“He’ll think about it,” Honor cut in.” Wait and see. And he’ll be calling you to apologize.”
“That’ll be the God damned day,” Clinton growled.
“No, just the opposite.” Honor was brushing his clothes with both hands. “You have any idea how many so-called insane people there are in this world, Milt?”
“Pat, what the hell has gotten into you?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t be wrong.” He grinned at Barbara. “It just can’t be. Now let’s go see the President.”
“Oh no, hell no!” Clinton exploded.
“I think we’d better, Milt,” Honor said soberly. “There’s that June 15th event, and only eight days away now.”
“All right . . . but don’t you go telling the White House physician how to treat the President! You hear me?”
“Why the hell you think I want to see him?” Honor muttered. He tucked Barbara’s hand in his and smiled at his boss. “Let’s go.” He squeezed the girl’s hand. “Barbara has an important date.”
She returned the pressure to his hand and crowded his mind with reassurances about Curt Wenssler. You were right. All the way.
Damn right, he sent back, Just hope I don’t run out of gas.
We could always arrange another refueling.
The warmth overflowed his psyche and seeped into his loins. Where does a sweet little girl get such tremendous ideas?
The man from the nursing station was unlocking the main door. Clinton glanced irritably in their direction and stepped to the doorway.
I learned them from Octavia.
This last came even as Clinton was scowling at them from the doorway. He said, “Are you two going to stand there and smirk at each other, or do we go over to the Naval Medical Center?”
“That where the man is?” Honor said. He pushed Barbara ahead of him and they headed out.
Clinton was speaking over his shoulder. “Yeah, under an oxygen tent and with a team of medics hovering nearby. I don’t know what good it’ll do us to go. Prob’ly won’t let us in the room.”
“We’ll have to get in,” Honor responded. “Milt, the man is going to die on June 15th, unless ...”
“How do you know that?”
Honor honestly did not know how he knew. “I just know,” he said. They had passed the nurses’ station and were ascending the ramp. “I know how to save him, too,” Honor added.
“Either there’s things you aren’t telling me, Pat, or my best operative has slipped off—”
“Settle for the first part,” Honor advised, interrupting quickly.
“I don’t have to settle for a damn thing!” Clinton snapped.
“Well ... you’re the boss, and I guess it’s your choice. I can tell you this much. Friend of my dad’s, years ago, went around with a dumb look on his face all the time, hell, for years. Never seemed to be in the know about anything. Lost his job, lost his wife, alienated his family. Just dumb, see? Stupid. One day somebody discovered the guy was practically deaf. He got a hearing aid and suddenly, hell, the guy knew everything. He wasn’t really stupid, see, just cut off. Cut off from the action.”
Clinton was walking crabwise, staring curiously at his young assistant. “Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.” Honor squeezed Barbara’s hand. “I found me a hearing aid this morning. Milt.”
“What kind of a hearing aid?”
“I don’t know that yet.” He grinned. “But I sure got cut in on a lot of action.” They had reached the lobby. Honor stopped to light a cigarette. He exhaled a thin cloud and said, “Well, do we go over to Navy or don’t we. It’s your choice.”
Clinton was looking him over, up and down, as though somehow Honor’s physical dimensions could have some bearing on the decision. He sighed, his shoulders drooped, and he reached for a cigarette of his own. “We’ll take my car over to Navy,” he said quietly. He lit the cigarette as they moved on to the door. “But Pat,” he added, “don’t make an ass of yourself, eh? There’s too much at stake. Play it loose, eh?”
Honor shivered inwardly. Clinton had not, Honor was sure, the vaguest notion of how much was truly at stake. He wished he could loan the old pro his “hearing aid” for a few minutes. He could not, of course. Well ... Clinton had made his choice. He was throwing in with Honor. Now Honor had to make his choice, and there really were no alternatives of choice for Patrick Honor. Play it loose? He only wished he could. Honor knew he would playing it up tight from that moment on.
Yes, came a vaguely-familiar female-tinted thought. Your choice is singular, Honorkir.
Honor glanced at Barbara. She was smiling faintly, enveloped in some deep thoughts of her own. No, it hadn’t come from Barbara. Honor turned within. Octavia?
Your choice is truth. Beware the Low Nines. They enshroud your President.
Honor shivered and pulled Barbara close against him. They were crossing the parking lot. Affected by his sudden mood, she said, “Wh-what’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, sotto voce. “Could you run my body for a little while?”
“What?”
“I feel like I might have to leave. You can run things. I know it. The point is, do you know it?”
“I-I don’t ..
“You can,” he assured her.
Clinton had drawn far ahead. He stopped and looked back.
Honor whispered furiously, “The choice is singular. I can’t help it. Don’t worry, just take over and run things.”
Barbara’s bafflement was washed away by sudden panic. She screamed, “Pat, lookout!” He was already shoving her away from him. toward Clinton, in a rush of galvanic reaction. The little car had loomed from nowhere. Off balance from his defense of Barbara, Honor was falling toward it. He caught a glimpse of a grimly smiling dark face behind the wheel, and then the hurtling mass impacted bone and muscle. Barbara was screaming and he was down, and then he was swirling, swirling, into an ever shrinking vortex. Someone, or some thing, was waiting for him down there. He reached out, with complete trust, and felt himself being drawn in infinity.
8: Up Tight
Milt Clinton was shaking all over, repeating over and over, “The bastard, the bastard, the ...”
“He’s okay,” Barbara announced, curiously composed. She was on her knees, bent over, cradling Honor’s head in her arm.
“The bastard, didn’t even stop, hit and run, the lousy . . .”
“I’m okay, Milt,” Barbara had rocked back onto her haunches, pulling Honor to a sitting position. His eyes appeared to be slightly glazed; otherwise he looked fine.
Clinton dropped to one knee. “Lay still, dammit. I’ll run in and get some—”
“He’s just fine, Mr. Clinton,” Barbara insisted.
“I’m just fine,” Honor echoed.
“You couldn’t be! I saw that hit! Why, that bastard must’ve been doing ... Damn, you look all right. Is there any pain?”
“There isn’t ...” Barbara began the statement but immediately clamped her lips together.
“. . . Any pain,” Honor completed the declaration. “He just glanced me. Really. I’m fine.”
Clinton was glancing rapidly back and forth between the two. He extended a hand to assist Barbara as she began rising to her feet. Honor started up at the same instant; Clinton pulled them both up. Honor teetered momentarily, then steadied himself and grinned at Clinton. Barbara was smiling at him too. Clinton stared at them for a moment. They both seemed a bit weird. He said, “Wait right here. I’ll bring the car over.”
Clinton trotted lightly up a line of parked cars. Barbara watched him out of earshot, then turned to the slightly leaning figure next to her. “Pat!” she hissed. “Can you hear me?”
Honor’s eyes glazed and the lids drooped to a half closure. One knee buckled and he slumped toward her. She steadied him quickly and sent a frantic signal to the knee. “Oh my gosh!” she moaned. “What am I supposed to do?”
An idea began to form in her mind. She cocked her head, as though lis
tening to a very faint sound, then nodded her head. “I’ll try,” she breathed. “But it’s going to be like walking ventriloquism. You’re liable to get a terrible reputation out of this. I have a feeling you’re going to be acting and sounding terribly effeminate.”
Honor began slumping again. She moved in quickly to shunt the cerebellar reflexes. Honor straightened and swiveled his head awkwardly toward her. The eyelids batted rapidly then settled into a timed pattern. An expression of warmth crept into the eyes and face. Clinton pulled the car up alongside and opened the door. Honor bumped his head getting in but didn’t seem to notice. Clinton wondered vaguely, if Honor was feeling so damned fine, why he left Barbara standing out on the pavement alone. She slid in beside Honor and closed the door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Let’s go,” Honor said.
“Sure,” Clinton said, eyeing the two of them wonderingly. “Let’s go.”
There were two of them . . . yes, he could see clearly now ... Octavia and a man, or a man-like something. He, too, was nude, tall and lithely built, ruggedly handsome with tightly-curled black hair worn close to the ears and thick in back.
“I am Hadrin,” the man stated in rich tones. “Welcome, again, to the Ninth, Honorkir.”
Honor was straining to see more. “Is this a place?” he asked.
Quiet laughter sounded all about him. The man replied, “It is a geometer, Honorkir. Make it what you will, whatever suits your comfort.”
“I guess I don’t understand that.”
Octavia was moving towards him. She said, “Give it the form of your understanding, Honorkir.”
Honor felt a movement of his own consciousness. A background began to swirl behind Octavia, brilliant colors leaping and mingling in mists of various shapes. Suddenly the swirling ceased, settled, crystallized, and Honor was looking into a beautiful meadow. Octavia was approaching him across a soft mat of almost blue grass. Honor became aware of his own self. He was nude, and his sensory perceptions crashed in on him in a sudden, cascading awareness. Others stood about him, in small groups. The meadow extended infinitely in all directions. Octavia reached out and took his hand. “Do not be afraid,” she said.
“I can’t see the faces of the others,” Honor complained. “Who are they? What is this place?”
“Later,” she said. “Come. Hadrin has summoned you.”
“Who is Hadrin?” He was walking beside her, approaching the tall man.
“Hadrin is he who has summoned you. Do not be afraid.”
“Why should I be afraid?” Honor realized, though, that he was.
“You should not be. Never fear truth, Honorkir.”
Honor’s hand tingled under her touch. They had reached Hadrin. He reached out and placed a hand on Honor’s shoulder. “Everything in my world has changed suddenly,” Honor found himself saying. “I don’t understand it. I fear what I do not understand.”
“Do you understand this?” the man called Hadrin asked. He moved his hand to Honor’s forehead. Honor felt momentarily blinded by a brilliant white light exploding deep inside of him. Very faintly he heard the man’s organ tones, saying, “Go, Godmaker, and live in truth.”
The meadow disappeared, the man and woman disappeared, Honor himself disappeared. He was falling in an endless void. He felt awed, but not frightened. And then he realized: he was falling up! Brilliant lights were flashing in a crescendo of violence far above. He began to watch the lights, to wonder about their synchronization, and to understand their psychedelic-like patterns. And then he was staring up into the baffled eyes of Dr. Leon Tollefsen!
The psychiatrist had stood, in considerable agitation and for some time, outside the padded room in which they had placed Professor Curt Wenssler, gazing through the thick rectangular glass port of the door. The frenzy had certainly been brief, he acknowledged that peculiar fact, and had evaporated before they could get the needle into him. Tollefsen had been mulling over the outlandish suggestions of Clinton’s assistant, that Honor nut. Curiously enough, Tollefsen had found himself attracted to some of the implications of Honor’s weird ideas. Pain, though, even the dumbest medical student knew, was a condition of consciousness. It was nothing but sensory stimuli, as defined and identified by the consciousness. This had been demonstrated over and again through hypnosis. Of course ... a nerve jumped in the doctor’s cheek. Hypnosis had also shown that pain could be manufactured by the consciousness, with absolutely no corresponding sensory condition present.
Tollefsen had signaled the nurse, unlocked the door, and re-entered the cell. Wenssler lay on his side, curled into a half-fetal position, the eyes staring blankly. The doctor cautiously rolled him onto his back and manipulated the easily malleable limbs. Hell . . . there simply was no argument to it . . . this was about as classic a case of catatonia as Tollefsen had ever seen. He started to move away. Something . . . a flicker . . . something arrested his attention. Had it been the eyes? Something back there behind the glazed facade of blankness? He reached into his jacket pocket for the pencil flash.
Honor knew, abruptly, where he was. How in the name of . . . ? Tollefsen’s face moved laterally, out of range. Honor felt himself moving, expanding into the psychedelic lights. He was reorganizing, resolving. What a mess! God, what a mess! He brushed something extremely delicate, something that rebounded and scuttled quickly in retreat. “Wenssler?”
“My God! Who’s there?”
“Don’t you understand what you’ve done, man? You’re on the low side of the spectrum. They can’t find you over there!"
“I don’t know how to get back!”
Honor expanded in the direction of the previous contact. Again, the delicate brushing and the scuttling retreat. Suddenly Honor realized what had to be done. He was in a fantastically inverted universe, that understanding had come in a flash, and Wenssler was a man lost in space. The fantastic relativity! Wenssler had shrunk away from the tie that binds. It was almost like ... like escaping gravity!
Shaking with the sudden revelation, Honor centered himself in the geometric center and began expanding. He flowed into the cortex and sent brilliant streamers into the cerebrum and cerebellum, then drove probes directly into the thalamus and limbic systems, bypassing Wenssler’s carefully guarded nook.
Let’s see, now, it’s just about like mine . . . yeah, there’s the speech center, let’s see if I can’t get something going here. Boy! Would this turn the medical world on its side! Speak of split personalities! How about double habitation? Let’s see, now if I can figure out this route. Damn, it’s so easy when you’re doing it automatically. Now I know what I went through as a baby! There it is! Yeah, that’s it!
Tollefsen directed the beam of light into the pupil of the eye, stiffened, and bent closer for a better look. But ... how could it be? He moved the light to the other eye and received the identical reaction. Suddenly Wenssler’s eyelids fluttered rapidly, and he said, rather testily, “Get that damn light out of my eyes, will you?”
Tollefsen nearly fell from his stool. The pencil flash fell to the patient’s chest and the doctor, in a choked voice, said, “H-how are you feeling, Professor?”
The patient replied, “Lousy. I’ve taken care of the pain, but I can’t stay out here indefinitely. Listen carefully, now, and do what I say.”
Tollefsen was signaling wildly for the nurse.
“Introduce a minute electrical stimulation along the lower periphery of the limbic system while squaring that amount of stimulation to the heart of the thalamus. Start out with just a few ergs above normal nerve path energy and keep raising it, squaring proportionately to the thalamus, until the breakthrough. This will provide the necessary attraction and mark the path into the cortex. You got that?”
“Did you get that?” Tollefsen snapped, speaking to the nurse.
The man stared at him dumbly.
“Well just tell me you heard it!” the doctor commanded.
“I heard it,” the nurse croaked.
To
llefsen put a hand to Wenssler’s forehead. The lids immediately rolled down and shuttered the eyes. “Professor?” Tollefsen said anxiously. He raised an eyelid and directed the light beam in once again. “Well I’ll be a . . “ he muttered, paused, and turned to the nurse with a pained expression “.... a quack psychiatrist,” he finished. “He’s gone again, but you saw what happened, didn’t you? You’ll verify it, won’t you?”
The nurse nodded his head, staring mutely at the still figure on the cot.
Tollefsen reached for the pulse. “Get on the phone!” he barked. “Set me up with a shock therapy unit, and I mean right now, right away, immediately!”
The nurse wheeled about and walked away with the air of a man who had now seen everything.
Honor had “found” the other universe, and was trying to understand it, to get the “feel” of it. The resident force was depressed, troubled, and obviously in great difficulty. Something heavy, oppressive, darkly ominous lurked there, making its impress, working its will. Drugged, Honor supposed, also, but that was the least of the problems.
Honor exploded cautiously, sending out delicate probes into various sense centers, gathering data, evaluating, deciding. He raised the blood pressure and directed additional nourishment to the brain, altered the metabolism somewhat, checked respiration rate against carbon content, sent in balancing instructions, and threw up several neural blocks. Then he carefully withdrew. He was glad he’d come. Jack Wilkins was in deep trouble.
Barbara did not know how much longer she could keep it going. Milt Clinton’s irritation had been growing minute by dragging minute, and he had been looking with more and more suspicion upon his companions. They occupied a small sitting room in the Presidential suite; this was as far as they had been allowed to go. Honor’s body was slumped more and more noticeably; there was something wrong with it, Barbara was certain of that, and it was becoming almost impossible to manage. She had about decided to let Clinton bring some medical attention when she became aware of a gentle pressure at the tendrils of her influence.
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 22
