"_You are mad_," said the man with the tired voice.
I was drifting. I was swaying, bodiless, over a huge abyss of caverned
space; chasmed, immense, limitless. Vaguely, through a sleeping
distance, I heard two voices. This one was old and very tired.
"You are mad. They will know. Narayan will know."
"Narayan is a fool," said the second voice.
"Narayan is the Dreamer," the tired voice said. "He is the Dreamer, and
where the Dreamer walks he will know. But have it your way. I am very
old and it does not matter. I give you this power, freely--to spare
you. But Gamine--"
"Gamine--" the second voice stopped. After a long time, "You are old,
and a fool, Rhys," it said. "What is Gamine to me?"
Bodiless, blind, I drifted and swayed and swung in the sound of the
voices. The humming, like a million high-tension wires, sang around
me and I felt myself cradled in the pull of a great magnet that
held me suspended surely on nothingness and drew me down into the
field of some force beneath. Far below me the voices faded. I swung
free--fell--plunged downward in sickening motion, head over heels, into
the abyss....
My feet struck hard flooring. I wrenched back to consciousness with a
jolt. Winds blew coldly in my face; the cabin walls had been flung back
to the high-lying stars. I was standing at a barred window at the very
pinnacle of a tall tower, in the lap of a weird blueness that arched
flickeringly in the night. I caught a glimpse of a startled face, a
lean tired old face beneath a peaked hood, in the moment before my
knees gave way and I fell, striking my head against the bars of the
window.
I was lying on a narrow, high bed in a room filled with doors and bars.
I could see the edge of a carved mirror set in a frame, and the top
of a chest of some kind. On a bench at the edge of my field of vision
there were two figures sitting. One was the old grey man, hunched
wearily beneath his robe, wearing robes like a Tibetan Lama's, somber
black, and a peaked hood of grey. The other was a slimmer younger
figure, swathed in silken silvery veiling, with a thin opacity where
the face should have been, and a sort of opalescent shine of flesh
through the silvery-sapphire silks. The figure was that of a boy or a
slim immature girl; it sat erect, motionless, and for a long time I
studied it, curious, between half-opened lids. But when I blinked, it
rose and passed through one of the multitudinous doors; at once a soft
sibilance of draperies announced return. I sat up, getting my feet to
the floor, or almost there; the bed was higher than a hospital bed. The
blue-robe held a handled mug, like a baby's drinking-cup, at me. I took
it in my hand hesitated--
"Neither drug nor poison," said the blue-robe mockingly, and the voice
was as noncommittal as the veiled body; a sexless voice, soft alto, a
woman's or a boy's. "Drink and be glad it is none of Karamy's brewing."
I tasted the liquid in the mug; it had an indeterminate greenish look
and a faint pungent taste I could not identify, although it reminded me
variously of anise and garlic. It seemed to remove the last traces of
shock. I handed the cup back empty and looked sharply at the old man in
the Lama costume.
"You're--Rhys?" I said. "Where in hell have I gotten to?" At least,
that's what I meant to say. Imagine my surprise when I found myself
asking--in a language I'd never heard, but understood perfectly--"To
which of the domains of Zandru have I been consigned now?" At the same
moment I became conscious of what I was wearing. It seemed to be an
old-fashioned nightshirt, chopped off at the loins, deep crimson in
color. "Red flannels yet!" I thought with a gulp of dismay. I checked
my impulse to get out of bed. Who could act sane in a red nightshirt?
"You might have the decency to explain where I am," I said. "If you
know."
The tiredness seemed part of Rhys voice. "Adric," he said wearily. "Try
to remember." He shrugged his lean shoulders. "You are in your own
Tower. And you have been under restraint again. I am sorry." His voice
sounded futile. I felt prickling shivers run down my backbone. In spite
of the weird surroundings, the phrase "under restraint" had struck
home. I was a lunatic in an asylum.
The blue-robed one cut in in that smooth, sexless, faint-sarcastic
voice. "While Karamy holds the amnesia-ray, Rhys, you will be
explaining it to him a dozen times a cycle. He will never be of use
to us again. This time Karamy won. Adric; try to remember. You are at
home, in Narabedla."
I shook my head. Nightshirt or no nightshirt, I'd face this on my feet.
I walked to Rhys; put my clenched hands on his shoulders. "Explain
this! Who am I supposed to be? You called me Adric. I'm no more Adric
than you are!"
"Adric, you are not amusing!" The blue-robe's voice was edged with
anger. "Use what intelligence you have left! You have had enough
_sharig_ antidote to cure a _tharl_. Now. Who are you?"
The words were meaningless. I stared, trapped. I clung to hold on to
identity. "Adric--" I said, bewildered. That was my name. Was it?
Wasn't it? No. I was Mike Kenscott. Hang on to that. Two and two are
four. The circumference equals the radius squared times pi. Four rulls
is the chemming of twilp--_stop that!_ Mike Kenscott. Summer
1954. Army serial number 13-48746. Karamy. I cradled my bursting head
in my hands. "I'm crazy. Or you are. Or we're both sane and this
monkey-business is all real."
"It is real," said Rhys, compassion in his tired face. "He has been
very far on the Time Ellipse, Gamine. Adric, try to understand. This
was Karamy's work. She sent you out on a time line, far, very far into
the past. Into a time when the Earth was different--she hoped you would
come back changed, or mad." His eyes brooded. "I think she succeeded.
Gamine, I have long outstayed my leave. I must return to my own
tower--or die. Will you explain?"
"I will." A hint of emotion flickered in the voice of Gamine. "Go,
Master."
Rhys left the room, through one of the doors. Gamine turned impatiently
to me again. "We waste time this way. Fool, look at yourself!"
I strode to a mirror that lined one of the doors. Above the crimson
nightshirt I saw a face--not my own. The sight rocked my mind. Out of
the mirror a man's face looked anxiously; a face eagle-thin, darkly
moustached, with sharp green eyes. The body belonging to the face that
was _not_ mine was lean and long and strongly muscled--and not
quite human. I squeezed my eyes shut. This couldn't be--I opened my
eyes. The man in the red nightshirt I was wearing was still reflected
there.
I turned my back on the mirror, walking to one of the barred windows
to look down on the familiar outline of the Sierra Madre, about a
hundred miles away. I couldn't have been mistaken. I knew that ridge
of mountains. But between me and the mountains lay a thickly forested
expanse of land which looked like no scenery I had ever seen in my
life. I was standing near the pinnacle of a high tower; I dimly saw the
curve of another, just out of my line of vision. The whole landscape
was bathed in a curiously pinkish light; through an overcast sky I
could just make out, dimly, the shadowy disk of a watery red sun.
Then--no, I wasn't dreaming, I really did see it--beyond it, a second
sun; blue-white, shining brilliantly, pallid through the clouds, but
brighter than any sunlight I had ever seen.
It was proof enough for me. I turned desperately to Gamine behind me.
"Where have I gotten, to? Where--_when_ am I? Two suns--those
mountains--"
The change in Gamine's voice was swift; the veiled face lifted
questioningly to mine. What I had thought a veil was not that; it
seemed to be more like a shimmering screen wrapped around the features
so that Gamine was faceless, an invisible person with substance but
no apprehensible characteristics. Yes, it was like that; as if there
was an invisible person wearing the curious silken draperies. But the
invisible flesh was solid enough. Hands like cold steel gripped my
shoulders. "You have been back? Back to the days before the second sun?
Adric, tell me; did Earth truly have but one sun?"
"Wait--" I begged. "You mean I've travelled in time?"
The exultation faded from Gamine's voice imperceptibly. "Never mind. It
is improbable in any case. No, Adric; not really travelling. You were
only sent out on the Time Ellipse, till you contacted some one in that
other Time. Perhaps you stayed in contact with his mind so long that
you think you are he?"
"I'm not Adric--" I raged. "Adric sent me here--"
I saw the blurring around Gamine's invisible features twitch in a
headshake. "It's never been proven that two minds can be interchanged
like that. Adric's body. Adric's brain. The brain convolutions, the
memory centers, the habit patterns--you'd still be Adric. The idea that
you are someone else is only an illusion of your conscious mind. It
will wear off."