"How do you know he cracked up, anyway? Can you read that out of the
crystal?"
Ellerbee nodded. "He kept it in his pocket. It's close enough to him to
transmit the frantic messages of his dying mind."
"Then we've got to go! No matter if we get there in time or not."
Ellerbee shook his head again. "Sam is on his way over here. He's in
touch with Baker. He says he thinks he can talk Baker back."
"_Talk_ him back? What do you mean by that?"
Ellerbee hesitated. "I'm not sure. In some ways Sam understands a lot
more about these things than I do. He can do things with the crystals
that I don't understand. If he says he can talk Dr. Baker back, I think
maybe he can."
"But we can't depend on that!" Fenwick said frantically. "Can't we get
on our way in the car and let Sam do what he thinks he can while we
drive? Maybe he can get Baker to hold on until we get him to a doctor."
"You don't understand," said Ellerbee. "Dr. Baker has gone over the
edge. He's _dying_. I know what it's like. I looked into a dying mind
once before. There is nothing whatever that a doctor can do after an
organism starts dying. It's a definite process. Once started, it's
irreversible."
"Then what does Sam--?"
"Sam thinks he knows how to reverse it."
* * * * *
There wasn't much pain. Not as much as he would have supposed. He felt
sure there was terrible damage inside. He could feel the warmth of blood
welling up inside his throat. But the pain was not there. That was good.
In place of pain, there was a kind of infinite satisfaction and a
growing peace. The ultimate magnitude of this peace, which he could
sense, was so great that it loomed like some blinding glory.
This was death. The commitment and the decision had been made. But this
was better than any alternative. He could not see how there could have
been any question about it.
He was lying on his back in the wet clay of a bank below the road. It
was raining, softly now, and he rather liked the gentle drop of it on
his face. Somewhere below him the hulk of his wrecked car lay on its
side. He could smell the unpleasant odor of gasoline. But all of this
was less than nothing in importance to him now. Somewhere in the back of
his mind was a remnant of memory of what he had been doing this day. He
remembered the name of John Fenwick, and the memory brought a faint
amusement to his bloody lips. There had been some differences between
him and John Fenwick. Those differences were also less than nothing,
now. All differences were wiped out. He gave himself up to the pleasure
of being borne along on that great current that seemed to be carrying
him swiftly to a quiet place.
After a time, he remembered two other names, also. James Ellerbee and
Sam Atkins. He remembered a crystal, and it meant nothing. He remembered
that it was in his pocket and that for some time he had felt a warmth
from it, that was both pleasant and unpleasant. It was of no importance.
He might have reached for it and thrown it farther from him, but his arm
on that side was broken.
He was glad that there was nothing--nothing whatever--that had any
magnitude of importance. Even his family--they were like fragments of a
long-ago dream.
He lay waiting quietly and patiently for the swiftly approaching
destination of ultimate peace. He did not know how long it would take,
but he knew it could not be long, and even the journey was sweet.
It was while he waited, letting his mind drift, that he became aware of
the intruder. In that moment, the pain boiled up in shrieking agony.
He had thought himself alone. He wanted above all else to be alone. But
there was someone with him. He wasn't sure how he knew. He could simply
_feel_ the unwanted presence. He strained to see in the wet darkness. He
listened for muted sounds. There was nothing. Only the presence.
"Go away!" he whispered hoarsely. "Go away, and leave me alone--whoever
you are."
"No. Let me take you by the hand, William Baker. I have come to show you
the way back. I have come to lead you back."
"Leave me alone! Whoever you are, leave me alone!" Baker was conscious
of his own voice screaming in the black night. And it was not only
terror of the unknown presence that made him scream, but the physical
pain of crushed bones and torn flesh was sweeping like a torrent through
him.
"Don't be afraid of me. You know me. You remember, we met this
afternoon. Sam Atkins. You remember, Dr. Baker?"
"I remember." Baker's voice was a painful gasp. "I remember. Now go away
and leave me alone. You can do nothing for me. I don't want you to do
anything for me."
* * * * *
Sam Atkins. The crystal. Baker wished he could reach the cursed thing
and hurl it away from him. That must be how Atkins was communicating
with him. Yes, somehow it was possible. He had found no trick, no
gimmick. Somehow, the miserable things worked.
But what did Sam Atkins want? He had broken in on a moment that was as
private as a dream. There was nothing he could do. Baker was dying. He
knew he was dying. There was no medicine that could heal the battering
his body had taken. He had been slipping away into peace and release of
pain. He had no desire to have it interrupted.
There was no more evidence of Sam Atkins' presence. It was there--and
Baker wished furiously that Atkins would let his death be a private
thing--but he was not interfering now.
There was the faint suggestion of other presences, too. Baker thought he
could pick them out, Fenwick and Ellerbee. They were all gathered to
watch him die through the crystals. It was unkind of them to so
intrude--but it didn't really matter very much. He began drifting
pleasantly again.
"William Baker." The soft voice of Sam Atkins shattered the peaceable
realm once more. "We must do some healing before we start back, Dr.
Baker. Give me your hand, and come with me, Dr. Baker, while we touch
these tissues and heal their breaks. Stay close to me and the pain will
not be more than you can endure."
The night remained dark and there was no sound, but Baker's body arched
and twisted in panic as he fought against invisible hands that seemed to
touch with fleeting, exploratory passes over him.
"I don't want to be healed," he whispered. "There is nothing that can be
done. I'm dying. I want to die! Can't you understand that? I want to
die! I don't want your help!"
He had said it. And the shock of it jolted even him in the depths of his
half-conscious mind. Could a man really _want_ to die?
Yes.
He had forgotten what terror he had left so far behind. He knew only
that he wanted to move forever in the direction of the flowing peace.
Like probing fingers, Sam Atkins' mind continued to touch him. It
scanned the broken organs of his body, and, in some kind of detached
way, Baker felt that he was accompanying Atkins on that journey of
exploration, even as Sam had asked.
They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examined
the muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. They
searched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury that
Baker knew was hopeless.
"You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build it
again. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. The
nerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply the
scaffolding--while you build--"
He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he had
done this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the building
of organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinite
sadness at the present ruin. Yes--he could build again.
* * * * *
Sam Atkins' face was like that of a dead man. Across the table from him,
Jim Ellerbee and John Fenwick watched silently. Faintly, between them
was the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.
Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown prickle his
scalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the practitioner of
ancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick found the question tumbling over and
over in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy of
Sam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across space, to
the distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it while
Baker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of his
shattered organs.
[Illustration]
Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehow
shut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could not
follow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.
Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace of panic. He hesitantly reached
out to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyes
and imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested the
motion of Ellerbee's hand.
"I think you could kill them both," he whispered. The life force of one
man, divided between two--it was not sufficient to cope with unexpected
shocks to either, now.
Ellerbee desisted. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said.
"I don't know what Sam's doing--I don't know how he's doing it--"
Fenwick looked sharply at Ellerbee. Ellerbee had discovered the
crystals, so he and Sam said. Yet Sam was able to do things with them
that Ellerbee could not conceive. Fenwick wondered just who was
responsible for the crystals. And he resolved that some day, when and if
Baker pulled out of this, he would learn something more about Sam
Atkins.
Time moved beyond midnight and into the early morning hours of the day,
but this meant nothing to William Baker. He was in the midst of
eternity. Because the old pattern was there, and the ancient memories
were clear, his reconstruction moved at a pace that was limited only by
the materials available. When these grew scarce, Sam Atkins showed him
how to break down and utilize other structures that could be rebuilt
leisurely at a later time. There was remembered joy in the building and,
once started, Baker gave only idle wonder to the question of whether
this was more desirable than death. He did not know. This seemed the
right thing to do.
In the presence of Sam Atkins everything he was doing seemed right, and
a lifetime of doubts, and errors, and fears seemed distant and vague.
But Sam said suddenly, "It is almost finished. Just a little farther and
you'll have to go the rest of the way alone."
Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutely
sure he could _not_ go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "You
tricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I would
have to be reborn alone!"
"Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, except
alone?"
Slowly, the world closed in about Baker.
Light. Sounds.
Wet. Cold.
The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray
particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields.
Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for
all of his life.
Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immense
corridor. Behind were all the terrors spawned since the beginning of
time. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced for
the nearest and brightest and most familiar.
"No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way you
went before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it will
lead only to the same goal again."
"I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closing
in.
"Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distant
paths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you."
Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He passed
the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright.
He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in the
depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seen
before. He shuddered.
Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazing
brightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," he
said.
He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval.
He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was to
avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the dark
corridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathway
Sam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this very
point, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to die
rather than endure again.
It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But he
knew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He was
alive again.
Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all but
dead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pick
up Baker now."
* * * * *
They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires.
Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car at
Ellerbee's.
It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through the
muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road. For an hour Sam fought
the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle of the brownish
ooze that led them through the night. The three men sat in the cab.
Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been rigged for Baker.
Sam told them nothing would be needed except soap and water, but Fenwick
and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off without some other emergency
equipment.
After an hour, Sam said, "He's close. Just around the next bend. That's
where his car went off."
Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car. He was standing at the
edge of the road. He waved an arm wearily.
Fenwick would not have recognized him. And for some seconds after the
car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly in the beam
of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all.
He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie. His clothes
were ripped almost completely away. Those remaining were stained with
blood and red clay, and soaked with rain. Baker's face was laced with a
network of scars as if he had been slashed with a shower of glass not
too long ago and the wounds were freshly healed. Blood was caked and
cracked on his face and was matted in his hair.
[Illustration]
He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About time
you got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standing
out here in this weather."
* * * * *
Dr. William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitalization, but
he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway. He had some thinking to
do, and he didn't know of a better place to get it done.
There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast network of
very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays showed to have been
only very recently knit, and the violent internal injuries which gave
some evidence of their recent healing. Baker allowed the speculation to
go on without offering explanations. He let them tap and measure and
apply electrical gadgets to their heart's content. It didn't bother the
thinking he had to get done.
Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him. The two
approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing. "Pull up
chairs!" he exclaimed. "Just because you saw me looking a shade less
than dead doesn't mean I'm a ghost now. Sit down. And where's Sam? Not
that I don't appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but Sam and I have got
some things to talk about."
Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected the other
to speak.
"Well, what's the matter?" demanded Baker. "Nothing's happened to Sam, I
hope!"
Fenwick spoke finally. "We don't know where Sam is. We don't think we'll
be seeing him again."
"Why not?" Baker demanded. But in the back of his mind was the growing
suspicion that he knew.
"After your--accident," said Fenwick, "I went back to the farm with
Ellerbee and Sam because I'd left my car there. I went back to bed to
try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up again and
kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of lightning seemed to
strike Sam's silo. Later, Jim went out to check on his cows and help his
man finish up the milking.
"By mid-morning we hadn't heard anything from Sam and decided to go over
and talk to him about what we'd seen him do for you. I guess it was
eleven by the time we got there."
[Illustration: ... _Lightning doesn't strike up from inside a silo!
That's something else_ ...]
Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement.
"When we got there," Fenwick went on, "we saw that the front door of the
house was open as if the storm had blown it in. We called Sam, but he
didn't answer, so we went on in. Things were a mess. We thought it was
because of the storm, but then we saw that drawers and shelves seemed to
have been opened hastily and cleaned out. Some things had been dropped
on the floor, but most of the stuff was just gone.
"It was that way all through the house. Sam's bed hadn't been disturbed.
He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble of making it
up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess."
"Sounds like the place might have been broken into," said Baker. "Didn't
you notify the sheriff?"
"Not after we'd seen what was outside, in back."
"What was that?"
"We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said
he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the
county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit.
"When we went out, all the cows were bellowing. They hadn't been milked.
Sam did all his own work. Jim called his own man to come and take care
of Sam's cows. Then we had a close look at the silo. It had split like a
banana peel opening up. It hardly seemed as if a bolt of lightning could
have caused it. We climbed over the broken pieces to look inside. It was
still warm in there. At least six hours after lightning--or whatever had
struck it, the concrete was still warm. The bottom and several feet of
the sides of the silo were covered with a glassy glaze."
"No lightning bolt did that."
"We know that now," said Fenwick. "But I had seen the flash of it
myself. Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that morning
something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning. Instead of a
jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had seemed like a
thin thread of light striking _upward_. I thought I must be getting
bleary-eyed and tried to forget it. In the silo, I remembered. I told
Jim.
"We went back through the house once more. In Sam's bedroom, as if
accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found this. Take
a look!"
Fenwick held out a small book. It had covers and pages as did any
ordinary book. But when Baker's fingers touched the book, something
chilled his backbone.
The material had the feel and appearance of white leather--yet Baker had
the insane impression that the cells of that leather still formed a
living substance. He opened the pages. Their substance was as foreign as
that of the cover. The message--printing, or whatever it might be
called--consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-head size, in color. It
reminded him of computer tape cut to some character code. He had the
impression that an eye might scan those pages and react as swiftly as a
tape-fed computer.
Baker closed the book. "Nothing more?" he asked Fenwick.
"Nothing. We thought maybe you had found out something else when he
worked to save your life."
* * * * *
Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling. "I found out a few things," he said.
"I could scarcely believe they were true. I have to believe after
hearing your story."
"What did you find?"
"Sam Atkins came from--somewhere else. He went back in the ship he had
hidden in the silo."
"Where did he come from? What was he doing here?"
"I don't know the name of the world he was from or where it is located.
Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from my impressions.
He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological study. He was
responsible for the crystals. I suppose you know that by now?" Baker
glanced at Ellerbee.
Jim Ellerbee nodded. "I suspected for a long time that I was being led,
but I couldn't understand it. I thought I was doing the research that
produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a suggestion every
once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and produce
something fantastic. He knew where we were going, ahead of time. He led
me to believe that we were exploring together. Do you know why he did
this?"
"Yes," said Baker. "It was part of his project. The project consisted of
a study of human reaction to scientific processes which our scientific
culture considered impossible. He was interested in measuring our
flexibility and reaction to such introductions."
Baker smiled grimly. "We sure gave him his money's worth, didn't we! We
really reacted when he brought out his little cubes. I'd like to read
the report he writes up!"
"Why did he leave so suddenly?" asked Fenwick. "Was he through?"
"No, that's the bad part of it. My reaction to the crystals was a shock
that sent me into a suicidal action--"