Delusion World

by Gordon R. Dickson

  The ship, he now noted, seemed completely empty of human life.

  “Kai!” he shouted, jerking to his feet. His voice thundered in the narrow confines of the control room. He turned and took one long stride toward the cabin entrance; and the door, which had been standing ajar there, slammed suddenly in his face.

  “Don’t you dare come in here!” cried the voice of Kai.

  “Good!” bellowed Feliz. “Strap yourself into the bunk there. Lie down and buckle the straps around you." He dived back into the control chair.

  “Why?” came the voice from the cabin.

  “Never mind why!” roared Feliz, his hands doing complicated things with the controls. “Just do it!”

  There was silence from the cabin. He could only hope she was following orders. His ship did not take off like one of the great luxury liners. Rather, like a cat with a stepped-on tail.

  As he worked, he turned on the screen. In it he saw that his pursuers had just broken out of the woods into the open. Taki Manoai, wearing a black bedspread, or something that looked like a black bedspread, was directing them. They proceeded to set up their cannon and get it aimed at his ship.

  Feliz sweated. He had warmed his atmosphere engines. He was now mixing fuel with a painfully steady hand on the liquid oxygen control button.

  Outside, they loaded their gun.

  “Now!” said Feliz to himself.

  He took off. Too late, he remembered he had forgotten to strap himself in. He banged the back of his head so hard on the seat cushion, his nose began to bleed.

  However, a tense half-hour afterward, they were out of atmosphere and lined out into space. Feliz leaned back, wiped dried blood from his upper lip and felt the back of his head. Then he turned once more to the cabin.

  “Did you get yourself strapped in all right?”

  “Yes," came the somewhat quavery answer. "What happened?”

  “We took off. Strap yourself in again!” roared Feliz, diving for the controls as the interception counter began to chime as if it was trying out for a part in a grade-school rhythm band; and the now star-filled screen began to come alive with red dots representing the Malvar ships.

  "Aw, come on, fellas," groaned Feliz, staring in disbelief at their number. “We aren’t worth all that!”

  And then he stopped groaning. There comes a time sooner or later, even to the most cheerful individual, when the hour becomes a little too late for humor: It was that hour now. Shielding the movement with his big body, just in case Kai should be watching from the cabin, Feliz pushed on a panel of the control board that was level with his belly. It slid aside in a manner never conceived by its original manufacturer, and Feliz slid his hand into the space behind it. The hand came out holding a small but powerful pellet hand gun. Feliz closed the panel with one finger, shoved off the safety on the handgun and tucked it under the top edge of his Chinese scarf loincloth. The hard part would be Kai; but if he was quick about it, she would never know what hit her. No, Malvar, thought Feliz grimly, would take her alive—if it came to that. For himself, he would rather like to get his hands on one or two of them before signing off.

  If it came to that.

  But, Feliz reminded himself, it had yet to come to that. In fact, there was something very important to be tried first. He looked down and the call signal was blinking under die. screen. He turned the screen on, and a Malvar—they all looked alike to Feliz—wearing an officer’s collar was speak- ing.

  “ . . . surrounded. You cannot escape. If you surrender, you will be accorded all the good treatment normally accorded prisoners of different jurisdiction. If you do not surrender, we will be forced to take stem measures to halt you. I repeat, you are surrounded and you cannot—”

  Feliz switched off.

  “Kai!” he called.

  “What?” she said from behind the closed cabin door.

  “Come out here.”

  “I won’t. You haven’t any clothes on.”

  “I have. I’ve got a fine big scarf,” said Feliz impatiendy. He waited. Nothing happened. “Kai!”

  “What?”

  “I’m not joking. This is serious. Come out here.”

  “You have got a scarf on?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” The door opened and before Feliz’s astonished eyes, his only spare outfit, from boots to tunic, clumped into view, with Kai’s face peering rebelliously at him over the collar. Feliz stared.

  “You were outside!” he yelled.

  “Well, how was I to know?” she said. “I certainly never thought—”

  “I told you to stay inside!”

  "Well, of course you told me. But how was I to know—”

  “Never mind,” said Feliz. “Never mind.” He took a deep breath and forced his voice to a calm level. “Kai,” he said, “I think it’s time I began to fill you in on things. Do you know where we are?” He amended that quickly. “Where this ship is?”'

  “Certainly,” Kai said. “In the woods north of town.”

  “No,”he said. “We aren’t. I can see I’m going to have to educate you, Kai. We’re actually not on the world you know at all. We’re thousands of miles above it and getting farther away all the time. We’re out in space.”

  “Oh!” said Kai. “That explains all that strapping-in and what happened after I did. I know all about space.”

  “You do?” said Feliz with a sinking sensation inside him. He glanced aj the red dots, which were closing in toward the center of the screen. They made a pretty pattern.

  “Oh, yes. Our world is really one of millions of planets circling stars like our sun. Everybody knows that. Between these worlds and stars, there’s no air.”

  “Oh,” said Feliz. “Well, did you know that out among these stars there are other people?”

  “Feliz!” said Kai. “Don’t be silly. How could people be out where there isn’t any air?”

  “What if I showed you a picture of one?” he said. “Would you believe me then?”

  "Certainly not," said Kai. "A picture doesn’t prove anything.”

  “A picture that moved and talked?”

  “People in book-films move and talk. Certainly not!”

  Feliz crossed his fingers. He reached down and turned on the screen. The Malvar appeared on it, still repeating his demand for surrender..

  “So,” said Feliz sadly, “you don’t believe that there exists—” He broke off suddenly. Kai was certainly not behaving as if the Malvar on the screen did not exist. She was staring at him as if her eyes would pop out of her head and her face was a study in horror. “Kai!” cried Feliz. “You mean you see him!”

  “See it!” quayered Kai, still staring. “How could I help seeing it? I always thought they were j-just superstition.”

  Feliz felt himself turning cold inside. It is not pleasant to gamble and lose, he thought, particularly with someone you—someone else. He had been counting on the,fact that the Malvar would be as ignorable as the people in black had been to Kai—and that somehow this ignorability would protect the ship during their escape even as it had protected Dunroamin all these years from the Malvar. He had, it seemed, guessed wrong.

  “All right, honey,” he said gently. His hand slipped quietly to the gun in his loincloth. The red dots were getting very close. “Never mind. I didn’t know you knew about the Malvar.”

  “The—the what?” she looked over at him, then back at the screen. “That's not a—whatever you called it.”

  “It isn’t?” Feliz stared at her.

  “Of course not!” said Kai. “Don’t you know anything? That’s a goblin!”

  “A goblin?” said Feliz unbelievingly.

  “Of course.”

  “But you just said he was real!”

  “I did not say it was real. I said, now that I can see it, it isn’t just a superstition after all. Evidently there are such things as goblins. But goblins aren’t real.”

  She stopped talking and glared at Feliz. Feliz looked back,
and then became suddenly aware that there was silence in the cabin. He turned to the screen. The Malvar officer was still to be seen on it but he was no longer calling on them to surrender. Instead he was silent, staring straight ahead as if he could see right into the control room. Incredulously, Feliz glanced down at his transmitter button under the screen. But it was still in off position.

  “Not real?” said Feliz.

  “Of course not,” said Kai. “They’re just like things in nightmares. They don’t have any real existence. They go out like a candle if you just pretend they aren’t there any more. Want me to show you with this one?" Without waiting for an answer, she pointed a finger at the Malvar on the screen and chanted:

  You’re nothing but a nothing,

  You’re hollow all clear through,

  To blow you out I point my finger,

  Bang! And out go you!”

  The image on the screen winked out as the Malvar abruptly stopped transmitting—actually, before Kai had finished her chant. But this minor discrepancy did not seem to bother her.

  “See?” she said, turning to Feliz.

  Feliz sat down heavily. He felt suddenly and inexplicablyweak. On the screen, he saw the red dots beginning to withdraw from the center. Their circle widened.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I should think so. ” said Kai. “After all, I know a few things, you know. Oh, dear!” She frowned at him.

  “What?” said Feliz groggily.

  “I’ve got to get you some decent clothes. I know!” she said. "I’ll make some out of bedsheets.” She went back into the cabin, and he heard her break into humming, followed a second or so later by the sound of ripping cloth.

  Why don’t you make yourself clothes out of the sheets, and give me back my own clothes, he thought of saying. But it was too much effort after what he had been through to say it out loud; and besides, she would probably have a dozen good reasons against it.

  He looked back at the withdrawing red dots on the screen and, to his new numb astonishment, saw the face of Psi-Man Verde framed in their midst.

  “You?” said Feliz.

  “Oh,” said Psi-Man Verde, speaking through a receiver that Feliz had time to note was not turned on, “I’m not really here.”

  “Oh,” said Feliz. “Well, of course. Naturally. That explains it."

  The psi-man smiled. It lit up his lean face.

  “I’ve been sort of riding piggy-back on your mind,” he said. “Actually, I’m speaking in your mind right now. It’s just that your imagination insists on finding a logical apparatus to supply my voice."

  Feliz sat up suddenly.

  “You’ve been in my head all this time?” he cried.

  “Don’t worry,” said Verde. “Your private life and thoughts are under the strict seal of my professional confidence. We’re like doctors and lawyers that way.”

  “It’s not your telling people I mind!” muttered Feliz, suddenly remembering to keep his voice down for Kai’s sake. “It’s your knowing at all.”

  “I’m sorry. We couldn’t miss the opportunity to send a mental link in with you.”

  “I’ll sue!” growled Feliz. “There must be a law against it.” He growled to himself for a second. “After I risked my neck, solving your problem for you too.”

  “Don’t doubt we’re grateful, ” said Psi-Man Verde, floating among the stars. “You and Kai are entitled to, and you’ll get, just about anything it’s possible to give you.”

  “Well,” rumbled Feliz, slightly mollified. A technique trader, he reminded himself, is nothing if not a businessman. With a promise like that—he stopped thinking about it abruptly, remembering the psi-man would be listening in. Kai, after all, and her future, were the important things. “Something had to be holding back the Malvar. Do you know, though—” He stopped, remembering something. “There was a time when I even thought it might have more to do with the rabbits.”

  Verde laughed quietly.

  “That occurred to me too,” he said. “But I had a look at the mind of one of the rabbits and settled-the matter. They’re perfectly ordinary Terran-stock rabbits variformed to fit Dunroamin conditions.”

  “Yeah,’’said Feliz. Curiosity overcame him. “Tell me,” he said, “I figured out that it was the disbelief the people on Dunroamin were broadcasting that was hard for those Malvar telepath receivers to take. But how come?”

  Verde’s face grew a little sad, where it floated on the screen.

  “I don’t know if you can understand,” he answered. “To those of us who have talents, the universe is a larger place. A more complex place. We are moved by more than physical things. I myself am the spearpoint of human effort against the Malvar; but there are some things which I understand and the Malvar understand that plain humans like yourself don’t.”

  “For example?” said Feliz.

  “Things without substance to you have solidness for us—not a physical solidness, but solidness all the same. Happiness radiated our way is as warm as sunshine. Hate, to us, can be as hard and heavy as a steel bar.”

  “Yeah,” said Feliz.

  "So you see," said Psi-Man Verde. "You see the weapon that Dunroamin’s people found for us against the Malvar.”

  Feliz nodded. But his curiosity was still itching him.

  “Tell me,” he said. “To the people—to the Malvar—what does it feel like? I mean when somebody refuses to give you any points at all for existing?”

  “It’s something,” said Verde, “like hate—only empty. Empty.”

  “That bad, huh?” said Feliz.

  “It’s impossible to put in physical terms,” said the psi-man. "But you might get an idea if I said it would be close to the sensation of having your guts scooped out by a garden trowel.”

  Feliz felt the stomach muscles under his loincloth tighten. “I see,” he said, after a second.

  “No,” said Psi-Man Verde, “I don’t think you do. But maybe that’s just as well. The point is, the people of Dunroamin have survived all these years simply by effectively telling the Malvar—oh, not in so many words, but with a powerful emotion—that they don’t exist. The Malvar may not understand, but they feel extremely uncomfortable in the vicinity of these people.”

  He started to fade out on the screen. "I'll leave you now," he said. "The road home is clear for you and one of our heavy cruisers will intercept to pick you up at the edge of our spatial area and bring you in.”

  “Hey!” said Feliz. “Just a moment. Are you coming back?”

  Psi-Man Verde chuckled, as if from a long ways away.

  "To your mind?" he said. "Only by special permission."

  Then he was gone.

  Feliz blinked his eyes and sat up as if he had fallen asleep. From the cabin adjoining, he could hear the sound of Kai, still humming.

  Domestic already, thought Feliz, with a sort of desperation. And what do I really know about her? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The thought reminded him of something else he had meant to ask the psi-man.

  “Kai!” he called.

  “Yes—yes!” she caroled back.

  “Want to ask you something.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “Yes?”

  Now I’ll find out, thought Feliz.

  “Kai,” he said. “Rabbits. The rabbits you had there around Shangri-La. Can you tell me why a rabbit should bark?”

  There was a long moment of dead silence. Feliz opened his mouth to call again, but just at that moment Kai’s features appeared around the edge of the cabin door. Her face was set in a mask of astonishment

  “Why not?” she said.

 

 

 
00%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share