen went blank, but leaving Paul's vision filled with the after-image of the dark face that had been in it looking at him with a curious interest and intent. He rose, breathing out a little with relief. He had moved without thinking from the second of perception that had come to him in Elizabeth Williams' office. Suddenly he had realized that her education and training had made her blind to understanding in his case. She had not understood. That much had been explosively obvious. She had been trying to reconcile the speed of light with the clumsy mechanism of the stop watch she believed in. And if she had made that error, then the psychiatrist at San Diego, after the boating accident, had been wrong in the same way, as well.
Paul had reacted without thinking, but, strongly now, his instinct told him he was right. He had labored under the handicap of a belief in stop watches. Somewhere, he told himself now, there was a deeper understanding. It was a relief to go searching for it at last with an unfettered mind—a mind awake.
Chapter 5
As Paul entered through the automatically-opening front door of Jason Warren's apartment, he saw three people already in the room—a sort of combination office-lounge—he found himself stepping into.
Two of the three were just going out through a rear door. Paul got only a glimpse of them—one, a girl who with a start Paul recognized as the girl with the book he had encountered earlier at Chicago Directory. The other was a flat-bodied man in middle age with an air of quiet competence about him. He, too, had been with the girl and Blunt on the broadcast Paul had witnessed in the mine a year before. Paul wondered briefly if Blunt, also, was nearby. Then the thought passed from his mind. He found himself looking down, slightly, into the dark, mercurial face of Jason Warren.
"Paul Formain," said Paul. "I phoned———"
"Sit down." Warren waved Paul into a chair and took a facing one himself. He looked at Paul with something of the direct, uninhibited stare of a child. "What can I do for you?"
Paul considered him. Warren sat loosely, almost sprawled, but with his thin body held in the balance of a dancer or a highly trained athlete, so that a single movement might have brought him back to his feet.
"I want to grow a new arm," said Paul.
"Yes," said Warren. He flicked a forefinger toward the phone. "I punched information for your public file after you called," he said. "You're an engineer."
"I was," said Paul, and was a little surprised to hear himself say it, now, with such a small amount of bitterness.
"You believe in the Alternate Laws?"
"No," said Paul. "Truthfully—no."
"But you think they might give you an arm back?"
"It's a chance."
"Yes," said Warren. "An engineer. Hard-headed, practical—doesn't care what makes it work as long as it works."
"Not exactly," said Paul.
"Why bother with the Alternate Laws? Why not just have a new arm out of the culture banks grafted on?"
"I've tried that," said Paul. "It doesn't take."
Warren sat perfectly still for a couple of seconds. There was no change in his face or attitude, but Paul got an impression as if something like a delicately sensitive instrument in the other man had suddenly gone click and begun to register.
"Tell me," said Warren, slowly and carefully, "the whole story."
Paul told it. As he talked, Warren sat still and listened. During the fifteen minutes or so it took for Paul to tell it all, the other man did not move or react. And with no warning, even as Paul was talking, it came to Paul where he had seen that same sort of concentration before. It was in a bird dog he had seen once, holding its point, one paw lifted, nose straight and tail in line with the body, as still as painted Death.
When Paul stopped, Warren did not speak at once. Instead, without moving a muscle otherwise, he lifted his right hand into the air between them and extended his forefinger toward Paul. The movement bad all the remote inevitability of a movement by a machine, or the slow leaning of the top of a chopped tree as it begins its fall.
"Look," Warren said slowly, "at my finger. Look at the tip of my finger. Look closely. Right there at the end of the nail, under the nail, you can see a spot of red. It's a drop of blood coming out from under the nail. See it swelling there. It's getting larger. In a moment it'll drop off. But it's getting larger, larger———"
"No," said Paul. "There's no drop of blood there at all. You're wasting your time—and mine."
Warren dropped his hand.
"Interesting," he said. "Interesting."
"Is it?" asked Paul.
"Graduate members of the Chantry Guild," said Warren, "can't be hypnotized, either. But you say you don't believe in the Alternate Laws."
"I seem to be a sort of free-lance, then," said Paul.
Warren rose suddenly from his chair with the single motion Paul had expected. He walked lightly and easily across the room, turned, and came back.
"In order to resist hypnosis," he said, standing over Paul, "you must make use of the Alternate Laws, whether you recognize them as such or not. The keystone of the use of the Alternate Laws is complete independence of the individual—independence from any force, physical or otherwise."
"And vice versa?" asked Paul, smiling.
"And vice versa." Warren did not smile. He stood looking down at Paul. "I'll ask you again," he said. "What do you expect me to do for you?"
"I want an arm," said Paul.
"I can't give you an arm," said Warren. "I can't do anything for you. The use of the Alternate Laws is for those who would do things for themselves."
"Show me how, then."
Warren sighed slightly. It was a sigh that sounded to Paul not only weary, but a little angry.
"You don't know what the hell you're asking," said Warren. "To train whatever aptitude you have for use
of the Alternate Laws, I'd have to take you on as my apprentice in necromancy."
"Blunt's book gave me to understand the Guild was eager for people."
"Why, we are," said Warren. "We have an urgent need right now for someone comparable to Leonardo da Vinci. We'd be very glad to get someone with the qualifications of Milton or Einstein. Of course, what we really need is someone with a talent no one has conceived of yet—a sort of X-Genius. So we advertise."
"Then you don't want people."
"I didn't say that," said Warren. He turned and paced the room and came back. "You're serious about joining the Guild?"
"If it'll get me my arm."
"It won't get you your arm. I tell you, no one can put that arm back but you. There's a relation between the Alternate Laws and the work of the Guild, but it isn't what you think."
"Perhaps I'd better be enlightened," said Paul.
"All right," said Warren. He put his hands in his pockets and stood with shoulders hunched slightly, looking down at Paul. "Try this on for size. This is an ill world we live in, Formain. A world sick from a surfeit of too many technical luxuries. An overburdened world, swarming with people close to the end of their ropes." His deep-set eyes were steady on Paul. "People today are like a man who thought that if he made his success in the world, everything else that makes life good would come automatically. Now they've made their success—the perfection of a technological civilization in which no one lacks anything in the way of a physical comfort—and they find themselves in a false paradise. Like an electric motor without a load upon it, the human spirit without the weight of the need to achieve and progress is beginning to rev up toward dissolution. Faster and faster, until they'll fly apart and destroy this world they've made."
He stopped.
"What do you say to that?" he asked.
"It might be the case," said Paul. "I don't really believe that's the situation we're in, myself, but it might be the case."
"All right," said Warren. "Now try this: In a climate of confusion, one of the surest ways of confounding the enemy is to tell him the plain truth. And the Guildmaster has stated the plain truth plainly in his book. The Chantry Guild is not interested in propagating the use of the Alternate Laws. It only wants to train and make use of those who can already use the Laws, to its own end. And that end's to hurry the end that is inevitably coming, to bring about the destruction of present civilization."
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