At first, the lighted matches under his toe nails hurt like the very
devil. He had never known such pain. Then he forgot about the matches
under his toe nails. They started lighting them under his fingers.
"Where did they go?" Cuso screamed. "How did they do it?"
Zen had long since ceased trying to say that he didn't know. Instead of
speaking, he shook his head. This was all he could do. Cuso interpreted
the head shake as a stubborn refusal to answer. He kicked the colonel
in the face.
At the kick, the race mind clicked in. This was the effect Zen had--as
if a third person had suddenly come in on a party line. After that,
the pain from the kick did not seem so important. The torture from the
matches under his nails seemed to diminish also.
Not that the contact with the race mind nullified the pain or made it
any less real. Fire was still fire and torture was still the same. But
neither were very important.
Other things were.
Zen tried to concentrate his attention on the other things. The room,
the shouting Cuso, the two Asians who were holding him down while
the third thrust the matches under his nails, the shivering Cal, the
lieutenant who was over-eager to obey his leader's orders, all these
seemed to become misty and vague. These things were real; there was no
question about that. But his mind was contacting another reality which
made these things different. Time began to lose its meaning.
He wondered if he was fainting. Another question came across his
thoughts, heeled over like a sailing ship moving across the wind. Was
he dying?
There was no shock with the thought. If that was the way it was, then
he was more than ready.
"You are not fainting and you are not dying," the race mind whispered
to him. "Come closer to me."
"How do I come closer to you?"
"Let go." The voice of the race mind was like a whisper from the other
side of infinity. "Let go and come to me."
Dimly, he wondered how one let go. The answer came with the question.
The words meant exactly what they said, the meaning was literal--_let
go_.
As he performed the action that went with the words, the big gallery,
Cuso, the lieutenant, and the torturers faded away and became a part
of a misty world that seemed to have no real existence. Even the pain
vanished.
"Come to me," the race mind whispered, again and again, a luring voice
that drew him irresistibly.
Abruptly, he was back in the gallery. He did not know how long he had
been gone but he realized that some time must have passed, enough to
allow them to set up a portable radio transmitter in the gallery. The
set looked to be very powerful. A yellow-skinned operator was huddling
over the controls.
"In contact with Asian headquarters," Zen thought. He knew his thinking
was correct.
Off somewhere in the distance outside the mountain the night shuddered.
He knew the meaning of the sound. A rocket ship was either landing or
blasting off, probably the latter. A long line of burdened Asians was
moving through the gallery.
At the sight of their loads Zen knew what had gone into the hold of
that ship. The equipment of the hidden center here. He saw parts of the
super radar go past on the backs of sweating Asian soldiers, and he
knew where this was going.
At this knowledge, anguish came up in him. With West's super radar in
their possession, no American secret was safe from prying Asian eyes,
unless some way could be found to shield the frequencies employed.
Such shielding might work for laboratories, but there was no way to
shield troop movements and take-offs and landings. These would be as
public as an advertisement.
His face was wet. He could not understand this until another bucket of
water hit him. An Asian bent over him, saw that his eyes were open, and
grunted with satisfaction. They started again on his fingers.
The radio operator called to Cuso, giving him a message. Zen could not
understand the language but the Asian leader was both startled and
elated. He shouted at the men carrying loads to work faster.
"Not much time left. Big bomb coming."
"What bomb?" Zen thought. With the question came the answer. Warned
by Cuso that their preparations were probably known, the Asians had
decided to launch their super bomb immediately. Turmoil came up inside
Zen at this knowledge.
Real pain came from his finger tips as the torturers began operations
again.
"Do you want to die?" the race mind whispered in his thoughts.
Although he couldn't contact it, the race field could reach him. "You
have suffered all that is required. You have met the law. You may join
me, if you wish."
"I--" Zen shut off his thinking. This was fantasy, the product of
torture and nearing dissolution. His own imagination was tricking him,
he thought.
"This is not your imagination," the answer came. "This is what you call
the race mind."
"But--"
"How do you know? You don't. At this point, you have to accept me on
faith." The thinking flowing smoothly into his mind went into silence,
then came again, stronger than before. "Do you want to die? You have
earned the right."
"No," Zen answered. He screamed the words again. "No. No!"
"The path before you will be difficult."
"I don't care how difficult it is. There's work to be done!" Again he
shouted the words.
"Very well. It is your choice. You may remain among the living for as
long as your strength may last." The voice whispering in his mind went
into silence.
Kurt continued screaming. Pain raced through his consciousness again.
As he came awake he realized that he was screaming at the torturer to
stop.
He also realized that the Asian had stopped. There was a sound in the
gallery. Filling the air, it seemed to emerge from the very walls of
the mountain itself.
The note of a violin!
High and sweet and compelling, the sound came from nowhere. Every atom
in the solid stone walls seemed to pick it up and to rebroadcast it.
The molecules of the air seemed to dance in resonance with it.
Simultaneously, about ten feet above the floor, the face appeared again.
The lieutenant's rifle blasted at it. He fired shot after shot at point
blank range. Red-hot slugs howled from the walls of the big gallery in
a cacophony of death.
The face smiled at the lieutenant. The lips moved. "Keep shooting, old
fellow," the lips seemed to say.
The officer emptied his gun. In a desperate burst of fear, he threw it
at the mocking face.
The weapon passed through the face without harming it.
"You fool! That's a projection, not a real person!" Cuso shouted. He
grabbed the officer by the shoulder and spun him backward to the floor.
"Who are you?" he demanded of the face.
It smiled at him.
Zen repressed the impulse to shout. He knew what was going to happen
next.
"I said, _Who are you?_" Cuso shouted again.
The crash of something in the gallery jerked his attention away.
Twisting his head around, he saw that one of the soldiers engaged in
carrying the loot of this cavern out to the plane waiting to hurry it
to Asia, had collapsed on the floor.
Under ordinary circumstances, Cuso would have had the man summarily
executed. But with that face smiling at him out of nothing, these
circumstances were not ordinary.
Zen, knowing what was going to happen, forgot the pain of his burned
fingers and toes. He could feel it creeping over him in waves. This
time he did not resist it: He let his eyes close.
When he opened them, the torturer was snoring beside him. Every Asian
in the big gallery was sound asleep.
People were crowding around him. The new people. In a sweeping glance,
he recognized every person he had met here, except Nedra, and he did
not see her at first because she was busy bandaging his hands. West was
smiling down at him with an expression that was somehow grandfatherly.
But back of West's smile was perturbation.
Zen started to get to his feet and discovered they had not as yet
removed the ropes from his legs. As one did this, Nedra clucked
reprovingly at him and tried to tell him that he was wounded. He said
this did not matter. Faces were here that he did not recognize. This
did not matter either.
"You did this?" he said to West.
"Yes. I designed and built the equipment. Others were operating it in
this instance." West had something else on his mind.
"Thanks," Zen said. "Why didn't you take me with you when you
went--wherever it was you went?"
"We couldn't," West answered. "You haven't had the training."
"Why did you come back?"
"To rescue you. Kurt--" West had something that he wanted to say.
"Nedra, will you stop fussing with me? I'm all right."
"But your poor hands and feet."
"I don't even feel them. I won't have them to feel at all unless action
is taken. Don't you understand. Somewhere in Asia they're getting ready
to launch a super bomb. Or maybe it's already on its way."
"I didn't know," the girl said. "The big one?"
"Yes."
A flicker of pain crossed her face and she shook her head. "I always
wondered what it would be like to live on a mud flat. I wonder if we
will be oysters, or eels. Or maybe crabs."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Zen demanded.
"After the bomb goes off," the girl said.
"What then?"
"The race mind will have to start over again," she explained. Her
manner indicated that she was explaining something that she clearly
understood. She seemed to wonder why he did not understand it. "Maybe
we will be turtles? That will be funny! A turtle that can remember when
it was a man! That's the way it will be. Except--"
"I know all about that."
"Except that the turtle won't be able to do anything about its
memories," the girl continued as if she had not heard him. "It will
have flippers and a beak but what it will need will be hands. It won't
have them until it grows them itself. A turtle with the memories that
it was once a man, knowing that if it had hands, it could rebuild human
culture!" A bemused expression appeared on her face. "I wonder how the
race mind will solve that problem." Again she seemed to muse. "It would
be worse to be crabs. Or would it?"
"Shut up!" Zen snarled. "We're not turtles yet. Or crabs. And we're not
back on the mud flats."
"But we're on the edge of them," the girl insisted. "One more teeter
and we will go totter."