Chapter II: Part 2

I looked back. Reeta stood in the center of the village by the fountain, waving. I didn't wave back. I knew that my smile was bitter. And then I concentrated as much as I could on the flat metal disc that came out at me from the wall of the bubble with a humming of delicate electronic power. I sat on it. I thought: "I'd like to be on my way to the City. To the City."

I was outside the bubble. I was high above the surface of Mohln, with the quickness of thought. And I was--high!

It was like a splash of white light under me, the moon shining on that wonderful world. I looked ahead toward those giant spires of that colossal city. Built for ten men, ten freaks. A city of thought.

That one tower stuck up half again as high as the rest of the City. A blue dangerous looking light shone from its top. There wasn't any use drawing this appointment out, I thought. And a fast appearance might give me an advantage of surprise, if I had any advantage at all, and I doubted that.

"There," I thought, "is where I want to be next. On top of that building, facing Durach. _Now!_"

And I was there.

5

Remember Me?

Durach was waiting for me. Not LeStrang; nothing that looked like LeStrang. This was the real Durach, and he was not something you would want to see a second time, nor anything you would care to remember, if you could help it.

He wasn't human; he was a monster, a freak. Yet, he looked much like anyone else. It was the inside of him that was so different.

Durach wasn't alone as I found myself standing there before him. Two women and several men were in the big arched room with him. None of them were any more pleasant on the inside than Durach. Jelahn's dive on the North Canal seemed like the memory of an anteroom to paradise compared with the feeling in this room of Durach's.

It was filthy and obscene, and it made me mad; it made me shaking mad to think that a chance thing like these freaks had been sent into the Fourth Stage world of Mohln where they didn't belong, to contaminate it, and bring hate and destruction and death to a world that had put a few men at least on the edge of marvelous super life.

Durach was bigger than he had been in the personality of LeStrang, a personality he had given to people by suggestion. He was on a couch of bright red that seemed to writhe under him. Durach was a fat white man with white hair, his fat wrapped up in a tight-fitting shiny stuff like resensilk. His face was soft and his eyes wide and bland and blue. Pale jowls hung over his collar on either side, and under his beaked nose was a small, pursed, red button of a mouth.

Silly little mouth, I thought. I wanted to laugh at it, but I didn't; I couldn't laugh. I couldn't do much of anything except stand there and try to figure out what I was really doing here--wherever I was.

The women and men around the room looked at me, very silently, terribly curious, and far away. Durach's little red mouth smiled at me. No one said anything. They just thought--about the ways I could look dead--and about the many ways it was possible for me to become dead--ways that can take so long.

And there were other thoughts pounding at my skull. They were laughing at me; they were feeling sorry for me, and they were thinking I was an idiot, at least.

I felt like a silly little mortal suddenly brought before a bunch of wicked gods. And then it hit me--

_That's just about what I was!_

I was scared. My mind seemed covered with a cold twisted shadow. Winds I couldn't see seemed to sweep and cry and thunder through that giant room. And I could feel power, great stores of controlled power, churning and boiling and ready to explode around me.

No one moved. I saw the great rotary convertors spinning away beside banks and banks of transformers, and grid oscillators. Machinery, and it was running and developing power, but it seemed unreal, foggy, as though I was seeing it through a curtain of fog.

Well, I knew that this great room contained the Merger that Durach had built. Durach was a freak, both Third and Fourth stage. He was utilizing both fields in a mad kind of fusion. He was mad, beyond the mental reach of sane Fourth Stage minds. That was understandable.

Fourth Stage minds, combined, could control some part of the Merger by mental energy, so that Durach couldn't use it. But Fourth Stage minds were being killed off by another gadget Durach and his freaks had made.

The Merger--a big gadget channeling unknown electronic force partly by mind-energy. This Merger could hit hard at a man's entire nervous system and his mind, and force it back to Third-Stage awareness, or step it up so that Third-Stage reality faded away, and the Fourth became reality.

But I knew this was phony. It was like the old methods of shock treatment for the insane. The methods were wrong, and the results might be harmful, and unpredictable.

Then Durach laughed, and he was laughing at me; his laughter burned and roared inside my skull.

I blinked and gasped out something as I jerked the neutron gun from my pocket and pointed it for the second time at his belly.

* * * * *

I knew I was talking, but my voice didn't sound like mine; it didn't sound like anybody's voice. "This time I do it, Durach. You can't go through the Barrier to get away from me now. The Merger machinery, you can't use it. Carleth's people have you blocked, Durach."

Durach's little red mouth stretched at me. He purred. "What do you want to kill _me_ for?"

A woman in the corner laughed. It was like somebody had sprayed dry ice through the room.

I said, "I'm not wasting time talking, Durach. I'm killing you because--because--"

Durach laughed again. "Because you've been told to by a bunch of humanitarian perfectionists obsessed with their own vague destinies! Because you think you want to save the Third Plane--a dismal unreal blind world where people shamble like cattle and peer into continuous fog like moles! Is that why you want to kill me?"

I knew I'd have to do it now, fast, or I'd never be able to. I tried to press the trigger back. I knew that Durach couldn't stop me, not by any physical means. They had no weapons; they didn't need any, to deal with the Fourth Stage people in their own plane. They had mental-shattering gadgets, but none of them could work on me. I wasn't built like the other Fourth Stage people. I wasn't built like anyone now. I was a special job, made to get Durach, and that was all.

"You know the reasons you've been told and made to follow," Durach smiled. "You're the big sucker, as you think you are, Berton. You're beginning to see the truth now; you're beginning to realize why they can't touch me--why they had to get _you_ to do it."

I tried to fire the gun. The air seemed to get hot and smoky around me with conflicting thoughts. I knew there was a battle going on--a fight of mind-energy. But I wasn't a part of it. It was between Durach and his freaks, and Carleth and Reeta and whoever was left of their kind. A fight for control of the Merger.

I tried to fire, but I couldn't; I wanted to hear what Durach had to say. I knew it was something that might mean a lot to me. I shouldn't want to listen; I had my job. I--

I felt like knives were stabbing me. I was shivering and sweating. I could feel my face growing wet and gray and lips quivering. I was about finished and I knew it. And I knew that if I did anything, I'd have to do it quick.

No physical weapons. What trap would they use against me, what unknown forces?

I felt my lips move, and heard my own tortured, sobbing cries.

"I'll tell you, Berton," Durach laughed. "They can't kill me. But you can. Why? Because you're like us, Berton! They have no more real respect for you than for the rest of us here in this room. You're just a tool they're using, and when they're through, you'll go back into the garbage dumps of Third-Plane sickness.

"_Berton--you're just another freak, like us!_"

I felt blinded. I forced my eyes to hold him in sight as I tried to fire. I moved toward him; the room was large, and I kept walking, listening to him.

"But we're bigger than they are, because we're freaks, Berton. We're natural freaks, you might say. Mal and Glora created a freak out of you so you would come through the Barrier. But we're all freaks, neither Third or Fourth Stage--_but the strongest talents of both planes are in us!_

"They can't move back from Fourth to Third Plane after having once left the Fourth. They can't destroy anything with their paraphysical power, Berton. That's their weakness. But we can. They call us insane. But use your own intelligence! What do you think?"

I kept walking toward his voice, toward that shifting smoky outline. Sweat made a stream down my throat. I was sick and blinded.

"They're asking you to give it all up, just for their fanatical belief in some sort of abstract destiny for all humanity. _Immortality!_ Think of it, Berton! And then you can go on and on, through higher and higher stages of reality. Reach heights of experience the greatest dreamers have never touched.

"We'll be gods, Berton! They want to do it by slow and ponderous evolution, and play at a chance to become gods. They call us freaks--because we've found the short cut to eternal greatness.

"Mutation, that's one way. You got it another way, thanks to them. But from now on, it can be our show, Berton.

"They want to hold us back, using Third-Stage people as pacers. They want to destroy us, because we're superior. They want Third-Stage reality, with its disease, its blindness and its million incurable sicknesses to go on being a burden to the realization of Fourth Stage greatness, holding it back, drawing its entropic rate down to zero.

"Listen, Berton! If we destroy the Third Plane, the energy release will speed up the entropic rate of Fourth Plane development a billion fold. You can be one of us. A part of it. And why not? We're mutations. You got through the barrier because they changed your nervous system and consciousness by synthetic methods. But you're like us. You're a freak too, Berton.

"_You're fighting on the wrong side. You're destroying--yourself!_"

* * * * *

Time, movement, sight, everything seemed to freeze as I stood there. There was Durach and the others, like pale statues in a dream. Then I felt other minds and other eyes around me. Reeta! Carleth!

I saw them. It was like a dream look at a forgotten room, and people almost forgotten; their voices, like stillness beyond a threshold I had once crossed.

She said, her eyes sad and wet. "The decision must be yours, Ray Berton. We can give you the support of what paraphysical energy we have left within us. But we can't destroy directly; you must do that. In that way, you're different from us, but you're not a freak like Durach and these others. You have temporary Fourth Stage awareness. At a given time, that awareness will fade, and you'll go back to Third Stage reality, and be as you were before, with no memory of this world. Destroy him, Berton. _Now! Now!_"

My eyes were shut. I felt like I was falling. "You're gods," I sobbed at them. "I'm still human. You're asking too much. How can I decide? I could be like them--greater than you. And you want me to give it up, go back to--" I thought of it. The stinking disease of Jelahn's tavern, and the girl--

I laughed a little then, and in that laugh was a crazy climbing note of fear and madness and not-knowing. Go back to that, when--

"There are only five of us left now," Reeta said. "Durach's feelers have killed the rest of us. We can't hold the Merger against him but a few seconds longer, Berton."

I thought of the outer planets where I'd always lived. The disease and the cold, the sadistic cops, the taverns with rotten women, minds eaten away with _krin-krin_.

"You picked me wrong," I yelled wildly. "You don't get heroes from where I came from. Like Durach said--he's more my kind. We could be like gods. Immortal--how can I--"

I felt mind-energy, paraphysical power, flow into me from Reeta and Carleth. They told me something, a word--extratemporal--new perception that could let me see things that would happen! Space factors disappeared, for one terrible second. The factor of future time faded--_and I could see_!

I felt it. Hot and horrible and final. A flash of future knowledge. I saw Earth disappear into a great white flame. And where it had been was a white hot nova in black space.

Horror rose like a volcano of madness, and a sheet of pain seemed to split my head wide open.

"No," I felt Durach's roaring thought. "No, Berton! They're giving you a false impression. That's a probability variant of Earth's future. They've let you see the Earth destroyed--but it's a different variant than what will happen if you join us. By destroying the Third Plane my way, we can save Fourth Stage reality from destruction--but their way--all will be destroyed!"

"It's your choice," Reeta said. "We have only a few flashes of time left, and then it won't matter anymore."

Maybe I didn't make any decision, not consciously. The pressure was too much for me. I had to do something, anything. I heard myself screaming as I pressed the trigger of the gun.

Durach fell beneath its power beam. It sprayed and burned and roared in the great room. He came around the desk as I turned; his white face had turned gray with a coat of wet over it. I felt the sudden complete effort within all of them as they tried to get me.

Freaks. But there wasn't much physical difference between these people and the average looking group. It was the inside of them that was different. Differences in metabolism, neural structure, conscious awareness ... a lot more....

Durach and the others were surging in toward me. Walls of mind-energy throbbed around me. Their faces were twisted with hate and fear.

"Berton! You can know immortality, perfection, omnipotence! Don't sacrifice your life for a cause already lost according to that vision you had of the future! You know the conditions on the Third Plane! They have conquered a part of atomic power, but their Third-Stage mentalities will never develop fast enough to keep that power from destroying them. Them and us too! That's the probability variant of a future that will happen anyway--unless we destroy the Third Stage now, in a way that will let this higher reality go on, unburdened!

"_Earth will destroy itself anyway, Berton. Let us save ourselves!_" My legs wouldn't hold me anymore. I was on my knees. I tried to lift the gun again.

"It's your choice, Berton," Reeta said. Now her thought and her voice was weaker, faraway, dying. "Remember--Durach's insane."

Insane? Insane by what judgment? It was relative. Who--?

Durach's final argument was the most convincing; nobody wants to die. "It means death for you, Berton, if you kill me. This city, this tower we're on top of--it exists because I will it to exist! This tower is two miles high, Berton! Kill me, and the tower will crumble from under you. You'll fall--fall, Berton! Remember, your Fourth Stage capacity is only temporary. When you kill me, your work for them will be done. You'll automatically start to return to Third-Plane existence.

"You could control your fall here, with Fourth stage energy. But kill me, and you'll find yourself back in Third-Stage reality--two miles above the Earth! And nothing under you but death--that'll be your reward for saving Earth for a little while longer, Berton! You want to live!"

Far, far away, I felt Reeta and Carleth, still trying to help me. Sure, a man wants to live. That Marty in Jelahn's tavern, he wanted to live. Millions of people on Earth, they wanted to live, wanted to try to make it work. No man wants to die.

There are some ways no man cares to live.

I fired the gun, fired it point blank into Durach's chest, then moved it around over the others.

There was blinding white light. And Durach and his kind stopped living. They went back to some other energy form, a kind that would never cause anyone any more trouble.

I knew then that Durach had been right, in one respect anyway; when he died, the tower died. I felt it melting away around me as the mind-energy that had created it started to fade away. I felt that awful emptiness opening under me. And--this is funny--I felt like a little boy who's done something he thinks is pretty good and pretty big. But no one knows he's done anything, and he feels hurt, and he wants people to know.

I wanted people to know. I didn't want what I'd done, and everything that had happened and might happen, to be lost to people. It wouldn't be fair. Reeta and Carleth knew what I was thinking. I felt their thoughts coming back again, stronger, and stronger and growing, and joyous.

Reeta--Carleth--help me.

I don't want to be forgotten.

* * * * *

Somehow, they were holding me with them, but I knew they couldn't do it very much longer. Around me was a gray billowing fog, and I was starting to fall through it--

Reeta and Carleth will stay here with Fourth Stage power; they are all right now. Durach's finished, and they have the Merger back in their power completely now, and can use it for constructive purposes, or not at all. It doesn't matter. I've done my job. The danger's gone.

But I want people to know.

They're telling me to concentrate. They'll help me, but I must hurry, hurry. I've still some of the power, and they'll help me. Mind-energy. Matter changed from one form to another by thought. MY thought and theirs, together. Telurgy. Everything's made from the same stuff, only the electronic patterns are different. So we're willing patterns to change. We change some of the patterns of elements around me to another arrangement--into a metal scroll, my story to you, my thoughts of all that has happened, and what I've done. So you'll remember.

And they'll send it through the Barrier by the Merger.

What I'm thinking now as this tower and this city fades around me, it will all be on that metal for you to read. Maybe they could still save me, someway, but they can't because I guess I don't really want to go back to being a Third-Stage guy.

I'm not like Glora and Malcolm, willing to give up so much, for a cause. After playing god, I can't go back to drinking _krin-krin_ in Jelahn's tavern on the North Canal of Mars.

I'd rather die this way.

Durach said you'd blow up Earth and this higher reality too, with atomic power, because you wouldn't be able to learn to think enough to control it. Reeta and Carleth said Durach was insane, that he was wrong.

I don't know; I hope they were right. Because it's all waiting for you. I've seen it and I know. Beauty and greatness you can't imagine now. I don't know when, or how, but it can be yours someday. If you can hang on. And it'll be yours not just for a little while, like it was for me, but forever.

I guess it's up to you to prove whether Durach was insane or not.

I wonder if my thoughts are being recorded now by Carleth and Reeta for you to read? I can't tell. I've lost them. Things around me are blurred, and I seem to be falling down through a gray, slow rain....

* * * * *

From a midnight teleaudocast by International Information Service. New York City. September 9, 1983:

Reporter: _The preceding has been teleod as a special interest feature, and is not intended as a factual report, naturally. The body of the man who appeared so mysteriously, according to reports, from the atmosphere two miles above Manhattan, and crashed into the city, cannot be satisfactorily identified. The metal scroll which fell after him, and which was just narrated for your interest, is obviously the work of a quack looking for notoriety, and a possible niche in Fortean records._

_However, the Atomic Energy Commission has ordered a complete scanning of Uranium Pile personnel. This move is reported to be motivated by the discovery that during the afternoon, Ronal LeStrang, President of the Atomic Energy Commission, disappeared, and no trace of him has been found, up to this time._

_Teleflashes will be brought to you directly from the scanning rooms as soon as further reports come in regarding President LeStrang. Security Police say that perhaps foreign agents are again trying to bore from within ... though they insist that there is no proof up to this time that any foreign State is responsible for LeStrang's disappearance._

_And now there will be an interlude of music, brought to you by special permission of Interplanetary Cultural Foundation, through the facilities of I.I.S.'s new Teleospan System. The first number features the Martian folk dance cycle...._

THE END