He received snatches of information from around the circle. One of the women—barely a girl in fact—was anxious because, the night before, she had confessed to one of the men that she loved him and he had not, so far, chosen to make an answer. One man—for all Alec knew he might be the subject of the girl's concern—was very upset because the wife he had deserted in London some months past had recently communicated a threat to have him confined to a mental home because, she claimed, his action in depositing their joint fortune in a Swiss bank account belonging to Ah Tran (under a phony name) indicated a certain looniness on the part of the man. All sorts of questions assailed him. Would the war intervene and prevent his wife from obtaining the court order she sought? Maybe, with luck, London would be the recipient of that now famous Indonesian A-bomb. Or should he take steps to free the money and see that his wife received a fair share, thus preserving his own freedom for the nonce? There was another young man, who wondered what position his father—the ruler of a primitive island kingdom unfortunately located less than a hundred miles from the center of civilized power—would take now that the war had actually begun. Would he (the father) feel it necessary, for reasons of national or personal pride, to field an army? And, if so, would he then consider it necessary to follow ancient tradition and recall his son and heir to head that army? As he sat in the circle, supposedly trying to meditate, the son struggled to recall some of the lessons he had been forced to study in early childhood relating to the tactical theories of battlefield action. If he was going to be a general, he had to know the proper way to fight.
Alec felt all of them—not just these three. The radiations reached him simultaneously but he had no difficulty separating one from the others. Never before had his talent come so near assuming the aspects of real telepathy. Although each of the disciples was striving to meditate, seeking to discover some abstract location upon which to focus all attention, none had as yet wholly succeeded and thoughts continued to flow. Alec saw anxiety, pleasure, guilt, jealousy, anger, bitterness, fear, envy, disgust, avarice, serenity, joy, pride, and loathing. Alec focused his attention on Ah Tran and although the messiah had withdrawn more fully than the others his thoughts were clearly open. Alec was surprised at what he discovered but not really shocked. He restrained himself to keep from laughing.
Alec realized it was time for him to act. Reaching out with his own mind, he sought to enter the others. He went to the young woman first and drove out all thoughts of her self-proclaimed future husband. He cautioned the man to forget his wife for the time being and further calmed the anxious recollections of the son and heir. He went to each of the twenty-four, smoothing out their psychic wrinkles, slicing off any jagged mental peaks, filling in the gaping chasms, creating a flat but equal wholeness.
Then he drew back. It was time for him to wait. Needing something to fill the gap, he recalled the ancient fable of the dying man and decided to try to review his own life. It was an easy process making it rise up. The events of a lifetime flowed neatly behind his eyes. He assumed an attitude of disinterested observation. He might have been watching one of Anna's more speculative sculptures. The life story of an incomplete superman. A tale without plot, theme, significance, or hero. The most valid artistic aspect of the tale was its keen ambiguity. What, he wondered, was the point? What about the author? Where did he stand in relation to his material? Artistic objectivity seemed quite total. Alec failed to detect, within the story, so much as a hint of tragedy, comedy, farce, allegory, or irony. The sequence of events proceeded casually from cause to effect. A child was born, placed in a home, became a man, married, worked, and—finally—riding in a small plane—turned to the pilot and said that yes, he would do it. Minor characters came and entered. Subplots flickered, then faded. At last, he saw himself seated within the circle. Was this the end? He couldn't tell, but he stopped. Then he sat, witnessing what seemed to be an infinity of mirrors, endless dwindling layers of shining glass, one piled atop the other.
The twenty-four were gone. Instead, a single fused mass lay waiting. Alec trembled with sudden dread. Had he ever really expected this? They had succeeded. The mass beat against the hastily erected barriers of his mind, demanding entrance. For a time—involuntarily—he resisted.
Then he closed his mind, drawing back. It was too late now for saying no. He began to tear down his own self, moving through his mind from room to room, snuffing out any illumination he found. At last he came to a final lighted corner and, stopping here, he turned and raised the barriers, allowing the fused mass to rush through. It poured into his mind as thick as water, obliterating any final remnants of himself, drowning his soul, consuming him; and in the final flickering moments of his awareness, Alec reached out and grabbed the thing that had entered his mind and threw it high, like a rock, letting it soar upward and into the infinite unknown.
Then Alec Richmond was gone.
The fused spirit—departing the husk of the conduit---rose high. Propelled by the spark provided by the man once known as Alec Richmond, the mass sped into the heavens, reaching out, stretching toward a form of existence never previously known. The gestalt was whole now—fused and merged—and once it reached its proper dwelling place would assume a fixed location in the universe and be as truly and purely alive as any of its components once had been. Closer... it came closer... closer. The mass rushed through a world outside space, one lacking in color, light, and time. A place of utter nothingness and yet—near at hand—another place lay waiting, a world of synesthesia, where light was sound, color motion, and time space. The mass moved as an embryo now. Its existence seemed inexorable, as though firmly predestined, predicated upon events that had already occurred and could not be revoked.
But then the other thing came rushing down. In a flash of individual awareness, Alec knew: Ford! It came sweeping down—blackness—ripping into the fused mass, lodging there, caught. The moment contact occurred, Alec screamed, Father, father, father. He fought with all his might to drive this foul and ugly thing away. But he was
burning up. As if he had been carried bodily through space and plunged into the heart of a flaming star. He could not fight. This thing was far stronger than himself. Father, father, father. The thing exuded an essence of such undiluted evil that Alec was suddenly certain that not only was there a Creator but a Destroyer and that this thing was as surely the son of the latter as Christ was born of God.
The thing of blackness permeated the fused gestalt. Alec glimpsed the dawning of his own end. He did struggle—yes—he resisted. But the barriers he erected to protect himself were as fruitless against this thing as the shield of a medieval knight raised against a cosmic bomb. The fusion began to shatter. Alec glimpsed them separately—the woman worried of her love, the heir and his father, the man and his wife, and even Ah Tran himself— rigid with fear. The broken gestalt limped through the summit of its arc, then turned downward. The earth rushed up, spinning, while Alec—alone—struggled to preserve some faint, lingering vision of life.
And then a flash of sudden whiteness swept over him and, with it, the sweeping pain was gone. A horrible weight was raised from his shoulders. The black thing was gone; the gestalt was set free. Quickly, though wounded, Alec struggled to fuse the mass together once more, to repair the injured fragments. He let it fall. The mass dipped, swung through the nadir of its arc, then soared high again. Alec died. He merged wholly with the mass. The place came near—land of synesthesia—paradise, heaven. It grew nearer. Closer. Closer. Close....
And then it was there.
The journey was over.
The gestalt paused, trembling with eager expectation, but then, realizing that anticipation was no longer necessary, settled down to await the beginning.
And, soon enough, it came.
Later, Inspector Cargill approached the room where the circle had met. With the key Ah Tran had given him, he unlocked the door and peeped inside. He discovered the twenty-three remaining disciples, Ah Tran, and Alec Richmond seated ex
actly as he had originally left them. He shook his head, but without any real disappointment. In truth, he had not expected anything more. Ah Tran was his friend and an intelligent young man. Perhaps he had indeed stumbled upon some important spiritual technique and if that method had not proved great enough to save the human race, then the failure in itself could hardly be termed exceptional. After all, in all the past centuries of human life, no other method or technique had been invented, created, or detected capable, by itself, of providing complete spiritual salvation. Why should Ah Tran be allowed to succeed where so many others had failed before him? There was only one difference this time. Before, there had always been other times in which to try again. But the days were over now and, with them, the human race as well.
Cargill entered the room in order to find out exactly what had occurred. He approached the circle. The eyes of the disciples were shut. Only Alec, in the center, lifted his gaze as Cargill came near.
"What happened?" Cargill asked, standing behind the circle. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Alec said, and his voice was barely more than a whisper.
The tone caused Cargill to shiver. "Don't tell me you— you made it?"
"Yes," Alec said. "We made it."
"We?"
"Yes. You see—" Alec smiled "—I am not I any more; I am we."
Cargill nodded. "I see."
Alec crooked a finger. "Come closer and we will tell you what happened."
"Yes, tell me," Cargill said, but he came no closer.
"We went up," Alec said, "just as you told me—told Alec. It was astonishing, the way we merged into a single glorious whole. We thought we would get there for certain this time. Then Ford came down. We tried to resist, but he was far too strong even for Alec. We began to fall. Then, suddenly, Ford was gone. We returned and reached the place we sought. And that is where we are now."
"You killed him?"
"Ford? We do not know. Yes, perhaps that is what happened. But it did not seem that way. Perhaps we tired him and he was not able to fight us any more. But it did not seem that way either. He was gone and then we were there."
"But he isn't dead?"
Alec shrugged. "We can't know. Death is there and we are here." He giggled. "This is another universe."
"And I don't suppose you can tell me what it's like?"
"No, we cannot. But we are not alone here. There are other races here too. Other peoples who have achieved in the past what our race has achieved now."
"But you can't tell me any more?"
"You must come here first."
"How will I manage that?"
"We will assist you. All men must come here now that the path is open. We are a superman." Again, Alec giggled and stopped himself only by thrusting his fist into his mouth.
Cargill pretended not to notice. "Are you greater than the Inheritors?"
"The Inheritors, despite what they think, are merely the children of the human race. We are another, far superior race entirely."
"Then you can defeat them? Drive them away?"
"If necessary, that could be accomplished."
"If necessary? But I thought that was the whole point of this experiment."
"Their domain is limited to the Earth. Ours now spans the universe. They are harmless creatures now."
"What about Ah Tran?" Cargill pointed to one motionless figure within the circle. "I'd like to talk to him."
"Ah Tran no longer exists. He is part of us now."
"But I can talk to you, Alec."
"We are not Alec."
"Oh." Cargill stepped back, shaking his head. He glanced eagerly toward the door. "Is there anything you need? Food? Water? I can bring it."
"We need nothing."
"I see." Cargill stepped away. The eyes—Alec's eyes—followed him. He opened the door and slipped through. On the other side, alone again, he found he was shaking.
When he recovered, he threaded a path through the maze of floors and rooms and corridors and came at last to the kitchen, where he stopped to eat. He was munching on a sandwich when one wall of the room suddenly erupted in a blaze of light and sound and color. Dead-faced troops raced across a burnt and forsaken landscape.
The announcer's voice said, "An important victory was today attained by the civilized forces active upon the plains south of Manitoba. Western Hemispheric action has been declared inevitably successful. Current attack plans call for—"
Cargill realized he did not want to hear another word of this. What did it matter? The war was over and no one knew it yet but he. Searching the wall for some means of making the picture go away, he found nothing, finally giving up, kicking furiously out, thrusting the tip of his shoe through the center of the electronic battlefield. Obediently, the picture faded away.
Smiling, he went back to the sandwich. He thought, He's gone mad, and found the idea powerfully reassuring. He knew about reversion, how the Superiors, balanced precariously between two conflicting species, often fell into the chasm between. The pressure had got to Alec; he had gone mad.
But what about the others? The disciples? Ah Tran? Had Alec, in the end, proved strong enough to drag them down with him? Had his ravaged mind swallowed them up, consumed them too?
It was a frightening thought. But what was worse was the opposite. The human race saved and yet—he had to admit this—destroyed more utterly than the Inheritors could ever have hoped to accomplish. If we have won, he thought, then what is wrong with me? Is it that I am merely me, myself, I? That I like to say I when I talk of me and never we or us or them? Is it that I am simply afraid?
He looked down at himself, seeing the blue veins in his bare arms, the skinny legs, weak misshapen hips. He raised his hands and held them close to his face. This is me, he thought, and I can never be we.
He was mad. He had to be mad. The war would go on. In the end, they—the Inheritors—would win. The Earth was theirs. No one could stop them from claiming their prize.
He dropped his hands. I am a man, he thought and, thinking this, felt suddenly and awfully and dreadfully alone.
Twenty-Five
Henry J. McCoy was the sort of person who, when forced to go out unprotected on the streets, had to proceed in a sharp, cautious, constantly alert manner, for otherwise, if he wasn't careful, something big and strong and tough would surely pop up from someplace and run straight over him. The truth was that hardly anyone ever noticed the existence of McCoy. Even when he spoke forcefully and waved his hands and danced a vigorous jig, it was necessary to reassure passing strangers that this gesturing wraith was, in fact, something real.
McCoy was fully aware of these facts and took the necessary precautions. Years ago, when first contacted by the agents of Karlton Ford, he had tried in vain to convince them that they had the wrong man.
"You are Henry J. McCoy, born of unknown parentage in Oakville, Wisconsin, home patient number 4678-99-4744?"
"Well, yes, that's me," McCoy admitted.
"Then there can be no mistake. You are the man Mr. Ford wants." The agents had then proceeded to reveal that Karlton Ford had personally considered more than a thousand applicants for the position of his private secretary before eventually choosing McCoy.
"But I didn't apply," McCoy said.
"A personal application is not required. Mr. Ford considered the best men for the job and selected you." Salary would not be permitted to present any obstacle. McCoy could name his own price. All he had to do was agree to accept the work and promise to do the best job he knew how.
"I shouldn't but—" McCoy began. He made himself stop. Shouldn't? But why not?
McCoy was then working for an old firm of corporate lawyers in San Francisco. He was chief clerk—the only clerk actually—but had already been notified that, come the new year, his position would be automated. More than a dozen times in the past, this same fate had overtaken McCoy. On one dreadful occasion, he had been forced to draw the government unemployment pension for more than a year. He had always flat
ly refused all offers of retraining. In spite of its precarious aspects, he loved his work. He was a clerk, which meant doing whatever his current employer ordered him to do. Invariably, he performed his assigned tasks in an efficient—if never brilliant—manner. He always worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and if he happened to complete all his assigned duties in less time than that, then he would immediately begin over again, hoping to achieve a nearer perfection the second time around. Outside of his job, he had one hobby, but that was not a time-consuming avocation and was perfectly respectable.
"All right," he said, shocking himself with the firmness of his tone. "I'll do it."
"There is one other requirement," the agents said. "You must divest yourself of all friends and close acquaintances. Mr. Ford demands that his employees devote all their available energies to him."
"Of course," said McCoy. And—no wonder: he didn't have a single friend and only a few, very vague acquaintances.
McCoy went to work for Karlton Ford the following week.
He occupied a modest room of his own at the Wyoming ranchhouse and was soon provided similar quarters in the various apartments around the world. Karlton Ford did not prove to be—in any conceivable way—a common or normal human being. But the work was good. Normally, McCoy labored sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, which left him time for seven good hours' sleep and one additional hour he could devote to his hobby.
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