THE GODMAKERS

by Dan Britain

For Greg, and for all the Godmakers everywhere.

“Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.”

—George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)

FOREWORD— The Measure

The perfect man, Hadrin, stood quietly at the edge of the infinite sea with Octavia, the perfect woman.

Octavia remarked, “You have not laughed for some time.” She thrust forward her bare belly, rubbing it upon Hadrin’s hip.

“I have been contemplating,” replied Hadrin.

“When the thought is complete, will you share it with me?”

Hadrin absently caressed a daintily upthrust breast and sighed. “It is as complete as I can get it, at this time.”

“Then tell me the thought, Hadrin.”

Hadrin smiled. “God is the measure of all men,” he said soberly.

Octavia laughed.

Hadrin joined her in the laughter, then sobered again and asked, “Why do you laugh at my thought?”

“Because there is something very sad in it.” She laughed again. “Sad… and also something quite wrong.”

“Yes, I recognize that.” Hadrin leaned forward to peer through a flowering geometer. “But it is the best I can do, at this time.”

“The truth will out,” Octavia assured him, rubbing her bare belly against his.

“Yes.” Hadrin was peering determinedly through the geometer. “It will out. And quite soon, I’d say.”

“Sayyy,” Octavia enthused, peering also into the geometer. “This is going to be very interesting.”

Book I

CONVULSION

1: The Nines

Patrick Honor strode through the open doorway and crossed the general office with the efficient gait of athletically conditioned reflexes. Though 31 and several years removed from the shadows of ivory towers, his manner of dress continued to show the influence of up to date collegiate fashions; only his hair, curly blonde and worn close-cropped with no background to detract from the rugged handsomeness of the square jawline, contradicted the “young man on campus” image which he carefully preserved. Two file clerks, working near the doorway, halted their labors to watch his progression through the office. Then they exchanged knowing glances, one of them formed a silent “ummm” with her lips, and the other one giggled selfconsciously. Honor was aware of the feminine interest; indeed, he had long ago become accustomed to it, accepted it, and learned to use it to his own best interests.

He paused at the closed door to the chiefs private office, grinned at Clinton’s secretary, said “What now?” and, receiving only a smiling headshake in reply, went on in. Clinton was behind the desk, tilted back in the swivel chair, and staring thoughtfully at a young woman who stood at the window. Her back was to Honor. He received a quick impression of flowing, miniskirted female lines, long legs swelling toward flared hips, nipped waist, and further pleasing angles beyond that.

Then she turned to face him and he was jarred by the confrontation. Casually flipped dark hair softly back-dropped glowing skin and delicately carved planes, a sensitively voluptuous mouth, and widely spaced eyes which, Honor swore, could only be violet.

He reluctantly broke off the inspection and turned his attention to his boss. “Glad you invited me,” he said, grinning.

Clinton showed Honor a light scowl and shifted his weight to bring the chair to an even keel. He leaned across the desk on both forearms and said, “Pat, this young lady has—oh, pardon me… Patrick Honor, Miss Barbara Thompson… Mr. Honor heads up our Academics Unit, Miss Thompson… uh…”

Honor had advanced to the window and taken the girl’s hand. He squeezed it gently, working hard to “not come on too strong” and allowed her to see a mildly interested smile. He received pretty much of the same and a murmured greeting, then she withdrew her hand and went to a chair at the side of the desk. Honor’s eyes met Clinton’s in a “what’s up?” glance. Clinton merely scowled again. Honor walked behind the girl’s chair and dragged one for himself into a close-conference position, spun it about, and sat down astraddle with his arms folded across the top of the chair.

Clinton got right to it. “Miss Thompson has an interesting story, Pat,” he said. “Would you go through it again, Miss Thompson, for Honor’s benefit?”

The girl frowned, then turned a pained smile toward Honor. “Have you ever repeated a word over and over until it began to sound unreal?” she said. The voice was softly melodious, pitched for easy listening. Honor was deciding that he would not mind her repeating words to him. “That’s the way I’m beginning to feel about this ‘story’. I’ve told it all over Washington, now, for the past two days. Do you realize how many offices—”

Clinton said understandingly, “I’m afraid it’s the bureaucratic way, Miss Thompson. Let me assure you, though, this is the end of the line… and Mr. Honor is the one who will have to take the appropriate action. So… please… just once more.”

Honor was grinning inwardly. He knew what a burden it was for Milt Clinton to be diplomatic. The 41 year old Chief of the Inter-Agency Intelligence Group had been for too many years an operative in the field, accustomed to direct action and positive intelligence efforts. He had received the Presidential nod to head up the new IAIG operation two years earlier and had responded eagerly to that challenge. The group, now unofficially known as “the Eggs”, had quickly become established as the President’s front-line troops in the ever-broadening intricacies of executive intelligence gathering, and had largely supplanted the clumsy and overly involved machinery of the CIA as a direct tool of the President. Clinton had succeeded in his post mainly because of his directness and an impatience with protocol and diplomatic niceties, yet the evolution of the idea had turned the wheel directly atop the veteran operative and imprisoned him within the bureaucratic structure. Lean and hard, both in mind and body, Milt Clinton was anything but a bureaucrat. Patrick Honor knew this, he knew his boss, and he knew the writhings of psyche beneath that bureaucratic hat.

The girl was thoughtfully watching Honor. Their eyes met and Honor let his secret leak out. The look he gave her was of considerable voltage and stated plainly the male ideas surging around back there behind the eyes. She colored lightly and dropped her eyes in a flash of curved lashes. “Are you aware of the govern ment program at Atlantic Institute?” she asked him in a soft voice.

“Yes and no,” he replied, just as softly. “I’m aware of the fact that we are funding a pilot project over there. I haven’t studied the details.”

She took a long breath, flicked a glance at Clinton, then met Honor’s piercing gaze head-on. “We are doing research into PPS—Psychic Power Sources.”

Honor’s gaze did not waver, nor did his face reveal any emotion. “Yes, I have a passing acquaintance with the work.”

“Some very strange things have been happening at Atlantic, Mr. Honor,” she said, with controlled animation.

Honor glanced at Clinton. The chief was staring at his hands. “Such as?” Honor prompted her.

“The head of the psychology department, Professor Curt Wenssler, is in charge of the PPS program,” the girl said. “He has gone through a… a personality change. I mean a marked one. Five months ago, when we began this study, he was a perfect love of a man. Now he… well, he’s irritable, explosive, erratic, highly emotional, and… and…”

“You say ‘we,’ Miss Thompson. What is your capacity at Atlantic?”

“I’m doing graduate work at Atlantic, under a fellowship. I am assisting Professor Wenssler.”

“Uh-huh.” Honor smiled genially. “And how old a man is the professor?”

She read the implication behind his words. “Old enough to be my father,” she replied levelly. “I think of him that way, and I adore him. But like a father. Are there any other personal questions you’d like to get out of the way at this time, Mr. Honor?”

“Touché,” Honor said, grinning. “Forgive the interruption.”

“Please go on, Miss Thompson,” Clinton said heavily, glancing at his watch.

Her gaze remained steady on Honor. “On several different occasions during the past weeks I have come to the lab, early in the morning, and found that Professor Wenssler had been there all night. On each of these occasions I have found him incoherent, disoriented.” She dropped her eyes. “The last time this happened, just the other day, I opened the lab and found him wandering about in there… naked. I mean, totally.”

“Sounds like a medical problem,” Honor commented.

“Let her tell the story, Pat,” Clinton said, mildly irritated.

“There undeniably is a medical problem,” the girl said, ignoring Clinton completely. “I’ve tried to persuade the professor in this direction, but he becomes terribly upset each time I mention it.”

“I don’t see—”

“Show him the stuff from the blackboard, Miss Thompson.”

The girl fumbled into her purse and produced a folded sheaf of papers. “Yes… also… on each occasion… he had scribbled on all the blackboards, lining one wall of the lab. All sorts of weird symbols, math equations…” Her eyes snapped up to Honor’s. “Professor Wenssler is no mathematician. He used to joke about his weakness in math, claiming that the only reason he became a psychologist instead of a physicist was because he couldn’t get beyond basic algebra. But look at these equations… I copied them.” She unfolded the papers and handed one to Honor.

He inspected it briefly, muttered “I’m not much on math either” and handed it back to her.

The girl refused the paper. “Didn’t you notice anything unusual about those equations?”

Honor unfolded the paper and dutifully re-inspected it. Then he grinned and said, “Looks like he’s hung up on nines, doesn’t it.”

The girl leaned toward Honor’s chair, bringing her head next to his. He relaxed and enjoyed it. “Exactly,” she said moving a finger along a line of numerical values. “If you’ll just look closely, you will see that each calculation is resolved on some power of 9. Even in the inverse numbers… look at these minus factors.”

Honor was looking at Barbara Thompson’s full lips and gleaming teeth. He was wondering how such a delightful morsel of femininity could get so lathered up over a mad professor. “Uh huh,” he murmured. “That’s very interesting.” He placed a hand on the back of her chair and helped her lean closer.

The girl was unfolding another paper. She turned her head to gaze point blank into Honor’s eyes. “Here’s the shocker,” she said.

Honor glanced at the new paper. “More nines,” he observed, trying to sound interested. He flicked a glance at Clinton, received a sternly disapproving visual message, and added, “But what’s the point, Miss Thompson?”

“You’re not looking,” she said.

He looked. Stiffening suddenly, he bent forward for a closer look. “Sayyyy…” He took the paper from the girl’s hand and walked to the window with it. “You say you copied this from a blackboard in Wenssler’s lab?” he asked tensely.

“Yes, I did.”

Honor smoothed the paper and studied it raptly. Nine equations were spaced down the length of the 11 inch sheet, each one filling an entire line. Each one began with either a positive or negative power or factor of the numeral nine and involved various manipulations of such values throughout the equation, but each of the nine equations ended with a name and a date.

Honor raised startled eyes to his boss. “You’ve seen this?” he asked.

Clinton replied in a muffled voice. “I’ve seen it.” He was speaking through cupped hands, and staring straight ahead at the girl. “Note the descending order of the nine lines, Pat. They’re arranged in chronological sequence. READ THEM OFF TO ME.”

“Cartwright,” Honor read in a hollow voice, “February 14,1974. Then there’s—”

“General Earl Cartwright, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, died on the 14th of February, 1974,” Clinton said. “I already checked it out. Go on, Pat.”

“Helgendeisen,” Honor continued, “May 6, 1974.” He raised his eyes to Clinton. “The President’s Science Advisor?”

Clinton nodded. “Drowned in the Potomac on that date.”

“Exactly 81 days after the death of General Cartwright,” the girl added.

“The next one must be Senator Vaught,” Honor murmured. “July 26th, same year.”

“Right,” Clinton confirmed. “Leaped from a hospital room on that date, fell 17 stories to his death. Don’t bother reading the rest aloud. You get the idea, I’m sure, by now.”

“Please note,” the girl put in, “that each event is spaced precisely 81 days apart… or, nine to the first power.”

Honor was grunting with interest as he scanned the sheet of paper. “These check marks,” he snapped. “To the right of the first few equations. Who put them there?”

“I did,” the girl replied. “Those same marks were on Professor Wenssler’s blackboard.”

“It’s like a scoreboard,” he observed sullenly. He looked at Clinton. “The first six carried up through March 26th of this year. And that particular event is still top secret, the March 26th event.” His eyes swept to the girl. “Does the name Bogan mean anything to you, Miss Thompson?”

She shook her head in an emphatic negative.

“Welllll…” Honor looked to Clinton for direction.

Clinton picked it up with a sigh. “It’s still top secret, and I’m charging you with that obligation, Miss Thompson.” He cleared his throat and leaned toward her. “Donald Bogan was a special Presidential Courier. I can’t give you the details, but he left the White House on the morning of March 26th on a mission for the President. He never reached his destination. He was found wandering along a runway at Dulles International at just past noon. He did not know who he was, where he was, and had apparently suffered a total mental breakdown. He has been under very hush-hush observation over at Bethesda since that date. This man carries in his mind information which is strongly vital to the national security. He—”

“The point is,” Honor growled, “the greatest secrecy has enveloped this event. Only his wife knows, and she has been in virtual isolation herself since this—”

“That’s the kicker, of course,” Clinton mused. “The other events are, in every case, items of public knowledge. The thing is, how did Wennsler come by the knowledge of the Bogan event. Another thing is, each event is connected by the fact all these men occupied sensitive government positions. Another thing, and I admit it’s a peculiar one, is the 81-day spacing between the events.” He sighed and turned somber eyes toward Patrick Honor. “And then, of course, there’s that seventh event… the seventh equation.”

“Yeah.”’ Honor was staring at the paper. He angled a thoughtful stare at the Thompson girl. “What is going to happen to our President on June 15th, Miss Thompson?” he asked woodenly.

“I don’t know,” she replied, dropping her eyes. “That’s why I’m here. I thought that someone should be alerted to the danger.’”

“That’s your own personal assessment of this?” Honor asked, waving the paper gently in the air. “That President Wilkins is in danger?”

She nodded her head, then raised her eyes to his. “Yes. I’m sure of it.”

Honor spun about to stare through the window. The President and his 12-year-old daughter, Angie, were strolling about on the south lawn, a bevy of SS men all but enveloping them. Honor’s jaw tensed and he said, “I don’t like nutty mysteries. What’s this all about, Milt?”

“That,” Clinton said soberly, “is precisely what you are going to determine.”

“Simply because I have the Academics Unit? What does academics have to do with… whatever this is?” He ran a hand through his hair and watched the President bend over the flower garden in the southwest corner, pick a bloom, and carefully insert it in the hair behind Angie’s ear. “Look, I’ve got student revolts and campus riots to worry about… and that’s plenty enough. I’m not even equipped to… well, dammit, the other agencies will be brought in, won’t they?”

Clinton nodded his head reassuringly. “I already have a conference set up for two o’clock. Don’t worry about the President’s security, Pat. That end of it will be taken care of. I want you to get with Wenssler and find out what he knows about Bogan. Look into this mathematical thing, find out what it’s all about. Get a good reading on this PPS program, find out how it figures in with all this.” Clinton glanced at the girl.

“From what Miss Thompson told me about Wenssler’s actions, it sounds like he might be suffering a mild form of the same thing that struck Bogan. Look into that angle. Pull whatever strings you need, but get some top medical opinions on Wenssler’s condition. Miss Thompson has already agreed to give us every cooperation, so you’ll be working closely with her.”

“June 15th is only nine days away,” Honor growled.

“What did you say?” the girl asked breathlessly.

Honor glowered at her. “I said we’ve only got nine days,” he told her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Nine again, isn’t it.”

Honor glared at the girl. Her eyes met his, and held. Clinton broke the pregnant silence, opening a manila folder and shuffling some papers about. “Here’s the security report on Miss Thompson, Pat,” he said. “Just to satisfy your own mind. She was given a Top Secret clearance before she was allowed to join the PPS team at Atlantic.” He closed the folder and shoved it across the desk toward Honor. “Take this along and look it over if you’d like. Make arrangements for about a week’s absence. Pick up your expense voucher from Betty, it’s ready and waiting for you.”

“I see,” Honor said, a bit sullenly. “It was all set up even before you sent for me.”

“What’s eating you?” Clinton snapped.

“I don’t buy this damned psychic phenomena bit, that’s what eating me,” Honor shot back.

“Oh that’s just great,” the girl breathed. “So we start with a big round zero.” Her tone was one of utter disgust.

“And I dont buy that eighth event!” Honor said angrily.

“So, you noticed that,” Clinton muttered.

The Thompson girl’s eyes flicked rapidly between the two men, then she said, “I—I didn’t recognize that eighth name. Does Honorkir have some significance? I mean, well yes, it is similar, but—”

Honor was glaring once again at the sheet of paper. “Honorkir,” he read, “September 4th, 1975.” His eyes went to Barbara Thompson. “That is my old family name, Miss Thompson,” he said, his voice suddenly soft in the explanation. “My father shortened it to Honor a few months before I was born. And this isn’t exactly, uh, common knowledge.”

“So,” she replied with an abrupt sigh. “We do not begin with zero. We begin with a power of nine.”

“Damned if that’s so,” Honor muttered. He snatched up the manila folder, dropped the folded paper on the girl’s lap, and slammed out of the office. He recognized his anger, however, as nothing more than a whistle in the dark. He was chilled right down to his marrow, and not just because of the number mumbo-jumbo although, he admitted, that was probably part of it. The thing that was twanging the nerves of Honor’s spine was the certain knowledge that he had never seen or heard of the Thompson girl until just a few moments earlier… and yet… he knew, and precisely, the contents of that security folder. He knew it all—time and place of birth, parent’s names, educational history, address, telephone number, and the various vital statistics. He could even “see” the comments of neighbors and associates, as recorded by the investigators. Trembling inwardly, Honor marched across the general office, ignoring the frankly interested stares of the female employees, and hurried into his own office with the folder clutched to his chest. He closed his door and dropped into the chair at his desk, opened the folder, and quickly skimmed through the data. Then he closed the folder and rocked back in the chair, hands locked behind his head. “Well kiss my big round zero,” he muttered aloud. Letter perfect. He’d got it letter perfect. His head swiveled toward the window and he stared with glazed eyes onto the beauty of the White House grounds. The President and Angie, suitably escorted, were headed back toward the South Portico. “Kiss theirs too,” Honor sighed.

2: Conversion

There was a tail on him. He had become sure of it soon after crossing the Arlington Bridge, and he was fuming with himself for not tumbling to it sooner. Honor gave credit where it was due, however: the guy was doing it skillfully; only the most alert mind would have picked up the play that took place back on the Washington streets. It had been a different story from the Lincoln Circle on, though, in the thin traffic of early morning, and Honor’s earlier vague suspicions were quickly borne out. The dark blue hardtop in his rearview was a tail car.

Honor seized the occasion to toss a mental salute to the people over at GPO. Honor had thought they had lost their minds when they decided to put all government vehicles on the steam basis. Okay, he’d thought, go ahead and promote a cleaner atmosphere, but give the steam jobs to the bureaucrats and let the working troops keep their old reliable combustion wheels. But Honor had grown to love the steamer. Light, silent, and extremely responsive, it outperformed any gasburner he’d ever owned. As for reliability, well… there just wasn’t that much to the steamer to go wrong.

He moved the headsteam control into the upper range and flipped the drivejet onto the open road orifice as he swung onto the Jeff Davis Highway. The rapid acceleration pinned him to the seat momentarily, the big orifice clicking in with a sudden, almost explosive hiss, then the muted sibilance was lost in the snick of tires on pavement as he floated along in the unreal silence of highsteam speed. The blue hardtop quickly faded in the distance. Honor smiled and relaxed, zipped on past the Pentagon exits, then began slowing into the swirling traffic streams of the merging interstate routes. Several minutes later he had selected the appropriate turnoff and was moving leisurely into the quiet Virginia countryside. He flicked an automatic glance into the rearview, stiffened for a closer look, then swore under his breath. The blue hardtop was back there again.

Honor reflected on the inexplicable. He decided to try it again, steaming into another rapid acceleration, leaving the blue tail far behind, then swerving onto a country lane and sweeping into a gentle valley between the foothills. Five minutes later he came out on another state route, passed through a small Virginia town which was just beginning to stir with early-morning activities, and cut onto another country lane that would return him to his original track. As the small town faded in his rearview, the blue hardtop detached itself from the background and hung there grimly.

Honor shook his head in wonderment. It just was not possible, he reasoned, even if he was being tracked electronically, for that same car to keep closing the gaps Honor was leaving. Again he poured on the steam, accelerating until the tail was out of sight, then he halted abruptly with a scream of rubber, executed an enraged U-turn, and hissed back along the reverse track. He glanced into his rearview, half expecting to see a small blue hardtop centered there. Noting nothing but the rapidly unfolding ribbon of blacktop, Honor grinned selfconsciously and got set for the confrontataion. It came at the crest of a small hill, with the blue car looming suddenly in Honor’s forward vision. He caught a glimpse of a dark and concerned face behind the wheel of the other car, and then they had flashed past each other to opposite sides of the hillock.

Honor applied his brakes immediately and spun into a dirt sideroad, then backed onto the blacktop and again reversed his field to hiss along in hot pursuit. He was beginning to enjoy the game and was looking forward to the other’s reaction when he discovered that the roles had been reversed.

The driver of the blue car had not been so fortunate as Honor; there was no nearby exit to facilitate a quick turnaround, and Honor caught him see-sawing across the narrow road in an awkward attempt at reversal.

Honor spun into a broadside halt and leapt to the ground before the rocking vehicle had stabilized, crossed to the hardtop in two agile strides, wrenched the door open, and plucked the driver from behind the wheel. He was a small man, young, very dark, terrified. Honor spun him around, shoved him against the side of the car, roughly flung his hands to the roof, and shook him down for weapons. He found none. He found, in fact, nothing at all—no wallet, not even a scrap of paper.

“No movements,” Honor warned. “Just conversation. What’s the game?”

The dark man gave no flicker of comprehension. He seemed frozen, staring stonily forward at the roof of the car. Honor placed a heavy hand at the back of the man’s head and shoved his face into harsh contact with the metal of the roof. The man struggled feebly. Honor placed a knee in the small of his back and pinned him motionless, then increased the pressure on the head. Cartilage crunched, blood trickled from both nostrils, and the man yelled something in a strange language. Honor relented, easing the pressure. “One more chance,” he announced ominously.

The man babbled something incomprehensible to Honor, then broke free, twisting sideways with surprising strength. The sudden movement dropped the intelligence man to one knee. He crouched there, marvelling at the sudden display of strength, and tried to pivot about to meet certain attack. Then Honor realized that it had not been sudden strength on the small man’s part—it was sudden weakness in Honor’s own frame. The momentum of the man’s breakaway had carried him toward the rear of the car; he stood there now in a moment of pained indecision, poised between fight and flight.

Time seemed to have stopped. Honor hooked a hand onto the open door of the blue car and dragged himself upright with a seemingly superhuman effort. It seemed that his weight had increased overwhelmingly, as though he were caught in some weird centrifugal warp; even the air he was laboring so to bring into his lungs was oppressive, heavy, constrictive.

The dark man had made his decision. He jumped off the shoulder of the road, vaulted a wire fence, and ran off across a bordering pasture, disappearing almost immediately around the side of the hill.

Honor’s strength was slowly returning. He sagged onto the seat of the blue car, trying vainly to understand what had happened and fighting to re-establish a breathing rhythym. When he was feeling normal again, he searched the car for some evidence of ownership. There was none. He went to the rear to inspect the license plate. There was no license plate. He returned to the driver’s seat, started the car, and parked it on the shoulder, then removed the keys from the ignition and flung them into a clump of bushes alongside the road. As an afterthought, he then opened the hood and inspected the engine. It looked to Honor like a standard internal combustion V-8. The events of the morning were making less and less sense. He glared at the engine for a moment, then sighed philosophically. He’d broken up the tail, hadn’t he? That was the primary consideration. Just to make double certain, he pulled off the distributor cap and ripped out the rotor, dropped it into his coat pocket, and returned to his steamer. Moments later he was gliding along once again and angling toward the secluded Virginia farm which housed Professor Curt Wenssler’s PPS Lab. He could not clear the dark man from his mind, and he was still smarting over the ease with which the little guy had gotten the upper hand in their encounter. Some sort of Judo punch? A nerve pressure? Honor shook his head in wonderment. He’d experienced no sensation of being struck, or even touched. Everything had just suddenly gone out of him, and he’d been as weak and defenseless as a babe. Why hadn’t the little guy pursued the sudden advantage? Why hadn’t he stomped hell out of Honor?

Honor gave it up and concentrated on the route, but he maintained a vigil at the rearview mirror. After another thirty minutes of trouble-free travel, he turned onto a gravelled road and followed it across rolling countryside to his destination, several miles off the state route. It was a neat farm, tucked into a secluded valley in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridges. Graceful trees bordered the small acreage. A modern, split-level house occupied a gentle knoll, overlooking several small outbuildings and a rather large barn. The gravelled road swept past the property then jogged off abruptly over a hill and into a forested area. Honor angled onto a macadam drive that entered the farm directly in front of the house and curved beautifully around the knoll, past the outbuildings, to terminate at the barn. He halted at mid-curve for a terrain orientation, lit a cigarette, and luxuriated in the beauty of the setting.

A small herd of cows grazed peacefully in rich pasture behind the barn. A station wagon and a tractor were parked side by side at the end of the drive. A large collie lay in the luxurious grass of the knoll, watching the cows graze in the distance. He swivelled his regal head about in an interested scrutiny of the visitor. The dog seemed to accept Honor’s presence, losing interest immediately and returning to his surveillance of the herd.

A striking female figure in tight bluejeans emerged from the rear of the house and walked casually down the knoll. Even from the distance of several hundred feet, Honor recognized her immediately as Barbara Thompson. She wore a white, tailored blouse and obviously nothing beneath it; well-formed globular breasts jiggled tauntingly in free motion as she walked. Apparently she had not noticed Honor’s presence. She paused to ruffle the fur of the collie then went on to the barn.

As soon as the girl had disappeared inside the structure, Honor eased off the brakes of his vehicle and coasted silently down the drive, rolling in to a gentle halt alongside the station wagon. As he swung his feet to the ground, he experienced an unaccountable prickling of the hairs at the nape of his neck. He straightened, hands on hips, and quietly surveyed the area again. Then, feeling a bit foolish, he leaned into the car and took his revolver from the glove compartment, glared at it for a moment, then chuckled and put it back. He was damned if he would let these people get him to jumping at shadows and rambling hunches. He wondered about the little fellow in the blue car. An overreaction? Had an innocent foreigner, out for an early morning drive in the peaceful American countryside, fallen victim to an overactive American imagination? Well… no… he wouldn’t go that far… the guy had been following him, and deliberately. Still… Honor shrugged and walked into the barn.

It was a large structure with a high, vaulted roof—but it did not have a “barn atmosphere”… Honor recognized this immediately. The ceiling had been dropped quite low, for a barn; there was obviously a full upper floor, perhaps two. The ground level was cemented and apparently entirely non-functional. Several livestock stalls at the end bore no evidence of having been occupied. Neatly baled and stacked hay occupied the far wall. Various items of shiny-new farm machinery were scattered about. A circular steel stairway showed the way to the upper level.

Honor walked over to the stairway and peered up. There was no landing. The damn thing just disappeared into the ceiling. He hesitated, one foot on the stairway, then changed his mind and walked toward the rear of the barn. His hackles were rising again as he stepped around a high partition and into a stall-like affair. Down, hackles, down, Honor commanded, there’s a logical explanation for this!

A small blue hardtop occupied the stall. Honor stood quite still and fought down a surging wave of emotion. Someone is playing games, he told himself. He went slowly around the car, inspecting it closely. There was no license plate. A dried smear of blood marred the surface of the roof, near the door on the driver’s side. With a growing inner excitement, Honor moved on to the hood, raised it, and stared at the engine. The distributor cap dangled above the heart of the ignition system. The rotor was missing. He quietly closed the hood and pawed in his pocket for a cigarette. What the hell. He found the cigarette pack at the same instant he found that he was not alone.

Barbara Thompson was silently regarding him from the front of the stall. Their eyes met, hers reproving, his puzzled. “What the hell is this?” Honor growled.

“You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” she asked, the sensuous lips pouting more noticeably.

“I don’t even believe it yet,” Honor muttered.

“You were unnecessarily rough on Singh,” she declared.

“On who? The little guy?”

The “little guy” stepped out of the shadows and alongside the girl. He stared at Honor with hurt eyes.

Honor said, “How’d he get here so… ?” He pointed dramatically toward the engine compartment of the car. “There’s no rotor in there! And I threw the keys away!” He dug into his pocket and produced the missing rotor, holding it out for them to see. “There’s the damn rotor! Now you tell me how…” Fired by his own emotions, Honor was boiling. He advanced menacingly on the pair. The small man took a quick backwards step, but the girl held her ground.

“Mr. Honor!” she cried angrily.

“Mr. Honor, hell! I’m going to shake a story out of this guy, or else…”

He was reaching beyond her, intent on grabbing the fast-retreating man. Suddenly his knees buckled and he sank to the floor. It was happening again, the weakness, the oppressive weight and leaded lungs. His eyes rolled up to the girl, his hands clutching at the bluejeans, the question in his suddenly tortured eyes unmistakable.

“Promise to behave,” she murmured. Buoyant air entered his lungs and the heaviness evaporated.

Honor gulped the welcome air and struggled to his feet, the girl helping him up. “You simply must accept PPS, Mr. Honor,” she said.

“I accept it,” Honor gasped. “Hell, I accept it!”

3: Surrender

A floor-flush door had opened automatically at their approach up the circular stairway and Honor found himself standing in plush luxury on the upper level of the barn. It was a rather small reception room, beautifully paneled, thickly carpeted. Soft music was issuing from concealed speakers, the smell of flowers was in the air, and the entire surroundings bespoke soft and sensual charm. Oriental tapestries shared the walls with oil paintings and modernistic sculptures. The furniture was modernistic, light, casually comfortable. A heavy door at the far end barred the way into the lab proper.

Honor dropped into a chair and loosened his collar. Barbara asked solicitously, “Can I get you some water?”

Honor gave her a shaky grin and replied, “I’d prefer something stronger.”

“Coffee is about as strong as we get around here,” the girl said. “I’ll get some.” She patted his shoulder and disappeared through a tapestry-concealed doorway.

The dark man, Singh, sank into a chair across from Honor and regarded the guest with open curiosity. Honor returned the inspection and said, “You speaking English now?”

Singh nodded his head, smiling. “I speak,” he replied genially.

“That’s a pretty tricky car you drive,” Honor told him.

“Singh not drive. Car drive.”

Honor was trying to figure out the declaration when the girl reappeared bearing a tray with silver coffee service. She busied herself pouring the coffee and passing it around, fussing with sugar and cream, all the while humming lightly under her breath. Honor caught her eye and said, “Singh not drive… car drive. What’s that mean?”

Her lips curled into a soft smile. “We’ll explain that later.” Her eyes went to the dark man. “Have you looked in on the Professor yet?”

He shook his head. “Professor yell. Singh not look.”

A distressed expression crossed the girl’s face and quickly disappeared. She set her coffee down and said, “I’ll be right back.” She crossed to the heavy door and entered the lab, the door remaining open.

Honor heard the deep rumble of a male voice, rising to sharp exclamations and interspersed with the soothing tones of Barbara Thompson. She reappeared in the doorway moments later, her face pained, and said, “Professor Wenssler would like to see you immediately.”

That suited Honor fine. He left the coffee untouched and joined the girl, moved with her along a short and darkened hallway, then through another vault-like doorway. Glass cubicles lined one side of the room, half a dozen at Honor’s quick count. Each contained a large recliner chair, similar to the ones used by dentists, which was flanked by electronic panels and a maze of electrode wires. A separate large area at the far end was similarly enclosed and housed a console, a small desk, and various objects which Honor could not identify. A blackboard lined the other wall. Another desk, quite large and littered with open books and stacks of papers, was positioned in the corner of the unglassed area. Odds and ends of upholstered chairs and couches completed the picture. Except for the man himself. He looked about sixty, white hair thin and flowing in undisciplined fashion. Medium height, thickset, redfaced, tormented. This was Honor’s impression. A pile of clothing lay on the floor in front of the desk. Wenssler was dressed only in a bathrobe, carelessly tied and partially open.

Barbara Thompson gave no indication of embarassment. Honor wondered if she had just put that bathrobe on the professor. She led Honor into a close confrontation and performed a sober introduction. “Profesor Wenssler, this is Mr. Patrick Honor… from the White House.” She emphasized the latter phrase.

Honor extended his hand but the professor seemed not to notice. “Did you bring the nines?” he asked intently.

Honor shot a glance at the girl. “What nines?” He was asking her.

Wenssler’s agitation increased. “Don’t hedge, man,” he said loudly. “Did you bring them or didn’t you?”

“I just brought myself,” Honor admitted tightly. He wished he could catch the professor’s eye, but the gaze was constantly roving about the room, flicking violently from one spot to another. The guy is scared out of his skull, Honor quickly decided.

“Get out! Get out of here!” Wenssler had erupted suddenly and was shoving both Honor and the girl toward the door.

Barbara hooked an arm inside Honor’s and pulled him back to the reception room. She closed the door firmly behind them and rubbed the back of a hand across her forehead.

“I need to talk to him,” Honor protested.

“Obviously you cannot do so right now,” she replied.

“That guy is nuts! You shouldn’t leave him—”

Honor’s agitated retort was cut short by the crash of the heavy door opening violently and rebounding against the wall of the passageway. Honor was staring through the open doorway with uncomprehending wonderment. The door at the other end had opened also, and the professor was framed there in the dim light. He screamed, “If you didn’t bring them, who did you bring?”

“How’d that door bang open?” Honor asked in an awed whisper.

“Can’t you understand?” Wenssler was screaming. “It’s the only hope, the only hope! You must persuade them! You must bring them here!” He staggered back from the doorway, the robe flapping full open, fell over a chair, and crashed to the floor. The chair immediately skittered across the floor with tremendous force and impacted against the glass wall of one of the cubicles. The wall shattered and rained broken glass in a jangling series of crashes.

Electrified, Honor set himself into motion toward the open doorway. The heavy door swung shut in his face, and only then did he realize that the girl was clinging to his arm. He was fighting to get the door open and she was crying breathlessly, “No—don’t—you can’t go in there now!”

“The hell I can’t,” he muttered. He had succeeded in opening the door, and was now trying to free himself from the girl’s frantic grasp.

“No! Wait until he calms down! He’s dang—”

Honor flipped her away and set her on the floor, hard, then he was rushing along the short passageway and crashing through the other door and into the lab. Wenssler was cringing on the floor in a kneeling position, arms folded atop his head as though to ward off invisible blows. Honor dropped to one knee and encircled the professor’s shoulders with his arms, then aburptly jerked away, tingling as though he had grabbed a live electric wire.

“What th’ hell?” Honor cried. He glanced up and found the girl standing just inside the doorway. Singh stood just behind her, peering around her with frightened eyes.

Honor tried again to assist the kneeling man, and again jerked back quickly. “FGod’s sake, he’s electrified or something!” he exclaimed.

“Is kundalini,” Singh declared in awed tones.

“Is what?” Honor snapped.

“Kundalini,” Barbara whispered. “Vital life forces. See the aura?”

Honor could, indeed, see something which could be called an aura. A wavering and faintly pulsating light emanation of some sort seemed to be cloaking Wenssler’s head and shoulders. The old man’s arms abruptly jerked down from atop his head. His face, tortured and constricted with strong emotion, elevated toward the ceiling, and a moaning cry tore from his lips: “Oh God! I’m sorry! I quit! Help me! I give up!”

Barbara Thompson’s face went white and she cried, “No! Don’t! Curt… don’t surrender!”

Obviously, however, the professor had already done so. The expression faded from the eyes, the face went slack, and all evidences of the personality seemed to evaporate. The girl dropped to the floor beside Honor, tears flowing, and took the old man in her arms. He went easily, unprotestmgly, like a sleeping child into mother arms. But he was not asleep. Honor seized his wrist and found a faint but steady pulse. “Seems to be okay,” Honor murmured.

“No, he is gone,” the girl sobbed.

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” He glanced at Singh, who was sadly shaking his head.

“He is gone,” Barbara repeated. She released him, moving carefully away. Wenssler’s posture remained unchanged, awkwardly off balance as though the girl’s arms were still about him. The pulse was still firm under Honor’s grasp. He lifted the arm, pulling it stiffly outstretched over Wenssler’s head, then released it. It hung there, as though suspended by wires.

“Catatonia,” Honor said softly.

“Yes,” the girl agreed, wiping at her tears.

“Is living death,” Singh declared in a hushed voice. He spun about and quickly left the lab.

“We’ve lost,” Barbara said mournfully. She became suddenly galvanized, leaping to her feet. “Come on, help me,” she said to Honor, tugging at Wenssler’s curiously lethargic mass. “We must get him out of here! Right away!”

Honor’s heart was thudding in his chest. He did not know why. He knew only that suddenly that laboratory had taken on an ominous atmosphere. He pushed the girl aside and dragged what was left of Professor Curt Wenssler out of there.

4: Beyond Sex

Honor made the necessary telephone calls and cleared the way for Professor Wenssler to be admitted to the Bethesda Medical Center, and under special security arrangements. They had carried Wenssler down to the station wagon and made him comfortable on the rear deck; a worried and nervous Singh was chauffeuring him in to Washington, where he would be met and escorted on to Bethesda.

Honor and the girl went to the house on the knoll. She had quickly gained control over her emotions, busying herself in the kitchen with a coffee pot and a pan of scrambled eggs. Honor scouted the interior layout of the house, finding it adequately supplied with city conveniences and gadgetry, sumptuously appointed, and far too large for the average American family. Built along the contour of the knoll, it sported three levels, counting the basement which was only half-finished into a huge recreation room complete with billiard table and bar. The main level housed kitchen and dining facilities, utility room, library-den, and a fully equipped office. Five bedrooms and a sitting room were on the upper level. Honor snooped and found that three of the bedrooms showed signs of tenancy. Male clothing, large like Wenssler, was in one room; smaller stuff, Singh-size, in another. Barbara’s room was obviously feminine, frilly, with a large rag doll seated in the middle of the bed. He went on back downstairs and seated himself in the breakfast nook just as Barbara was dishing up the eggs.

They ate in silence, Barbara staring stonily at her plate, Honor lost in mental gymnastics. He finished the eggs, tasted the coffee, lit a cigarette, and tossed the pack to her side of the table. She wrinkled her nose, smiled wanly, and said, “You shouldn’t. Cigarettes kill.”

“Lots of things kill,” Honor grunted. “Anything wrong with choosing your own death?”

“Sometimes we lose that choice,” she replied, her eyes wistful.

“Like Wenssler?”

She nodded. “Like Wenssler.”

“What’s been going on out here, Barbara?” Honor exhaled a cloud of smoke and added, “Which brings up another question. Why out here? Fifty miles from Atlantic?”

“Curt insisted upon isolating the lab,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, it’s Curt, eh?”

“Certainly it’s Curt. Would you prefer Uncle Curt? I’ve known him all my life. He and my father were friends.”

“Your father still living?”

She shook her head in an abrupt negative. “Died five years ago, in the same accident that killed Katy Wenssler, Curf’s wife. Automobile. Curt was driving. He has baby-tended me ever since. Mother died when I was three.”

“Why did Wenssler want the lab way out here in the sticks? How does that blue car run with no ignition system? What is all that weird gear in the lab? Who is Singh? What sort of oddball stuff have you people been poking into? What caused Wenssler to flip his skull?”

Barbara was staring at him with a tight little frown. “You still don’t know?”

He grinned and shook his head. “Of course not. How would I know. You haven’t told me a damn thing yet.”

Barbara tossed her head and said, almost angrily, “You’re playing games with me.”

Honor’s grin faded. “The hell I am,” he said, making it sound like a question. “Games, yes, I go along with that. But the joke has all been on me, so far.”

Barbara’s face reflected her puzzlement. “But Curt was certain that you… you…”

“I what?” Honor growled.

“Well I… you know it would have been impossible for me to do anything behind his back. I had decided to go to Washington, and of course he discovered my intentions. And he… he gave me his blessings and… said… that I would find the…” Her eyes dropped and she finished lamely,”… the one.”

“The one what?”

“The one… to… help. He said I would find you, that it was written.”

“Written in what?”

“You really don’t understand?”

Honor solemnly shook his head. “I don’t understand any of it,” he assured her.

“But I… I felt your mind cross.”

Honor’s hairs were beginning to lift again. “You felt my mind cross what?” he asked in a strained voice.

“In Mr. Clinton’s office. When you picked up the security folder with my name on it. I felt your mind cross.” She was staring at him in an almost pleading manner.

Honor shifted his gaze to the glowing tip of the cigarette. “Yeah, okay,” he replied softly. “So something queer did happen back there. I knew what was in that folder the instant I touched it. But that’s the least understandable part of all.” He lifted his eyes in time to see a warm smile flooding her face. His hairs continued stiffening. “What’s it all about, Barb?”

“This was your first such experience?” she asked breathlessly.

He nodded his head. “And I hope the last.”

“Oh no, not the last. That was merely awakening. The development will come quickly now.”

Honor didn’t like the sound of it. He shifted into another track. “What’s the secret of the blue car?” he asked quickly.

“I honestly don’t know. Curt does that. He would never tell me how.”

Honor accepted the answer for the moment. “And Singh?”

“Curt brought him back from India several years aga. He was supposed to be an adept. Now he—”

“Wait. Adept at what?”

“It’s a term applied to the Hindus who have mastered the concept of mind over matter. Singh was very helpful at first, but Curt very rapidly surpassed everything Singh could teach him. Now Singh is a sort of general handyman. He—”

“You still haven’t said why you’re buried out here in the country.”

Wrinkling her nose, she replied, “We’re not buried. The campus is only an hour’s drive. The controls which Curt insisted upon couldn’t be met on campus. This is a very delicate program, you can understand that, and—”

“No, I can’t understand that, Barb, because I don’t know what the damn program is. Even after studying our files half of last night, I have little more than a glimmer. In fact, I just can’t believe that our government would subsidize something like this, on the strength of the information in our files. And believe me, I have access to—”

“Well they did,” she said emphatically, interrupting his growing blustering. “And I can tell you why they did. What if a foreign power were to develop this capability before we could get a—”

“Now wait, dammit,” Honor said. “Who’s going to take over now that Wenssler’s out of the picture?”

The girl’s eyes flipped wide. “Oh, I… I hadn’t thought of…”

“You mean there isn’t anyone else?” Honor asked incredulously.

She shook her head in thoughtful misery. “Not since Dr. Gibson’s collapse, two months ago.”

Honor was getting inwardly lathered. “You mean to say that you’ve got all that junk out there in the barn, all those glass cages and a million bucks worth of… and just you and Wenssler to play with it?”

The girl’s defenses slipped into place, faced by Honor’s wrath. Her voice was cool and controlled as she said, “We started with a full-scale experimental project. It was Professor Wenssler, Dr. Gibson, myself, and two other research assistants. And 15 student volunteers. Curt had been working out the details of this program since his return from a visit to India, several years ago. As soon as he got the funds we started right in, full scale. And then… some of the students began… well, exhibiting undesirable characteristics. Curt dismissed them immediately. He and Dr. Gibson began a review of the data. They began experimenting alone. The other two research assistants quit. I believe they became frightened. Then… Dr. Gibson suffered his collapse. Over-work, we thought then, but he still doesn’t know his own name half the time. And then, lately, the strange behavior by Curt th-that I told you about yesterday.” Her eyes were beginning to water, the lips tremble. Stony-faced, Honor watched and listened. She paused briefly to dab at her eyes with a napkin, then continued. “Singh has been flapping around like an excited hen ever since Dr. Gibson left. He’s… I believe he’s devoted to Curt, but strongly disapproves of the directions the research has taken. He seems to think that we are toying with the very foundations of the universe.”

Honor was wondering about Singh. “A guy that young,” he said musingly, “… how is it that he’s a . . what did you call him? An Adept?”

She nodded. “He isn’t so young. Just shows what mind can do to matter. Singh is 64.”

Honor’s jaw dropped. “He isn’t a day over 25!” he declared.

Barbara shook her head adamantly. “He is 64. You should have been there when we were trying to get his visa. They didn’t believe it either.”

Honor sighed wearily. “Okay,” he said resignedly. “Just exactly now, Barb, in eighth-grade words, what is PPS?”

She stared at him for a thoughtful moment. “Psychic Power Sources,” she slowly replied. “It’s an outgrowth of the work started by the Rhine Foundation many years ago. But that was ground-level stuff. Curt has taken it on through the so-called occult sciences, the metaphysics of the East, and added a lot of his own discoveries. We spent a year in India. Curt taught at a university there to finance the Eastern research.” She smiled sadly. “Wasn’t exactly a lost year for me, either. I did some work translating ancient Sanskrit writings and worked it into a thesis which won this fellowship for me.” Her eyes fastened onto Honor’s. “We saw some amazing things over there, Patrick. That really represented the beginning for Curt, even though he’d already devoted a lifetime to, first, ESP . . and then to metaphysics. I know that it was there that he first started using the term Psychic Power Sources.”

Honor sniffed and reached for another cigarette.

“He’s a scientist, you know,” Barbara went on. “Any scientist who is worth the powder to blow him up, once confronted with seemingly inexplicable phenomena, is going to start looking for the answers. But… well… it has become… like… an obsession, for Curt.” Her eyes raked Honor’s face and she took a deep breath, the delectably unfettered chest heaving against the thin fabric of the shirt. Honor’s eyes were drawn like magnets to the darkened circles of delicate areolae and suggestively-peeking nipples. She colored slightly and crossed her arms in front of her. “It uh… there seems to be uh… sexual considerations.”

Honor’s eyes crackled. “You can say that again,” he agreed.

Her eyes fled to the far wall. “I didn’t mean… what I mean…”

“There are sexual considerations,” Honor prompted her, grinning.

“I’m speaking of the work,” she said, coloring more noticeably. “Curt told me that it… well… he’s sort of… past his prime, you know… and besides, we’re like family.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Honor asked, suddenly hyper-interested.

Barbara’s face was now a furious red. She uncrossed, then recrossed, her arms and leaned forward against the table. “Curt thinks that the safest… route… to the psychic source… is through… sex… the sex act, I mean.”

“And this is how you assist—”

“Of course not!” she cried. “I told you, we’re like family. B-but if he could have started… all this… thirty, or even twenty, years ago, he feels… or he felt … that he could have made immense strides that are now… denied him… because of… physical limitations.”

“Uh-huh.” Honor was watching her skeptically. Her eyes were still wandering. “You’re already speaking of him in the past-tense,” he observed softly.

“It’s entirely appropriate,” she said, sighing. “That… that body we took out of here… that’s not Curt Wenssler. Curt is… elsewhere.”

Honor’s eyes narrowed. “Elsewhere where!”

“I-I can’t say. B-but, I believe sex could have saved him.”

“I see.” He did not see. If it was a romantic pitch, it was certainly the most outlandish Honor had ever heard—and he’d heard a few. “You still have not told me what PPS actually is,” he reminded her.

“You were using it, yesterday, when you crossed me,” she told him. Her discomfiture was dissolving, the eyes flashed to his, and she said, “It was not a romantic pitch!”

Honor’s jaw dropped again. “Huh?”

“That’s PPS,” she declared, almost laughing.

“You read my mind?” he asked darkly.

“More or less. I didn’t read it. I just knew what you were knowing.”

“Sort of gets in the way of conversation, doesn’t it?” he observed thickly.

“Uh, mostly it works in matters of sex,” she replied, still good-humored. “And other life-or-death matters, also. But we aren’t faced with life-or-death too often, are we. So it comes mostly in a sexual reference. Curt worked up a hypothesis relating libidinal drives to psychism. The sheer weight of empirical data seems to point that way, and uh…”

“And uh what?” Honor wanted to know.

“Well… you…” The girl was beginning to color again, but her eyes remained steady on his. “… you seem… entirely virile. And… and our minds have crossed. Which means that you already possess a certain psychic potential, and…”

“And?” Honor was making her go it alone.

“And… well, you wanted to know how Curt controlled the blue car. My development isn’t that great, but… well, watch your coffee.”

Honor had barely tasted the coffee. It was far too weak for his taste, and he had entirely ignored it. The cup was nearly full. As he watched, a noticeable swirling began at the surface, rapidly forming into a whirlpool, and the liquid began sloshing onto the saucer. In a matter of seconds, the cup was emptied. The saucer was overflowing; tepid coffee was running across the table and dripping to the floor.

Honor was dumbfounded. He stared silently at the dripping coffee, then hastily moved his legs aside as it began to wet his trousers.

“That’s PPS, too,” Barbara stated quietly.

Honor picked up the cup and gazed into it, then poured the contents of the saucer into the cup and turned the saucer over to inspect the underside.

“No tricks,” she assured him. “Just elemental PPS.”

Honor’s mind was tumbling. “I’ve heard of this kind of stuff,” he declared in a near-whisper, “but I always thought of it as hokey-pokey.” He moved his hand aside to allow Barbara to sponge-up the mess from the table. “So!” He smiled faintly. “It is not hokey-pokey. The car? The phantom judo chop? It’s all real stuff?”

“It’s all real,” she assured him. “The phantom judo chop, as you call, it is a cerebellar scrambler. It merely mixes up neuro-muscular reflexes. It can kill, of course, if held too long. The victim will strangle on his own breath.”

“Let’s get back to the sex bit,” Honor suggested. “Are you suggesting that the two of us could cross minds and bodies, and somehow, by that process, gain access to all this phenomenal power?”

She nodded her head, soberly, eyes fixed on his. “Science and aesthetics do not always go hand in hand, Patrick. Let’s call a spade a spade. I have been studying Curt’s notes for the past week. Somehow I knew that something like this was going to happen. I have been prepared for it for quite some time. I believe he knew it, too. He left his notes lying about where I could find them easily. I think—”

“I think you know exactly what happened to Wenssler,” Honor told her. “He didn’t just blow his mind, did he? And he wasn’t babbling insanities when he was asking me about the nines, was he? And I’ve been very carefully set up to come in and take a stooge’s role, haven’t I?”

Her eyes wavered and dropped. “All but the last part, Patrick, yes. There is no place for stooges in this work. We are all masters… or we are all nothing.” The eyes came back up, blazing in full violet brilliance, “Do you have the courage to venture into the unknown? With me as your guide? We can find Curt, you and me. We can find him and bring him back.”

“Where is he?” Honor asked, his breath curiously constricted.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But… where he went, we can go. Safely, though, unitized in libidinal projection.”

“How do you know it’s safe?” he asked. “Just on Wenssler’s say-so?”

She shrugged delicately and showed him the pink tip of her tongue. “If it works at all, then it works safely. If it does not work…” She smiled demurely. “… then what have you lost? Other than a bit of sexual energy?”

“I’m not so sure I’m sold,” Honor muttered.

He suddenly became aware of a draft on his chest.

He looked down at himself. The buttons of his shirt were one by one slipping through the buttonholes, unaided.

“This is PPS too,” the girl said softly.

His belt popped loose. The zipper of his fly descended. Honor staggered to his feet, suddenly electrified, holding his trousers together at the waist. Barbara was smiling at him, her hands flat out on the table. Her own blouse began opening, button by button, gleaming flesh appearing in tantalizing display.

“Do you have the courage?” she asked calmly.

“If I don’t, I’ll get it on the way,” he assured her. He reached out and pulled her to her feet. She came into his arms and their mouths joined in a breathless mingling of rapidly building urgencies. Barabara broke the kiss, pressed closer into the embrace, and nuzzled his ear.

“Upstairs,” she whispered.

“I know the place,” he said.

“It doesn’t have to be done with scientific detachment,” she briefed him, rubbing ecstatically against his hips.

“It’d better not be.” He pulled her along in a lock-step. “If we’re going to catch old Curt, we don’t want to lose any time, eh.”

“We’ll find him,” she said, panting up the stairs in his embrace.

“Where?” he asked, not really caring where.

“Out there, and in there, and up there,” she whispered. “Beyond sex!”

5: An Understanding

“Ohhh! Oh my, Patrick, that’s… this is…”

“I know what this is. Far better, I’d guess, than you.”

“Old… oh dear!… pro, eh?”

“Uh, comparatively. Kinda new for you?”

“Pat! Oh, Pat. Keep my mind. Not… entirely… new.”

“No scientific… detachment now, Barb… God! God, you’re sweet!”

She pulled at him, fingertips raking his back. “No… not detached. Phew! A-ttached, thoroughly! But… have to… ohhh!” She moaned and twisted the ample torso in ecstatic abandon. “Remember notes! Yes. Patrick! You feel this! Feel it!”

“Crazy? Sure! I feel it!”

“No! Feel me—I mean… what I feel. Know me, Pat, darling, know me! It’s important!”

“I don’t… God, Barb!”

“Like the folder. Know!”

Not even understanding, Honor reached out for knowledge, and received it, and was rocked by it, and was flooded by it with cascading waves of strange sensations. He felt both filled and filling, giving and given, stretched, expanded, constricted, pierced and piercing. “God’s sake!” he groaned.

“Ohhh, it’s… yes, yes!”

Honor was beginning to understand. He was experiencing his own lovemaking, as subjectified in Barbara.

And yet he was experiencing also her responses, as subjectified in himself.

“Unity!” Barbara cried. “My darling, my darling, this is unity!”

God, didn’t Honor know it. He was descending into a swirling vortex, completely lost in sensate pleasure. He knew the sweet impress of her glowing breasts upon his own flesh, while at the same time experiencing the delighted thrills shrieking out from her sensitized nipples as they were irritated against the hard masculine chest; he knew every touch of himself upon her, and viewed through her touch upon him; he knew the explosive throbbing of his own gallant probe while instantaneously experiencing the convulsive female joy of crushed, pulsing, shuddering, distended and clutching tissues. And he knew that she was right with him in that awareness, that they moved together surely toward the brink of supreme sensation. Then they were flowing over it together, floating in the pleasant weightlessness of zero-gravity, riding high on the crest of a sensate wave that never broke but just continued sweeping across an infinite sea of ecstasy. His consciousness was assimilating the unitized absorption of each tiny detail of the perfect union, yet experiencing the entire myriad as a subjective whole. Honor was in sexual heaven, and Barbara was there with him. An overwhelming lovingness enshrouded them; he would love her eternally, eternally, this woman he’d known for so few minutes. They were unitized; he was experiencing his joy and hers, at once, as viewed through his own consciousness; also her joy and his at once as viewed through her consciousness; all four qualities together embodied the total unity. Blissful euphoria descended upon them. He could not even stir himself to wonder or to worry as the ecstasy crashed on and on endlessly. And then he was viewing both their bodies in every dimension and from every viewpoint, and all simultaneously.

A thought came, female-colored and authoritatively positive. We have left the bodies! Success!

Another thought, male-tinged, groping and nearly negative: No! This is ecstasy, bliss. We’ve just never had it so good.

Open your third eye and look. Look!

Honor looked and was immediately frightened. The sensation of floating ended abruptly. It seemed that he was alone and standing still in an environment of constant surrealistic motion. Blurred images advanced, swirled past, and receded before he had time to identify them. Even at such fantastic speeds, however, he managed to recognize a few. Faces, mostly. His mother and father, as they’d looked long ago. A third grade teacher. A girl who had climbed an apple tree with him that summer at Uncle John’s farm. And then Honor realized that these objects were at rest; they were not moving; he was moving, on and on across an infinity, in and through it, swirling, and his fear increased.

“Barbara!” he cried out. “What’s happening? Where are you?”

Courage, came a female thought. It was detached from him now, he knew, separated, distant.

Panicky, he yelled, “You’ve abandoned me!”

No, I am the positive pole. I stand at the gate. Relax. Don’t fight.

Honor tried to twist himself about to look behind, searching for some clue to her whereabouts. As he did so, he had the sensation of rising, and abruptly he was above the surrealistic stream, looking down on it. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he had left Barbara far below. Something moved past him, then returned and hovered over him. He knew an attraction, an impelling need for unification with that something.

He raised his arms and reached for it, and then he was enveloped in it, part of it. The fear departed. He knew where he was now, and he was frightened no more. He was home.

“It’s okay, Barbara,” he said, with every sensation of speaking aloud. “I have arrived. It’s okay now.”

A voice, female and melodious, said, “Patrick Honorkir.”

“Honor,” he corrected. “My father was the last Honorkir. I am Patrick Honor.”

He heard amused laughter. A male voice said, “Welcome, Honorkir, to the Ninth Parallax.”

“I can’t see anything,” Honor complained.

More laughter, subdued, then the female voice again: “Form is at the root octave, Honorkir. Do you understand?”

“I… think so,” he replied.

“Then use your understanding. Do you not wish to see me?”

Something jolted Honor’s consciousness. Immediately he perceived gently swirling mists, rapidly receding, and an incredibly lovely human-like form emerging from them. It was a woman, but a woman like Honor had never seen. She was nude, with glowing fleshtones and a figure of divine form and warmth. Her hair was boyishly short, wine-red, tapered to the exquisite head. Eyes of sparkling blue, royal, all-knowing. She raised finely molded arms to him and announced, “I am Octavia.”

“Yes,I understand,” Honor murmured, and then he was rushing headlong into those arms.

6: Via Infinity

Barbara Thompson had been one of those children for whom “normalcy” just hadn’t seemed to be in the cards. Julia Thompson, Barbara’s mother, had been a self-styled “seer” or clairvoyant. Dr. Charles Thompson, Barbara’s father, had know of this “peculiarity” when he married Julia. She had been, in fact, one of his patients. Dr. Thompson was a psychiatrist. He was 12 years older than Julia. She had consulted him at her parents’ insistence, they had fallen in love, and they had married. Charles had thought that he could “cure” Julia of her “delusions”. Barbara came along in the second year of their marriage, an event which seemed to accentuate Julia’s condition. By the time Barbara was two years old, Julia Thompson had become deeply enmeshed in various occult organizations, or “cults” as Charles called them. She had received ordination in a spiritualist church and was gadding about the country attending spiritualist seminars and “playing with witchcraft”, as Dr. Thompson put it. Upon returning from one such trip, she arrived home to find baby Barbara legally separated from “the mother’s unwholesome influence”, the doors of her own home barred to her entrance, and a process server waiting to hand her legal papers in a divorce action.

Julia Thompson immolated herself, by fire, four months later, on the sidewalk outside her former home. Charles Thompson, shaken by grief and guilt, retired from psychiatric practice and took a job teaching at a nearby university. It was here that he met Curt Wenssler. Prompted and encouraged by Wenssler, Thompson took up the study of metaphysic and occultism in an attempt to understand the earlier conflicts between his dead wife and himself. He became “a believer”, and worked diligently beside Wenssler to increase “an understanding of the mysteries separating man and God.” Meanwhile, young Barbara had begun to have “psychic experiences.” At the age of five, she reported long nighttime conversations “with my mommy.” When she was six, she walked out on her first day at school because of “bad vibrations there”.

Recognizing his daughter’s unusual sensitivity, Charles Thompson provided her with a private tutor; she never again attended a public school until, at the age of sixteen, she was admitted to the university in which Thompson and Wenssler taught. Her social life suffered, because she had so little in common with youngsters of, or even far beyond, her own age. Even during the college years she habitually sought the company of the teachers and professors. She was usually readily accepted in such circles. Her senior year at the university was marred by an unhappy romance with a 40-year-old instructor and, later, by her father’s death. She took residence thereafter with the widowed Professor Curt Wenssler, accompanied him on a year’s sabbatical to India, and had lived in his shadow ever since.

Patrick Honor was by far the most exciting event in Barbara’s young life. Twenty-five and hardly less than a virgin, she had felt a compelling tug toward the masculine beauty and virility of the man. She was even more strongly aware of that tugging in the aftermath of passion. Luxuriating in the mellow contentment of female fulfillment, she moaned softly and ran a hand gently along the relaxed muscles of his back, carefully extricated herself, and moved quietly away from him.

She loved him. Yes, she would always love him. After such an experience, how could two people not be in love? She delicately examined her tender tissues, made a wry face, glanced at her lover, and slipped off the bed and staggered into the bathroom. Now she knew. Why women so often made such utter fools of themselves over men. It was because of men like Patrick Honor. She shivered, remembering, and stepped into the shower. How had it happened? She moved beneath the stream of water, shaking her head in mystification. How had they gotten together like that? A gap existed in her memory. She could recall sitting across the table from him, and feeling embarrassed, and he was staring holes through her blouse. Then… boom!… they were in bed, belly to belly, and she was going out of her mind.

Barbara turned off the shower and towelled herself dry, then draped the terrycloth about her middle and returned to the bedroom. She gazed at his sleeping, naked form for a thoughtful moment, experiencing a revisitation of tingling excitement, then went over to sit beside him at the edge of the bed. She smiled tenderly. His arms were still hooped out, as though he were holding her, and the expression on his face was… was…

She bent closer and examined the face carefully. His eyelids were only half-closed. From above, they had seemed shut. Now, the eyes were half open and he was staring out at her. She thought for a moment that he was playing with her. She slapped his hip and said, “Okay, peekey-boo, I see you too.”

He did not move nor change expression. Her hand moved along the hip and onto the torso, over the heart. A paralyzing fear stabbed at her. She removed the hand and placed an ear to his chest. Thud, ka-thud, ka-thud. Slow, so slow. She seized his wrist, feeling expertly for the pulse, and gently rolled back an eyelid. Blank, staring. Pulse faint… steady, but oh so faint. And then the gap in her memory filled in, and she cried, “Ohhh! Patrick! Oh Pat!”

What had she done? Dear God!

Panting with fear and apprehension and with a strength borne of desperation, she rolled and dragged him off the bed and across the floor to the bath. Her towel fell off in the struggle. She kicked it aside, got behind and partially beneath him, and rolled him into the shower stall. She propped him in the corner, turned on the cold water and adjusted it to a stinging spray. Shivering spasmodically, she knelt on the floor beside him, slapping his face, calling his name, and weeping.

His lips had turned blue from the cold when his eyelids fluttered and he mumbled, “Beautiful… beautiful.”

“Patrick,” Barbara cried. “Come back!”

“Back where?” The eyes opened full. He shivered violently and clutched his chest in his arms. “Jesus Christ! Wh-what’s with the c-cold water?”

Barbara sprang to her feet and turned off the water, then helped him to his feet. They staggered arm-in-arm to the bed and fell across it, soaking wet, blue, and shivering, rolled into the covers, and lay in close nose-to-nose embrace. Still twitching occasionally, Honor began chuckling.

“What’s‘s-so funny?” Barbara gasped.

“I’ve heard of… dousing dogs… but…” He erupted in a shivering spasm of laughter, pulled her closer, and said, “What happened… did we get hung up?”

“Oh Patrick,” It was a soft rebuke. She nuzzled his throat, nibbled it lightly, then moved back to his lips. “You scared me out of my wits,” she told him. “You were in some sort of trance.”

“Me?” He lay still, very still, for a long moment, then pushed her gently away and rolled to his side to stare soberly into her eyes. “Barb, where is the root octave of the Ninth Parallax?”

She shook her head dumbly.

“But you showed me the way. You stood at the gate. Until I found Octavia.”

“Who is Octavia?” she asked, the lips barely moving.

Honor tossed back the covers and flopped his legs over the side of the bed. He sat up, held his head with his hands and squeezed the temples as though trying to bring pressure on something inside. “I don’t… I was there, across the infinite… somewhere. She said… I could see her… at the root octave. And there she was. She knew me. I believe she was expecting me. There were others, too, but I didn’t see them.”

“Pat…” She curled against his back and encircled his waist with her arms. “I—‘m frightened. Let’s not try that again.”

“No, it was… beautiful! I can’t remember too much but it… well I felt like I belonged there. Know what I mean? It was like coming home. I—Barb! We’ve got to go to Wenssler.”

“No, no,” she moaned, shaking her head against his back. “It’s crazy… too dangerous. We don’t know what we’re… what we are playing with.”

“I don’t mean…” He pulled away from her and got to his feet. “I mean Wenssler’s body. I think I know how to help him.”

Barbara sat up and stared at him.

“Come on, get dressed.” He snatched up her bluejeans, glared at them, and tossed them across the room. “Not these. Get dressed for the city. We’re going to Bethesda.”

Bargara struggled off the bed and went quickly to the clothes closet. She felt no need to ask further questions, or to protest. Honor had taken over. This much was obvious. He had gone beyond her. She knew this.

From the bathroom doorway, he said, “Barb, the professor was slightly off base in his sex theory. You know, the idea that—”

“Yes, it’s more than sex, isn’t it,” she said in an incredibly soft voice.

“Damn right. Who was it that said, ‘To know is to love.’”

“Yes, love” Barbara whispered. “That’s the real power source, isn’t it.”

“Call it what you like—knowledge, love, truth. It’s all homogenized into the deeper dimensions of sex. I don’t know how, yet, but—”

“I remember now,” she said.

“What do you remember?”

“Enough.” She selected a simple frock and carried it to the dressing table, opened a lingerie drawer, and searched for matching accessories. “What did this Octavia look like?”

“She looked like something else,” Honor declared reverently.

Barbara silently nodded her head and stepped into blue frilly panties. Indeed, she remembered. She remembered an experience when she was ten. Her mother had come to her, in a dream. She was accompanied by “an angel.” The angel was indescribably beautiful. “We are watching you, dear, from beyond infinity,” her mother had told her. “When the time is right, we will show you the way. It will not be an obvious way, but it will be a way.”

Then the “angel” had smiled sweetly and added, “And it will be a woman’s way. So you must hurry and grow up.”

Indeed, Barbara remembered. The “angel’s”’ name had been Octavia.

7: The Choice

The steamer was silently eating up the highway. They were on the Interstate Bypass, only minutes out of Bethesda. Barbara was curled up in the corner, legs on the seat, quietly thoughtful. There was a warm bond between them, there simply did not seem to be much to say to each other. Honor smiled and reached out for her foot, squeezed it, and held it in a gentle grasp. She sent him a warm surge of love-feeling; he knew it, accepted it, and silently returned it.

Things had certainly changed for Patrick Honor, this he also knew. The world would never be the same, nor would he, not after the experiences of this day. It was funny, he reasoned, how people—intelligent, educated people—could go on year after year, crashing around in total blindness without once realizing that they were blind. Everyone seemed to take the world at face value, even after they’d learned that the world actually had no face. The closer science had advanced into the heart of reality, the more obvious had it become that there was no reality which was perceptible by the human senses. Yet we continued on in our blind march, sneering in the face of the unknown, jeering at those who could not be content with superficial explanations.

Even now, Honor realized with a jolt, he could not be entirely sure of the “reality,” of his experiences. Any psychiatrist in the country would put it all down as delusions or hallucinations. How could Honor tell, for instance, Milt Clinton of his experiences of the morn ing? Wouldn’t Honor quickly find himself in a padded cell alongside Wennsler? Sure. Sure he would. And maybe even the psychiatrists would be right. Maybe it had all been some weird trick of the mind. Except that now Honor knew things. He did not know how he knew, of course. And how could he then know that he knew? He supposed that he would have to prove, to himself, that the knowledge was genuine.

He sent a probe into Barbara’s mind. Am I nuts?

She reached over, as though by impulse, and gripped his hand. “Of course not,” she said softly.

He gave her a sideways glance. “Of course not what?”

She giggled selfconsciously and said, “Sorry, I thought you said something.”

“What did you think I’d said?”

She raised the hand to her lips and kissed it. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Whatever it was, though, I thought it was pretty wild.” She wriggled closer to him and lay an arm on his leg. “Were you wondering if I was feeling sorry? Or guilty?”

Honor grinned and patted her arm. “I love you, Barb,” he said quietly.

She shivered and lay her head on his shoulder. “I know. Isn’t it wonderful? I love you, too.”

Your body is wild!

“Patrrrick,” she purred and stretched an arm across his waist, scrunched closer, and flopped a leg over his.

He wasn’t nuts. It worked, dammit, he knew it worked. He gently moved her leg; it trembled beneath his touch. “You’re going to put us in a ditch,” he warned softly.

She kissed his ear and whispered, “After we bring Curt back, let’s go find some place to lose ourselves.”

“We’ll do just that,” he assured her. Then, “Barb…?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I feel your mind on mine.”

“Uh-huh. It’s nice, isn’t it.”

“Yeah. Uh, you’ve been kidding me. You know what I’m thinking, even as I think it. Don’t you?”

She kissed his ear again. “Some of it,” she admitted. “Not all. We have to be terribly honest and good, don’t we. If this keeps up, we’ll know each other as well as we know ourselves.”

“Which may not be saying much,” Honor replied Jdddingly.

“Well… then… better than we know ourselves. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Honor.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Starting right now. Your lovemaking is wild, wild, wild. I want some more, a whole lot more, and as soon as possible.”

He laughed lightly and encircled her with an arm, drawing her closer. “You can make book on that,” he told her. He sent her a picture image.

She shivered and rooted against him. “That isn’t even fair,” she gasped. “Not out here on this highway, in a speeding car. That’s sadistic.”

Honor laughed again and took his arm back. The marker for the Medical Center had just flashed by, signalling the turnoff at the next exit. “Well, let’s see what we can do about Wenssler,” he said. “Then we’ll see what can be done for that runaway libido.”

“Oh Patrick,” she protested, moving quickly away in blushing embarrassment.

Incredibly, it was not quite 12 o’clock noon. Clinton awaited them beneath the clock at the reception center of the psychiatric section.

“What the hell is going on?” he barked at Honor, then touched his hat and said to Barbara, “Morning, Miss Thompson.”

Barbara murmured greetings through Honor’s rejoinder. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe what’s going on. Have you seen Wenssler yet?”

Clinton impatiently shook his head. “Just got here myself. Jack Wilkins woke up this morning with a raging fever, congested lungs, the whole bit. Doctors are worried as hell. That June 15th date is looking ominous as hell already. What the hell is going on? What’s wrong with Wenssler?”

They were moving quickly along a narrow passageway. Honor replied, “I don’t know, he just sort of came unglued. Right in front of my eyes. Barbara saw it, too. We thought if we could talk to the doctors… who’ve you been talking to, by the way.”

“Tollefsen,” Clinton snapped. “Chief Resident here at Psychiatrics. He says the man is catatonic.”

Honor nodded. “Looked that way to us, too. But we’ve been reconstructing the thing. There could be another answer.”

“If he’s catatonic, he’s clear out of his skull. That’s one of the worst forms of psychosis. They can’t even reach those birds. How the hell are we going to get anything out of him in that state, Pat?”

“I told you, Milt, we don’t think…”

Clinton had halted the small party at a closed door. He pushed the door open, fixed his gaze on a young woman who was seated at a desk just inside, and said, “Clinton, White House. Dr. Tollefsen’s expecting us.”

“Yes sir.” The woman moved excitedly to her feet, nearly upsetting a typewriter in the process. “Dr. Tollefsen is with the patient. Follow me, please.” She hurried out the door and down the passageway. The trio followed close behind. The passageway took a sharp jog, then angled downward on a long decline, on to a landing, then down a steeper ramp.

“Where th’ hell are we headed?” Clinton muttered. “…Hades?”

“You’d probably think so if you had to live here,” Honor replied.

They came out in a wide hall. A nurses’ station all but filled it. Several uniformed men stood about behind the counter, drinking coffee from paper cups. The woman singled one out for her attention and announced, “These are the people from Washington, to see Dr. Tollefsen.” She turned to Clinton. “The nurse will see you the rest of the way,” she said.

The male nurse smiled at Barbara Thompson. “Maybe it would be better if you waited here,” he told her.

She shook her head and gripped Honor’s hand tightly.

“We’ll all go,” Honor said.

The nurse smiled again and walked away. They followed him along another passageway, past a pair of heavy swinging doors, through another short passage and to a locked, massive door.

“The tombs,” Clinton growled, as the nurse worked the lock.

“Heavy security,” the nurse explained in a flat rebuttal. He stepped aside to let them enter, then locked the door behind them, remaining on the outside. They were in a large, pleasant room. Piped music issued from a speaker over the door. Drapes hung over false windows. Light, rattan furniture was softly and colorfully covered.

Curt Wenssler sat in a chair near another door, hunched over, staring blankly at nothing. A tall man in a rumpled coat and baggy trousers stood alongside the professor’s chair. A burly nurse hovered close by. The tall man looked at the newcomers, said something in a low voice to the nurse, and approached the visitors. “I’m Tollefsen,” he said, sticking out a hand.

Clinton took the hand and introduced himself, then the others.

“This is a consultation room,” the doctor explained, smiling at Barbara. His gaze shifted to Clinton, sizing him up. “I figured I’d better get down here and look him over. Hadn’t had a chance to before your call. The examining resident’s diagnosis seems entirely valid, however. He seems to be in a very deep catatonic state.”

“I’d like to examine him,” Honor said quietly.

Piercing brown eyes swept him. Honor experienced strong hostility, though the Chief Resident’s demeanor was outwardly friendly, inquisitive. “Are you a physician? I had understood that you were in the intelligence service.”

“Your understanding is correct,” Honor replied. “I’d still like to examine him.” A smile twisted his lips. “I promise I won’t hurt him.”

Tollefsen shrugged and looked at Clinton. “If it’s all right with Mr. Clinton,” he said casually.

Honor stepped directly to the still figure in the chair. The others straggled over behind him. He dropped to one knee, took Wenssler’s hands in a steady pressure, and gazed into the blank eyes. He sent a quick probe into the mind, found nothing but chaos and pain, and immediately withdrew. Tollefsen had moved beside the chair and was staring down at Honor.

Honor raised his eyes to the doctor’s and said, “There is severe pain in there.”

Tollefsen smiled. His tone was condescendingly tolerant as he replied, “Believe me, there is no condition to produce pain. And if there were, the professor would not be aware of it. The mind of the psychotic is… curiously impervious… to pain.”

“He’s not a psychotic,” Honor declared flatly.

Tollefsen caught Clinton’s eye and grinned. “Believe me, Mr. Honor, there is no better word to define a mind in such disarray.”

Honor never believed a man who began each statement with “believe me”. He put his hands to Wenssler’s temples and held them there for a moment. “Wenssler,” he said loudly, “listen to me. Freedom is in the Ninth Inverse Parallax.”

“He can’t hear you, Honor,” Tollefsen said irritably.

“He’s gone deaf, too?” Honor asked, in obvious disgust.

“Well, no, of course not, but believe me, he cannot hear you.”

“He hears me all right,” Honor declared. “He’s just trapped, he—”

“The consciousness has disintegrated,” Tollefsen argued. “In catatonia, the personality has gone into retreat. There is no—”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Honor shot back. “He’s trapped.” He sent in another cautious probe and came out wanting to scream. He put a hand to his forehead and rubbed vigorously. “Look for him between the thalamus and the limbic system.” He stared hard at the doctor. “Does that make any sense to you?”

Honor detected a flicker of emotion behind Tollefsen’s eyes. “Not really,” he replied quietly. “What do you mean by ‘look for him’?”

“He’s all scrunched down in the interchange. It’s the only place he can escape the pain. And that pain, doctor, is absolutely unbearable. You should experience it.”

“You sound as though you have.”

Honor evaded the challenge. “Find some way to get rid of that pain. He can’t come out until you do.”

“Perhaps you could tell me what produces the pain.”

“No, I can’t. Not right now. But I intend to find out.”

Tollefsen smiled and flicked a quick glance at Clinton. “How?”

“If I told you ‘how’, doctor, you’d have me in a straitjacket in two seconds flat.”

Tollefsen’s smile broadened. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, at that,” he said musingly.

“Don’t try it,” Honor warned.

The doctor laughed. “No, I didn’t mean the straitjacket. I was thinking of your suggestion. If there is severely localized pain present . . We’ll do an EEG study. I don’t know where you got your idea, Honor, but it just might have some validity. But I don’t see…” He shook his head, frowning. “How could an entire personality withdraw into a few brain cells? I’m afraid I can’t…”

“You can’t buy it?” Honor said. “That’s because you need to revise your thinking regarding human consciousness. You would say that consciousness arises from the chemical interrelationships of living cells which are massed in a complementing unity. That’s true only to a certain extent. Approach the thing from the reverse case, stop at about the midpoint, and pull the two ends toward you. Then think about Wenssler, stuck in there between the thalamus and the limbic system. He has no access to the cortex, you see. But he’s still there, for God’s sake. If he wasn’t there, that body would be dead.”

Tollefsen turned a helpless look to Milt Clinton. In a pained voice, he said, “I’ve tried to be tolerant, Mr. Clinton. But, after all, this is the National Medical Center. I’ll have to ask you to take your friend, and his quacky ideas, to hell out of here.”

Honor sighed with resignation and said, “Well, you think about what I said, quacky or not.” He turned back to Wenssler, again placed his hands on the temples, and repeated, “The Ninth Inverse Parallax, Professor. There’s your route to freedom. Figure it out.”

Tollefsen cried, “Mr. Honor, will you please—”

It was at that instant that Wenssler erupted. He came out of the chair with a gurgling scream, his hands at Honor’s throat, and the two of them crashed to the floor together. “Get the nines!” Wenssler yelled. “Hurry, hurry, the nines, bring them here!”

The male nurse had joined the fray, cursing and grunting and trying to pull Wenssler off of Honor. Honor had the professor’s thumbs, struggling only to lessen the pressure at his throat, and was hoarsely shouting, “The parallax, Curt, dammit, the parallax.”

Then the nurse had the professor in a double-nelson and was shoving him across the room. Tollefsen had the door open, waiting. He tossed an embittered, “I hope to hell you’re satisfied, Honor!” and followed the panting pair through the doorway.

Barbara dropped to both knees at Honor’s side. “Are you all right?” she inquired anxiously.

He assured her that he was and accepted a helping hand from his boss. “How come you suddenly know so damn much?” Clinton asked in an obviously miffed tone. “I’m so disgraced I could cry. Leon Tollefsen is the undisputed authority in this country on—”

“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 listening 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 swivelled 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 hand some 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, crystalized, 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 signalled 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.

Lets see, now, its just about like mine… yeah, there’s the speech center, lets 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? Lets see, now if I can figure out this route. Damn, its so easy when you’re doing it automatically. Now I know what I went through as a baby! There it is! Yeah, thats 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 signalling 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.

Tollefsen 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.

“Thanks, Barb. You were great. I’ll take it now.”

Barbara vacated with a relieved sigh. “Thank God! I was losing it!”

Clinton was glowering at him with unconcealed irritation. The expression changed abruptly and the intelligence chief leaned toward him with sudden concern. “Pat, you’re in pain, aren’t you. I’m going to get you a doctor!”

“No, it’s okay,” Honor replied, working up a faint smile. “You still in my corner, Milt?” He was feeling nauseous. Pain signals were clanging up from the abdomen.

“I guess I’m sort of stuck there,” Clinton replied worriedly. “But look… they’re flat not going to let us in… especially the way you look.”

“Here’s what you have to do…” Honor paused to turn within momentarily for a damage inspection.

Clinton wavered, wondering if he should run out and get a doctor. The boy was obviously not in good shape, regardless of what he had to say about it. Barbara was clinging to him as though she had just stumbled onto a long-lost friend in the darkness.

Honor’s voice was somewhat stronger as he said, “Didn’t you tell me that Bicknell is in charge of the case?”

Clinton nodded. “And he’s worried as all hell. Says the vital signs are bad.”

“Yes. Well, here’s what he must do, Milt. Now don’t let him fandango you around. Use whatever pressures you have to, but get him to move the President into a shielded room. And the sooner the better.”

Clinton’s face was contorted into an agony of indecision. “Shielded? What sort of shielding?”

“The sort they use at nuclear projects. Or… yes, an X-Ray room would do fine, if it’s shielded completely. Know what I mean? Has to be quick!”

“God, Pat, how will I get ‘em to do something like that? They’ll think I’m completely out of my mind. And maybe I am, at that.”

Honor was lighting a cigarette. He tried an inhalation, decided against it, and crushed the cigarette in an ashtray. “Tell Dr. Bicknell what you want. Then have him call Tollefsen, I think he’ll be in our corner.”

“Tollefsen? Why should he—?”

“Trust me, Milt, and hurry. Every minute counts.”

Clinton rose quickly and marched jerkily across the room. Barbara’s composure left with him. She melted against Honor and said, “My gosh, what a terrible twenty minutes. I was about to have a breakdown all over the place. Maybe I still will.”

He patted her hip, winced, and said, “I think I must be one solid bruise, from collarbones to insteps. Some internal hemorrhaging, too, but it’s being taken care of.” He brushed her cheek with his lips. “You did a great job, Barb. But we can’t let down now. Things are still up mighty tight. And they’ll be that way for some time.”

“Have you been… there again?”

“Yeah, and a few other places. I found Wenssler, by the way. He’s going to be all right.’”

Barbara squealed in muffled excitement. “Wonderful! Oh Pat, I—”

He cut her off with: “But there’s plenty of hell coming up. This PPS stuff is child’s play, Barb. This is the most fantastic creation… God, if people only knew what they had going for them. But it’s turning on them, Barb.”

“The President?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh that and a hell of a lot more,” Honor replied. He tried to shift his weight in the chair and gave it up as a bad job. “Wilkins is in great danger, though. There are very dense bodies impacting him. I did what I could with what I had. I think the shielding might work, but… Barb, this world needs Jack Wilkins. And it needed the others who fell. And there’s a lot more coming up. Not just here … all over the world. Hell is breaking loose. I don’t see how we’re going to… unless…”

Barbara waited for him to continue, but he seemed lost in his thoughts. She wondered if she should mingle with his stream of consciousness, and decided that she was just simply too exhausted to even try. They sat in silence for several minutes, then Milton Clinton returned. He stood directly in front of Honor and regarded him with puzzled eyes.

“Mission accomplished?” Honor drawled.

Clinton nodded, and his voice was thoughtfully formal when he spoke. “I jumped your suggestion. I called Tollefsen… first, from Bicknell’s office. I told him what you said. He said to put Bicknell on. I did. I guess they’re old buddies, or something. Tollefsen told Bicknell to follow any suggestion you offered, provided that it didn’t sound too unreasonable. I don’t know what else Tollefsen told him. But…” Clinton sighed. “They’re moving the President down to X-Ray Therapy right now. There’s a lead-lined vault down there.”

“Good,” Honor commented, sighing.

“Pat… what’s the conspiracy?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“But you’re onto something, aren’t you.”

Honor sighed again. “Yes, Milt, I’m onto someTHING.”

“You going to tell me about it?”

“Can’t, Milt, not right now. I’ll have to beg your indulgence.”

Clinton shifted his weight several times from one foot to the other. “Okay,” he said finally. “I guess I have no choice. Who else is in danger, beside the President?”

“We all are, Milt,” Honor intoned softly.

“Huh?”

“The entire beautiful, fantastic, unimaginable production. It’s all in trouble. Bear with me, Milt. I’ll fill you in as soon as I’m able. Right now, the old body has simply got to find a place to stretch out. Run Barb and me over to my place, will you.”

“I have a better idea,” Clinton quickly replied. “I’ll run us all over to my place. Guest rooms are all bare.”

Honor scowled. “Dorothy will skin you alive, dropping uninvited guests on her.”

Clinton chuckled and said, “Shows how little you know Dorothy. I insist, Pat. I want you close by.”

“Okay.” Honor slowly got to his feet, grimacing. He supposed he could shut the pain off, but he considered it better to be aware of the damage areas.

“You don’t look so hot,” Clinton growled.

“Just give me a bit of physical support,” Honor replied. He took each of his companions by the hand. “And walk slow, dammit, slow. This temple is about to topple. Speaking of that…” Honor studied Clinton’s face. “Did you get a look at the guy who ran me down?”

Clinton shook his head. “Just a glimpse, an impression of a dark face, Negro maybe.”

“No, not a Negro,” Honor said. He turned his gaze to Barbara. “A dark, small, young-looking man. That was my impression.”

“Not Singh!” Barbara gasped.

“Not who?” Clinton growled.

“I don’t know,” Honor said thoughtfully. “I believe Singh was a lot closer to things than Wenssler thought. I feel one thing most strongly.”

They were moving slowly along the hall and toward the elevators.

“What’s that?” Clinton asked.

“I think maybe I’ve seen the foundations of our universe.”

Clinton threw a worried glance at Barbara Thompson. She avoided his eyes and carefully guided Honor through the elevator door.

“And those foundations are up-tight… mighty tight. Maybe it’s already too late. I don’t know. I need to lie around and think for awhile, and know more about what I really do know.”

“You’re the one’s up-tight,” Clinton said lightly. “What you need, my buddy, is about three days of uninterrupted sleep.”

“I may never sleep again,” Honor murmured.

Book II

REVELATION

1: Between Sexes

The Clintons’ Georgetown home was spacious, gracious, and alive with the guiding presence of Dorothy Clinton. Intensely feminine and vibrantly lovely, the 38-year-old still possessed a figure which was the envy of many younger women. Her blonde good looks and natural charm had fitted easily into the Washington social swirl and though the Clintons were not noted for lavish entertaining in their own home, their names were on many of Washington’s party lists and they had long been generally regarded as an asset to any social gathering. Dorothy would have traded it all for a modest bungalow with a picket fence and a couple of kids whooping it up in the yard. She was childless, and not from any biological disadvantage, but purely as a result of the unsettled earlier years of her marriage. By the time her husband’s international cloak-and-dagger gallivanting had evolved into a quiet domestic routine, Milt was pushing hard on 40 and Dorothy was facing the stunning realization that youth had slipped her by. She had stopped thinking about “some-day” mother hood and resigned herself to a barren old-age. Her home showed her frustration. Any good psychologist could easily spot the “sibling substitution” orientation of her housekeeping. Dorothy recognized it herself. Her home was her family, and she lavished loving care upon it.

She heard the car in the driveway. Milt had phoned from the hospital to tell her that he was bringing Pat “and friend” home with him. She adored Pat, frankly and unreservedly, but she had seen enough of his “and friends” to be on her guard against the unknown quality. Pat had a habit of attracting the most disconcerting women… disconcerting to Dorothy. Brassy little things, forever hot and urgent, usually always quite frankly amoral… and always intensely beautiful. They made Dorothy feel inferior, and she had enough reasons for feeling something less than a woman without Pat Honor’s little sexpots flaunting themselves around.

Dorothy paused at the hall mirror and checked her appearance. Face it, Dotty, you’re getting hippy, she told her reflection. Well… she guessed she may as well. Milt was getting… She clamped off the thought, denying it, rejecting it. After all, Milt was past 40 now, and it was entirely normal for a man’s energies to lessen somewhat in those advanced years. And he’d been carrying quite a mental strain since he’d taken over the IAIG’s. Still… She pressed her hips tightly and jerked her hands away quickly, watching for a rebound. They were probably getting flabby from inactivity. What she needed was some… She cranked off the lewd idea and swung toward the door as it eased open.

“Pat you look terrible!” she declared.

“Hell, don’t I know it,” Honor mumbled. He pushed on in with a grin, leaned tiredly against the wall, and pulled a divine child into view. Dorothy blinked in the rapid inspection.

A miniskirted angel, was her quick impression. She hurried forward and took the girl’s hand. “I’m Dorothy Clinton,” she announced warmly. “What have you been doing to my boy?”

The girl gave her a shy smile. “I am Barbara Thompson,” she said in a tiny voice. “Pat got hit by a car.”

“I’d say a truck,” Honor interjected, grinning weakly.

“For heaven’s sake!” Dorothy reached out for him to give him a motherly squeeze, but he flinched away.

“My bruises have bruises,” Honor explained.

Milt Clinton came in the doorway at that instant. He flipped a hand in a greeting to his wife, pecked her on the cheek, and said, “We need to get a bed under Pat. I’d say a hospital bed, but he won’t listen to me.”

Dorothy’s eyes clouded with concern. “How about a drink first? Don’t you want to sit down, Pat?” She pushed the door closed. The three arrivals stood awkwardly in the entrance hall. Dorothy looked from one to the other.

“I think I’d better stand until I lay,” Honor announced. “If you’ll just point me toward a bed…”

“Of course. Your same old room, Pat, downstairs here. Come on… “She took him carefully by the arm.

“I’ll need Barb with me.”

Dorothy’s gaze went to her husband, to the girl, and back to Honor. “Well, sure, why not? I can see that you’re in no condition to… I mean…” She blushed and emitted a short, nervous laugh. “I’ll bring in a cot for your nurse.”

“Thank you,” Barbara murmured. “And we could use lots of ice, if you have it.”

“Of course.” Dorothy released Honor’s arm. “Take your patient on to bed, he knows the way.” She was moving toward the kitchen. “I’ll be getting the ice.” She halted and turned back to stare levelly at Barbara. “Do you really know anything about nursing?” she asked.

Barbara colored lightly and replied, “A little.”

“Ummm. You’d better let me help out.” She spun about and continued her progress across the room.

Honor was rocked by a sudden realization. He had always regarded Dorothy Clinton as an attractive and desirable matron… but… he had never suspected the fires burning just beneath that unruffled surface. He looked at his friend, Milt, and suddenly knew another truth. Dorothy had paused at the kitchen door and was gazing back at them, a strange look on her face.

“Do you two need anything else?” she called.

“I think not at the moment,” Barbara replied breathlessly.

“Anything at all, just whistle,” Clinton chimed in.

Follow your own needs! The instruction had flowed out of Honor’s mind spontaneously, before he’d realized it was happening.

Dorothy stiffened noticeably and leaned against the doorjamb. Clinton’s hand jerked to the back of his neck; he squeezed down harshly and glanced toward his wife.

Dorothy turned jerkily, as though suddenly discoordinated. “I’ll get that ice,” she declared in a high pitched voice.

“Barbara can get the ice, Dotty,” Honor said gently. And again he flowed unbidden: Not ice, fire! Follow your fire to bed!

“All right.” Dorothy agreed. “I’d better go upstairs and round up some more bedding.” She strode rapidly in a reverse of the room and snared her husband’s hand on the way. “Come help me, Milt,” she commanded.

“Just whistle if you need anything,” Clinton repeated thickly. They were already on the stairway.

Do you need anything, Barb?

“You know what I need, darling,” Barbara murmured aloud.

Yes, Honor knew what Barbara needed. And he knew that he had an even more urgent requirement for some hasty organic repair. “Come and share some vital energy with me,” he said, pushing her gently through the bedroom doorway. “And then we’ll see what we will see.”

He closed and locked the door and immediately began undressing. Barbara tried to lend a hand. He shooed her away, saying, “Take care of your own, eh?”

“You want me to undress, too?” she asked faintly.

He nodded. “If it wouldn’t work any undue strain on you, I’d like for you to just crawl in and lay with me, flesh to flesh. I need to repair some tissue.”

Barbara smiled and said, “Well, in the interests of therapy, I suppose I could stand the strain. Frankly, Pat, I’m sort of pooped myself.”

She unbuckled her belt and quickly ran her hands along the button line of the dress and shucked it off. Honor watched appreciatively as she released the bra and the bouncy breasts leapt free, then he slid beneath covers and sighed happily. He extended an arm and she rolled into a loose embrace, her flesh immediately tightening under the assault of tingly sensation.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” she declared in a shivery voice. “We may be tired, but we’re a long way from dead.”

Honor quickly probed her, smiled wearily, and said, “You’re okay for now. Let me know if it gets too troubling and I’ll slip in a neural block.”

“Can you do that?” she asked, sober faced.

“You bet. There are a lot of things I can do now, and I haven’t even discovered the limit of it yet. There are things I know… that I don’t even know I know. It’s like a great, shimmering pool, just lying there, waiting for me to dive into it. It’s like… like…”

“Essential knowledge?”

“Yeah, sort of like that. Unformed, unused, but still there… just waiting for my intellect to dive in and stir it up. It happens spontaneously sometimes, before I even realize what’s happening. Then, all of sudden, I’m in there, and I’m knowing.”

“Yes, I… I think I understand.”

“So I need to talk, if only to discover how much I know.”

“Yes, uh-huh. Would you like for me to ask you some questions?”

“Sounds like a good approach. Shoot, inquisitor.”

“Well… let’s begin with something very profound. An arrow right in the heart, so to speak. What is the basic Psychic Power Source?”

“God,” Honor replied immediately.

“Oh dear.”

Honor frowned and continued, “But our classic concept of God is all haywire. The God of the human race is a rogue.”

“A what?” Barbara gasped.

“Yes, that’s the word. Hadrin would call him a Rogue. A misshapen, evil mass of human error. Yes, that’s it. He’s not really a he, he’s an it. A distorted projection of… of…”

“Pat!” Barbara was deeply disturbed. “Don’t misunderstand… I’m no psalm-singer but… Patrick!… a rogue God?”

Honor adamantly nodded his head. “Don’t be disturbed by the concept, Barb. The Rogue is not the true God. He is the human God… a gross error of human consciousness, created by error, fed and made continually more powerful by geometrical progressions of error.”

“I don’t see how that could be… could be possible,” Barbara protested.

Honor rubbed her hip with an unconscious motion. “I realize it’s hard to accept, but this is the understanding I’ve been given. Hadrin touched my head, see, and… Yes. That’s the way it works. Look here, Barb, you’ve been working in human psychology. Give me the difference between deductive and inductive logic.”

“Well… in reasoning deductively… we take a general assumption and work it down to a group of particulars. That’s what a doctor does when he diagnoses… or, no—that’s the opposite case. If I called my doctor and told him I thought you had the measles …”

“Make it the mumps,” Honor interrupted, grinning.

“Okay, I tell him you have the mumps. He begins reasoning deductively, and he says, Do you know that he has been exposed to the mumps? Is his jaw swollen? Is there a temperature?’ In other words, he works my general assumptinon into a group of particulars.”

“Swell. But what gave you the idea, in the first place, that I had this awful affliction?”

Barbara paused reflectively. “Well… little Johnny down the street was over here the day before he came down with them. And you’re obviously not feeling well, your jaw is swollen, and you have a fever.”

“Okay. So you took a group of particulars and worked them up into a general assumption. Right?”

“Right. I was reasoning inductively.”

“That is absolutely correct. All right. Human consciousness evolves through the interplay of these two basic mental activities. The major thrust, though, toward higher knowledge, lies in the inductive function. We take note of particulars, and from these particulars we formulate a higher truth, a unity of understandings which, together, add up to quite a bit more than just the sum of the individual particulars. In other words, there is a sort of geometric progression in the direction of general assumptions. Now. As these higher truths continue to be formulated, they take on an identity of their own, a sort of self-propelled existence, to the effect that many of the particulars which were used in those formulations become lost, without identity. This is the real purpose behind all intelligent life forms, universally. We are building a field of knowingness, a general assumption type of knowingness, in our own particularized sphere of action.”

Barbara looked confused. “Gosh, Pat, there’s nothing particularly original in that idea.”

“I make no claim to originality. I only said that I am knowing. Let’s follow it through. Ask me something about it.”

She wrinkled her forehead, moved carefully against him, and asked, “How does this concept tie in with the idea of a Rogue God?”

“Uh-huh, that was the right question. It ties in because we’re all staggering around in the dark. We think of the universe as being out there. Well, okay, the material universe is out there. But, hell, that’s just a projection. The material world is not real. It’s a three-dimensional projection from the geometers, it’s a—”

“You’re losing me,” Barbara cried.

“My gosh, Barb, it’s all there, in all the written religions of the world, and nobody ever tumbled to it. We stumble around with good and evil, sin and salvation, creeds and dogma, morality and immorality… and all the while it’s lying there, like my untapped pool of knowingness, just waiting to be discovered.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Reality, Barb. We’ve been hiding it from ourselves, down through the entire evolution of man, and building the Rogue in the process. Superstitious fears, irrational religions, then scientific pragmatism and geo-social ideologies… there’s the conspiracy, Barb, and we’ve all been party to it. My God, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful.”

“Slow down,” Barbara pleaded weakly. “I can’t keep up with you.”

“All the religions, sure, they got kicked off by guys who’d found out about the geometers—but nobody understood them, see. I mean, sure, those guys saw truth, but then somehow the human mind got hung up on the idea of the immutability of truth, and hell that’s just all wrong, Barb. Truth for Moses couldn’t have been truth for Jesus, because it’s constantly building, steadily rising to new levels of an evolving reality… hell… hell… that’s the answer, sure, that’s the whole damn thing. The religions aren’t wrong … they’re just not entirely right … hanging on for dear life to a chunk of frozen and no-evolving reality… and hell they won’t let it grow!”

“Oh dear,” Barbara said with a sigh.

“Like a kid, Barb. Is a kid for real? Sure, he’s as real at age 6 as he is at age 60. But suppose we all became fixed at the age of 6! Hell, it’s so simple, it’s so…”

Honor had fallen off into a reverently silent introspection. Barbara shifted about uncomfortably and whispered, “But if you’re going to become a priest, what’s going to become of my sex life?”

Honor laughed loudly. “A priest!” he howled. “Not on your life! That’s like being fixed at the age of 6. That’s part of the subconscious conspiracy, Barb. Hell, sex is the route to reality, I mean pure and loving and guiltless sex, not pornography, not the slimy ooze they’ve tried to foster and fix in our minds… that’s where they got off the track, the purity bit. Asceticism isn’t purity… it’s part of the slimy ooze reality. No wonder asceticism is…” He stopped talking abruptly, his eyes widening in a startled inspection of Barbara’s face.

“What is it?” she asked worriedly.

“I just touched home base, Barb,” he replied, his voice hushed. “Yes, there it is, all laid out, placid and beautiful, the secret of the universes.”

“What is?” Barbara whispered.

“What is the one and only truly creative expression available to humankind?”

“The sex act,” she breathed.

“Exactly! From the geometer of geometers! That’s why it’s the route to freedom, when you leave the slimy ooze behind. That’s why there are male and female, throughout all creation. That’s why love and sex are continually building and reshaping our… yes… dammit, yes, that’s why the Rogue…” Honor’s face clouded and he again fell into dark speculation. “The hell of it is,” he muttered a few seconds later, “most people who think they’ve found the route to God have actually found only the Rogue. That’s why we’re so screwed up, so divided, so forever…”

“Why is our God a rogue?” Barbara inquired meekly. “Is there that much evil in our world? Are you saying that the world is essentially evil?”

“Get away from ideas of good and evil,” Honor murmured. “There is but truth and error. Truth is generalized into reality, through the geometers, back into the true infinity. Error, denied access into the general assumptions of reality, can arise nowhere but into the material universe. It hangs there, an oppressive cloud, ever growing, and ever increasing its corruptive influence in the world of men. It’s a Rogue! A runaway, homeless, and maddened beast!”

“H-how can it wield influence?”

Honor growled something beneath his breath. He fidgeted, sighed, and said, “The Rogue is our collective personality.”

“What does that mean?”

“Go back to psychology, Barb. How do we characterize an individual human being? I mean, in trying to relate him to the world about? What is the term you use in psychology in describing the sum of a person.”

“Personality,” she sighed.

“Exactly. What a person does, thinks and knows determines his personality. Conversely, his personality, or the thing which has arisen from these particulars, then has a great deal to say about how he will further do, think, and know. Isn’t that right?”

Barbara nodded her head in mute agreement.

“So…” Honor shrugged. “Take if from there, Barb. The Rogue is our collective personality.”

Barbara looked frightened. “We, uh, build a God who is in the image of our collective experiences. Then, uh, that image reflects back upon us to further, uh, influence, and uh… what is the word I’m searching for, Pat?”

“Particularize, I guess. Whatever we give rise to, as a result of human activity, comes back to us at an inverse power and as modified by the general assumption already existing… the personality, in other words… and, also, as it has modified the personality. There is a constant interplay, you see, a continual change-off. The net effect, for humanity, is the condition you were stumbling toward, Particularization. The net relationship between God and man is a grand extension of the relationship existing between a man and his own personality.”

Honor sorrowfully shook his head. “I’m afraid not. You’re forgetting reality. We have become immersed in the negative influences of the Rogue. Our geometers are closed by our own actions. Whatever truths we build seep through and adhere to the true God, or whatever’s behind there. Oh, there’s access to that, all right, and that’s what Wenssler stumbled onto, looking for psychic powers, but that isn’t where he wound up.”

“But… where?”

“Hadrin would call it the low band. Error.”

“The Rogue?”

Honor nodded his head. “Isn’t it strange,” he murmured. “Heaven is hell, and hell is heaven.”

“What does that mean?” Barbara asked in a shocked whisper.

“Hell is out there,” Honor replied, sweeping his hand toward the heavens. “The domain of the Rogue.”

“Why is sex the route to heaven?” she whispered.

“Not just sex,” he replied, smiling. “But knowing sex, the pure unity, the divine merging of male and female into a single statement in truth. In such a state, where else could you go? Back to the geometer of geometers, my dear.” He stroked her softly, lovingly. “The Rogue is utterly repelled by such energies.”

“H-how are your tissues coming along?” she asked shakily.

Honor smiled and gently slapped her hip. “I believe there’s been a miracle-healing,” he said.

“Good. Let’s uh… let’s show the Rogue where he stands in our little reality.”

Honor laughed and pushed her onto her back. “Stretch toward heaven, Barb,” he murmured.

“I knew it couldn’t be bad,” she sighed, encircling his neck with her arms. “I just knew it.”

And in the room directly above, Milton and Dorothy Clinton were taking a stretch of their own. Honor suddenly “knew” it. He chuckled and said, “I wonder how it would be to take Dotty and old Milt into our unity?”

“Not this time,” Barbara moaned. “This time I want you all to ourselves.”

Honor filed the idea away for future consideration and gave himself unrestrainedly to Barbara’s heavenly stretch. And, in a flash of understanding, Honor suddenly “knew” who Octavia was.

2: The Image

“This is freaky, Pat. Where are we?”

“Infinity, Barb. Don’t be afraid. We are merely beyond the geometers.”

“You keep using that word. I don’t understand it.”

“Geometer? It’s the… source of things, Barb. The material universe is a geometric progression of energy in motion.”

“But what is a geometer?”

“It is like a general assumption. In the divine mind. Looking at it from the energy universe, if we could, it would appear as a particularized point in nothingness. The heart, in other words, of the tiniest energy field. The geometer emanates from the causal field of creation and begins to assume geometric proportions, expressed as physical energy and as dictated inherently by the original geometer. A geometric progression is established and pretty soon, relatively, a geometric field is established.”

“I guess I understand that.”

“Very simple, really, as are all truths.”

“How many geometers are there?”

“Many. A geometer exists for each field.”

“What is a field’?”

“You are one. I am one. Earth is one. Sun is one. See? There are many.”

“A flea is a geometric field?”

“Oh yes. And each has its geometer.”

“The geometer is the creator, then. How does it work?”

“No, it is the creative medium. And it works like… well, like a lens, through which is projected the divine idea.”

“What is this projection? Is it energy?”

“No. Think of it as a mental umbilical cord. One without substance, physical substance, in other words. Extending from the geometer, or warp of nothingness, into the geometric field-to-be. At a pre-ordained point of evolution, this umbilical is severed. It… I see it as… it isn’t severed at the field, but at the warp, and it… it flashed down like a beam of light and is absorbed at some particularized point within the geometric field. At that point, Barb, creation has manifested.”

“You used the word ‘evolution’. Evolution is still a valid concept?”

“Oh yes. Evolution is the out-picturing of the divine idea. Remember our discussion of deductive and inductive thought? Evolution is the particularization of divine mind, expressed deductively. The plan, in other words, falling into place.”

“That sounds paradoxical. Evolution seems to be a ‘gathering together’, not a fragmentation.”

“Yes, it is paradoxical. Remember, though, that the image was whole and complete, as formed in divine mind. In the out-picturing the image is broken down into particulars. Evolution is merely the struggle, you could call it an inductive struggle, to rebuild the particulars into the original general assumption.”

“Adaptation of the species, survival of the fittest… all this is just a re-formation of something that has already been?”

“A re-formation through energy, Barb. That is creation.”

“Sounds frightening to me.”

“Only until you fully understand. Then it is beautiful.”

“I see a very giddy implication there, Pat. We can’t speak of ‘creation’ as though it were something already accomplished… as an historical event at some point in the past.”

“You’re getting it.”

“Yes. Our classic concept of creation is only a fragment of the truth. There has not been a creation. There is being a creation.”

“You’re pounding down the stretch, gal.”

“I have not yet been created!”

“Welcome home, Barb. You’ve hit it. Your creation is merely ‘in-process’. You are a Godmaker, dear, building yourself.”

“Beautiful… oh, beautiful. The pieces are coming together, Pat.”

“Yes. As I knew they would. We are ready to go on now. Are you prepared to see your goal? Clear your vision now, Barb. What’s the matter?”

“Something… is… I’m frightened, Pat.”

“Don’t be. Look ahead. Up there. See the woman?”

“Ohhh Pat, I… I…”

“Go on, Barb. Go to her. She is the original image in divine mind.”

“Octavia! It is Octavia!”

“Names are only symbols, Barb. Go. Get acquainted with your true self.”

Honor could not cease to marvel at the idea. Fantastic as it was, impossible as it seemed, still it was beautiful in its simplicity and intriguing in its logic. He watched Barbara and Octavia walking together across the lush meadow—a meadow which he realized was merely a fabrication of his own sense perceptions—and he knew that basic truth would forever be this way: beautiful and intriguing. He looked at Hadrin and felt the truth much closer to home, wondering if he could accept it as simply and naturally as he had in the impersonal.

Hadrin laughed and returned the somewhat shy gaze. “You marvel,” he said. “Do you find so much difficulty with the image?”

“I see the beauty of a divine idea,” Honor replied softly, “and yet… perhaps… like Barbara, I find it a bit frightening.”

“You have come a long way in a short time. I am quite proud of you.”

“How many lifetimes have I—have you lived, Hadrin?”

The tall figure took Honor by the arm and walked with him, following the two women. “What is a lifetime?” he asked. “I live but one life, Honorkir, as do you. The individuations are…” He snapped his fingers. “From microbe to mollusk, even, and from mollusk to man… they are but fleeting frames in the divine projection.”

Honor shivered. “We’ve come… that far?” he asked weakly.

Hadrin laughed and squeezed Honor’s arm. “Yes taken together, it has been a long trail. But, in the overall…” He laughed again. “Well, you can see where you are headed now, Honorkir. That is quite an advantage for me. We will progress rapidly, now, if you remain true to the image.”

“You mean, I might not?” Honor inquired.

The beautiful man laughed again; it seemed to come easy for him, easily triggered, spontaneous. “The choice is always yours, Honorkir. Look at these about us.” He pointed out various faceless groups in the nearby shadows.

“What’s the matter with them? Why can’t I see their faces?”

“They have not become consciously individuated. They cannot become delineated in divine mind until that time.”

“Why not? I understand that the image was… was…”

“Fixed and eternal? Of course, but… well, think of a photograph, Honorkir. Is it not fixed? But then, was it not also fixed even as a negative? The non-individuated ones are negatives, Honorkir. We were once a negative.”

“I see.”

“Do you? So why do you pity the unconscious ones? They, too, know their joys.”

“Could we ever become a negative again?”

Hadrin shot Honor a sharp glance. “Oh, we have been negatives many times, my brother.”

“Damn!” Honor exclaimed.

Hadrin’s booming laugh rolled across the meadow and stopped Barbara and Octavia. They looked back, waved, and continued on. “You thought you ‘had it made,’ eh?” Hadrin said, chuckling.

“It looked that way,” Honor replied, grinning selfconsciously. “How can I ever know for sure?”

“You cannot,” Hadrin assured him, “until you have resolved geometrically.”

“That’s reality-talk for transfiguration’, isn’t it,” Honor growled.

“You dislike the sound of that, eh?”

Honor shrugged. “It seems so mystical, so…”

“And what does this seem?” Hadrin asked, smiling.

It was Honor’s turn to laugh. “Okay,” he said. “Can I look into the future, then?”

Hadrin looked surprised. “But you are doing so at this moment.”

“No, I mean…” A baffled frown crossed Honor’s face. “I mean the interim future.”

“How can you see an interim that is not yet formed?”

“You mean… oh, I see. Damn! It’s all up to me, isn’t it.”

“Of course.”

“But if I had some guidelines, some idea of what—”

Hadrin halted and spun Honor around. They stood face to face. “You are confronting the only guideline you shall ever know,” he said soberly. “It is enough. Do not be concerned with the interim. All paths lead inexorably to this image. Do you understand that?”

“I understand,” Honor replied weakly. “But I can’t help wondering… suppose I slip us back into the negative column.”

“You could do so… for a time. There could be pain, suffering, and dense error… but remember this, Honorkir. Be true to your image. It is your only guideline.”

“Hadrin, I sense a… a terrible… overlying… well, danger. There is a possibility, isn’t there, that the entire thing could fall apart.”

Hadrin’s face moved into shadow. “You still seek guidelines,” he whispered. “If you persist, the law will shade your knowledge.”

“What does that mean?”

“Even a geometer of geometers, Honorkir, possesses free will.”

“There is a danger!” Honor cried.

Hadrin was beginning to fade all over. “Take your woman, Honorkir, and return to your parallax.”

“There is a great role in my interim, isn’t there!”

“Too much is already said.” Honor could hardly see him now. “Go, Godmaker, and remember the image.”

Barbara was running toward him, arms outstretched. “Pat!” she cried. “Don’t leave me!”

And then they were joined together and moving swiftly across the infinite sea. Honor felt stunned, frightened, and exalted all at once. “I saw the image beyond the image, Barb!” he shouted. And then there was blackness.

3: An Impress

“This thing is a hell of a lot more complicated than I’d thought!” Honor told Milt Clinton. “Just when I thought I had a good handle on it, it starts crumbling away from me.”

“Well keep it as simple as possible, will you,” Clinton said dismally. His gaze travelled to his wife, only partially visible through the kitchen doorway. The two women were banging around back there, putting a meal together. “God, there’s been a lot of surprising…” He checked his words and swiped at his nose with a half-balled fist. “Just tell me about the conspiracy,” he growled. “Start with Wenssler’s list, the one Barbara brought into my office yesterday.”

“Hell… was that just yesterday?”

Clinton nodded. “It was. Talk to me about those first six events. Tell me how they were engineered and how Wenssler tumbled to them.”

“Oh hell,” Honor said with an impatient jerk of the head. “That wasn’t the beginning. It’s just a part of it, a part that fell out of Wenssler’s mathematics.”

“Then where is the beginning?” Clinton asked sharply.

Honor drummed his fingers on the table, reached for a cigarette, lit it, and blew the smoke over his boss’s head. “Most anything I’m likely to tell you will be just like that smoke,” he mused. “Right over your head.”

“Try me. When did it start?”

“Hell, it started with the microbes.”

“With the what?”

Honor grinned. “I’m not trying to snow you, Milt. Believe me, it’s awfully hard to make this sound believable.”

“I said, try me.”

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was—”

“Aw shit, Pat!”

“You said try you,” Honor said soberly, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m trying you. Anyway… then… the word took form and flat got out of hand. The process of evolution began throwing off all these errors, the random-selection idea, you know, and the Rogue got his start, long before civilized man came on the scene.”

“You’re trying too damn hard, Pat.”

“Get the straitjacket ready. You haven’t heard anything yet.”

“Who the hell is the Rogue?”

“You just said it, buddy, exactly. Two Gods, not one, starting out on equal terms, except that one began in heaven and the other began in hell. The one in heaven started it all, because he was nothing but an image. He gave birth to himself, through a geometric projection, the idea being that free will and random selection would take him where he needed to go—Omega, see, creation fulfilled. Except that he’s not being fulfilled. His cast-off errors began building a mirror-image on the other side of things, see, only that mirror-image is distorted and misshapen like these trick mirrors in the arcades. It’s built of runaway projections, rejected errors, and all the lousy misfits of a random-selection evolution. Then the frigged-up mind of man entered the equation and—”

“Tell me about the conspiracy, Pat,” Clinton said heavily.

“I’m getting there. So, see, man reared up with his precious consciousness of self and saw how things were going. Only, he saw only the one half of the equation, the Rogue half, see, and he fell on his knees and said, yeah, that’s God all right and he’s been worshipping the Rogue ever since. That’s the conspiracy, old buddy.”

“You’re outta your God damned mind,” Clinton muttered.

“You said try. I’m trying. Look, dammit, the Rogue, the world, the whole damned material universe together is no more than a wart and it’s getting more troublesome all the time and pretty soon it’s going to eat itself, and then where will we be, huh, the victims of the conspiracy, where the hell will we be?”

Honor had run out of breath. He sucked in another supply and plunged on before Clinton could protest. “The hell of it is, Milt, we could fix things if we only would. And we have to, can’t you understand? Hadrin and Octavia and all the others, especially those in the shadows, are depending on us. They’re stuck with us, see, we’re all stuck. After five billion years in this field, we’re stuck with it. Oh sure, hell, he can go on and start again, just scrub it all out, see, and start another one, another field, but when he scrubs the field, he scrubs us. And that means Hadrin and Octavia and everybody who’s been projected into this field. That’s why I saw, see, behind the image. It’s the image of doom, buddy, and don’t think Hadrin doesn’t know it’s there. That’s what he meant by free will in the geometer of geometers. That image of doom was co-created, Milt, right along with the image of fulfillment. It’s an automatic destruct button—a doom machine, old buddy, wired up to the whole cracklin’ universe, the final word in insurance. He can’t let the Rogue take over, see, cause then maybe all the geometers everywhere

would split and then God, that would even be the end of God himself.”

Clinton was staring at his young cohort with a sick look. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s some conspiracy, all right.” He flicked an almost panicky glance toward the kitchen, mumbling, “I wish the girls would hurry it up. I’m hungry as hell.”

Honor, fully wound up, was showing no signs of tiring. “Wenssler’s list, now, that’s just an extension of the basic problem. This crap has been going on for centuries, and getting worse all the time. Didn’t you ever think it funny the way the ‘good guys’ never really win, Milt? It’s true, you know. Every guy who ever really stepped out front and tried to grab the bull by the horns ended up getting gored. Didn’t he? Scan down through history and look at ‘em. Every damn time. That’s the damned Rogue’s work, see. The son of a bitch has become so powerful that guys like Hadrin have to sit there at the geometer night and day, trying their best to stir up even a flicker of understanding. Well, he flicked my flicker all right. But now I don’t know what the hell to do about it. I don’t know which way to go. And, hell, he won’t give me a hint, hell no. I wonder if he wants me to transfigure! That would be his out, wouldn’t it. Sure, hell, transfigure, bail out, get the hell out of the field and let the Rogue take the hindermost. And then we’ll start all over again in some other field. Oh no, hell no! Another five billion years?? Back to the microbes and the slimy damn mollusks? For God’s sake, Milt, I couldn’t take that again!”

“We’re having beef tips,” Clinton murmured. “And hot biscuits with honey. If they ever get it fixed.” He crossed his legs, carefully avoiding Honor’s eyes, and reached for a cigarette.

“You think Jack Wilkins is a good guy? Okay, sure, and so how about the two Kennedys, and Martin King? How about, hell, Abraham Lincoln? What did they ever get but gored, eh? It happens to all of ‘em. It couldn’t matter less whether you get nailed to a cross, or hung from a banyan tree, or shot between the eyes, or symbolically slain through public disgrace. That isn’t the point. The point is that nobody has been strong enough yet to really take on the Rogue.”

“Look, Pat, uh…”

“I know, you’re worried about Wenssler’s list. I’m getting to that. The guy who looks out for number one, and plays it cool, and makes no waves, that guy usually makes out okay. Right? The wave makers, good or bad, they’re the ones who get gored. Right? Sure, happens every time. The Kennedys, King, Wilkins. Wave-makers, right? High Nines, Milt. Sure. Surprises you, eh? There are other nines, too, plenty of them. Gored, too, every damn one. Even the low ones. The Low Nines, Milt. Think of Hitler, eh? Mussolini. Wave-makers. Gored by their own damn God! Right? He plays no favorites. Make waves, get gored.”

“I’ll bet supper is ready.”

“Waves resolve things, Milt. They stir the pot, separate the truth from the error, get people moving. That always hurts the Rogue. Anything hurts the Rogue gets gored damn quick. You’re worried about Wenssler’s list. Hell, it’s simple, simple as pie. Those guys were wave-makers, Milt. Psychic wave-makers. Yeah. Surprises you, eh? Wilkins is psychic. You know who else is on that list, too, don’t you. Hell yes. Yours truly, that’s who. Eighth man out. They screwed up, Milt. They should have made me the fifth man out, and maybe old Hadrin would have even slipped into a negative. Okay. So I’m going to get gored. I accept that. But I’m going to make some waves in the meantime, old buddy.”

“Shut up, Pat.”

“Huh?”

“You think I’m insane, don’t you.”

“I said, shut the hell up.”

“I admit I was wondering about it… at first. But then I tumbled to what you’re doing. Why’re you double-talking me, Pat?”

“I’m not double-talking, Milt. I’m serious as hell. What this world needs for survival is a resurgence of the Don Quixote idea. Yeah. We need a world full of guys like that. Fight the impossible fight, see. Stand up for what’s right, and fight like hell for it. We’ve all got to make waves, Milt.”

Clinton sighed. “You’ve got to start making sense, Pat. We’re friends, yeah, and so you can waltz me around this way… for awhile. But…” Clinton scratched the side of his nose. “Well, I got a call just before I dragged you out of bed.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The President has had a, uh, miraculous recovery.”

Honor nodded his head. “It worked, then. Great.”

“I want to know how it worked. So do some other people. It’s way over my head now, Pat, and you’re going to have to start talking sense. What was that machine you mentioned?”

Honor chuckled. “That was just a figure of speech. There has to be a machine, eh? If I could produce some sort of diabolical machine, they’d believe me. Is that it?”

“You telling me there isn’t one?”

“Yes, I’m telling you that. I’ll tell you something else, though. Everything happens through a process of natural law, and can be explained quite precisely in terms of scientific certainty. The problem is, no one has come up with a scientific understanding of some of our so-called phenomena. That is what Wenssler was working on.”

“Just tell me how that shielding saved the President, Pat. You have to tell me, you know. What was he being shielded from? Who is behind the conspiracy? How are they doing it?”

Honor released a loud sigh. “I gave you the whole damn story, Milt, just as simply as I know how.”

Clinton was glaring silently at his young associate when Dorothy appeared in the doorway and announced dinner. Clinton waved his acknowledgement, cleared his throat noisily, and told Honor: “Well you’d better start thinking of something simpler. We have a command performance coming up in just…” He glanced at his watch,”… two hours and ten minutes.”

“Whose command?” Honor asked quietly.

“The President. It seems that you’ve made quite an impression on him. Wants to talk to you. I suggest that you talk straighter than you did to me.”

“I made no impress on you, Milt?”

“Yeah, you impressed me all right,” Clinton answered glumly. “You impressed me clear outta my skull.”

“I believe I’ll try to look up your image next time I go over,” Honor said musingly.

Clinton rose hastily to his feet and moved toward the dining room. “You disgrace us in front of the President,” he growled, “and there won’t be any image to look for. Rogue God, for Christ’s sake. That’s nutty, Pat.” He drew up short at the dining room door and gawked at his wife. He’d never seen her looking so radiantly animated, so lovely. He inspected her critically as he moved on to the table. “What’ve you done to yourself?” he asked her, still gawking.

“Nothing,” she bubbled happily. Her eyes flashed to Barbara as she added, “We’ve just been having some fascinating girl-talk.” She giggled. “Sit down, Barbara-Three, and pass the biscuits.”

Barbara giggled back. “I still want that recipe, Dorothy-Three.”

“Three? Three what?” Clinton turned to Honor with a sigh of resignation. He did not bat an eye when the platter of biscuits floated unsupported along the length of the table. “Three what?” he asked Honor calmly.

“It’s one of the nicer laws,” Honor replied matter-of-factly. “Woman is the root center of truth. Conscious man is two. Conscious woman is three.”

A biscuit floated onto Clinton’s plate. It opened itself to receive the honey already moving toward it. Dorothy was giggling. “Sex is the first octave to either side of freedom,” she told her husband.

“Okay,” Clinton said. “So I’m impressed.”

4: Executive Touch

The radiation vault had been turned into a very appealing Executive Suite. Jack Wilkins sat upright on the hospital bed. Papers were scattered about, evidence that the President was back to work already. He nodded gravely at Patrick Honor and said, “I wanted to personally thank you, Pat, for your remarkable if, uh, unorthodox suggestion. They tell me that I was down for the final count. How much longer must I remain sealed up in here?”

Honor had expected the direct approach; Jack Wilkins operated in that fashion. “I believe Wenssler gave us the clue to that answer, Mr. President.”

Wilkins’ eyebrows formed sharp vees. “June 15th?”

Honor nodded. “Yes sir, that would be my recommendation.”

“What’s going on, Pat? What does the shielding have to do with my recovery?”

Honor looked uncomfortably at Milt Clinton. His gaze roamed to the nurse and to the several members of the White House staff who were present. “It has been suggested, sir,” he replied, “that I not attempt to answer such questions.”

“Suggested by whom?” Wilkins snapped.

Honor rocked gently on the balls of his feet. “It’s pretty far-out stuff, Mr. President.”

The Presidential gaze went immediately to an aide who stood alongside the bed. “Mr. Honor and I will speak privately,” he commanded.

“I’d like for Mr. Clinton to stay,” Honor requested.

The aide received an acquiescing nod from the President. The room was already beginning to clear. The aide was the last man out, insistently escorting the nurse to the corridor outside.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” Wilkins said.

Honor took a chair directly opposite the President. Clinton dropped onto a lounge along the wall. Wilkins was closely scrutinizing Honor. He smiled suddenly and said, “I understand you’re to be my son-in-law.”

Honor’s jaw dropped and he said, “Sir?”

The President chuckled. “Angie has eyes for you, Pat.”

“She’s a sweet kid,” Honor murmured.

“That ‘sweet kid,’ Pat, has very carefully checked you out… marital status, the whole bit. She’s decided that you are waiting for her. I’d say you’d better be on your guard. Angle can be a very determined young lady.”

Honor realized that the President was trying to get things on a personal, informal footing. He grinned and replied, “Angie’s a ray of sun around the executive offices, Mr. President. We’re always glad to see her come in.”

“She’s been the light of my life, since her mother died,” Wilkins mused. “Well… let’s get down to cases. Tell me about this ‘far out’ theory of yours.”

Honor said, “It’s not a theory, sir. Maybe it would be better if you were to ask direct questions. I’ll answer them the best I can.”

Wilkins stared at him for a moment, then flicked a glance to Clinton. “I understand that Curt Wenssler is recovering,” he observed quietly. “Did you know Wenssler before his, uh, breakdown?”

Honor shook his head. “No sir.”

“I knew him,” Wilkins confided. “Since long before we began funding the PPS program.” He sighed. “Let’s drop the pussy-footing yik-yak, Pat. I have been in close contact with Wenssler from the very beginning of the program. He has had my unqualified support. Now… as I understand it… you were assigned to the program only yesterday. According to my information, you have never shown any interest nor predispostion toward the psychic sciences. Suddenly you come on like Blackstone the Magician. I want to know what you’ve stumbled onto. I want to know what you know, Honor.”

Honor stole a quick look at his chief. “I, uh, made contact with Professor Wenssler’s protege,” he replied slowly. “A Miss Barbara Thompson. You know her?”

Wilkins nodded. “I know of her. Wenssler has been her guardian since the death of her father.”

“Yes sir. Well… I was on the scene when Wenssler transfigured low. Barbara was very—”

Honor doggedly held his ground, though feeling very strong disapproval from the couch behind him. “Professor Wenssler did not have a breakdown, sir. He experienced a transfiguration. But to the low side. Does that make sense to you?”

The President stared silently at Honor through a long moment of thoughfulness. Then he sighed and said, “Maybe it does, Pat. Go ahead with the story.”

Honor continued, “Well, Barbara had been going over some of Wenssler’s notes. She thought she had a clue as to what had gone wrong for the Professor. She suggested an experiment, involving the two of us. A psychic experiment. As a result of that experiment, I experienced a sort of breakthrough into the object of Wenssler’s research. I, uh, learned many things, Mr. President.”

“Such as?”

“Well…” Honor glanced at Clinton. “I learned that there are some highly destructive forces loose in this world, Mr. President.”

“You’re speaking of the collective-unconscious.”

“Sir?”

“Wenssler was aware of these forces. He equated them with Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious. Are you familiar with Jung’s work?”

“No sir, not intimately.”

“Swiss psychologist, died in 1961. Jung theorized that the subconscious minds of all men everywhere are linked, that this constitutes a collective-unconscious from which spring all of man’s creative expressions. Wenssler hypothesized this Collective Unconscious as the source of psychic power.”

Honor looked at Clinton and said, “The Rogue.”

“What’s that?” Wilkins asked quickly.

“We call this mental field ‘The Rogue,’ sir,” Honor replied quietly.

“Why do you call it that?”

“Because it is malevolent in its effect on our world. It is, so to speak, in competition with God.”

“Then why don’t you call it Satan?” Wilkins snapped.

“Others have called it that, also,” Honor sighed. “But it… is not… wilfully evil. Actually, sir, this force is built and sustained by the minds of men.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t wilfully evil?”

“I mean that…” Honor groped for delicate shadings of words. “… that it operates through natural law… of the ‘cause and effect’ variety. Or, ‘action and reaction.’ Also, it is anti-evolutionary. Especially since man’s higher intellect has begun to evolve. You might say that the Rogue is a devolutionist.”

“You’ll have to explain that one, Honor,” the President said, staring at him intently.

Honor sent a despairing look toward Clinton. “The Rogue pre-dates modern man. By billions of years. He was, uh, an off-shoot of, uh, non-life evolution. His roots are very strongly in the geometric fields of, uh, I mean, uh, he is rooted in the material universe.” Honor cleared his throat and explained, “Stars and planets, you know, and—”

“You’re saying that the stars are conscious, you know,” the President observed, his interest quickening. “That’s really what you’re saving.”

“Well… yes sir… of an elemental sort. The earth itself is conscious. The earth is evolving, sir. As is the entire material universe.”

The President coughed, looked at the clock, and said, “I believe I can have a smoke now. Will you gentlemen join me in a cigar?”

Both men declined. Honor lit a cigarette. Clinton merely glowered. Honor lit the President’s cigar. Wilkins coughed, glared at the cigar, and said, “Tried to cut me off completely. Say there’s still some congestion.” He patted his chest. “Smoke’s good for my congestion… tried to tell ‘em that.” He chewed the end of the cigar for a moment. “How is the earth conscious?” he asked suddenly.

“It’s energy conscious,” Honor replied, surprising himself with the answer. “Energy is a consciousness unto itself. A form of consciousness, I mean. Those who say that consciousness is the only reality are deluded by this universal form, this energy consciousness. It’s true that energy is the consciousness of inanimate matter, but it is a very elemental and unevolved consciousness. This is the root of the Rogue. This is his field, his natural one. But there was a mutation.”

“What sort of mutation?” The President’s cigar had gone out.

“God goofed,” Honor replied immediately. A peculiar expression was forming on his face. “Even the geometer of geometers has free will, and therefore im parts free will to all the geometers. A rock has free will.” Honor paused and ran a hand through his hair. Clinton’s feet scraped the floor in a restless movement. Honor only vaguely heard it. He was sitting stiffly in the chair, as though at attention.

“What sort of mutation?” Wilkins asked again.

“The mind of man arose and began to dominate his environment. This was the plan, unfolding. This also caused the mutation, caused by the impact of free-will against free-will.” Honor took a deep breath and said, “Gods in collision!” He stood, his face in awe and wonderment, and turned to Clinton. “It must be the shielding,” he said in shocked tones. “Things are clearer now. The Rogue has been impacting me. Of course! Of course!”

Clinton had surged to his feet and taken a step toward Honor. The President caught his eye and sent a silent reprimand. Clinton hesitated, then sat back down.

“It’s true that truth returns through the geometers,” Honor breathed. “But not spontaneously. It builds the personality … and… returns through death. Error rises spontaneously, though, and builds the personality of the Rogue. That’s why… yes… that’s why.”

“Go on, Honor,” Wilkins prompted quietly. “That’s why what?”

“It’s why—or how—the Rogue is taking over. Why he’s so strong. That’s it. Jung was right, Wenssler too. It is the collection of selfconscious error, forever being harvested by the Rogue … for God’s sake… he’s not unconscious any longer.”

“What do you mean by that?” the President asked.

“He works through the law, sure, inexorable in the action-reaction sense, but he’s also a selfconscious entity now. For God’s sake, he knows what he’s doing!” Honor took a furious drag on his cigarette, spilling a long ash on the President’s bed, and urgently said, “Mr. President, you have to stay in this vault until your numbers run out!”

The President was visibly shaken. “Wenssler’s nines,” he murmured.

“Yes sir, and—”

Clinton had come alive once again. He was at Honor’s side and gently tugging him away from the bed. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said tensely. “Pat is still shaken up from that accident this afternoon. He—”

“No no, Milt,” Wilkins broke in. “I understand everything he’s been saying. Sit down. Let’s kick this thing around some. Now, Pat. You said awhile ago that this, uh, Rogue is not willfully evil. Now you’re saying that it is selfconscious, and knows what it’s doing. That needs some clarification.”

“It came to me,” Honor said weakly. He glanced about the room. “The shielding… Truth comes from within, error from without The Rogue’s error-influence was interfering with my… until… well, when I started thinking… in here, behind the shielding, things became clearer. Even here I can sense a… rather… fine influence. I suppose it isn’t possible to shut him out completely, this side of the geometers. He’s sort of omnipresent in his finest form. Yes sir, he is selfconscious and therefore willful… but his denser influences have to follow the law. The law of his root being, and this is an energy base. The shielding will protect you during your numbers. After that, the law itself will protect you.”

“What numbers?” Clinton asked irritably.

“Wenssler’s nines,” Wilkins said, his brow furrowed in thought. “He stumbled onto this ancient mathematical symbology in the Far East… seems to think it was the basis for the Cabalistic mysteries. You understand the intriguing aspects of the number nine, don’t you?”

Clinton shook his head, obviously surprised at the President’s reaction to Honor’s “babbling.”

“Arabic numerals,” the President explained, “were not generally adopted by the Western world until somewhere around the 10th Centruy, or so Wenssler tells me. He found evidence that they are incredibly ancient, however, and… well, look here, Milt. There are ten basic digits to the Arabic system, the one we’ve been using for a thousand years or so. These are the numerals 1 through 9, and the zero. The zero is not actually a value, however, standing alone, so it is said that the basic Arabic numerals are the digits 1 through 9. Nine numbers, you see. Now. If you add those nine numbers together, you get a sum of 45. Now. Add the two digits of that sum, the four and the five, and you get a sum of nine. Thus it is said that the reduced sum of all digits is nine. Many of the ancient religious mysteries are resolved around that number. In all the mysteries, this curious property of numbers is regarded as being fraught with symbolism.”

“Now Wenssler was never much of a mathematician, but he stumbled onto something over in the East that shook him right down to his core. He worked on the thing and came up with the idea that this value of nine symbolizes the very basis of creation itself. And he has done some amazing things with it.”

“The blue car,” Honor muttered.

Wilkins shot him a sharp glance. “You know about that, eh?”

“I tangled with it,” Honor said, smiling glumly.

“Wenssler calls it a ‘warp nine projection,’ though I haven’t the foggiest notion of how it actually works,” Wilkins said.

“Geometric displacement,” Honor murmured.

“How’s that?”

“Man manipulates his environment,” Honor replied casually. “You have any idea how many geometers are disturbed by our technologies? Wenssler’s mathematics rounds up the displaced geometers and gives them the new field. It’s a sort of a matching process. You know the old science-fiction idea of teleportation? Well, Wenssler discovered the principle and learned how to use it, though in a limited sense. It’s a matter of geometer alignment into the displaced fields. Pretty simple, really, once you see the principle.”

“It’s too much for me,” Wilkins said, frowning thoughtfully.

“It was too much for the Rogue, too,” Honor replied. “This is what got him all stirred up, I’d guess. It seems likely that Wenssler was mating the Rogue’s field to the causal field. I can’t think of any other way to get a projection warp. It’s okay to use the Rogue for simple psychic games, but this was too much.”

“Are you saying that Wenssler awakened this, uh, whatever it is?”

Honor shook his head and said, “No, I’d say that the Rogue ‘awakened’ a very long time ago. But Wenssler very likely focussed his attention. We’re in for a lot of hell, make no mistake. All over the world.” Honor raised his eyes suddenly, a nerve jumped in his cheek, and he exclaimed, “Oh, hell!”

“What is it?” Wilkins asked. “Another ‘revelation’?”

“You could call it that,” Honor replied shakily. “There is but one selfconscious God in this geometric field we call the universe.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the true God does not realize himself until the job of human evolution is completed.” The blood drained from Honor’s face. He leaned against the bed, hands to his cheeks. “Oh God, Hadrin?” he cried. “It can’t be!”

Wilkins and Clinton exchanged uncomfortable glances. Honor was not even aware of their presence. He was remembering Hadrin’s instruction: “Go, Godmaker, and be true to the image.” That’s the entire story, isn’t it, Honor was thinking. Go, Godmaker, and make the true God. The whole thing was in the hands of mankind. Continue evolving into the perfect image of the creator, or else be content with what you’ve got … live in the bosom of the Rogue forever… or until the geometers split. But how did one go about making the true God? What could Honor do? Why had he been given this knowledge? What could he do with it?

“Mr. President,” he mumbled, “I’ve got to have some help.”

Wilkins placed a hand on Honor’s shoulder. “What can I do, Honor?” he asked solemnly.

“Evolve,” Honor replied.

5: Inverse Order

Clinton eased the steamer out of the parking lot. “It’s funny,” he mused, “I came here thinking that maybe you’d get us both fired. I leave here with you as my boss.”

“I’m not your boss,” Honor protested. “It’s just a temporary assignment to the staff.”

“Have you ever seen me talk back to any of the White House Staff?” Clinton said.

Honor chuckled. “Well, we’re all in the same boat, anyway,” he observed. “I guess it couldn’t matter less who’s at the tiller and who’s at the throttle. The important thing is that we have the government behind us. Now if Wilkins can just line up the other world governments…”

“History reveals the immensity of that task,” Clinton growled.

“Watch it!” Honor exclaimed, placing a hand on Clinton’s arm. “An accident is waiting for us at the intersection.”

Befuddled, Clinton slammed on the brakes. The steamer stood on its nose and rocked back and forth. A truck thundered through the intersection, violating Clinton’s right of way, the driver’s face reflecting anxiety and consternation.

“Lost his brakes,” Honor muttered.

“How the hell did you know?” Clinton asked in a quivery voice. “I didn’t even see that guy until the last second.”

“I just knew,” Honor replied. “Take it slow and easy. The Rogue’s after us.”

“I’m afraid to believe you and afraid not to,” Clinton sighed. He moved the car cautiously through the intersection and slowly picked up speed.

“I’ll radar for us,” Honor said.

“This thing can really attack us?”

“Indirectly, sure. He’s running things, you know.”

Clinton cast his companion a dark sideways glance. What he saw was not at all reassuring. Honor was sitting stiffly in the corner by the door, eyes closed, face angled upwards. “Christ’s sake, Pat,” he said gruffly, “this is the age of science. We left witchcraft and black magic in the dark ages.”

“Maybe we did, but he didn’t,” Honor retorted. “Science evolves, too, you know. Wenssler is a scientist of the first order. And let me assure you, he figured out how to move a ton and a half of automobile faster than the speed of light. Just zip zap, like that.”

“Nothing moves faster than the speed of light,” Clinton argued. “That much I do know. It’s the universal speed limit.”

“Yeah, but which universe?” Honor responded, chuckling.

“Shit,” Clinton said.

“Floorboard it!” Honor cried.

Clinton’s reflexes moved ahead of his thinking mind. He’d clicked the steamer into high range and was pushing with all his weight on the accelerator before he even noticed the gasoline truck. It was pulled over to the side of the road, an orange flame licking up from one of the rear wheels. Clinton’s headlamps picked up the driver, sprinting up the road ahead of the truck. Then they had flashed past in a continually building acceleration. Seconds later he saw the flash in his rearview mirror, and then the sound waves reached their ears in a thunderously rolling explosion.

“What… the… hell,” Clinton said in an awed voice.

“We were supposed to have been right alongside when she blew,” Honor explained tightly.

“Twice in two minutes is too much,” Clinton observed shakily. “No more conversation, buddy. This thing is really after our ass, isn’t it. You radar, I’ll drive.”

Honor smiled. “He may be selfconscious, but I’m quicker,” he announced. “And he doesn’t have my number, yet, for the dense forces.”

“What’s all this crap about a number?” Clinton asked. “That the formula stuff Barbara brought to the office?”

“Yeah, it’s a cyclic vibrational characteristic… energy patterns. We all have one, every material object. It runs on a sine wave. Wenssler obviously worked up calculations… or else he drew them out of the Rogue.”

“What sort of calculations?”

“I thought you said no more conversation.”

“Yeah, but what sort of calculations?”

“The Rogue’s dense forces can pick us up during a descending characteristic. I doubt that medical science has anything to combat them. He can kill with those dense bodies, just simply snuff us out.”

“Dense bodies, dense forces, bullshit, what are you talking about?”

“There are various types. You know what a virus is.”

“Oh, viruses, sure, if that’s all you’re talking—”

“No, that is not all. I just gave that as a point of reference. He does use viruses, but they are the very densest of his weapons. The virus is the bridge between life and non-life, chemically speaking, and is a microminiature body. There are various other bodies, vastly smaller, and forces which can scramble the brains, disrupt organs, and jam the nervous system. These are the dense forces. The fine forces operate on the mind, influence thought, and contribute to all manner of human problems.”

“Sounds like a cop-out,” Clinton said nervously. “A nice easy way to shrug off personal responsibility. Hell, it’s not my fault that I’m a rat, it’s the damn Rogue influencing me. I can’t buy that, Pat.”

“Buy it or not, it works that way. It’s the errors of the world pulling against you, old buddy. At your core, you are a divine being. Slow down a bit, a guy is going to run a red light two blocks up.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Clinton asked irritably.

“Because I just caught the program. It’s a matter of timing.”

“No, I mean how do you know that I’m a divine being?”

Honor grinned. “You’re going to have wings if you don’t follow my instruction and slow down. We’re on a collision course.”

Clinton abruptly removed his foot from the accelerator, glowered at Honor, then reapplied a gentle pressure. They drove along in silence for a block and a half. A car shot across just ahead of their position, travelling fast and against the light. Clinton whistled and said, “Well, you called it again. You want to drive the rest of the way?”

“It’s better this way,” Honor replied, smiling. “I don’t have to get involved in automatic reflexes.”

“This thing—this Rogue—does it control those, too?”

Honor nodded. “He can influence them.”

“Why’s he got a hard on for the whole human race?” Clinton cried, in sudden anger.

“It isn’t like that,” Honor said with a chuckle. “If you don’t want the Rogue to bother you, you can co-exist with him. Just take the easy way in all things. Don’t let yourself get stirred up over human problems. Don’t try to improve yourself or your world. He won’t bother you, then. Course… you’ll never find your image, God may never get built, and we might all just drift and rot in hell forever… or until the thing destructs.”

“What the hell’s the sense, then?” Clinton growled. “If you’re saying this thing has the power of a god…”

“I’m saying he’s the only god we’ve got,” Honor said. “And, contrary to later-day pronouncements, he’s a long way from dead.”

“So how the hell do you fight a rampaging God?”

Honor was smiling with a sudden idea. “There is one weapon that can be effective against the Rogue,” he said.

Clinton was hunched over the wheel, staring alertly ahead. “And what is that?”

“Sex.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What do we do… screw ‘im to death?”

Honor laughed. “That’s about it,” he said.

Clinton began chuckling also. “It’d be a hell of a war, wouldn’t it?” he guffawed. He sobered quickly and added, “But who’s going to sell the idea to my wife?”

“I’d say that she’s already sold,” Honor replied.

“Dorothy? Naw. She was just kidding along with Barbara.” He frowned, remembering the events of the afternoon. “Dorothy’s a fine woman, but she’s got a pretty narrow outlook on sex. No. No. Not Dorothy. You’ll have to count us out of your sex war, Pat.” He glanced at his passenger. “You’re just kidding anyway, eh?”

“No, I’m entirely serious,” Honor assured him. “Sex might very well be our only way out.”

Clinton sighed heavily. “Dorothy and I will rot in hell, then.”

Honor smiled and they drove on in silence. Ten minutes later, with no further incidents, they pulled into Clinton’s driveway. “Well,” Clinton said, with another heavy sigh, “this day has been quite a revelation. What else could happen that hasn’t already?”

Honor climbed out of the car, grinning. He already “knew” the revelation still awaiting Milt Clinton. He waited while the older man walked around the car, then they crossed the lawn together. Honor hesitated at the door, insisting that Clinton go in first. They went through the entry hall with Clinton leading the way, and stepped into the living room.

Clinton’s breath left him in a strong “whoosh.”

“Hi!” Dorothy called out gaily. She ran into her husband’s arms and clung to him, her eyes glancing off Honor in a shy smile.

Barbara insinuated herself into Honor’s embrace and melted against him in a fiery kiss.

“What the hell is this?” Clinton asked weakly.

Both women were completely unclothed. Clinton’s eyes wandered to Barbara’s unsettlingly undraped curves and bounced quickly back to his wife. “Whats going on?” he asked again.

His wife wriggled hotly, pressing with her hips and receiving an immediate reaction from the electrified Clinton. “Barbara and I decided,” she reported breathlessly.

“Decided what?”

Her arms snaked up about his neck. Lush breasts spread across his chest. “That you and I should take that route to freedom,” she said.

“What?”

Honor chuckled and leaned against Clinton at the shoulder. “Welcome to the hot war, old buddy.”

“Barbara’s been teaching me mental disciplines,” Dorothy warbled. “I can hardly wait to try them out.”

“What do I have to do?” Clinton muttered thickly.

Honor howled and traced the outline of Barbara’s spine with a thumb. She giggled and said, “Just do what comes naturally, Milt. Dorothy will guide you.”

“It may take a couple of tries,” Dorothy opined, still pressed warmly in her husband’s arms. “But I’m game to try all night… if you are.”

Clinton’s eyes were slightly glassy. He turned a wan smile to Honor. “Hell, I’ve been game for 15 years,” he declared.

“I’m going to be the root center of your being, did you know that?” Dorothy asked happily.

Clinton slapped her lightly on the bottom. “You bet you are.” He began nudging her toward the stairway.

“Not up there,” she said, pushing him toward the living room. Her eyes found Honor and warmed on him. “Come on, you two,” she gasped, then turned back to her husband with, “Barb and I fixed a sort of harem room down here. You don’t mind, do you? It’s very comfortable, all silky and soft.”

Clinton did not mind. Honor “knew.” Clinton did not mind at all.

Book III

RESOLUTION

1: An Appearance of Evil

Barbara removed Honor’s shirt, massaged his chest lightly with her hands, and whispered, “I figured it would be best if we stuck pretty close to them. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

Honor nodded and kicked off his trousers. Dorothy Clinton was a surprisingly well-formed woman, nicer out of clothes than in, and Honor was enjoying the sight of her. She was staring shyly into her husband’s eyes and helping him out of his clothing. Honor was not at all surprised at the good form of his longtime friend and associate, Milt Clinton. The veteran intelligence operative was hard and tight all over with no signs, thanks to regular workouts in the Executive Gym, of the two years of enforced captivity behind a Washington desk.

Barbara sagged back with her head resting on a large taffeta-covered pillow, drawing Honor down with her. Dorothy, wriggling about on the satin sheet for position, giggled as she tugged her husband down beside her and turned her head to nuzzle Honor’s ear. “Four little bugs in a snug rug,” she cooed happily.

Honor grinned and patted the hip nearest him, then he raised to an elbow and peered across Dorothy into the eyes of his friend. “You know what this is all about?” he asked soberly.

Clinton laughed nervously and replied, “Well, it’s my first orgy but I guess I can play it by ear.”

“I’m speaking of the hot war,” Honor persisted. He looked down at Dorothy, smiled, and said, “It’s obvious that Dotty has been pretty well briefed. I see the truth in her eyes. Just follow her lead.”

Barbara scooted about suddenly, turning on her side to encircle Honor’s chest with her arms. She flopped a leg over him and let it drape across all three, the foot lying warmly on Clinton’s knee. “You’d better explain libido projection to him,” she suggested.

Clinton was staring at the svelte leg. “My libido is fine, thanks,” he mumbled.

“Just try very hard to keep your mind off of your own reactions,” Honor told him. “Try to blend in with Dotty’s subjectivity, try to understand what she is feeling and how she is feeling.”

“And I’ll do the same to you,” Dotty put in glowingly.

Clinton groaned. He pushed Barbara’s foot away. “If I’m going to have to do this by the numbers, forget it already,” he said.

Honor chuckled, lightly ran a finger the length of Dorothy’s torso, and twisted about to take Barbara in his arms. “No numbers,” he said. “Just follow your own pace. Give yourself to the moment and don’t try to shut out anything that might tap at your mind. Let it in.”

Clinton’s voice floated back strained and strange. “How do I know it’s not the Rogue?”

“You’ll never find the Rogue in a tangle like this,” Honor assured him.

There was a threshing at Honor’s side. A pair of shapely legs flashed high and seemed to hang there in quivering suspension. Dorothy Clinton was giggling in a muffled voice. A moment later she moaned, “Ohhh Milt! That’s good!”

Barbara pulled at Honor and said, “Better hurry. They’ve left us at the gate.”

Honor chuckled and moved in vigorously. He tried a light probe of his neighbors and met with immediate success. Clinton’s mind was tumbling and lost in utter subjectivity. Dorothy’s field was somewhat better but also erotically frantic. Honor moved swiftly through Clinton’s confusion, organizing the tumbling energies and encouraging an inductance into Dorothy’s shrieking synapses. She gasped and flung her legs about; Clinton froze momentarily, then cried, “My God! My God!”… and fell into a quietly exploratory movement.

They’re okay, Barb.

Yes. Aren’t they wonderful! I love them, Pat.

Stay close. Pace yourself to Dotty. I’ll be with Milt.

Oh Pat! I love him through us!

Yes, yes, and I love her through us.

This is a grand unity, my darlings!

Cool it a little, Barb. Not too subjective.

Moments later, four carnal projections were swirling across an infinite sea of bliss, locked together in a squared union of mind and body, the value of their grand assumption far greater than the sum of the particulars.

“For God’s sake, Pat, this is something else!” Clinton exclaimed excitedly. “Where are we?”

“Infinity.”

“Infinity? But I… don’t…”

“You will see. We cross the sea of freedom. Remember this. Sex through human consciousness is the first harmonic to either side of freedom. This is why sex has been such a forbidden pastime for so many ages.”

“But who forbade?” Dorothy gasped. “Why? Why forbid such rapture?”

“The Rogue, the self-perpetuating mutant, forbade it. It had to be so, and he knew it.”

“Sex has been tolerated,” Barbara added, “because the race would have perished without it, and so would the Rogue. So he has given us crumbs, but with guilt, with shame, in degradation. Under such a burden, how many would find this place?”

“I’m not complaining,” Clinton said, “so don’t misunderstand me. But is this all there is to it? I mean… just infinity!”

“This is most of it, as I understand,” Honor replied. “We are moving through the uncreated.”

“What does that mean?” Dorothy asked.

“It awaits the mind of God in man.”

“What?” from Clinton.

“Your understanding will progress geometrically,” Honor assured him. “I don’t want to steal the joy from your own self-realization. Keep your minds open, both of you. When you are ready, you will see the image.”

“What image?” Clinton asked.

“Wait for a tug. Then follow it. Don’t worry about us. We will be nearby.”

“Ohhh!” Dorothy cried moments later. “Ohhh beautiful, beautiful.”

“Let yourself go,” Honor urged gently.

Clinton followed almost instantly. “Hey!” he said. “Well for… yes, yes.” His astral arms were outflung as he rapidly receded into the infinite.

“I envy them their first time across,” Barbara said softly.

“It is only the beginning of wonders,” Honor commented. “Let’s go find Hadrin and Octavia. We have some things to discuss.”

Barbara lifted herself to all fours, above the tangle, and swung her belled hips into a slow descent onto her own haunches. “Boy!” she exclaimed wonderingly.

Dorothy raised to one elbow and swung groggy eyes onto her guest. “What happened?” she mumbled, as though intoxicated.

“Don’t you remember?” Barbara asked, smiling with her own delicious memories.

“Oh… my… God,” Dorothy said in misery-laden tones. “This is… terrible. I must have… lost my senses.” She delicately touched her husband’s shoulder. “Milt? Milton!” She closed her eyes and sank back to the satiny pallet.

Pat! She doesn’t remember!

From another universe, Honor’s reply came firm and sure: She will. Talk her back, Barb. Its the influence of error, the appearance of evil.

“What will Milt think of me?” Dorothy moaned.

“What do you think of him?” Barabara asked calmly.

Dorothy rose up again and glared at her companion. “It’s so… cheap and… tawdry. All these years of marriage, and it came finally to something like this. Group sex. God knows what else.” Her eyes flared suddenly and jumped to an instant inspection of Honor. “I-I seem to remember did we swap?” she finished weakly.

“In a manner of speaking,” Barbara replied solemnly.

“Oh God no!” Dorothy wailed, sinking again onto her back.

“You enjoyed it,” Barbara observed brightly. “I know you did. Admit it. Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“What’s that have to do with anything?” Dorothy muttered. She clenched both hands across her eyes.

“You enjoyed it because it was beautiful. Think back and recapture the beauty of the experience, Dotty.”

“Think about it, think deeply, then tell me—and tell yourself—where is the evil? Back there, in the beauty? Or out here, in the remembrance of it?”

Dorothy’s hands slid down to lie across her throat. She angled her head toward Barbara and returned the direct gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Did you accept beauty, believing that it was evil?”

Dorothy shook her head in mute response.

“And do you now accept evil, remembering that it was beauty?”

Dorothy came up onto the elbow again. She rubbed her hip and hastily jerked back from an accidental contact with Honor’s leg. Her eyes widened as she stared at Honor’s unconscious form. Something seemed to be forming in her mind. “It… I… it was beautiful,” she whispered. “I… was I dreaming? There was a… a…” She shivered violently and shrank from Barbara’s warm gaze. “No… no! This is… madness! It’s awful”

Barbara’s voice was patient and understanding. “Look through the appearance, Dotty. The Rogue throws an appearance of evil over the most beautiful human expressions. Don’t be deceived by the cloak of the Rogue. He denies truth by hanging an odious atmosphere about it.”

“The Rogue?” Dorothy replied faintly. “Yes, I… think…”

“He cloaks the beauties of human sex beneath an appearance of evil,” Barbara went on relentlessly. “Some people dive beneath the cloak to sample the beauties there, then go away content and undismayed that the cloak is still firmly in place. These are the ones who suffer the most. Are you going to rip it off once and for all? Will you renounce the sea of freedom, Dotty? Will you flee from the truth of your eternal being?”

Dorothy’s eyes came up strong and bright. She rippled her tummy and moistened her lips with her tongue, interlacing one of her legs with Honor’s. “I remember,” she whispered in awed tones.

You’d better get back here quick, Pat! She was gazing across Honor’s slumbering body and into the expanding awareness of Dorothy Clinton, whose heavy breasts were now making light contact with Honor’s arm. The cloak has been ripped assunder!

And the Rogue strikes out, came Honor’s distant reply. Cool her. We’ll be back in a moment.

“I heard that,” Dorothy said, her eyes wide pools of awe. She threw herself prone across Honor and wrapped her arms about Clinton, on one side, and Barbara on the other.

“The Rogue struck out, all right,” Barabara murmured.

2: The Evolvers

In the days and nights immediately following that day of convulsion and revelation, Honor, Barbara, and the Clintons became more and more “as one.” Various frightening incidents plagued and cautioned them. The heating system in the basement of the Clintons’ home, though secured and idle for the summer months, exploded moments after an aroused Patrick Honor had flushed everyone out of the house. Only minor damage was incurred by the property, but the knowledge of the danger hampered future “out of body” excursions by the occupants. Enroute to the Virginia farm, some hours afterward, all four of the blowout-proof tires on Clinton’s steamer “blew out” simultaneously with the vehicle moving slowly along a straight stretch of highway. Seconds earlier they had been hissing along at 160 MPH and rapidly approaching a sharp turn onto a narrow bridge; again, Honor’s “alarm system” had saved them. Later that same day, a swarm of thousands of angry hornets descended upon the barn lab at the farm, less than a minute after Honor had sealed all the windows and doors.

“The bastard’s using everything in the arsenal,” Clinton had observed sourly.

“Look for it to get worse,” was Honor’s advice. “We’ve got him worried now. I believe he knows what we’re up to.”

On June 16th, President Wilkins resumed his interrupted occupancy of the White House. Special precau tions, under Honor’s guidance, had been taken to assure the security of the ancient structure. Several water pipes nevertheless ruptured in the Presidential Apartment on the night of June 16th. Little Angie Wilkins, at the time preparing for her bath, was saved from a severe scalding by the alert actions of Patrick Honor. The President himself was soaked by a spraying cold-water line, but was unharmed.

At a special conference later that evening, Honor warned, “He hasn’t given up on you, sir. And it appears that he is marshalling the unconscious forces to his cause. I cannot overemphasize the danger.”

“How does he do it?” the President mused. Pale, shaken, and angry over the attack upon his daughter, he was still coolly collected.

“It’s really quite easy, sir,” Honor replied. “You see, all he has to do is unbalance the…” His words trailed off and he stared speculatively toward the far wall. He turned to the Chief of the Secret Service detail and said, “Isn’t there oxygen in this building?”

“Sure,” the SS man replied, “down in the emerg—”

“Inspect those bottles thoroughly,” Honor snapped. “Put heavy duty regulators on them and get ‘em up here as soon as possible. I mean like ten minutes ago!”

The man nodded his understanding and hurried from the room. “What is that all about?” Wilkins asked uneasily.

“The Law of Chaos,” Honor muttered.

“Sir?”

“You probably know it better as the Law of Diffusion… or irregularity…”

“Thermal motion,” Clinton put in.

“Yes,” Honor said. “Our bewildering physical sciences have given it many names. The Law of Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It’s still the Law of Chaos, though, and the Rogue can disrupt that law almost at will.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Pat,” the President said.

“In this room sir,” Honor explained, “there are multiple billions of air molecules. This is the air we breathe. It is all about us, and you have access to as much as I. This is the Law of Chaos, keeping these microminiature particles in an even distribution, or diffusion, in the space about us. Even so, it is a rather thin sprinkling—so thin that if the Law of Chaos were set aside, we could compress the multibillions of molecules now diffused throughout this room into your hat. This is actually what occurs any time we compress and bottle a gas of any sort. Air itself is a gas.”

“So?” Wilkins asked faintly.

“So I want some oxygen bottles spaced around the apartment for easy access,” Honor replied. “The Rogue could deprive you of the very air you are breathing, and in a twinkling.”

“Then why has he not already done so?” the President asked.

“I guess he just hasn’t thought about it, sir.”

“I hope that you are not giving him the idea, sir.”

“I hope not too, sir.”

“I just had a terrible idea,” Clinton spoke up. “If it is possible to make ordinary air collect and compress into any desired space, why couldn’t it collect and compress in our lungs?”

The President paled. “I’d like to talk about something else,” he said.

“Yes sir,” Honor replied. “We didn’t mean to alarm you.”

“You did just the same,” Wilkins admitted. “By the way, I have been totally unsuccessful in my attempts to set up a Pan-World Summit Conference. The smaller nations would have gone along if I could have persuaded the major powers, but I struck out miserably in that arena. The Soviet Premier very politely laughed at my ‘very funny joke.’ Karl Marx is the only God they recognize, and the Premier assured me that he has been harmlessly dead for quite some time.”

“The British PM listened solemnly to my pitch, then suggested that I confer with the heads of the Church of England. You can just imagine what they told me in Rome, and the French President laughed himself into an hysterical fit.”

“How about the Eastern powers?” Honor asked.

“Even worse. Delhi mumbled something about the final peace of Karma, or something. Israel assured me that their Covenant was still firm and that they had not yet begun to fight. Peking wouldn’t even accept the call, and I doubt that there’s anyone over there with any authority to speak, anyway. Tokyo declined in view of their unstable home situation. Just the phone call probably cost them a thousand demonstrations.”

“So we go it alone,” Clinton said. “We don’t need them.”

Wilkins glanced sharply at his intelligence chief. “That’s a bit different tune from the last one,” he observed.

Honor smiled. “Milt’s been doing some intelligence work on the other side,” he said. “He has the girls scanning some geometers right now.”

“On the ‘other side’?” the President asked, his gaze wavering.

“Yes sir.”

“But I saw them in the next room, just a few minutes ago.”

“Yes sir. We keep them close by.”

“But they…” Wilkins scratched his head and dropped that line of conversation. “How is Curt Wenssler coming along?”

“He’s pulled a total cop-out,” Clinton said. “Won’t talk about any of this. Refuses to leave Bethesda. Says he wants to die there.”

“Can’t blame him, Milt,” Honor observed softly.

“It must have been a shattering experience,” Wilkins murmured.

“Yes sir, I’m sure it was,” Honor said.

“I’d like to join you fellows,” the President said, sotto voce.

“That would be too risky, Mr. President,” said Honor. “The Rogue has your number, and—”

“He has yours also, Pat.”

“Yes sir, but I have out-evolved him.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means simply that my understanding of truth is greater than his understanding of error.” His eyes met Clinton’s. “We know how to avoid him. We would not dare venture into the ethers, as Wennsler did. I, uh, understand your interest in psychism, Mr. President. I’m just afraid that you would slip into the wrong parallax.”

“If you do not venture into the ethers, then how do you get to ‘the other side’?” He studied Clinton’s face. “I had the impression that you were in contact with various people of other nations. How have you been doing this?”

“We travel geometrically,” Honor explained. “And, yes sir, we are in contact with others. The numbers grow daily.”

“I’ll want you to explain that to me when we have more time,” Wilkins replied, sighing. “I am beginning to feel less and less the President.”

“You are the President, sir,” Honor said. “And your touch, at the proper time, will be the one to tip the balance our way. This is primarily why I advise you against adventuring with us.”

The President was silent for a moment, then he said, “These other persons you are contacting. Are they, uh, evolvers also?”

“Yes sir, they are.”

“Are there quite a number of them?”

“Individually, Mr. President, the numbers are small. Geometrized, though, the value is considerable.”

“I see.” Wilkins sighed. “I, too, would like to be an evolver.”

“I’m sure that you will be, sir. When the danger is-“

The President cut him off with a wave of the hand. “Don’t patronize me, Pat,” he said heavily. “What do you think of ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” Honor smiled. “Not much, sir, I’m afraid.”

“What would you say if I told you I saw Lincoln tonight, just before the pipes burst?”

Honor and Clinton exchanged glances. Clinton commented, “The ghost of Lincoln is a White House legend. Many visitors have claimed to have seen him here. Queen Wulielmina, on a state visit during FDR’s time, said she saw him standing at the door to her bedroom. Even Eleanor said that she frequently felt his presence; she used Lincoln’s old bedroom as a sort of office. He’s scared the pee out of White House maids.” Clinton laughed drily. “Even old ‘give ‘em hell’ Truman said that he frequently had phantom knocks at his door. Lot of people think they’ve seen him.”

“I did see him,” Wilkins soberly reported. “Tonight. In my study. He seemed agitated, as though he wanted to tell me something.”

“It was an illusion, sir,” Honor said positively.

“How can you be so sure of that?”

Honor and Clinton again exchanged glances. Honor said softly, “I probably shouldn’t be speaking of this, sir, but Mr. Lincoln is an evolver. If you should truly see him now, it is unlikely that you would recognize him.”

“So what did I see?” Wilkins snapped.

Honor looked troubled. “This is what I meant by, uh, the danger of your, uh, psychic sensitivity, sir. I am not saying that there are no ‘ghosts’ but I also know that Abraham Lincoln is not, uh, dead.”

Wilkins stared at Honor thoughtfully for a long moment. “If he is not dead then where is he?” he asked presently, “… and if I did not see Lincoln, then what did I see?”

“I’m afraid I am not at liberty to answer that first part, sir,” Honor replied stubbornly. “As for the second, I can only say that the ethereal world contains many errors and is now under the conscious direction of the Rogue. You must avoid it at all costs.”

“So Lincoln lives again,” the President said musingly. “Did you know, Honor, that he spoke of that same infinite sea you’ve told me about?”

“Uh, I do not find that surprising, sir.”

“He had many psychic experiences.”

“And he died tragically, sir.”

“Yes, he did that. He did that. Goodnight, gentlemen. I am suddenly quite tired.”

“Were you entirely serious, sir?” Honor asked softly. “Would you like to venture with us to the other side?”

“I was entirely serious. I’m 51, Pat, and the years are getting heavy. I would very much like to know what you know.”

“I believe I can work something out,” Honor said. He arose and quietly took his leave, Clinton at his heels.

They paused outside the door and Clinton said, “That was some wiggling, Pat. I thought I’d die when he started talking about Lincoln.”

“History has a way of repeating itself,” Honor said, frowning thoughtfully. “I want to get him resolved, and the sooner the better. See somebody about doubling his personal bodyguard. I’ll collect the girls and meet you downstairs. Let’s flip a coin, or something, and select a partner for him. Evolution can be nipped in the bud by revolution. It’s happened before. I don’t want it to happen again. Not in this case.”

“Hadn’t you better consult Hadrin first?”

“I already did. He’s in favor of evolution.” Clinton grinned. “Me too. See you in five minutes.” Standby, Mr. President, Honor said to himself as he went in to pick up the girls. Your deliverance is at hand. The first octave awaits.

3: The Carnal Truth

Honor briefed Barbara and Dorothy on the evening’s developments, concluding with, “So now we’ve decided that the President must be resolved. He’ll need a guide to the other side.”

The two women looked at each other and, in unison, said, “I’ll go.” Barbara laughed and squeezed Honor’s hand. “We’ll work it out between us,” she assured him. “The point to be considered is will the President go?”

“How does one go about seducing a President?” Dorothy said thoughtfully.

Honor replied, “Can’t be that way and you know it. It has to be a willful decision on his part.”

“It also must be a libido projection,” Barbara added. “Right?”

“Right. We can’t risk any other method. And I’ll want…” He stared at Barbara briefly, then continued. “It will have to be you, Barb. Dotty, you and Milt had better go along also. Watch him very—”

Clinton banged into the room at that moment. “All set,” he sang out. “We now have the best guarded President in history.” He looked from Honor to the two women. “Well, who’s going to be the lucky girl?”

“Barb will guide,” Honor told him. “You and Dotty had better go along with them. Watch him, Milt, and make sure he understands every step of the way.”

“What’re you going to be doing?” Clinton queried.

“I’m going to check out something on this side.”

“Something very ominous, if my understanding isn’t too clouded.”

Clinton grinned and said, “You make it sound very mysterious. Okay.” He punched Dotty lightly on the shoulder. “What’ve you been up to, old gal?”

She smiled. “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been seducing students in Pakistan?”

Barbara giggled and leaned against Clinton. “Not carnally, of course. We stumbled onto a very dedicated study group at a university in Karachi.” She rolled her eyes at Honor. “I don’t know what they were studying, but it sure didn’t take much nudging to geometrize them.” The dancing eyes flashed to Dorothy Clinton. “It was a very strong erotic field, wasn’t it?”

“I know what they were studying,” Dorothy replied solemnly. “The boys were studying the girls and the girls were studying the boys.” She smiled winsomely at her husband. “We helped them cement their studies.”

Honor’s brow was furrowed with thought. “Net value?” he asked tersely.

“A very strong octave to the fifth progression,” Dorothy reported.

“Great. That should wrap up that area. Now if we can get a comparable harmonic out of Australia and… let’s see, where would be the best geometer in, uh… yeah, let’s say Paraguay, then we—”

“I get the Latins,” Barbara squealed delightedly.

“Down, girl,” Honor said, grinning. “First we must resolve a President.”

“Carnally,” she agreed, nodding her head. “I hope he, uh… he is able, isn’t he?”

“He’s only 51, Barb,” Honor reminded her. “I’m sure you can, uh, get the necessary response.”

Clinton grinned, commenting. “She could get the necessary response from Methuselah.”

“Okay,” Honor said, sobering. “You guys know what to do. May as well get started. I’ll swirl with you as soon as I can.”

“Be careful,” Clinton said soberly.

Honor kissed Barbara, pecked Dorothy quickly on the lips, and left them. He went down the side hallway, nodding absently at the guards who were placed here and there along the way, took the elevator to the ground level, and made his way quickly to the south lawn. The skies were overcast and the feel of summer showers was in the air. He went directly to the flower garden in the southwest corner, plucked a blossom, smelled of it, crushed and rolled the petals between his fingers, then smelled of it again. He dropped the blossom to the ground and put the finger to his tongue, tasting sensitively.

Troubled and quiveringly alert, Honor walked to the center of the lawn and stood gazing speculatively toward the large white building. It was ablaze with lights, sending out a sort of aura into the enveloping blackness. His eyes carefully traced the skyline projections, and he began mentally measuring the angles formed by the geometrical dimensions.

A soft voice said, “Hello, Pat.”

Honor’s eyes focussed on a spot several feet to his side. A familiar-looking figure stood there in the darkness. “Yes?” Honor said tightly.

“Don’t you know me?” The figure moved closer, until Honor could make out the teasing smile and the faintly quizzical eyes. Honor had already recognized the voice. It was a damn good facsimile, he decided, of his dead father, Steven Honor.

“I know the face and the voice,” Honor said quietly. “Who uses it?”

The figure now stood directly in front of him, an arms-length distant. “Your mother and I are worried about you, Pat. We want you to cut out all this morbid business and get back to the business of life.”

“You are an error,” Honor flatly stated, without emotion. “Go back to the home of errors.”

The laconic voice of Honor’s long-dead father said, “You always were a rebel. Where did I fail you, Pat? Don’t you understand what you’re doing? You’re throwing in with the devil, boy.”

“Go back to the error from which you arose,” Honor commanded quietly.

The figure wavered, then faded. Another quickly took its place. Honor recognized his “mother.” She was weeping in inconsolable grief.

“You can see what you’re doing to your mother,” said his father’s disembodied voice from the darkness. “All this rotten vulgarity, this running around with loose women. What has happened to your conscience, boy?”

Honor set his jaw and walked right through his weeping mother. Other figures rose up to join him in his walk and to add their pleas that he give up his life of “sin” and “deviltry”—all cherished personalities of the dead past. Honor reached the South Portico with a group of discarnates clustered about him.

“I am truth incarnate,” he declared, raising his voice above the din of weeping and wailing. “The God of Error has no power in my field. Return to the error that spawned you.”

A uniformed guard stepped from the shadow of a pillar of the porch. “Mr. Honor?” he called. “Is something wrong?”

Honor mounted the first two steps before responding to the query. The wraiths had faded away. “Did you see or hear them?” Honor asked the guard.

“No sir, I just heard you talking. Who’s out there?”

“No one, I guess,” Honor replied. He had moved into the light. A distant, intercloud discharge of electricity lit the sky momentarily. Honor whirled to gaze across the lawn just as a strong wind sprang up. Something partially lifted him and spun him down the stairs. He landed on all fours on the sidewalk, then was rolled into the grass.

The guard had yelped a startled warning and was running down the stairs to assist him. The wind was pulling at Honor’s hair and whipping his coat tail like a flag in a stiff breeze. The guard seized him by the arm and helped him regain his feet, then the two of them staggered up the steps and beneath the overhang of the porch.

“I thought I’d seen dust devils in Kansas,” the guard said, his voice awed. “I never seen anything like that. It was a baby tornado.”

“Is that what it was?” Honor muttered.

“Yessir, I’ve seen hundreds of them, as a kid, whipping up the dust around the farm. But never nothing like this. You okay?”

Honor assured the guard that he was “okay,” thanked him, and re-entered the White House. He wanted to find the geometric center of the building. Something about its angular projections were bothering him. Something frightening kept whispering into his inner mind, too faintly to understand. Something about the geometer… Something about the… Honor’s head jerked to stiff attention, his nostrils quivering. Good God! Barbara, stop! Don’t go! Its a trap!

Wilkins had almost seemed to be expecting them. He had, as obviously, been preparing for bed. He wore silk pajamas beneath an Oriental smoking jacket, bedroom slippers, and carried a heavy congressional report under one arm. He gravely shook hands with the wom en and led the trio to a small lounge area just outside his bedroom. Clinton, in as few words as possible, had explained the reason for the visit and the mechanics of libido projection. Except for appraising glances at Barbara, the President had sat stony-faced during Clinton’s monologue. Then he had nodded his head in understanding and said, “Well, I was more or less prepared for something like this.” He had looked at Barbara, smiled, and added, “Curt was keeping me abreast of his findings. I must admit, though, that this business of libidinal projection has seemed more far-out than all the rest.”

Barbara had felt compelled to smooth the thing out for the Presidential mind. “That is mainly due to our social and religious training,” she told him. “Millions of Westerners, though, have accepted the principle of soul-liberation through physical alignments—Yoga postures and such, I mean—the idea being that this harmonizes the physical structure into a total dominance by the mind. Libidinal projection goes far beyond that, being the ultimate harmony and geometrized on the square. The psychic energies released in that instant of unitary harmony can only be expressed as powers of powers.”

The President had smiled grimly, almost sadly, and observed, “Yes, I’m sure that’s true if you say so… still, it seems that most of the miseries of this old world have been produced by sexual immorality and licentiousness.”

“But sex is basically pure, not immoral,” Clinton pointed out. “You have the report I gave you on Curt Wenssler. Remember Honor’s suggestion that Wenssle’s personality was trapped between his thalamus and limbic system?”

“Yes, and subsequent treatment seems to have val idated that suggestion,” Wilkins had replied. “But what’s the point?”

“Mankind as a whole, like Wenssler as an individual, is imprisoned in carnal error. It’s a trap, just like Wenssler’s. Mankind is trapped in the interactions of the mass libido.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?” Wilkins had asked, rather testily.

“Yes, if you want to go with us, I guess it’s absolutely mandatory that you understand it, sir. Honor won’t have it any other way.”

“Then you’d better explain the dimensions of this libidinal trap,” the President responded.

Barbara took it from there. “It’s the pull between sin and ecstasy, guilt and fulfillment, vulgarity and beauty, and all the other opposites on the two sides of sex. Many couples, lying together in bed, are using other expressions and calling them sex. Such as hate, fear, greed, vanity—you name it, it’s all in there in the sexual bed. Gross error compounded. Everything but the truth of it all: beauty and freedom.”

“Freedom, as we say, is the end-truth of sex, sir,” Clinton added.

“The carnal truth that sets men free, eh?” the President mused. He arose, went to his bedroom door, turned a slightly embarrassed gaze toward Barbara, and said, “Miss Thompson?” He opened the door and ushered her in.

She softly told him, “Under the circumstances, I’d be more comfortable if we could be less formal.”

“Of course.” He stood indecisively in the center of the bedroom, staring at her.

Barbara removed her dress and draped it across a chair. She smiled at him and said, “I love all mankind through my Godmaker, Honorkir.”

“Yes, I can believe that,” the President murmured.

She had stripped to the buff and was helping him to do the same. She moved into his arms and sighed. “You are beautiful, Jack. You must love me as I love you.”

“Yes,” he said shakily, “I believe I do that.”

Moments later, the space where Presidents had lain for nearly two centuries was vibrating to the song of freedom.

“I’ll wager a lot of graves are being spun in this night,” Wilkins observed in one of his last objective moments.

“Forget that,” Barbara moaned. “You’re in my body, now get into my mind. In, Jack, in!”

“Good lord!” he cried. “What was that?”

“That’s the way you make me feel! See? Oh! Oh yes, darling, that’s it, that’s it. Give yourself! All! All of you to all of me! Yes! Yes! Oh darling, oh darl—”

Honor’s urgent cry shrieked into her swirling consciousness, Barbara, stop! Don’t go! Its a trap!

But the warning came too late. She was committed to the journey and there was no pulling back. Wilkins’ mind was wrapped in hers and they were drifting through infinity. A strange infinity. A hostile and a frightening one.

“Good God, where are we?” Milt Clinton cried.

Dorothy screamed, “Something is crawling on me!”

“Think of Pat!” Barbara called to them. “Don’t for one moment lose consciousness with Pat!”

Back in the White House, Patrick Honor was frantically searching for a warped geometer. A group of men in weird red uniforms ran past him, carrying flaming torches. They showed him no attention whatever, as though he did not exist. Suddenly he knew who they were and what they were doing.

“God’s sake!” he yelled to nobody at all. “It’s the British! They’re burning the White House!” He ran to find the warp they’d entered from.

4: Masters of Geometry

In a flash of understanding, Honor knew the circumstances. The Rogue, damn him, was rapidly growing into an understanding of his own power and was beginning to reason geometrically. Honor could understand, quite easily, an occasional error-image, or “ghost”, drifting through the material field. This could be explained under the Law of Chaos and Infinite Chance. But he should have realized the implications of a horde of discarnate error-images collecting in one place and all seemingly bent toward a specific goal. He should have known … he had, of course, “known” that something was out of kilter. It was why he had taken the stroll across the lawn; why he had crushed, smelled, and tasted the blossom; why he had studied so intently the geometric properties of the ancient structure. Yes, he had “known” … but too vaguely… and he blamed the Rogue for that, also.

The Rogue was manipulating the geometric field, this much was now obvious. How absolute, Honor wondered, were the physical laws? Not at all, he realized quickly. The projections from each individual geometer were easily malleable by the receiving medium. The Rogue had been that medium, almost from the beginning. The same laws that had created the medium had created also the Rogue; inherent free will was his birthright, and the birthright of every material body. The Rogue had co-existed with material free will, the Law of Chaos, because it had been the law of his being and had served his purposes. But now, knowing itself, the Rogue could manipulate those laws almost at will. Almost. He could not replace the White House geometer; he could but set up a harmonic and, being the Rogue, the devolver, naturally he would select a time harmonic—past time.

Honor was still blaming himself for not realizing the truth sooner. He could have aborted that projection to the other side if he had only understood the phase-constant difference between the plants outside the White House and the geometric atmosphere of the structure itself. Joint evolution had been “out of step”— mis-phased—and only his subconscious had grasped the implications of that unnatural circumstance. The Rogue had thrown him off the track, of course, diverted him with howling banshees and malevolent molecules.

Honor had found the location of the geometric warp. He directed his consciousness into the void of displacement between the two parallaxes and raised his astral arms to full length above his head. Hadrin, he prayed, show me the way!

He was abruptly jarred and flung into a counterclockwise spiral, narrow and twisting. He recognized it instantly as a barrel-parallax, and he knew where he was headed. “Beyond the mirror!” he cried, torn suddenly by the cruel knowledge of a complete and utter separation from the True God.

“This is incredible!” Jack Wilkins groaned. “I’m in agony. What went wrong?”

“Pat tried to stop us at the last instant,” Barbara explained in a pained voice. She was working hard to maintain self-control. “I’m afraid that the Rogue has outsmarted us.”

“It’s like… hell!” Wilkins complained.

“It is hell,” Milt Clinton declared, adding his tortured voice to the conversation.

“I get the feeling that Pat will get us out,” Barbara assured them. “He knows what has happened to us. Keep your fields open to his influence. He will find us.”

“I hope he hurries!” Dorothy half screamed. “These awful things are… what are these awful things?”

Wilkins groaned and said, “Maybe we’ve been wrong…”

“Don’t!” Barbara warned sharply. “Don’t even think like that. We must cling to truth!”

“It’s hell, it’s hell,” Wilkins moaned. “It’s tearing at me. This is what happened to Wenssler, isn’t it. This is…”

“Swirl together,” ordered a familiar voice. “Hurry! Join up!”

“Pat!” Barbara cried.

“I said hurry! Let’s geometrize! Come on Milt, Dotty. Swirl, dammit!”

Five alien entities in an incredibly unhappy land came together, swirled, and crystallized into a geometric pattern. “Five planes,” Honor ordered, “symmetrize… I said symmetrize … that’s good… yes, that’s better. Hold it just like this, now, and they can’t enter us. Feel better now?”

A chorus of relieved responses rippled across the pentagon.

“Good,” Honor said. “Cool down, now, and let’s figure a way out of this mess.”

“Where in the name of God are we?” came from Clinton’s pentagonal plane.

“In the name of God, nowhere,” Honor replied. “I believe that we are in the collective unconscious.”

Wilkins groaned. “Jung should be here to see it,” he said.

“And feel it,” Dorothy added with a shiver. “What are those things, Pat?”

“Thought forms,” he immediately replied. “Thoughts are things, you know. There… feel that one? That was a murder instinct that just glanced off of us.”

“It’s terrible… terrible,” Wilkins said.

“We’re in the low spectrum, the best I can figure,” Honor told them. “This is the collection of errors in eternal mind. Now look… there’s a trade-off between this universe and the world of matter. We’ve got to figure out how it works, and quick. The Rogue is burning the White House. We must get back to the bodies before they’re destroyed.”

“God almighty!” Wilkins cried. His side of the pentagon wobbled erratically and a strong surge of pain entered the formation before he could firm it up again.

“Keep your mind on truth!” Honor commanded.

The Wilkins plane quickly stabilized. “What happens if our bodies are destroyed?” he asked weakly.

“We lose our field of attraction,” Honor replied. “We would then be resolved into error.”

“You mean we’d have to stay here?” Dorothy gasped.

Honor ignored the question. His mind was busy on other matters. “We are hovering,” he announced suddenly, “… suspended… in something or other. Let’s try to objectify perceptions. Maybe we can get the lie of the land.”

“Can we resolve this thing mathematically, Pat?” Clinton asked.

“I think so,” Honor mused. “We are in a mirror-image causal field, of that much I’m certain. Let’s concentrate on that idea, geometrically, and try to objectify something.”

“He means, try to see where we are,” Barbara explained to Wilkins.

“I don’t know how to…”

“Enter my root center, then, and follow my lead. That’s it. There. Now, amplify in a geometric progression. No… not one, two, three, four …go two, four, eight, sixteen … that’s it.”

A moment later, Clinton exclaimed, “Well I’ll be damned. We’re swirling with history!”

“Yes, I see it,” Dorothy murmured.

“Frightening!” from Wilkins.

The five displaced “angels in hell” were at the center of a giant pinwheel. It looked, Honor thought, like the pictures he had seen of spiral galaxies, except that there was a wave motion of rapidly advancing and receding rings of “images.” In the nearest rings were vibrating the human atrocities of the 20th century… a silent yet hideously realistic reenactment of the World Wars turning slowly upon weeping women, grim-faced men, and emaciated children. Hitler’s ovens were there, still burning, still ingesting millions of gaunt-eyed human wrecks. The atomic cloud still rose above Hiroshima, and one thin layer below, Pearl Harbor was being rocked by Japanese bombs. At the other side of the ring, men were storming ashore at Normandy while, just below that, Paris prostitutes continued to trade their bodies for German favors.

Honor forced his eyes away from the grim storehouse of recent memory and lifted his gaze to the more-distant rings. Out there, distant but still vigorously active lay the horrors of the centuries. Christians continued to burn, the holy wars remained undiminished by time and, in the barely discernible fringes of the “galaxy”, man-like creatures slew each other with stones while others lurked in caves piled high with bones.

“Now I know the meaning of eternity,” Jack Wilkins said in awed tones.

The “galactic hub”, in which drifted the alien pentagon, seemed to be void. Honor knew better; it was not a void. “This is great,” he muttered. “We’re very near the barrel, unless my orientation is completely distorted.”

“What’s so great?” Wilkins said. “This is hell and we’re in it. Look at that! Poor souls as far as the eye can see. Living their agonies over and over again, eternally. This is—”

“You’re wrong,” Honor said flatly. “Those are not souls. They’re memories, no more, no less. We’re in the hub, see. Look around you. See the trailing edge of that first ring over there? Look at it closely. Follow it around the complete circle and keep a careful watch. There! See that?”

Wilkins gasped, “Why, yes! There’s last week’s riot at Columbia! And look at that one! The killing of the policeman in Harlem! Three days ago! That happened just three days ago, Honor!”

“We’re in the assimilation chamber,” Honor replied, grim-lipped.

“In the what?” Clinton asked.

“It’s an inductance field. This is where thoughts become things. We’re being assimilated at this very moment. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“How can we be assimilated?” Barbara commented. “We’re not thoughts… are we?”

“I’m afraid that’s most of what we are,” Honor murmured. “I believe we’re safe as long as we can hold this form. But we can’t hold it forever, and certainly not after our earth-fields are destroyed.”

“What’s the significance of all this, Honor?” Wilkins asked. “I mean, why? Why a universe filled with nothing but grotesque dreams?”

“You can’t call those dreams, sir,” Honor replied. “They are the net residue of the evolution of man. We’re in the Rogue’s mind, haven’t you understood that? Look at it, all of you. Look and remember. Here is the enemy, the God which mankind’s errors have made.”

“It really is the collective unconscious,” Wilkins said.

“More… it is the Universal Subconscious,” Honor told him. “Only now with a—well dammit, Milt, do you see it?” he finished excitedly.

“See what?”

“The secret, the way. Oh-ho, the Rogue God goofed, he screwed up good, he shouldn’t have allowed us in here. I know now, Milt. I understand the Rogue.”

“What? What is it?” Barbara cried happily.

“I think I know how to get us out of here, too. Listen carefully, now, all of you, we have to play this to close numbers, we haven’t a moment to lose. That bastard Singh! Your baby-faced buddy is in for a rude surprise, Barb.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind, now. Later. Right now here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to blast our way out of here, straight down the gunbarrel. We do not swirl, we ream it. Form on me, and geometrize. I’m on the point, a square-nine at the first power. Milt, you next, and on the next power. Then Dotty, Jack, and Barb at the rear, each at progressive powers.”

“I don’t understand,” Wilkins protested.

“I’m speaking of mental expansion, sir. You’ll catch it quick. Okay, here we go. Now stay close, allow no separation, and if I change values everybody change progressively and immediately. Okay? This may hurt a little. You with us, sir?”

“Yes, I have it now.”

“All right. Here we go, down, not up. Stay together! Let’s go!”

The pentagon broke apart. A small point formed at its center and quickly took the form of an inverted pyramid, then seemed to explode into pyramiding dimensions and began falling through the four-dimensional space of the galactic hub. Rapidly picking up speed, it hurtled into the geometric center of the mental universe, slowed momentarily, then exploding again to double in size and velocity.

“We’re in the barrel!” Honor announced exultantly. “Hang in close now, the real test is just ahead!”

Barbara, required to constantly check and reinforce Wilkins’ projection, was beginning to tire and grow faint. “You’d better hurry,” she cried, “my corners are fraying.”

“Hang on, we’re almost through. Get set for a shock!”

“Things” were tumbling past Barbara’s awareness, reaching out for her, tearing at her, trying to dislodge her from Jack Wilkins. She clung grimly in a final, supreme effort. Then came a jolt, a bright flash, a tearing pain, and she was fighting for her life. A heavy body was lying atop her, she was choking, and an intense heat was searing her flesh. She struggled to roll the President’s body aside, rising to an elbow and trying to peer through the dense, choking smoke. “Pat!” she cried. “Pat, where are you?”

The door to the State Bedroom was kicked open. She caught a glimpse of Dorothy Clinton lying on the floor just outside as Pat and Milt ran into the room. “Get the President,” she heard Pat snap. “I’ll take care of Barbara.” And then she passed out.

5: The Recruits

The night of June 15-16 was to be remembered around the world and for many years to come. News of damage to the White House, “by a fire of undetermined origin,” was eclipsed by more traumatic world developments. More than a dozen large jetliners, of various countries, fell from the skies. An orbiting weather station disappeared, leaving no clues to its fate. The cities of Denver, Copenhagen, and Marseilles experienced complete power blackouts. The New England States of America and the Province of Quebec reported a strange 7-minute interruption of normal late-hours television programming, with all channels carrying a “weird film” of some ancient war throughout that period. Wire service dispatches from Oklahoma and Texas told of “mass hysteria” in those areas, prompted by a line of severe tornadoes “with horribly ugly faces frowning from the funnels.” Landslides in California and Turkey, severe electrical disturbances throughout Europe, numerous hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, stampeding animals and human eruptions in Africa, severe storms and flash floods in Asia—all these contributed to the scene of worldwide chaos and horror.

A Washington television newsman called it, “The night God shook his fist at the world.” Patrick Honor had another way of looking at it.

“It was the Rogue’s first death rattle,” he told his companions. “He should never have let us in there. We really shook things up. We’ll have to be more careful next time—we don’t want to destroy the earth along with him.”

“Next time?” Dorothy gasped. “You don’t mean to say there’s going to be a next time!”

“Has to be,” Honor replied. “But next time, we go in force.”

Damage to the White House had been light and contained within a few rooms of the Presidential Apartment. Except for two mild cases of smoke-inhalation among the White House staff, no injuries were incurred and the daily routine of business was hardly interrupted.

The carnal resolution of President Jack Wilkins was attempted again, and achieved, later that morning. On this occasion, Dorothy was the “guide,” Milt Clinton “bodyguarded,” and Honor and Barbara “escorted.”

Wilkins returned from the experience more thoughtfully somber than ever, and commented to Honor, “I wish I could have gone through this 30 years earlier.”

“You still have a lot of effectivity left in you,” Honor assured him.

“Yes, I know,” the President replied, “but I believe I could have prevented a lot of hell from loosing itself on this world.”

“There’s a lot of hell yet ahead,” Honor reminded him.

“Yes, I see your point,” Wilkins replied. He called a full Executive Council that afternoon, visited the Justice Department and the Supreme Court later that day, and scheduled an address before a Joint Session of Congress for June 18.

Meanwhile, Honor and his small group were moving in their own directions. Barbara and Dorothy resumed their “geometer-scan” activities while Honor and Clinton began a down-to-earth search for one Ruahl Bey Singh.

“I believe Singh is focalizing for the Rogue,” Honor explained to Clinton. “I feel certain, also, that he was sabotaging Wenssler from the very beginning… or, at least, leading him deliberately along a road of certain doom.”

“But why would the Rogue need a human ally?” Clinton argued. “And, even allowing that he does, what makes Singh the likely candidate?”

“I don’t know all the answers,” Honor admitted. “There’s just a vague realization in the pit of my mind and… well, I realized it last night when we were behind the mirror-image. The Rogue is sheer subjectivity. Nowhere, not from any direction during all the time we were in there, did I get a tug of objective faculty. The truth hit me then like a ton of bricks. The Rogue is selfconscious, yes, but his selfconsciousness is an imposed factor.”

Clinton’s face was screwed into a dark frown. “Damn, I don’t get that, Pat,” he admitted.

“You will,” Honor assured him. “Look, Milt, have you ever seen a hypnotist work? Hypnotism works through the imposition of one person’s will upon another person’s subjectivity. It is merely conscious suggestion cast into a subconscious medium.”

“I understand that.”

Honor shrugged. “So, think of Singh—or someone like Singh—as the hypnotist and the Rogue as subjectivity.”

“Why someone like Singh?”

“Because he’s the perfect bland quality,” Honor replied, grinning. “Remember what I told you about wave-makers? Any action, good or bad, sets up a reaction within the Rogue. In this universe of self-will, the Holy Joes who run around preaching ‘thy will, Father’ are just trying to co-exist with the Rogue, whether they know it or not The real Rogue, Milt, are the religious fanatics who are offering up their objectivity for the Universal Subconscious to focus upon.”

“But surely Singh isn’t the only religious fanatic in the world, Pat. My God, I can name you a dozen right off the top of my—”

“I’m speaking in a personal reference, of course,” Honor said. “I am saying that Singh is probably responsible for all the unhappy events in our particular sequence. You’re right, though, there could be a million ‘Singhs’ scattered about the world.”

“Do you know what you’ve just done?” Clinton fumed. “You’ve geometrized our problem. Instead of one enemy, now, there are a million!”

Honor was frowning, deep in thought. “There is still the one enemy, Milt,” he replied. “It’s that vast pool of human error in which we’re all immersed. Somehow we’ve got to sever the tie that binds us to it. Somehow we have got to destroy the Rogue … or else neutralize him.”

“And how the hell do we do that?”

“We’re going to geometrize him with Truth,” Honor said.

“My God, it just hit me,” Clinton declared softly.

“What?”

“What it all boils down to, that’s what. It’s the war of the Godmakers.”

Honor smiled. “Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.”

“It’s the only way to look at it,” Clinton avowed. “Some are trying to build one God… others are trying to build another. It boils down to a construction war.”

“Every war is a holy war,” Honor quietly observed.

“Yeah, well, I’d say we need a bunch of recruits!”

“Wilkins and the girls are working that end,” Honor reminded him. “You and I have an intelligence job. We have to find the enemy’s forward post.”

“Now thats a job I understand,” Clinton replied.

“There’s a juicy looking bunch,” Dorothy said excitedly.

“Ummm, I love student groups,” Barbara agreed. “But there’s an awful lot. Maybe we should concentrate on smaller numbers.”

“Nonsense. There’s a very strong field here, lots of tensions. Just made to order. Let’s try a—”

“Strong, yes,” Barbara objected, “but not erotic. It’s some sort of protest meeting, I’d say.”

“There’s a strongly libidinal undertone to that protest, Barb. Let’s at least ripple through. How about the blonde there? The one with the big buckets.”

Barbara giggled. “The big what?”

“Buckets, jugs, whatever they call ‘em.” Dorothy was giggling also. “She has an itch right in her—”

“Okay,” Barbara said quickly. “Let me try… oh yes… you’re certainly right about that. It’s the boy on the platform. She’s thinking… she’d like for him to… oh, naughty naughty, Blondie. Let’s see, just a light psychic goose in the…”

“Perfect!” Dorothy squealed. “She’s moving toward the platform!”

“Hit the boy, quick!… well, gosh, you didn’t have to hit him right there, Dotty.”

“It’s lifting and looking, isn’t it? Ah! That’s a good resolution, kiddies! Quickly now, Barb, triangulate the field, let’s get them all to swinging.”

Moments later Barbara sighed and said, “Well, I’d call that swinging. I hope the newspapers are kind to them.”

“You know better than that,” Dorothy replied. “I can see the headlines now, six inches high: SEX RIOT AT COLUMBIA. Everybody in the country will hate and envy them.”

“Oh well,” Barbara philosophized, “someone has to carry the burdens of freedom. Who better than the young?”

“I’m carrying a bit of a burden myself right now,” Dorothy said, “and I’m not all that young. Come on, let’s find another field. God! I don’t know how many more of these I can take. This is no job for a red-blooded girl.”

“You’re getting downright lecherous,” Barbara commented, smiling secretly to herself.

“Call it holy, holy, holy,” Dorothy replied. “Come on, let’s see if we can convert Princeton.”

“Did you get the numbers?”

“The net is to the tenth nine, high,” Dorothy said. She scowled, rippled her libido, and added, “… and it’s tearing me up.”

Barbara was laughing almost hysterically as they swirled toward the Princeton geometer. Recruiting was such fun.

The evening of June 16 saw a surprise Supreme Court announcement in a long-pending Arkansas case, with a historic decision which seemed to strike at the very heart of traditional American morals. In a broad reaffirmation of the individual’s constitutional rights and freedoms, the language of the decision ranged far beyond the considerations of the case at issue, the challenge of an illegal-cohabitation law. In throwing out the Arkansas statute which forbade a man and woman to live together except in marriage, the court went on to strike down virtually all “morals legislation” which abridged the rights of individuals to choose their own code of moral ethics.

The major statement of the majority decision assert ed that “… legal coercion and manipulation of the individual conscience can be viewed only as an imposition of unwarranted force upon the free will of the individual. For the state to decide, therefore, what is good and what is evil for the individual is an abridgement of basic human rights and a serious erosion of human and national dignity.”

On the morning of June 17, the pastor of a large interdenominational church in Washington, which numbered in its congregation the President of the United States, issued a call for “a new search” in man’s religious involvement, stating that, “No plan of human redemption which has at its roots the cruel and inhuman torture-murder of one of God’s chosen can have any validity for any rational man. Personally, I feel nothing but shame and degradation for mankind as a whole whenever I think of the cross, and I feel only a consuming anger whenever I am confronted with the insane concept of original sin.”

These developments, unleashed upon an already stunned American public and seemingly in concert with an epidemic-like outbreak of campus orgies, produced a traumatic null in American thinking. Other national governments, aware also of a rapidly growing unrest within their own borders, sat in a quiet stupor and wondered which way America would swing the rest of the world.

On June 18, Patrick Honor summed it up thusly for the Godmakers: “The Rogue is reeling. The mantle of error has not been ripped asunder, but the cracks are showing everywhere. Be alert, now. Watch for the counterattack.”

6: The Plan

It was early morning, June 21. President Wilkins walked across his office and stood with hands clasped behind his back, staring gloomily out the window. He sighed and said, “I’ve made all the waves I can think of, Pat. I guess the rest is up to you, and I’m hoping you can do your bit soon… before the waves completely engulf the nation.”

“The action-reaction is going great,” Milt Clinton observed drily. “The country’s turning on itself like a pack of wild dogs.”

“We couldn’t expect the Rogue to just roll over and die quietly,” Honor said.

“I didn’t expect the nation’s police to use bayonets on our citizens, either,” Wilkins muttered. “They did, you know. Last night. In Philadelphia.”

“I heard about it,” Honor replied. “But those weren’t cops. A cop doesn’t know one end of a bayonet from another.”

“Same difference,” Wilkins sniffed. “That militia was there at the expressed desire of the Mayor. That made them his police. Same thing.”

“I’ve, uh, been wondering if we weren’t, uh, overdoing things a bit,” Clinton said. “The iron-curtain countries are going completely ape, Pat. You inject a taste of freedom into an environment like that, and… well, blood just simply has to flow in the streets.”

“It’s better than having the oceans run red,” Honor argued. “We don’t stand a chance against the Rogue if we don’t play the plan to a close count.”

“I wish I understood this plan a bit better,” Wilkins complained.

Honor shrugged his shoulders and went over to stand beside the President. “It isn’t all that complicated, sir,” he said. “It’s simply military tactics. Divert the enemy with a few probes around the flanks, then a sweep right up the middle as soon as his back is turned.”

“How many, uh, probes will be required to turn his back, Pat?”

“Well…” Honor grinned and looked out the window. “I’d say he has his hands pretty full right now. Look, sir…” Honor paused to light a cigarette. “Every human act that serves to move the race off dead center is another step forward for the Godmakers. Good or bad, every action demands a counter-action. It’s the response to challenge that’s built into every human mind. Pass a law, that’s a challenge. You’re challenging somebody to go out and break it. Repeal a law, that’s another challenge. Try to do something—anything —good or bad… someone will rise up to oppose you. And that’s fine, it’s great, it’s what life is all about. There isn’t any good and evil Jack… there is just growth and decay. Grow, and you’re building the image… decay, and you’re building the Rogue. We grow through action and reaction.”

“I’d still like to see this thing brought to a head,” Wilkins murmured.

“So would I.” Honor exhaled a lung full of cigarette smoke. “And all I’m waiting for now in Singh. We have to find him. He’s my ticket into the Rogue.”

“I don’t understand that part, either,” Wilkins said.

“I told you that we’re going to sweep up the middle,” Honor replied. “Singh’s the middle, the broad boulevard to Rogueville. I’m going to pop right up through his geometer, and I’m going to be taking Dottie’s and Barb’s numbers with me.”

“I still say it’s a suicide attack,” Clinton growled. “There has to be a better way.”

Honor doggedly shook his head. “It’s the only way,” he insisted. “I’ve got to go in there with numbers, and it has to be with numbers which the Rogue can’t possibly assimilate.”

“Numbers of ecstasy,” Wilkins sighed.

“That’s right. If I can get enough expansion, I can shake that dead universe of his like it’s never been shaken before.”

“Once more around the horn now, Pat,” Wilkins said slowly. “Exactly what will this accomplish?”

Honor sighed. “I’ve told you… I’m hoping to destroy the Rogue. I don’t know if I can accomplish that much… but I’m going to try. At the very least, I would hope to introduce such disarray to his field that it would be shook loose from ours.”

“And the net effect of all this?”

“Well, the immediate effect would be a great leap forward for mankind, even if I had a minimal success. If I knock him out entirely, I’d say this old world will be in for a fantastic pace of evolution. We might hit our true potential in a matter of a few generations.”

“And suppose you don’t destroy the Rogue.”

Honor shrugged. “If I fail completely, then the world, as we know it, has but 81 days to live beyond September 14th.” His eyes brooded on the President. “That’s the full significance of Wenssler’s list, you know. It’s a countdown to the Rogue’s complete domination of the earth, and then… well, the image beyond the image might decide to just abort the entire endeavor.”

“Suppose you find your, ah, minimal success.”

“Then it’s just a reprieve. The Rogue will be tem porarily disarmed. Another geometric progression will begin.”

The President sighed. “And it will start all over again. Another stretch toward Armageddon.”

“That’s about it,” Honor murmured. “Only not such a long stretch, this next time. I’d say, probably, the numbers would come up again just about in time to catch Angie’s grandchildren. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Clinton asked interestedly.

“Unless some real gung-ho Godmakers should fall out of our efforts here. It could happen, you know. If we can just win a reprieve, we might have the real Godmakers nestling in our loins right now.”

Wilkins sighed again, in heavy sibilance. “Well, Pat, sounds more impossible every time I hear it,” he said, “but… with these stakes… well, I guess I just can’t afford to stand in your way.”

“I didn’t know that you were, sir,” Honor said, watching him curiously.

“The message beat you here by about a minute and a half.”

“What message?”

Wilkins scowled. “The message that your hour has come. We’ve found Singh.”

Honor and Clinton exchanged glances.

“Wenssler checked out of Bethesda this morning,” Wilkins continued. “Your man Jarvis, Milt, trailed him out to that farm in Virginia. He called your office just as you and Pat walked out the door. The call was transferred here. I took it. Singh and several other Hindu types came out of Wennsler’s lab to greet him. Jarvis says it was a very chummy reunion.”

Without a word, Clinton stepped to the desk and dialed the mobile operator, then added a coded leader for hookup to the mobile equipment. He got an imme diate connection, spoke briefly through the telephone, then hung up and turned to Honor with a grim smile.

“Jarvis says they’re all in the lab,” he reported. “A couple other cars should be joining him any minute. He says something is going on inside that lab, something involving high voltages. Says he can hear stuff humming from 200 yards away, lights are flashing and dimming, all that bit. I told him to maintain the watch and stay the hell out.” Clinton was moving toward the door. He broke the stride and looked back at Honor. “Well, come on,” he said, in light confusion. “Aren’t we going out there?”

Honor’s eyes were lifted in a thoughtful examination of the ceiling. “Where are the girls?” he asked quietly.

Clinton glanced at his watch. “They should still be home.”

Honor said, “Yes, they are. I just crossed Barb. They’ll wait for us there. We’ll pick them up on the way.”

“I don’t think that’s a…” Clinton squirmed in agitation. “Why take the girls, Pat?”

“Part of the plan,” Honor muttered. He turned to Wilkins. “You’ve got 45 minutes. Put the nation on disaster alert. Get as many people as possible out of the cities, but give us a ten minute lead… we can’t afford to get plugged in here. Then you take Angie down to the War Room and you stay there. You might get on the hot line and warn the other nations, also, for whatever good it will do.”

“It’ll be that bad?” Wilkins asked nervously.

Honor nodded emphatically. “It could be that bad. One miscalculation of my numbers, could open the very gates of hell. Get prepared for the worst.”

Wilkins pulled himself erect and took Honor’s hand. “Good luck,” he said simply. Then he shook Clinton’s hand and walked across the office with the two men.

He closed the door behind them, then retraced his steps to the desk, picked up the telephone, and gazed at it thoughtfully.

“What sort of emergency preparations do you make for the advent of hell?” he murmured. He shook his head, hung up the telephone, and depressed the master-net button on the intercom. “Everybody in here on the double-quick,” he barked. Then he released the button and added, under his breath, “The sky is falling.”

7: Hell’s Geometer

Barbara and Dorothy lolled unconscious in the back seat of the steamer. Clinton was behind the wheel of the speeding vehicle, casting dark glances at Honor who sat casually in the corner next to the door.

“Twenty minutes ‘til doomsday,” Clinton intoned dramatically.

Honor grinned. “What’s eating you?”

Clinton sighed and said, “Final doubts, I guess.”

“Doubts about what?”

“You can read my mind.” Clinton said warily. “So read it.”

Honor chuckled. “We’ve been a few years down the road together, Milt,” he said softly.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve valued your friendship. Thanks.”

Clinton shot him another dark look. “Sounds like a deathbed confession,” he said.

“Just want you to know how I feel. And, uh, let your doubts rest, Milt. We’re on the right side.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late to cop out now, anyway,” Clinton observed. “But… sometimes… it does seem that… you know what I mean. How do we know we’re on the right side?”

“It’s a matter of being on the side of truth, Milt.”

“You keep saying that. But how do you know? The difference between truth and error, I mean. We’ve sure been raising a lot of hell lately, Pat. I never was one to shout hosanna’s… but… well, hell, I never believed in selling my soul to the devil, either.”

Honor laughed and said, “You know better than that.”

“No, no I don’t. That’s just the hell of it. I don’t know better. Okay, so I’ve had some beautiful nooky, and I’ve been to an enchanting place that seemed like heaven and I was shown some more beautiful things there…and I was given the understanding that this was truth. But who gave me that understanding, Pat?” Clinton shivered lightly and glanced into the rearview mirror. “And now my wife is sitting back there in some sort of a trance, zooming about the world in some sort of light body, getting a lot of other people fired up to a sexual frenzy. I’m sorry, Pat, but I have to call it the way I see it. And I really don’t see truth all that clearly.”

“The sex bit has been bothering you all the way, hasn’t it,” Honor replied.

Clinton shrugged his shoulders. “Sex is a sacred thing, Pat. It isn’t easy to shake it off.”

“How sacred has it been for you, Milt, the past ten years or so, until just recently?” Honor asked softly.

“It’s been sacred,” Clinton said, angling a quick glance toward Honor.

“It’s been hell and you know it. Tell me something, Milt. When you see a couple of dogs going at it, do you see truth and beauty in that movement… or do you see something disgusting?”

“Dogs?” Clinton grinned suddenly. “Well, it depends on where they’re going at it.”

“God’s sake, Milt,” Honor said, “sex is the prime tool of creation. How can you love God and be revolted by sex? Where ever you see it?”

“I, uh, I feel a bit mixed-up about that,” Clinton admitted.

“Don’t take it to heart,” Honor advised. “Just look at truth and see it as it is… simple and uncomplicated. When truth moves into complications, then bet your ass the Rogue is there, juggling the facts. You start looking at sex—any kind of sex—between plants, insects, animals, or men—as the plan of God in action, then you’re going to see the unvarnished truth. Ten million hosannas aren’t going to get you as close to truth as one simple, uncomplicated little brush with beautiful nooky. You still confused?”

Clinton grinned and replied, “Yeah, but I’m resigned. Gotta have faith in something, I guess. I have faith in you, Pat.”

“Thanks.” Honor was genuinely warmed by the admission. He twisted about to gaze at the girls. “Look at that expression on Barb’s face,” he said. “She sure loves her work, doesn’t she.”

“Dotty too,” Clinton replied. “I guess that’s one of the things that’s been bugging me. She’s really carried away by this stuff.”

“It’s a woman’s essential nature,” Honor told him. “She’s the root center of creation.”

“Yeah,” Clinton said drily.

“You and Dotty ought to have some kids before you’re too old.”

Clinton threw him a surprised sideways glance. “Hell, we gave that idea up a long time ago. We’re already too old.”

“Oh hell no,” Honor replied.

Clinton studied his unconscious wife’s reflection in the mirror. “Well, we’ll see how things turn out,” he murmured.

Honor smiled and closed his eyes. “I can feel it already,” he said a moment later.

“You can feel what?”

“The field of error. It gets stronger with every mile we close on that lab. I think I’ll try a light probe into that mess out there. See what those guys are cooking up.”

“Be careful,” Clinton advised tensely.

Honor’s smile broadened and he relaxed more into the seat. His eyelids fluttered. The smile evaporated, his body jerked, and he lunged upright in the seat. “Damn!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?”

“Those nutty bastards!”

“What’re they doing?”

“They’ve got a numbers game of their own in progress. And artificially amplified.”

“I can’t imagine Wenssler doing anything—”

“Wait…” Honor gripped the seat with both hands and leaned toward the dashboard, his eyes closed and the lids quivering.

A moment later, Clinton cried, “Well Jesus Christ! Lookit that!”

Honor’s eyes jerked up and focused immediately on a billowing mass in the sky. “Uh-huh,” he breathed, “that’s just what I thought.”

“We’re almost there,” Clinton said excitedly. “Is that thing hovering over the farm?”

“That thing certainly is hovering above the farm,” Honor whispered. “And that thing, old buddy, is our friend the Rogue, objectified.”

“Oh, hell, how could that be?” Clinton yelled.

“Those dumb bastards have given him body,” Honor sighed.

The tremendous cloud, quickly analyzed by Honor as an ion mass, was in a fantastic mushroom development when the streamer bounced to a halt in the farm yard. They had been waved to a frantic halt on the lee side of the knoll by one of Clinton’s operatives.

“Don’t try to get any closer,” the operative excitedly advised. “That cloud is protecting the barn. Don’t ask me how, but it must be some kind of force field. A collie dog just wandered into it and was vaporized, whoosh!, like that.”

“What do you mean?” Clinton said. “The dog wandered into what?”

“I dunno, it was about 20 yards from the barn, and it flashed, and it was gone. I tossed a stick down there and the same thing happened to the stick.”

“It’s all right, Milt,” Honor said calmly. “We don’t need to get into the lab. The house will do fine.”

Clinton nodded, passed brief instructions to his operative, and threw the steamer into reverse. Then backed to the front of the house while Honor roused the women. The four of them leapt to the ground and ran to the house with nervous glances into the heavens. The huge mass seemed to be doubling rhythmically, growing in pulsing geometric progression.

“What in the world is that?” Dorothy cried.

“I’ll bet it can be seen from Washington,” Clinton yelled.

“Pat, what’s going on?” Barbara asked nervously.

Honor shoved them on through the doorway, saying, “No time to talk about it now. How’s your numbers?”

“Great!” Barbara replied breathlessly. “And geometrizing on the square!”

“I’ll have to go through you, Barb!” Honor said. He was scrambling out of his clothes. “Milt—you and Dotty ground us here. Now don’t let go. Barb—you stay at the gate.”

“Oh God, Pat, be careful!” Dorothy cried, fighting frantically with her clothing.

Honor grabbed her and kissed her, grinned at Clinton and punched him lightly on the shoulder, then picked up his own woman and bore her to the floor.

“Give me everything you’ve got, team,” he said. “You girls—bring those numbers to the gate! I’m swirling with ‘em—clear to hell!”

“Pat, darling, I love you,” Barbara gasped. “Let me go with you, all the way.”

“Nothing doing,” he grunted. “Come on, swing it, hurry, hurry.” His probe went out instantly to the Clintons and he gathered them into his field.

Get in step!

We’re with you Pat, from Milt Clinton.

We love us!, from the ready and shrieking Dorothy.

“Oh God, we’re one, we’re one!” Barbara moaned, and then she and Honor and the Clintons were swirling across the infinite sea. Their numbers began to swell immediately as other fields swirled in to join them, progressing geometrically in a continual expansion.

“Drop away,” Honor commanded. “And don’t worry, we’re stronger than error.” He left his partners at the geometer gate, bursting through to the other side with brilliant streamers of an erotic pyramid trailing behind, then swinging in a sharp arc into the geometer barrel of Rauhl Bey Singh.

Curt Wenssler was wondering if he was really doing the right thing. After all he had opposed Singh once — and look at the trouble that had brought him. After all, went his reasoning, no one could doubt that the little Hindu was a man of God—Wenssler had gone afoul of natural law because he’d failed to heed the warnings of Singh. And now that his former Master had offered to join unreservedly in the search for universal power, Wenssler was not too proud to once again assume the role of “student”. In the greater interests of science, what difference did it make which one did the leading? He did not pretend to understand the significance of the lab rearrangement. Singh had it all worked out even before Wenssler arrived—and Wenssler was grateful that Singh had rounded up the new volunteers. So what if they were Hindus? Who would be better equipped than these quiet little men with centuries of mind-control in their genes?

Wenssler sat in the special glass cubicle which Singh had prepared for him, and watchfully monitored the indications of the power controls. It certainly was curious… the way Singh had the lab set up now. All the lounges arranged in a circle, with Singh’s jutting out like a pointer, almost touching the tremendous filament. Wenssler wondered vaguely where Singh had managed to find a filament such as that. Well… the thing was underway… only time would tell now if he had been an idiot again.

Singh’s lounge was at full recline. The little Hindu was stretched out casually immobile, the electrodes on his head looking like insect antennae. Wenssler wondred what was going on. His finger moved to the next event on the checklist as the digital timer clicked along, then he moved the lever to again carefully double the power output. What was that Singh had said? We must move to protect the one God? Was that why Singh wanted to harness the power source? To turn it into a God? Wenssler chuckled drily. Oh well, he reasoned, there was no reason why God and Science could not co-exist.

And then Singh did something remarkable. He sat bolt upright on the recliner and clawed at the electrodes, tearing them away from his scalp in a most careless fashion. Then he began tearing at his clothes and threshing about, flipping onto his stomach and grinding his hips in a very lewd and suggestive manner. Curt Wenssler was shocked. Singh, in all the years Wenssler had known him, had been a faultless ascetic. And now the man was… was… Wenssler sighed and began scaling down the power output. Obviously something had gone wrong.

Honor boomed up through the geometer in a pyramidal ream, hesitating only slightly in the universe of Singh’s mind and then following the power flow with an explosive expansion. For a micro-instant he experienced Singh’s consternation as 81 powers of libido displacement roared through his consciousness, and then Honor was through and expanding into the Universal Subconscious. Powering at nine progressions beyond the speed of light, he reamed up through the barrel parallax and swirled with exploding powers into the Rogue’s assimilation chamber surfacing at the geometric center and flashing unhesitatingly for the first ring of universal memory. The ring wavered and parted at his approach, shock waves of malevolent energy tore at him momentarily and then the ring broke up and fell toward the center. Honor convoluted into a double helix and sighted out to the next ring. He was targeting directly on a rolling image of the French Revolution and Paris was in his gunsights as he swelled to the next progression. He became aware of pain and almost unendurable sadness and he could have sworn he heard a loud rumbling groan. He shook it off and bore on relentlessly in his invasion of the only God the world had ever known.

For nine seconds of earth history, the impossible became commonplace around the globe. Indians once again chased buffalo across the American plains, but this time through urban centers and, in at least one place, right through the substantial walls of a City Hall. Viking longboats were seen in the North Atlantic and a fleet of pirate vessels appeared briefly off the Virgin Islands. Pilgrims in the wartorn Holy Land swore that they saw Jesus carrying his cross through the streets. In France, a group of school children picnicking near the coastal cliffs claimed to have witnessed a band of cavemen battling a huge prehistoric beast. The inhabitants of a small Southern town in America viewed a 9-second reenactment of a Civil War battle, while in Mexico Pancho Villa rode again.

Residents of the mid eastern seaboard states panicked in reaction to a false nuclear alert, produced by the sudden appearance of a huge mushroom cloud which as suddenly disappeared to be replaced by an immense weather system that baffled weathermen. Washington and environs suffered a two-inch rainfall in less than 20 minutes, with resultant flash flooding, stalled traffic, and panicky motorists; otherwise, there seemed to be no adverse effects from the mushroom cloud.

Communications were disrupted around the world for a full nine seconds, and many jetliners reported erratic operations in flight during that period; again, however, no tragedies were reported.

In the days immediately following these strange incidents, a new atmosphere seemed to settle about the planet. Various warring nations exchanged peace feelers, a new ecumenical movement was launched within the several great world religions, and people everywhere remarked upon how nice their neighbors were behaving.

“I’ve scrambled him, Barb!” Honor exulted. “He’s falling apart all around me!”

“Pat… darling… I can’t hold on… much longer.”

Clinton cried, “Get back, Pat! The Rogue isn’t the only thing that’s falling apart!”

“God—I’m running out of gas,” Honor said, his thought-waves suddenly enfeebled. “Go on, Barb. Go on back.”

“I’m at… the gate,” she replied weakly. “I’m waiting.”

“No ..: don’t…” Honor was no more than a faint spark across a cosmic distance.

“Pat you get back here!” Dorothy screamed.

“Falling… falling…”

“Pat, darling, I’m… at the gate.”

“I’m coming in after you, Pat!” Clinton yelled.

“No, no… too late… too… Barb, God, Barb, I love…” The spark extinguished completely. A weak moan from Barbara seemed to punctuate the flare-out.

Dorothy was weeping hysterically and pushing at her husband. “Milt, they’re dead, they’re…” She pushed free of Clinton’s weight and rose to an elbow in a wild survey of the room. “Oh God!” she screamed. “Milt, oh my God, Milt—look at them!”

Clinton rolled to hands and knees and crawled to the other pair. He stared glassily for a brief moment, then turned a sick look to his wife. “Too much,” he whispered. “Too much for too long.”

“Th-they’re all b-burnt!” Dorothy wailed.

“I’d say fused,” Clinton replied. He reached out and touched Honor’s bare back, flinched, then moved an exploring hand to the joined planes of flesh, jerking it swiftly away in quick reaction. “Yeah,” he said, awed. “Fused.”

Flickering lights were dancing on the windows. “Wh-what’s that?” Dorothy asked.

Clinton got to his feet and staggered to the window.

“Oh hell,” he muttered. “It’s the barn. It’s an inferno.” He snatched at his pants and began struggling into them, lurching toward the door as he did so.

“What about Pat and Barb?” Dorothy moaned.

“Too late for them,” Clinton mumbled. “They’re gone.”

Milt Clinton made his sad-eyed report to the President, swore an oath of “to the grave” secrecy concerning the events of the previous few weeks, and took his weeping wife to their childless home in Georgetown.

“I don’t believe I can go in that house,” Dorothy said as they pulled into the driveway.

“There’s no place else to go,” Clinton replied bleakly. He went around and helped her out of the car. Her legs gave way completely at the doorway. Clinton had to lift her and carry her inside. “Call that symbolic of something,” he said. “After all these years of marriage, I finally carried my wife across the threshold.”

“Don’t say dumb things at a time like this,” Dorothy said.

He dropped her on the couch. “I just had to say something,” he explained. “Dumb or not. I felt like saying just that. From now on, Dotty, I intend to say just exactly whatever I feel like saying to you.”

“That’s nice,” she said. She brushed away a tear. “Say something clever like that at the wake, too, why don’t you.”

“What wake?”

Dorothy burst into new tears.

“You know one of the last things Pat told me?” Clinton said awkwardly. “He said we ought to have some kids. I think he’s right. We ought to have.”

“At a time like this,” Dorothy blubbered, “how can you talk about things like that.”

“It’s not as though they were dead, Dotty.”

“Well you’re just crazy,” she cried. “If they’re not dead, what are they?”

“If we’ve learned anything, Dotty, it’s that there’s no such thing as death. Now isn’t that right?”

“Well they’re dead to us,” she moaned. “That’s what counts. To us, Milt, Pat and Barb are dead!”

“Well I don’t give a shit about that!” Clinton declared. He pulled his wife to her feet and began to undress her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked indignantly.

“I’m taking your clothes off,” he told her.

“Why are you doing that?”

“I just suddenly felt like I wanted to. One for the road, eh?—for Pat and Barb’s road—a wake, Honor style, for Pat and Barb, eh? What say old woman? A grand sendoff for Pat and Barb?”

“Milt, you’re terrible,” she said. But she was unbuttoning his shirt. “Well… I guess… why not? I mean, yes, that seems highly appropriate. It isn’t death, is it Milt? It’s freedom, a special sort of freedom.”

“That’s right.” He pulled her into his arms. “We’ll celebrate their freedom with an exercise of ours.”

Dorothy sighed and said, “I guess I’d better take a pill.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“Well, I’d better. I’m already on overtime.”

“I said don’t do that.”

Dorothy sighed again and fell against him. “Shall we go upstairs?” she asked lazily.

“Let’s use Pat’s room. Eh?”

She nodded. “Okay. Pat’s room it is. One for the road, Pat. One for the road, Barb. Here’s to you guys.” As they entered the bedroom, she began crying again. “They’ll always be part of us, Milt,” she declared, trying to smile through the tears. “Isn’t that right? Wherever they are? They’ll always be right here with us.”

“I hope so, Dotty,” Clinton said soberly. He lifted her onto the bed and stared at her with melancholy eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, they always will be.”

8: The Harmonic

Arm in arm, Patrick Honor and Barbara Thompson approached Hadrin and Octavia. Hadrin stepped forward and embraced them, then moved back to give Octavia her turn.

“Mission accomplished, I believe,” Honor said smiling.

“Brilliantly so,” Hadrin replied, returning the smile.

“How’s the image?” Honor asked.

“Just very nearly perfect, I’d say,” Hadrin said.

“I mean the image beyond the image.”

Hadrin’s smile broadened. “Secure… for the moment. Yours was a tremendous victory, Honorkir. But there will be others.”

“All we won was a battle, then,” Honor observed, “… not the war.”

Hadrin nodded. “But a most significant battle. Why do you wear such a grievous face, my brother?”

“I’m pissed off because Barb and I died,” Honor replied. “I mean…” He shrugged and looked about him. “… this is a nice place, but… well, I think I could be a lot more effective out there. There’s a hell of a lot yet to be done… isn’t there?”

Hadrin and Octavia looked at each other and smiled. Octavia squeezed Barbara’s hand and said, “And you too, little sister? You share your brother’s assessment the situation?”

“I just want to be with Pat,” Barbara whispered. “I don’t care where it is.”

Hadrin gazed warmly at Honor, smiled the smile of divine mystery, and said, “There is no finality in death, Brother Honorkir. You may return, if that is truly your wish.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” Honor asked. His gaze flicked from Hadrin to Barbara. The message from each was unmistakable. He embraced Octavia while Hadrin and Barbara exchanged fond farewells. Then Hadrin took Honor’s hand, Octavia took Barbara’s, and they began a leisurely stroll across the blue meadow.

“This is the only way back now,” Hadrin announced, halting near a rapidly flowering geometer. “Look and decide. There is room for two. Hurry. You have but a microsecond.”

Honor and Barbara looked. Their eyes flashed with understanding. Barbara turned her gaze warmly to Honor and said, “Ohhh, the Clintons… yes, Pat, let’s.”

Honor’s eyes gave his reply. He embraced her and they swirled together through the sub-microscopic geometer.

“I’ll always love you,” Barbara sighed, in her final micro-instant of divine understanding.

“And I you,” Honor replied, “even though we know not who we are.”

The twin geometer split. Honor went his way, exploding up into a creative chaos of a new universe in unfoldment, and immediately forgot the world he had known as he threw all his energies into the staggering complexities of mitotic construction. As he expanded to assimilate the diverse activities of the exploding ovum, he even forgot who he’d been, from where he’d come, and why he had chosen to go through it all again. Barbara, too, became lost in the all-consuming subjectivity as she busied herself in the little-girl ovum just across the way.

Dorothy Clinton moaned softly in the close memory of ecstasy. She rubbed her husband’s back and whispered, “I just hope you know what you just did, old man. That one took, I know it did, I feel it.”

“How could you feel something like that,” Clinton asked, almost shyly. “There’s no difference, is there?”

She smiled langorously. “When you’ve had as many dry runs as this gal, daddy, well… yes, there’s a difference. It took. I’m had.”

“Well, I hope you’re right,” Clinton said, sighing.

“Me too, and I hope I have twins.”

“We’ll name them Pat and Barbara,” Clinton said, perking up delightedly.

“You know something, Mr. Clinton,” Dorothy said, “… after all these years of marriage, I have discovered something. I married an incurable romantic.”

“Aw, well…” Clinton colored and pulled the sheet up over his hips. “Twins would be too much to ask for. Tell you what, old woman. I’ll settle for anything human, okay? Just so it’s human.”

“How about a Godmaker?” Dorothy said teasingly.

“Ohgodohgod,” Clinton said. He fell back onto the pillow. “Anything but that,” he muttered.

Afterword—The Full Measure

Hadrin, the perfect man, and Octavia, the perfect woman stood quietly at the edge of the infinite sea. Hadrin gently rubbed her belly and said, “Well, we have grown a bit.”

“Yes,” Octavia agreed. She laughed, adding, “Quite a bit.”

“I believe I have that axiom worked out now,” Hadrin mused.

“Try it on me,” she suggested.

“Man is the measure of all that is, even of his God.”

Octavia clapped her hands with delight. “I like that,” she cooed.

“Me too,” Hadrin said soberly. He peered into the geometer of geometers. “Now… let’s see if we can catch someone’s attention with that one.”

Octavia leaned over to join the search. “Let’s see… there’s little Angie Linc—I mean, Wilkins.”

Hadrin frowned gently. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s only 12 years older than… and there always has been an attraction there and… well, why not, Octavia?”

“What was that axiom again?” Octavia asked.

“Man is the measure of all that is, even of his God.”

“Let’s add, and a woman is the measure of a man.”

“Good, good,” Hadrin applauded. “Let’s call it that way. Now… let’s see, Octavia, how do we get Angie?”

Table of Contents

Book I

Book II

Book III