"Dead," Reeta whispered. "They don't last long once Durach and his
gadgets pierce our last protective neural defense bands. We've had no
real defense. Even the last, or sith-threshold, is temporary. He's
hit us with various degrees of destructive mental force, augmented by
his gadgets. We've resisted each stage, but not the _sith_-threshold
breaker. Durach's closing in fast now that he's weakened us. He wants
full control of the Merger, so he can go back into the Third-Stage
plane and destroy it."
I thought it was all about as clear as Venusian moonlight. I turned
quickly as a low soft voice spoke. I knew it was Carleth, her brother,
standing just outside the nearest cone building. He was tall and
terrifically strong looking. He was studying me, inside and out.
Then he looked at Reeta. "Give the thought order to both our villages
right now! That Glora and Mal have sent a man with Third-Stage
abilities through. Tell them to throw up full resistance in the
_sith_-sector. Maybe that way, we can hold Durach's attacks off until
Berton can get to him."
4
"There Is Durach"
Carleth led me inside the cone, right through the wall. I felt the
humming of delicate machinery as though it was part of the working of
my own brain. An opening that closed again behind us.
I sat down. I was very tired. Something was very wrong; I knew that.
Here I was--but here I wasn't. I was through the Barrier, with enough
of this so-called awakened consciousness to live in the Fourth Stage
world of perception; but I wasn't like Reeta or Carleth, not by a long
shot.
I almost yelled as the chair reached up around me and stretched itself
to fit me. I shifted my position, and the chair remolded itself to me.
I was still trying to get rid of a clammy helpless feeling when Carleth
said: "We still may have time to act against Durach. We've saved this
last paraphysical resistance band in each of our minds until the last.
He's broken down the others since he came back through the barrier. He
might be able to kill the rest of us within an hour."
He looked at me strangely. "One hour perhaps, Ray Berton, to save your
world, Earth, from annihilation. One hour to get Durach."
Fine, I thought, but first, I'm hungry. And a tray of food floated
out of the wall and settled down on my lap. A steak, and all the
accessories, just what I'd wished I had.
While I ate, Carleth told me that people here didn't get energy that
way when they had stayed here long enough. Here, he said, they used
a process that Third-Stage minds call telurgy. Fourth Stage minds
use telurgy to construct their buildings, and transportation, and
to get energy directly from any element they wanted to get it from.
The only difference, he said, between any objects is made by our
limited consciousness (Third Stage) reacting to differently shaped
electron-identity patterns. Yet basically every substance, everything
in the cosmos, is the same, made different only by degrees of evolving
mental machinery.
I finished eating and said, "You're supermen here--that it? But if you
are, why are you helpless before this guy Durach? Why do you have to
call on me?"
Carleth said, "No, we're not supermen, Berton; just extended, or
advanced men. There'll never be supermen; there'll never be perfection."
Carleth turned; he looked at the wall and it melted away. I was looking
at a distant city. And what a city! Cone-shaped spires thousands of
feet high, and one high above the others, with the moon behind it.
Carleth said, "This Fourth Stage world of Mohln is sparsely populated;
only a few have come through. We built these two small villages, for
meditation and self development. We lived here, helping others who
came through to adjust and realize their growing potentialities. It
was peaceful then. Normally, it would be no other way here--sane and
balanced and marvelously stimulating as we discovered and developed new
abilities of Fourth Stage power."
He stared at the distant city, and said to me, "Then Durach and his
freaks came through. They built that city. It might be called by you a
city of the mind. Their diseased minds keep it there by paraphysical
mental energy."
"Freaks," I said. "Here too?"
"Yes, freaks; they're different. There's only seven of them, and that
they should build such a colossal futile city is proof enough of their
pathological, third-stage thinking. Third plane disease still motivates
them, even though they developed enough Fourth Stage awareness to
come through the barrier. They're paranoids, according to Third-Stage
standards. Here, they're much worse than that--able to realize many of
their delusions.
"But they're freaks. They didn't develop by evolution to reach Mohln;
they developed suddenly. As soon as they first came through, we knew
they were abnormal, that they didn't belong. Durach brought Third
Stage irrational, blind, destructive motivations with him. Diseased
personality attitudes. He wanted power; he wanted to rule and conquer
blindly. There had been an accident that sent him here.
"Durach and his freaks were seven chances in millions, but they
happened. Teratological freaks, monsters. Before they broke away from
us and built that mental city, we found their secret."
Carleth fell silent for a moment, then continued softly. "Durach and
the others there are offsprings of Third-Stage men and women who
were exposed to gamma rays, from experimental radioactivity, from
the last war, from various conditions on Third-Stage Earth allowing
over-exposure to hard radiation.
"Durach's father was an atomician engineer who was subjected to gamma
rays while working in one of the imperfected Uranium Piles, sometime
during 1964, according to Earth reckoning. Five years later, Durach
reached what is adult maturity in the Third Plane. He organized some
other freaks who were being kept on a small island off the coast of
Japan. A year later they had developed sufficiently to break through
into Mohln."
"There's only twelve of us left. You see no one here's in the same
stage of Fourth Plane awareness; some develop faster than others. That
makes us have different degrees of susceptibility to Durach's mental
attacks. Reeta and myself, we happen to be the highest, now that Mal
and Glora have gone back into Third-Stage existence."
* * * * *
It was strange, hearing him say these things with hatred in his voice.
Yet, I knew he hated this menace.... "Durach and the other freaks have
feelings of inferiority. They want to compensate, they have developed
paranoid delusions. They were persecuted on Earth, naturally as freaks.
Regarded as insane, imprisoned, mistreated. They have strong revenge
motives; they want to destroy Earth.
"Also, Durach has a theory that Third-Stage Earth is holding back the
development of Mohln. He thinks that if Earth's plane was destroyed,
Mohln could expand into complete Fourth Stage reality.
"Durach made a Merging machine to open a channel between the two
coexisting planes. What it really does is regress consciousness
molecules to lower and lower stages of development until it becomes
again bounded by Third-Stage blindness. Durach made the Merger to help
him and his freaks destroy Earth's plane. What they don't realize is
that the two planes are the same, part of the same reality field,
except that one is the result of more complex powers of awareness."
I thought about what Carleth had been telling me. It all started to fit
together. I told him what had happened on Earth--about Durach getting
control of the minds of the ten Chiefs who ran the Uranium Piles.
Carleth nodded. "You ran Durach back here into Fourth Stage reality.
Since then he's been using various kinds of gadgets to destroy us,
one by one. A kind of electron force feeler, you might call it.
We've caught flashes of his purpose, though they keep their diseased
minds locked up pretty well. It's almost impossible, and sometimes
destructive, to try to contact them mentally.
"He intends to return to Earth through the Merger. This time he'll take
the secret of the electronic feeler with him. He'll be able to kill Mal
and Glora with it. He'll be more powerful there than they are, because
in returning to Third-Stage reality, they've sacrificed most of their
Fourth Plane capacities.
"In other words, the next time Durach goes through the barrier, he'll
achieve his purpose. He'll have killed all of us by the electronic
feeler. It disassociates electron structure of the nervous system so
that it can't reform."
"And I'm the only one who can stop him," I whispered.
Carleth said that was right.
I said, "Why doesn't Durach use the Merger then, right now, and go back
and get the job done?"
He explained that to me also. "As soon as he came back this time, we
knew what he had tried to do, what he was planning. We got conscious
control of the Merger machinery, or part of it anyway. We've maintained
that control because we have greater numbers, and the combined
mind-energy has been too much for Durach. That is why he's been killing
us one by one. Our power over the Merger has been going down. The
danger point is reached now."
"And what about Mal and Glora?"
"They followed Durach into Third-Plane reality to try to stop him. By
so doing, they sacrificed most of their higher abilities. Durach, being
a freak, an abnormal Fourth Stage man, came back through. But Glora and
Mal cannot; they can never attain Fourth Stage life again."
Carleth paused, then said, "You can destroy, Berton; we cannot.
Therefore, you're the last chance of defeating Durach."
I thought about everything, as much as I could. About how bitter it
would be to know the feeling of being a part of this higher world of
Mohln, then finding yourself once again in the blind and groping world
of the Third Plane where no one had any idea of what greater reality
was so near.
* * * * *
Reeta came in. I caught a stray thought from her that sent pain and
sickness and futility through me. A thought of sadness and pity for me
as she looked at me.
I backed toward the wall. I thought hard, hard, and the wall opened for
me. A second of joyous power gave way to despair. I didn't belong here;
I didn't belong anywhere now. What if I should kill Durach? And then
what if I went back to the Third Plane?
What then? I wouldn't fit there either. I'd still keep some of the
power, I knew that. I'd be an ESP freak then, probably working in some
televised vaudishow. And I couldn't stay here, I thought, because I
hadn't developed normally. I'd been artificially developed so that I
could go through the Barrier hadn't I?
I was nobody; I was nowhere. I didn't have a name anymore, not really.
These supermen weren't my kind either.
Carleth pointed toward the City. "Durach's there," I heard him whisper.
And Reeta's eyes were wet with sorrow as she came toward me.
I didn't want to see her anymore, or feel her hands on me; I didn't
wait for anything else. One thing I knew as I went through the wall and
started down the beautiful still street:
_I would kill Durach, and then I'd be finished._ I tried to ignore the
screams in the village, tried not to see the people dying around me.
I still carried that neutron gun Malcolm Mergon had given me. It had
come through the barrier too.
Carleth's and Reeta's thoughts drifted after me: "We can give you some
protection. A constant stream of mind-energy shielding. We'll stay with
you, as closely as possible.
"Durach is there, in the tallest building in the City."
I looked back. Reeta stood in the center of the village by the
fountain, waving. I didn't wave back. I knew that my smile was bitter.
And then I concentrated as much as I could on the flat metal disc that
came out at me from the wall of the bubble with a humming of delicate
electronic power. I sat on it. I thought: "I'd like to be on my way to
the City. To the City."
I was outside the bubble. I was high above the surface of Mohln, with
the quickness of thought. And I was--high!
It was like a splash of white light under me, the moon shining on that
wonderful world. I looked ahead toward those giant spires of that
colossal city. Built for ten men, ten freaks. A city of thought.
That one tower stuck up half again as high as the rest of the City. A
blue dangerous looking light shone from its top. There wasn't any use
drawing this appointment out, I thought. And a fast appearance might
give me an advantage of surprise, if I had any advantage at all, and I
doubted that.
"There," I thought, "is where I want to be next. On top of that
building, facing Durach. _Now!_"
And I was there.
5
Remember Me?
Durach was waiting for me. Not LeStrang; nothing that looked like
LeStrang. This was the real Durach, and he was not something you would
want to see a second time, nor anything you would care to remember, if
you could help it.
He wasn't human; he was a monster, a freak. Yet, he looked much like
anyone else. It was the inside of him that was so different.
Durach wasn't alone as I found myself standing there before him. Two
women and several men were in the big arched room with him. None of
them were any more pleasant on the inside than Durach. Jelahn's dive
on the North Canal seemed like the memory of an anteroom to paradise
compared with the feeling in this room of Durach's.
It was filthy and obscene, and it made me mad; it made me shaking mad
to think that a chance thing like these freaks had been sent into the
Fourth Stage world of Mohln where they didn't belong, to contaminate
it, and bring hate and destruction and death to a world that had put a
few men at least on the edge of marvelous super life.
Durach was bigger than he had been in the personality of LeStrang, a
personality he had given to people by suggestion. He was on a couch of
bright red that seemed to writhe under him. Durach was a fat white man
with white hair, his fat wrapped up in a tight-fitting shiny stuff like
resensilk. His face was soft and his eyes wide and bland and blue. Pale
jowls hung over his collar on either side, and under his beaked nose
was a small, pursed, red button of a mouth.
Silly little mouth, I thought. I wanted to laugh at it, but I didn't; I
couldn't laugh. I couldn't do much of anything except stand there and
try to figure out what I was really doing here--wherever I was.
The women and men around the room looked at me, very silently, terribly
curious, and far away. Durach's little red mouth smiled at me. No one
said anything. They just thought--about the ways I could look dead--and
about the many ways it was possible for me to become dead--ways that
can take so long.
And there were other thoughts pounding at my skull. They were laughing
at me; they were feeling sorry for me, and they were thinking I was an
idiot, at least.
I felt like a silly little mortal suddenly brought before a bunch of
wicked gods. And then it hit me--
_That's just about what I was!_
I was scared. My mind seemed covered with a cold twisted shadow.
Winds I couldn't see seemed to sweep and cry and thunder through that
giant room. And I could feel power, great stores of controlled power,
churning and boiling and ready to explode around me.
No one moved. I saw the great rotary convertors spinning away beside
banks and banks of transformers, and grid oscillators. Machinery, and
it was running and developing power, but it seemed unreal, foggy, as
though I was seeing it through a curtain of fog.
Well, I knew that this great room contained the Merger that Durach
had built. Durach was a freak, both Third and Fourth stage. He was
utilizing both fields in a mad kind of fusion. He was mad, beyond the
mental reach of sane Fourth Stage minds. That was understandable.
Fourth Stage minds, combined, could control some part of the Merger by
mental energy, so that Durach couldn't use it. But Fourth Stage minds
were being killed off by another gadget Durach and his freaks had made.
The Merger--a big gadget channeling unknown electronic force partly
by mind-energy. This Merger could hit hard at a man's entire nervous
system and his mind, and force it back to Third-Stage awareness, or
step it up so that Third-Stage reality faded away, and the Fourth
became reality.
But I knew this was phony. It was like the old methods of shock
treatment for the insane. The methods were wrong, and the results might
be harmful, and unpredictable.
Then Durach laughed, and he was laughing at me; his laughter burned and
roared inside my skull.
I blinked and gasped out something as I jerked the neutron gun from my
pocket and pointed it for the second time at his belly.
* * * * *
I knew I was talking, but my voice didn't sound like mine; it didn't
sound like anybody's voice. "This time I do it, Durach. You can't go
through the Barrier to get away from me now. The Merger machinery, you
can't use it. Carleth's people have you blocked, Durach."
Durach's little red mouth stretched at me. He purred. "What do you want
to kill _me_ for?"
A woman in the corner laughed. It was like somebody had sprayed dry
ice through the room.
I said, "I'm not wasting time talking, Durach. I'm killing you
because--because--"
Durach laughed again. "Because you've been told to by a bunch of
humanitarian perfectionists obsessed with their own vague destinies!
Because you think you want to save the Third Plane--a dismal unreal
blind world where people shamble like cattle and peer into continuous
fog like moles! Is that why you want to kill me?"
I knew I'd have to do it now, fast, or I'd never be able to. I tried to
press the trigger back. I knew that Durach couldn't stop me, not by any
physical means. They had no weapons; they didn't need any, to deal with
the Fourth Stage people in their own plane. They had mental-shattering
gadgets, but none of them could work on me. I wasn't built like the
other Fourth Stage people. I wasn't built like anyone now. I was a
special job, made to get Durach, and that was all.
"You know the reasons you've been told and made to follow," Durach
smiled. "You're the big sucker, as you think you are, Berton. You're
beginning to see the truth now; you're beginning to realize why they
can't touch me--why they had to get _you_ to do it."
I tried to fire the gun. The air seemed to get hot and smoky around me
with conflicting thoughts. I knew there was a battle going on--a fight
of mind-energy. But I wasn't a part of it. It was between Durach and
his freaks, and Carleth and Reeta and whoever was left of their kind. A
fight for control of the Merger.
I tried to fire, but I couldn't; I wanted to hear what Durach had to
say. I knew it was something that might mean a lot to me. I shouldn't
want to listen; I had my job. I--
I felt like knives were stabbing me. I was shivering and sweating. I
could feel my face growing wet and gray and lips quivering. I was about
finished and I knew it. And I knew that if I did anything, I'd have to
do it quick.
No physical weapons. What trap would they use against me, what unknown
forces?