"Live with God, Wife."
* * * * *
The screen faded. He put on his robe and jabbed the hypodermic into his
wrist. Then he knelt to pray.
He did not pray for power. Intelligence and hard work could give him
that. He prayed for mercy, compassion, recognition of his own flawed
nature. He prayed for courage and the end of fear.
The balls danced between his hands. He sang the Song of Praise, the
love song to the world. _Gloria mundi._ Glory in the world, glory in
the flesh, glory in the flow of life. Creation is a flow and man a
bubble bouncing on the flow. Bubble that will burst but bubble that
is. Bubble that feels, strives, blends with other bubbles.
Bubble that can fill Creation!
He roared at the walls of existence. His mind yawned and stretched and
came awake. He prowled across the woods and parks. Gigantic, he gazed
at the mortals who stumbled through the shaded tunnels of the world.
These are such as me. These share my doomed existence.
And that one? That one lying in the brush with an axe? That one,
preparing to kill, clawing since he was a baby at a world that torments
him?
That also is me.
Smith rose to his knees and swung the axe. John Dyer crumpled with
a severed spine. The axe swung twice and two men fell. The hunters
dropped to their bellies. Rifles cracked. Bullets sang in the grass.
Now they knew they had to kill Smith or die. Now they felt no mercy.
Sordman hovered over them. What he feels, I will feel. His hate will be
my hate. His anger mine. His hate must be absorbed in great compassion,
in tenderness and rationality. _Or I will be destroyed with him._
In the room the balls spun and whirled. He lay prostrate on the floor,
the yellow bomb-burst on his back. He was afraid. His weakness was
naked. He had always known he would someday meet a personality he
could not forgive. When that day came he would shatter and flee, like
Smith, to any refuge he could make.
"Show your heads! Show your heads and I'll kill you!"
A bullet smashed into Smith's leg. He screamed and flailed the axe.
Shouting curses and threats, he crawled through the brush. The hunters
crawled after him.
Sordman located Smith. He shuddered as malice bit the edges of his
mind. He sang a long note of praise to life.
* * * * *
Then he opened his mind.
Listen, Smith. I'm your friend. I am Sordman, the Protector of all, of
the hunters and the hunted. I come in love. I am Sordman, small brother
of the Lord, bubble in the Fountain of Creation....
Once men had thought a Talent would fell his opponents with a blast
of mental energy. It wasn't that easy. Sordman had to find the cause
of Smith's hate. He was no rifleman, hurling a blast of energy, but a
surgeon probing for the source of a disease.
Two minds tangled. Sordman bore the light of himself into darkness.
--I'll kill you, too. Get out of me. Get out!
Snarl, growl, slash. Two minds linked as one. Sordman fighting Sordman,
Smith fighting Smith.
_Aaaaaaaah!_
He doubled up on the floor and hugged his knees. The Protector wept and
sobbed. Hate! How he hated hate. How he wanted to kill the haters. They
clawed his brain, they tortured every moment, and yet he had to love
them. _Love them!_
God, grant your servant strength. Be merciful....
He had lost his contact but he had to go back. Weak man or not, he had
to return or Smith would die.
--I'll kill them all.
He saw the hunters creeping after him. He felt his body's dirty sweat
and the blood draining on his leg. Run, said his belly. A hunter fired.
He saw a blue morning coat in the bush and felt the gun pointed at his
head. Kill!
The axe swung back in his hand. He remembered the swift stroke, the
hard resistance of the spine, the joy of having struck and won. I
never got to win. They always held me back. My hands wouldn't paint
what I told them, my mind wouldn't reach where I wanted to go. When I
loved Raven she didn't let me out, she denied me, she made me hold my
feelings back. But now I strike! Now I swing an unfettered arm.
Sordman knew what he was joined with now. Smith was what the psycher
Talents called an unopened personality. A mind totally absorbed in
what things meant to itself. A mind which had not learned to feel the
pain and joy of other minds.
Smith's arm had stretched all the way back. He had to act now or
someone else would die. He was Sordman the Protector, one of the four
best Talents in the world and his powers were running like a river at
flood. All he had to do was make the right move.
He linked Smith's mind with the mind of the rifleman.
* * * * *
The man in the blue morning coat was forty-three years old. He worked
in New York City, the assistant manager of a transportation line's
local office. His second wife had grown pregnant by accident, which
under law meant they were automatically married for life. They had
been married for fifteen years and still didn't know each other. His
two sons thought he was a spineless old fool who slept all the time
and couldn't give them what they needed. He didn't like his job but he
knew it was all he would ever do, an exact definition of his limits.
Alone in his house, imprisoned by his work, he smoked and slept and ate
without appetite.
But now he aimed his rifle and thought, I'll kill the witch. That will
be something. I'll know I did that.
The two minds were one. Each knew the other's pain, the other's fear.
If one died, the other felt his death.
Each recognized the other man's hunger, his frustration, his
imprisonment within his body and the limits of his life.
Sordman felt the weight of their lives. He gathered in the strength he
called a gift. His voice and mind, his total self, sang the Liturgy of
Joy. He gave his feelings and thoughts.
The axe dropped.
The finger squeezed the trigger and the bullet cut the bark from a tree.
His thoughts became a lullaby, a drowsy murmuring of peace and healing
sleep.
George and Lee ran from the woods.
"Andy! Don't shoot them. Andy!"
"Where?"
--Here.
He wiggled the leaves and branches of the brush.
--Here!
They stood over the unconscious men. The hunters crept from their
hiding spots and joined them.
"We'll bring him in," George said. "A psycher team is on the way."
--Good.