Dead. Dead. No bodily sensations. No _being_. But still thought. The
individuality of Eldon Carmichael looked without eyes, listened without
ears. It was absolutely, utterly alone in _nothingness_. Nothing but
terrible _aloneness_.
But something--someone--had said, "Call me." What? Whom? Shreds of
memory began to coalesce.
"Krasna!" The individuality of Eldon Carmichael shouted without lungs
or mouth. "Krasna!"
The nothingness was no longer quite so empty. A thought brushed his.
"Eldon? Where?"
"Here!"
"Think of your shape!" a thought commanded.
The individuality of Eldon Carmichael thought. Memory shreds were
coagulating to remind him he had once had a body. This was not death.
It was something else.
"Think of me--help me _form_!" The thought-appeal was urgent but
unfrightened. "I can't alone."
"Krasna?" He sent out the wordless question.
"Yes!"
He remembered her as he had watched her bathing in the warm pool
that flowed through her home. And then he could see her floating in
nothingness beside him, tenuous at first, then solidifying. He saw her
with a new three-dimensional clarity and depth, as though with two
eyes. Instinctively he reached toward her--and his left hand clasped
her right.
Krasna looked down at herself, at the crescent-shaped scar marring her
loveliness, and winced.
"Even here I must bear that," her thought reached him. "Until Sasso is
no more."
Confused memories were returning now, bringing horror of this unknown
emptiness.
And then Krasna's thoughts were flowing around him protectively,
soothingly--but not in pity. And her thoughts brought understanding.
They were in the Thin World, a--place--outside the more solid worlds.
Here only thought had actuality. Their bodies here were nothing but
thought-projections. And here they must remain until the Chamber had
had its way with their torn, tortured _real_ bodies, healing them. For
such were the unique powers of the Chamber.
"But my arm? And my eye?" Eldon asked.
"You forgot you had lost them. Here you are as you think you are. And
I--"
"Exactly as I have dreamed." The thought left Eldon's mind before it
could be altered by his loyalty to Margaret and his desire to return to
Earth.
Krasna glanced at him sharply, but she seemed not displeased. And there
was gratitude in her thoughts. Gratitude and surprised admiration for
the way he had come to her rescue without thought of his own safety.
"We must stay away from our actual bodies long enough but not too
long," she told him. "Otherwise we could not return at all."
She read his questioning thoughts. "No. A Vardan mind can not take
knowledge of the Thin World back. I can remember almost nothing of the
time I was here after escaping the Faith.
"But you, with your Closed World brain, can perhaps do what I can not."
With his new knowledge Eldon understood also that those crystalline
capsules in the gross grey carcasses were the real essence of the
Luvans. The bodies in which they had clothed themselves to live in
Varda had been purely artificial.
"I learned the secret of the Luvans in the slave pits of the Faith."
Krasna's thoughts grew grim and bleak as she remembered the things to
which she had been subjected there. Vardan memories could be carried
into the Thin World, though not back again.
Eldon's thought-body drew hers close as they floated side by side in
limbo, drew her to him comfortingly and protectingly to thrust those
memories aside. He thought she should be soft and warm to touch--and
she was.
She pulled away--after a time that could have been either a moment or
an age--with a tinkling laugh and a change of mood.
"Time here is _different_ and it will seem long before we can return,"
her mind said. "Let us build a world to our own hearts' desires and
live there until--until you can destroy Sasso and the Faith."
"But--"
She ignored his protest.
"I will go back to the Chamber occasionally--it will be necessary--but
if you with your tenacious Earth mind went it would be disastrous."
"Understand this once and for all," he warned her. "If ever I can
return to my own Earth I shall do so. I am not your marvelous
El-ve-don, and I have no intention of fighting this thing you call
Sasso. Those Luvans were bad enough."
Krasna frowned. Then her look of disappointment gave place to a knowing
smile.
There was a hint of a surprising idea. Just the faintest sort of
hint--and then she closed her mind, half laughingly and half in
seriousness. But tightly.
"Let's build our world," she said.
* * * * *
It was a Godlike sensation to _think_ a world. It changed with their
thoughts, part Earth, part Varda, and part the solidification of the
non-existent lands of dreams. There were groves, streams, mountains,
plains. There were towns too, but these could be seen only dimly,
indistinct in the distance, the men and women in them tiny figures
without individuality. Neither Krasna nor Eldon had formulated their
ideas for an inhabited utopia concretely enough to fill in the details.
Krasna created for herself a wardrobe of wonderful gowns every fold of
which draped in a perfection of beauty, and jewels of kaleidoscopic
inner fires that shifted with her mood. After her hunted forest life in
Varda she indulged her fancies to the fullest.
Eldon built a laboratory. He lavished concentrated attention upon
it--and then it failed to give him the satisfaction he had expected.
For he did not have to work to find solutions. He _knew_. Even the
mysterious bound charges yielded up their secrets in minutest detail,
and when he discovered his Earth theorizing about the close connection
between interacting bound charges and life itself had been on the right
track he felt no surprise. The experimental equipment he designed was
worse than useless, answering so perfectly to his thoughts that he
could make the needles of his meters swing by merely _willing_ it. He
gathered almost limitless knowledge.
Krasna asked about life on Earth, and occasionally Eldon created Earth
scenes for her. Once he built a dream automobile, unhampered by the
structural limitations of Earth materials, and any number of miles of
broad highway. Everything but the traffic. Krasna was delighted at
first, amused by the manually operated controls, but then she saddened
as she remembered that once Varda had had its own system of roads. So
Eldon erased the perfect automobile and perfect highway from existence.
Krasna looked at him peculiarly. She seemed almost afraid of him, so
deep was her awe.
"You--you are most certainly El-ve-don!" she whispered. "Only El-ve-don
could know how to do such a thing. My people will be grateful to you
forever when you save us from Sasso."
Irrational anger stirred within him at her assumption. "No! I shall
return to Earth as soon as I can--if I can. I am not El-ve-don."