"I'll tell you, Berton," Durach laughed. "They can't kill me. But
you can. Why? Because you're like us, Berton! They have no more real
respect for you than for the rest of us here in this room. You're just
a tool they're using, and when they're through, you'll go back into the
garbage dumps of Third-Plane sickness.
"_Berton--you're just another freak, like us!_"
I felt blinded. I forced my eyes to hold him in sight as I tried to
fire. I moved toward him; the room was large, and I kept walking,
listening to him.
"But we're bigger than they are, because we're freaks, Berton. We're
natural freaks, you might say. Mal and Glora created a freak out of you
so you would come through the Barrier. But we're all freaks, neither
Third or Fourth Stage--_but the strongest talents of both planes are in
us!_
"They can't move back from Fourth to Third Plane after having once left
the Fourth. They can't destroy anything with their paraphysical power,
Berton. That's their weakness. But we can. They call us insane. But use
your own intelligence! What do you think?"
I kept walking toward his voice, toward that shifting smoky outline.
Sweat made a stream down my throat. I was sick and blinded.
"They're asking you to give it all up, just for their fanatical belief
in some sort of abstract destiny for all humanity. _Immortality!_ Think
of it, Berton! And then you can go on and on, through higher and higher
stages of reality. Reach heights of experience the greatest dreamers
have never touched.
"We'll be gods, Berton! They want to do it by slow and ponderous
evolution, and play at a chance to become gods. They call us
freaks--because we've found the short cut to eternal greatness.
"Mutation, that's one way. You got it another way, thanks to them. But
from now on, it can be our show, Berton.
"They want to hold us back, using Third-Stage people as pacers. They
want to destroy us, because we're superior. They want Third-Stage
reality, with its disease, its blindness and its million incurable
sicknesses to go on being a burden to the realization of Fourth Stage
greatness, holding it back, drawing its entropic rate down to zero.
"Listen, Berton! If we destroy the Third Plane, the energy release will
speed up the entropic rate of Fourth Plane development a billion fold.
You can be one of us. A part of it. And why not? We're mutations. You
got through the barrier because they changed your nervous system and
consciousness by synthetic methods. But you're like us. You're a freak
too, Berton.
"_You're fighting on the wrong side. You're destroying--yourself!_"
* * * * *
Time, movement, sight, everything seemed to freeze as I stood there.
There was Durach and the others, like pale statues in a dream. Then I
felt other minds and other eyes around me. Reeta! Carleth!
I saw them. It was like a dream look at a forgotten room, and people
almost forgotten; their voices, like stillness beyond a threshold I had
once crossed.
She said, her eyes sad and wet. "The decision must be yours, Ray
Berton. We can give you the support of what paraphysical energy we
have left within us. But we can't destroy directly; you must do that.
In that way, you're different from us, but you're not a freak like
Durach and these others. You have temporary Fourth Stage awareness. At
a given time, that awareness will fade, and you'll go back to Third
Stage reality, and be as you were before, with no memory of this world.
Destroy him, Berton. _Now! Now!_"
My eyes were shut. I felt like I was falling. "You're gods," I sobbed
at them. "I'm still human. You're asking too much. How can I decide? I
could be like them--greater than you. And you want me to give it up, go
back to--" I thought of it. The stinking disease of Jelahn's tavern,
and the girl--
I laughed a little then, and in that laugh was a crazy climbing note of
fear and madness and not-knowing. Go back to that, when--
"There are only five of us left now," Reeta said. "Durach's feelers
have killed the rest of us. We can't hold the Merger against him but a
few seconds longer, Berton."
I thought of the outer planets where I'd always lived. The disease and
the cold, the sadistic cops, the taverns with rotten women, minds eaten
away with _krin-krin_.
"You picked me wrong," I yelled wildly. "You don't get heroes from
where I came from. Like Durach said--he's more my kind. We could be
like gods. Immortal--how can I--"
I felt mind-energy, paraphysical power, flow into me from Reeta
and Carleth. They told me something, a word--extratemporal--new
perception that could let me see things that would happen! Space
factors disappeared, for one terrible second. The factor of future time
faded--_and I could see_!
I felt it. Hot and horrible and final. A flash of future knowledge. I
saw Earth disappear into a great white flame. And where it had been was
a white hot nova in black space.
Horror rose like a volcano of madness, and a sheet of pain seemed to
split my head wide open.
"No," I felt Durach's roaring thought. "No, Berton! They're giving you
a false impression. That's a probability variant of Earth's future.
They've let you see the Earth destroyed--but it's a different variant
than what will happen if you join us. By destroying the Third Plane
my way, we can save Fourth Stage reality from destruction--but their
way--all will be destroyed!"
"It's your choice," Reeta said. "We have only a few flashes of time
left, and then it won't matter anymore."
Maybe I didn't make any decision, not consciously. The pressure was too
much for me. I had to do something, anything. I heard myself screaming
as I pressed the trigger of the gun.
Durach fell beneath its power beam. It sprayed and burned and roared
in the great room. He came around the desk as I turned; his white face
had turned gray with a coat of wet over it. I felt the sudden complete
effort within all of them as they tried to get me.
Freaks. But there wasn't much physical difference between these people
and the average looking group. It was the inside of them that was
different. Differences in metabolism, neural structure, conscious
awareness ... a lot more....
Durach and the others were surging in toward me. Walls of mind-energy
throbbed around me. Their faces were twisted with hate and fear.
"Berton! You can know immortality, perfection, omnipotence! Don't
sacrifice your life for a cause already lost according to that vision
you had of the future! You know the conditions on the Third Plane!
They have conquered a part of atomic power, but their Third-Stage
mentalities will never develop fast enough to keep that power from
destroying them. Them and us too! That's the probability variant of a
future that will happen anyway--unless we destroy the Third Stage now,
in a way that will let this higher reality go on, unburdened!
"_Earth will destroy itself anyway, Berton. Let us save ourselves!_" My
legs wouldn't hold me anymore. I was on my knees. I tried to lift the
gun again.
"It's your choice, Berton," Reeta said. Now her thought and her voice
was weaker, faraway, dying. "Remember--Durach's insane."
Insane? Insane by what judgment? It was relative. Who--?
Durach's final argument was the most convincing; nobody wants to die.
"It means death for you, Berton, if you kill me. This city, this tower
we're on top of--it exists because I will it to exist! This tower is
two miles high, Berton! Kill me, and the tower will crumble from under
you. You'll fall--fall, Berton! Remember, your Fourth Stage capacity
is only temporary. When you kill me, your work for them will be done.
You'll automatically start to return to Third-Plane existence.
"You could control your fall here, with Fourth stage energy. But kill
me, and you'll find yourself back in Third-Stage reality--two miles
above the Earth! And nothing under you but death--that'll be your
reward for saving Earth for a little while longer, Berton! You want to
live!"
Far, far away, I felt Reeta and Carleth, still trying to help me. Sure,
a man wants to live. That Marty in Jelahn's tavern, he wanted to live.
Millions of people on Earth, they wanted to live, wanted to try to make
it work. No man wants to die.
There are some ways no man cares to live.
I fired the gun, fired it point blank into Durach's chest, then moved
it around over the others.
There was blinding white light. And Durach and his kind stopped living.
They went back to some other energy form, a kind that would never cause
anyone any more trouble.
I knew then that Durach had been right, in one respect anyway; when
he died, the tower died. I felt it melting away around me as the
mind-energy that had created it started to fade away. I felt that awful
emptiness opening under me. And--this is funny--I felt like a little
boy who's done something he thinks is pretty good and pretty big. But
no one knows he's done anything, and he feels hurt, and he wants people
to know.
I wanted people to know. I didn't want what I'd done, and everything
that had happened and might happen, to be lost to people. It wouldn't
be fair. Reeta and Carleth knew what I was thinking. I felt their
thoughts coming back again, stronger, and stronger and growing, and
joyous.
Reeta--Carleth--help me.