I’M TOO BIG BUT I LOVE TO PLAY

Sorry, Jack. You’re right. Yes, I’m upset. No, it’s not the canipaign, for God’s sake the campaign is perfect. It’s not the crowds, either, I love them, Jack, you know that. Strain? sure it’s a strain, but—

Jack. Listen. Frightened. That’s what happened to Manahasset. Scared out of my mind. Because of, because of this feeling I get, this sensation. Too big! Every time now when things are going well, when I’m getting to them— the rapport, ifs working—all of a sudden this awful build-up starts, this sensation I’m swelling up too big. Terribly, ghastly too big! Listen, Jack: brain tumor.

Brain tumor.

I can’t go to a goddamn doctor now, there’s no way, they’d find out. I can’t tell Ellen. I can’t— Started? Oh, Christ, I know exactly when it started, it started after the Tobago weekend. At Tobago. That night. I know, you told me. But all I did was swim out and loaf around. Unwind. By myself. I had to, Jack. That’s when it started. The Monday after, at the Biloxi airport. You remember, I cut it off fast?

That was the first. The mayor, and that dot from Memphis, Dick Thing, you know, they were shouting questions, and the crowd started singing, and all of a sudden, Jack, I looked over at the mayor and you. And you were about two feet high, both of you. And the plane. Tiny! I couldn’t get into it! And this feeling, this churning—

Jack. Don’t. I know about infantile omnipotence. You don’t suddenly get delusions of infantile omnipotence at eleven-fifty on a Monday in Biloxi airport. Not unless there’s something physical. It’s physical, Jack. The bigness, the swelling, the—vortex—like I’m starting to explode, Jack. It’s got to be brain—

Alone of his kind, perhaps, he did not outgrow joy. Play-joy in the crowded galaxies, the nursery of his race. Others matured soon away from the pleasures of time and space and were to be found immensely solitary, sailing the dimensionless meadows beyond return. They did not know each other, nor he them. How could they? For him, still the star-tangles. To ride—how rich-riding the swirling currents between the stars! How various, the wild-swarm photons upon his sensors! And games could be invented:

For example—delicious!—to find some solitary little sizzler and breast close against its radiance, now tacking artfully, now close-hauled in the shadow of its planet, now out again to strive closer and closer to the furious little body, to gain the corona itself, to poise, gather—and then let go! Let all go! All sailing nucleus over ganglia out and out in a glory-rush—until that sun’s energy met another’s, and he was swept whirling down the star-streams to flounder roiled in some sidereal Sargasso.

Here he would preen and sort his nearly immaterial vastness, amusing himself with bizarre energic restructurings, waiting for a new photon-eddy to catch his vectors and billow him off again.

Sometimes what served him for perception gave him news that a young one of his kind was—or had been—following him. This lasted but briefly. They could not match his skill and would soon veer off. Of his equals he saw none. Was he alone of his age in his preoccupations? It did not occur to him to wonder. No member of his race had ever exchanged information. That he might be alone in his games of exostructure he did not know nor care, but played.

New games: resting behind a ball of matter on his approach to a red sun, his temporary nucleus snug in the shadow, his perimeter feathering out past the system turbulence—it occurred to him to invest his receptors more closely round the little ball’s surface. What he sensed there diverted him. Energy distributions—but tiny! And how complex!

He curled more closely around it, concentrating himself to the density of a noisy vacuum. Here was an oddity indeed: pockets of negative entrophy!

To him, as to all his race, the elaboration and permutation of field-energies was life. But he had never before conceived of energy-interaction of this density. And to conceive, with him, was not a passivity but a modeling. A restructurement into knowing. He hauled in a half-parsec of immaterial relatedness and began ineptly to experiment. Scarcely had he begun to concentrate when an incautious unbalancement exposed him to the red sun’s wind and sent him sweeping out of the system with his ganglia in disarray.

But what passed for memory among his kind persisted, and now and again he would hover to inspect a likely lump. And he found, oh, attractive, the patterns! A vast gamesomeness grew in him; he played Maxwell’s demon with himself, concentrating, differentiating, substreaming complex energy interchanges. Skill mounted, fed back to structure. He tackled subtle challenges. And on planetary surfaces where scaled, skinned or furry creatures focused dim sense-organs on the skies, one and another across the galaxy would be shaken by the sight of incorporealities vastwavering among the stars.

Shaken more especially, when they could recognize monstrous auroral versions of themselves. For technique was coming to obsess him. What had been play was becoming art. This phase culminated in the moment when he was fashioning—without in the least knowing it—a Sirian monitor shrimp family. His tension was great, and at its peak a resonance somehow ignited and held through the glorious backlash of release!

Greater feats! Were they possible? A new era of experimentation opened and claimed him.

High on the dunes of Lake Balkhash Natalia Brezhnovna Suitlov surveyed the beach, which was unfortunately deserted. Natalia cocked her white-blonde Baltic head. From the far side of the dune, faint but throbbing: music. Not the most advanced, but promising.

Natalia strolled a bit higher, studying the lake. She paused. Face sun-rapt, she stretched prolongedly. Then one hand dropped absently to the knot of her diaper. With fluent ease, first the diaper and then Natalia slowly sank from sight into a hollow.

Here she disposed her bronze body for maximum sun. The music ceased. Natalia hummed a few beats, husky but true.

From the far side of the dune came a scrabbling. Natalia’s eyelids drooped. A bullet-shaped shadow appeared in the grass at the top of the dune. Natalia’s expression became very severe.

For a long moment the tension-system held beautifully. The receptors in the bullet-head belonging to Timofaev Gagarin Ponamorenko focused upon Natalia. Natalia radiated strongly back. The system grew, recruited.

Action became imperative. Timofaev gave a perfunctory glance around—and inhaled yelpingly.

A hundred meters up the little ridge something huge was happening. Part of it was a gassy figure resting on the ground in Natalia’s same posture. It was Natalia—but fifty meters long and obscenely distorted. Giant-Natalia solidified, took on color. But it was not alone! On the ridge above it, a great head—Timofaev’s head—and his hands —and—

Natalia herself was up in a crouch and staring too. The giant head of Timofaev lacked hair, the hands lacked arms, they were floating in the air. And floating behind them were other portions of Timofaev, partly unrecognizable, part plain as a pikestaff—those portions of his being which had been energetically and reciprocally resonant with Natalia.

The youngsters screamed together and the monstrous images began to boil. Sand, air and grass rose whirling, and the dune imploded round them in thunder.

SOMETHING WRONG! WITHDRAW! REDEFINE SYSTEM!

Guerero Galvan swung his legs against his burro and gazed sourly down into the great barranca beside the trail. He was hot and dry and dusty. When he was rich he would ride to Xochimilicho in a private avion. But when he was rich he would not live in Xochimilicho. Very surely, he would live in a concrete palace full of girls at Mazatlan, by the sea. The sea? Guerero considered the sea. He had never seen it. But all ricos loved the sea. The sea was full of girls.

The burro hobbled on. Guerero kicked it reflexively, squinting at the trail ahead.

Coming toward him was another rider.

Guerero prodded his mount. The trail was narrow here, and the stranger was large. He too was prodding his mount, Guerero saw. But where had he come from? The trail had been clear to the pass a few moments before. He must have dozed.

As they came abreast Guerero raised three ringers in a studiedly casual greeting. The stranger did likewise. Guerero came fully awake, began to stare. There was something odd here. A diligent student of the mirror, Guerero saw that the stranger, though larger, looked very much like himself.

“Bueno,” he muttered, tracing his own dark, slightly adenoidal features, his own proud gold glitter of biscuspid. And the burro—the same! The same tattered blanket! He crossed himself.

“Bueno,” said the stranger, and crossed himself.

Guerero took one long look and began to scream prayers, hauling, wrestling his animal, flailing his legs. Next moment he had leaped free and was racing down the trail.

The voice had been his own voice, but it had come from the burro.

Careening, Guerero risked a look behind and redoubled his speed. The false Guerero-devil was trying to dismount too—but the flesh of its legs seemed to be joined to the sides of the devil-burro. Behind the devils the mountain was convulsing. Guerero flung himself into a gully and cowered while trail, pass and devils vomited themselves into fee sky.

MISTAKE! WITHDRAW! SUBCIRCUTTS IMPRECISE!

Through the noise of his party Ches Mencken was keeping one ear on the moonlit terrace. Majorca moonlight could get chilly. The three couples who’d gone skinny-dipping with Elfa had come dripping and giggling back and were applying themselves to the juice. Where was Elfa?

He mixed rock-vodkas, peeking at the electroquartz timepiece in the wide reptilian band around his wide mammalian wrist. Thirty-five minutes. He jerked his jaw clear of the turtleneck and pressed a glass into La Jones’ steamy paw. She breathed at him. Sorry, Jones-baby, Elfa is my score… Where the hell is she?

Jones-baby gurgled through her hair. Those earrings are real. But Elfa’s got all that glue. Pity Jones doesn’t fall on his head and leave you with the basic Xerox, things might be different for you and me, know that?

Automatically his eyes gave her the message: You— me—different—

Only it wouldn’t be, he thought. It’d be the same old ratass. Christ but he was tired! Whacked out…. Young cunt, old cunt, soft, sinewy, bouncy, bony, wriggly, lumpy, slimy, lathery, leathery cunt squeaking shrieking growling —all of them after him, his furry arms, his golden masculinity, his poor old never-failing poker—Oh Ches I’ve never oh Ches it’s so it’s oh Ches oh Darling darling darlingdarlingdarling—

Wonder what it’d be like to go gay? Restful, maybe, he brooded, checking bottles. Better yet, go off the juice onto pot. They say you don’t, with pot. After he landed Elfa that’s what he’d do: go on pot and retire. Surprise for Elfa. Only, where was Elfa?

Oh God no.

A pale form was wavering about the moonlit terrace. Not a stitch on and slugged. She must have had a bottle down there.

He disengaged fast and raced around through the bedroom, snatching up a rebozo.

“Darling you’ll get chilled!” Capturing her in the wool lace, leading her into the bedroom. She was slugged all right but not out.

“Don’t know… clothes? What this?”

“Warm you, baby. What a doll, num-num—”

Automatically moving in, his expert hands. Really a damn good stack for her age, she’s kept herself up. Careful, now. Mustn’t upset her. With Elfa it’s got to be love. Elfa is special. Elfa is the retirement plan.

“Ches!”

“Sorry baby, I’ll be good,”

“No, I mean, I feel so—Ches!”

“Little girl, you’re—”

“Ches, so intimate, I never—I mean, I loved Maxwell terribly, you know I did, Ches?”

“Yes, little heart?”

“But he never, I never! Oh, Ches—”

Oh God it was the pitch, he saw, and that damn crowd outside. They’d have to go. Life or death.

“—Drink this down for Ches, Ches wants you to drink it so you won’t get chilled, see? My little girl sit down right here just one minute, Ches is coming right back—”

“Ches—”

As he closed the door she was saving plaintively, “Ches, why am I so big? So terribly, terribly—”

Somehow he got them out. She was sipping and crooning to herself where he’d put her.

“Li’l bitsy!”

“Ches loves you.”

“Ches! Li’l bitsy moon!”

“Li’l bitsy you, m’m m’m.” Taking the glass, carrying her to the bed, she saying again, “Ches, I’m so big! Li’l you!”

He didn’t hear her. This was serious, this was make or break. She’d remember tomorrow, all right. It had to be the big tiling. Was she too drunk? Her head lolled. O Jesus. But his technique was good. Presently he knew he needn’t have worried. She was coming into it beautifully, puffing and panting. The nose knows. Mellow relief; I am good. Maybe I should be some kind of guru, give lessons.

She was gabbling incoherently, then suddenly plain. “Oh Ches I’m getting bigger!” Real panic?

“It’s good, honey,” he panted. “It’s what you want, let it happen, let it happen to you—”

He didn’t register the white figure wavering on the terrace outside until it stumbled into the glass and began to mouth. He glanced up, blurry—it was Elfa out there! Haw Elfa? No! ELFA?

The thrashing in his arms went rigid, arched.

“Ches I’m go-oo-ing explo-OO-OOO—”

Under intolerable stress the nebulous extension which had been compressed into a mimic of the woman by the water reverted to its original state. A monstrous local discontinuity comprising—among other things—the subatomic residuals of an alligator watchband, bloomed into the thermosphere from the Majorca cliffs.

NEW ERROR! ONE-TO-ONE INTERMIX? OOH HOW MORE?

Standing on the wet rocks, helit laughed. Laughing helit laughed more. To feel! To know feeling! To know knowing! A past flooded in—voices—speech-patterns—events —concepts—MEANING! Laughter roared.

The little subsystem was right! It worked. It lived!

But the little system was not right. The system was under strain, it demanded closure. It demanded to be itself, be whole. Something was outside, disequilibrating it, intruding alien circuits. The little system had integrity, it would not be a subsystem. It fought the disequilibrium, hauled and pulled on the incongruent gap.

He fought back, idly at first, then strenuously—fighting to keep his nucleus outside, to retain the system subsystem hierarchy. It was too late, no good.

Soundless as a soap-film snapping, the great field reorganized. The system inverted, closed and came to equilibrium with everything crammed in.

But it was not the same equilibrium.

…The moonlit surf creamed and hissed quietly around the rocks at his feet. Something he did not examine floated further out. Aftr a moment he lifted his head to watch the little moon slicing cirrus cloud. The breeze dried his skin. He felt an extraordinary… Pleasure? Pride?

Perhaps that he was still young enough to break a business trip with an impromptu swim?

He began to climb up the rocks. Beneath the pleasure was something else. Pain? Why was he so confused? Why had he come here? Surely not just for an idle swim. Not now. But yet he was happy. He let himself slide into pleasure as he found his clothes, dressed.

Dressing himself was actively enjoyable; he’d never noticed. A moment of panic seized him as he climbed back to Overlook 92 where he had left his car. But it was there, safe. With his briefcase.

Images of the spinning surf, the streaming clouds, wheeled in his mind as he drove, merged with the swirl of the car as the huge coastal cloverleaf carried him up and around over and dip down through the mercury lights flashing—sweeping—

Ooee-ooee-ooee! went his signaler. As his power cut the cop rolled in beside him. He answered automatically, produced his papers. The interchange excited him. It seemed delicious to see the cop’s thick lips murmuring into his ’corder. From ID card through the eyes through the brain through the sound-waves through the ’corder tape pulse—

“Who reads the tape?” he asked.

The officer stared at him, tight-lipped.

“Does a human being listen to it? Or does it go to another machine?”

“Where did you say you’re going, Doctor, uh, Mitchell?”

“I told you. San Berdoo Research. My meeting up north ended early, I decided to drive back. Fine night.”

In fact, he remembered now, he had been unspeakably depressed.

“Doing one fifty in a ninety kay-em zone. Keep it down.” The cop turned away.

Mitchell—he was Mitchell—drove on frowning. His dashboard needles fanned, dial lights blinked. Giving him information. The car communicated with him, one way. Whether it wanted to or not.

I was like the car, he thought. He made me communicate with him one-way. There was a roiling inside him. Where is the circuit, he wondered.

He raced on through the night, communications springing at him. Right lane must turn right, he read. Food gas lodging next exit. His black mood lifted. Green-to-red, green-to-amber, flashing-amber, All-Night Funeral Home. He laughed aloud.

He was still grinning when the garage opened to his beeper and the house door opened to his thumb. The house was dark, silent. He expected that, he realized. His wife was visiting her mother. Eleanor.

But his wife’s name was not Eleanor, his wife was Audrey.

Depression descended. Suddenly he saw he had been evading reality. Swimming and playing games with the cops instead of doing the serious thinking he had planned to do. Before tomorrow’s meeting.

He turned out the lights and lay on the bed, trying to concentrate. There were paragraphs in his mind. Other things. He must concentrate. The moon set. It grew darker, and presently, very slowly, lighter. He failed to notice that he did not sleep. When the little sun rose he got up and redressed.

The San Bernardino lot was still quite empty when he pulled in; the guards seemed surprised to see him. His office, though, was sunny. Did not need light. He found the files.

His secretary came in at eight-thirty tip-toeing.

“Miss Mulm,” he said brightly. He pushed the files away.

“Yes sir?” She was instantly wary, a small, dark, softlipped girl.

“Sir?” he echoed. “Indicating deference, subordination… are you afraid of me, Miss Mulm?”

“Why, no, Dr. Mitchell.” Staring gravely, shaking her dark head.

“Good. There’s too much of that sort of thing. Too much one-way communication. No> true interaction. Entropic. Don’t you feel it?”

“Well, I guess… uh—”

“Miss Mulm. You’ve been with me five years now. Since before I was Director. You came over from the department with me.”

She nodded, watching him intently: yes.

“Have you any feelings about the sort of work we do here?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Doctor Mitchell.”

“Do you—well, do you approve of it?”

She was silent. Wary. But somehow brimming.

“I—of course I don’t understand all of it, not really. But it—it seems more military than I expected. I mean, Colonel Morelake, I guess—”

“And you don’t feel quite right about military-type research?”

“Doctor Mitchell,” she said desperately, “if you think it’s all right—”

Her eyes, face brimmed, communicating information.

“My God,” he said slowly, studying her. “Do you think I think—does everybody here think I—No. You can’t answer that, of course. I guess I, since Hal’s been away I’ve been doing some—” He broke off.

“Miss Mulm! Does it strike you that we are engaged in a most peculiar interaction process?”

She made a helpless confused noise.

“On the one hand we’re discussing, verbally, the work of this institution. Arid at the same time there is another quite different communication taking place between us. Without words. Are you aware of that? I feel it has been going on for some time, too. Don’t you think so? By the way, my name is Colin.”

“I know,” she said, suddenly not confused at all.

He came closer and slowly, experimentally, reached his hands and arms out along the force-lines of the emergent system. The system of two.

“Eleanor,” he said. The system tightened, connected body to body, changing both. His body began to move along the field stresses. It felt wonderful. It felt resonant. Resonances tuned, building to oscillation. Feedback began to drive—swelled stress—

“Eleanor!” He was galvanized with delicious danger. “Eleanor—I—”

“Yes Colin!” Brimming at him, five years of small, dark very intense—

“I—I—I—” Bracing against the forcefield’s bulge, “What?”

“The intercom! They—they—it’s tune, Doctor Mitchell!”

“Oh.” It was flashing, buzzing, down there very small and far away. The… the meeting. Yes. What the hell had hit him. Damp. Damp the circuits. The room came back. And the paragraphs.

He was quite himself when the staff meeting opened. The project leaders, as usual, led off with their reports. There were eighteen bodies and an empty chair: the fourteen project directors, Admin, Security, Colonel Morelake, himself and the empty chair for his deputy Hal, on leave at Aspen. The reports were officially being made to him as Director, but most of the speakers seemed to be talking directly to Colonel Morelake. Again as usual.

Jim Morelake bore a disarming resemblance to a robin. A slim, neat robin with a perfectly good PhD and lots of charm. He bobbed his head in obviously genuine interest at each report. When old Pfaffman got into a tangled complaint—this time to Mitchell—Morelake spoke up.

“Colin, I believe I know where we can get some computer time to help Max.”

Pfaffman grunted without looking at him and subsided.

That wound up the routine. They looked at Mitchell.

“About Cal Tech North,” Colin Mitchell said. “I spent over six hours with Will Tenneman yesterday, before and after the general meeting. Essentially he was very ready to deal, provided we can work out the details of the grant allocations, and I feel they’ll be reasonable. In fact, there was so little to talk over until we get down to specifics that I came back early. I think the main thing that was worrying him was parking space.”

That brought the ritual chuckle.

“However,” Mitchell went on. “There’s something bothering me. This business brings it to a head. The Cal Tech North link-up is completely logical and desirable, provided we continue as we have been going. I’d like to do a little review. As you all know, especially those of you who have been here from the start—” He paused, momentarily aware of how many new faces were around him.

“This group was set up as an independent research facility annex to the university proper. It was our role to service a wide spectrum of basic research projects which could attract special funding arrangements. We started with eight projects. Two were medical, one was a short-term data analysis on traffic fatalities, another was historical, two were interdepartment teams in the anthro-sociology area, one was concerned with human developmental and learning processes, and one was an applied project in education. Of these, four were funded by N.I.H., one by private industry, one by the Department of Commerce, one by N.S.F., and one by the Department of Defense. Right?”

A few heads nodded, old Pfaffman’s the hardest. Two of the younger men were staring oddly.

“At the present time,” Mitchell went on, “we have increased to fourteen projects in hand. There has been a threefold increase in personnel, and a commensurate growth in support facilities. Of these fourteen projects, one is funded by N.I.H., three by private industry, and Commerce is still continuing the traffic study. The rest, that is nine, are funded by the Department of Defense.”

He paused. The empty chair beside him seemed to be significant. Things were different without Hal. He had chosen Hal, relied on him as an energizer. And yet—was it since Hal’s time that the D.O.D. connections had tightened?

“Everyone is, of course, very pleased,” he said heavily. “But I wonder how many of us have taken time to analyze these projects, which we live with daily. If you stand back, as I have been doing over this past week, and classify them very naively from the standpoint of their ultimate product, I think it is fair to say that five of them have no conceivable application except as means to injure or destroy human life. Three more probably have no other application, although they may yield a small return in basic knowledge. That’s eight. Number nine is devoted to the remote electrical control of human behavior. Ten and eleven are exploring means for the sterilization of plants. Twelve and thirteen are limited engineering problems in metallic structure. The last is one of the original—I might say, surviving—projects concerned with human cognitive development.”

That was Pfaffman. He was looking at his hands.

“When we link up with Cal Tech North,” Mitchell went on, “when and if we link up with Cal Tech North, this imbalance will be intensified. I am not f amiliar with their entire panel, since so much of it is classified. But they are entirely funded by D.O.D.”

The silence was absolute. Colonel Morelake’s eyes were on the table, his expression attentive. Even sympathetic.

Mitchell took a breath. Up to now his voice had been light and controlled, as if reciting a long-prepared speech. He went on, still quietly.

“I would like to have your comments.”

One or two heads moved. Feet shifted. One of the younger men—the neural impulse broadcaster—let his teeth click audibly. No one said a word.

The pulse under Mitchell’s ear began to pound. The wrangles—the free-for-alls that had gone on around this table! How had he let things drift so far? He leaned back, his elbow on the empty chair.

“I’m surprised,” he said, still mildly. “Let me remind you of the way we set up. Perhaps some of you haven’t read the charter. It calls for periodic reviews of our program—our whole program—giving each of you as project head a voice, a vote if you like, in evaluating what it regrettably refers to as the thrust or the social impact of our work. As Director, I have two votes—three, with Hal away. Gentlemen, I am calling for your evaluation.”

Three men cleared their throats simultaneously. Mitchell looked toward Bill Enders, one of the phytocide biologists.

“Well, Colin,” Enders said awkwardly. “Each of these projects was discussed, at the tune of initiation. I… I frankly don’t quite see-—”

There were several nods, a shuffling release of tension. Morelake, as a non-voting consultant, kept his eye on his papers throughout.

Mitchell drew a breath.

“I confess I am surprised that no one sees anything to discuss here.” His voice sounded oddly thick in his own ears.

“Colin.” A crisp voice; Chan Boden, biochemist was the oldest man present bar Pfaffman, with a lush, longterm grant.

“One sees what you mean, of course, Colin. These problems in values, social responsibility. It’s always been a difficult aspect. I’m sure all of us maintain awareness of, for example, the triple-A. S. ventilations of the problem. In our private lives,” he smiled warmly, “we all undoubtedly do a bit of soul-searching from time to tune. But the point is that here, in our professional personae, we are scientists.”

The magic word; there was audible relaxation.

“That is exactly the point.” Mitchell’s voice was dead level. “We are scientists.” This too was in the paragraphs, this had been expected. But why were the paragraphs fading? Something about the way they refused to respond. He shook bis head, heard himself plow on.

“Are we doing science, here? Let’s get down to basics. Are we adding to man’s sum total knowledge? Is knowledge merely a collection of recipes for killing and subjugating men, for eliminating other species? A computerized stone axe? I’m not talking about the horrors of gore and bloodshed, mind you. The hell with that—some bloodshed may be a fine thing, I don’t know. What I mean—”

He leaned forward, the paragraphs all gone now, the pound in his neck building.

“Entropy!. The development of reliable knowledge is anti-entropic. Science’s task in a social system is comparable to the function of intelligence in the individual. It holds against disorganization, oscillation, noise, entropy. But we, here—we’ve allied ourselves with an entropic subsystem. We’re not generating structure, we’re helping to degrade the system!”

They were staring, rigid.

“Are you accusing me of being a virus particle, Conn?” Jim Morelake asked gently.

Mitchell turned on him, eager for connection. The room seemed momentarily clearer.

“All right, Jim, if you’re their spokesman now. You must see it. The military argument. Biotic agents—because the other side has. Mutagenesis—because they may get it first. But they know we do it, and so they—Christ! This is at the ten-year-old level. Runaway forward oscillation!”

He was fighting himself now, peering down at the dwindling table.

“You’re a scientist, Jim. You’re too good a man to be used that way.”

Morelake regarded him gravely. Beside him Jan Evans, an engineer, cleared his throat.

“If I understand you, Colin, and I’m not sure that I do, perhaps it might help if you gave us an example of the kind of project you feel is, ah, anti-entropic?”

Mitchell saw Pfaffman freeze. Was the old man afraid he would cite his work? Afraid? The awful churning rose in his gut.

“Right,” he said clumsily. “Of course, one can’t, at a moment’s notice but here—communication! Two-way communication. Interlocking flow.” He felt suddenly better. “You can understand why a system would seek information—but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful? Look at it—a process that ties the whole damn human system together, and we don’t know fact one about it!”

This was good! Panting with relief, shining-eyed, Mitchell searched from face to face for what must be coming. At the edge of his mind he noticed the Admin man was by the door. He didn’t count.

“Fascinating idea, Colin,” Morelake said pleasantly. “I mean, it truly is seminal. But let’s go back one moment What exactly are you suggesting that we do?”

Annoyance tugged at him. Why didn’t the others speak? Something wrong. The swelling feeling came back, rose hard.

“That we stop all this,” he said thickly. “Close out the damned projects and kiss off D.O.D. Forget Cal Tech North. Get out and hustle some real research.”

Someone gave a snort of amusement. Mitchell looked round slowly in the silence. They seemed to be down there below him, the little faces—hard and blank as that cop’s. Only old Pfaffman and the lad whose teeth clicked— they looked scared. The swirling grew inside him, the pound of seeking resonance. Why would they not respond? Mesh, relieve the charge that was hunting wildly in him, straining the system?

“You won’t even discuss it,” he said with terrible urgency. Dimly he saw that two little guards had come into the shrinking room.

“Colin, this is very painful,” said Morelake’s voice from the pulsing roil.

“You’re going to pretend I’m sick,” his own voice chattered. Pygmy guards were closing on him, reaching out. Faces were in the doorway now. One small dark head. Incongruous newspaper in her hand: Eleanor Mulm had been reading that the nude body of a man identified as Dr. Colin Mitchell had been found on the rocks below coastal lookout 92.

“Believe me, Colin, this is very painful,” Morelake was saying to the choking thing that looked like Mitchell.

“Entropy!” it gasped, fighting hard. “We must not!”

The guards touched him. The human circuits—the marvelously dense gestalt he had modeled from the man-system floating in the sea—retained its human integrity long enough to make him yell:

“ELEANOR! RUN! RU—UU—UU—”

—And the strained equilibrium ruptured.

The huge energy which had been stressed into the atomic lattice of a human body reverted back to immaterial relatedness and blossomed toward Vega from a point in Lower California. The resulting implosion degraded much of San Bernardino County, including Colonel Morelake, Pfaffman, the S.B.R. Institute, and Eleanor Mulm.

—and he came finally to equilibrium among the stars.

But it was not the same equilibrium…

What served him for memory had learned the circuitry of self-consciousness. What served him as emotion had sampled the wonder of communication between systems, the sharing of structure.

Alone of his lonely race, he had touched and been touched, essayed to speak and been heard.

Reforming himself, he perceived that the nuclear portions of his being were still caught against the little planet by the solar wind—naturally, since the eversion had occurred at noon. It was no trouble to balance there on the standing wave.

He considered for a time, as his distributions stabilized. Then zestfully, for he was a joyful being, he let the radiance take him, swerved out and around to the haven of the planet’s shadow. Here he hung idle his immense periphery feathered out to the nearby stars. He preened new structural resonances, tickled by wandering wavicles.

Then he began to scan the planetary surface, tasting, savoring the play of tiny structurances. But it was different now. Somewhere in his field gradients, impalpable residuals of the systems he had copied lingered on. An astronomer in the Andes found something like a burro on his plates of Beta Carinae and chewed out his darkroom aid. A Greek farmer saw the letters ELBA glimmering in Scorpio, and carried corn and laurel to a certain cave.

The planet turned, the continents passed into the shadow where he hung, a lonely vastness slightly other than a vacuum. Playing his random scan, relishing energic intricacies. Feeling in what was not a heart a huge and capricious yearning which built and faded erratically, now so fault that he let himself diffuse almost to where the currents would whirl him eternities away, now so strong that he focused to a point on one human creature alone for a moment in the open night.

Temptation grew, faded, grew in him again. Would he? Again?… He would. Which?… Water; they were often by water, he had found. But which? This one, who played … was it music?… on the shore? He was seeking, he recalled now, a communicator. The world turned, carried the music-maker away. One who… spoke?… and was received, respoken. A linker. One-one? Or why not one-many? Was it possible? Restlessly, he drew a few parsecs of himself into the system, spelled D.O.D. in colliding photons, and began more intently to search for something to become.

—tumor. That’s what scares me, Jack. Everything gets small. It’s so real—Headaches? No, no headaches, why? No colored haloes on things, either. Personality change? I wouldn’t know, would I? You be the judge, I don’t think so. Except for the fear. Jack, I tell you, it’s physical! The interaction starts, the rapport—that terrific feeling that we’re really communicating—all those people, I’m with them. Agh, we don’t have words for it. Do we? And then this other thing starts, this swelling—the bigness, I mean BIG, Jack. Big like bigger than houses, bigger than the sun maybe! Like the interaction feeds it, it’s going to burst, it’s going to kill everybody—

All right, Jack. All right.

If you think so. I know it sounds crazy, that’s why— Do you honestly? Do you think so? That’s true, I don’t have headaches. I’ve heard that too. Maybe I— Yes, I know I can’t quit now. You’re so right. But I have to take a day off, Jack. Cancel something. Cancel that Dartmouth thing, it’s entropic anyway. Useless, I mean. We’ve got to take a day and hole up somewhere and rest. You’re right, Jack. You fix it. Before we tackle Dallas.

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