The journey had begun in earnest

III.

We prowled the depths of the woods, sniffing through the underbrush for the scent of Child, the odor of his mental essence. There were times when I forgot everything but my powerful shoulders, my claws and my teeth, the keen powers of my black nostrils.

We rooted through the dark cavelets along the valley walls which opened on the floor of the forest, seeking into their darkest recesses, where our eyes refused to be totally blinded. We overturned old, rotting lop in the woods, seeking burrows through which the entrance to Child's prison might be found. We padded through the foaming cascade of a waterfall which issued from the valley rim a thousand feet above, searching the subterranean chambers beyond that wet curtain, finding nothing. If there was a place with a blue floor where Child lay encircled by undescribed creatures of a malignant nature, it was nowhere within this valley. Neither was there a doorway into the conscious mind, no exit from this place where I found myself trapped. The journey was not to have a swift conclusion.

For some reason, I was glad for the extension. There was a strong reluctance to part with the form I had taken, to return to the world and be, again, a man.

It was snowing outside as the wolf led me across the last expanse of open fields before the impenetrable wall of mist which separated this part of the a.n.a.logue world from the next. Big white flakes clung to our coats and frosted us, kicked up in clouds as we pranced forward toward the distant veil of fog.

We were sidetracked by the scampering of a covey of quail-like animals off to our left. My lupine friend broke into a wild, breathtaking run, teeth bared ferociously, lips drawn back, s...o...b..r falling from his wide mouth.

I followed, feeling the wind and snow and scenting the flesh of small creatures.

I saw him leap: muscles taut. I saw him land: a spring's coils jammed together.

The air reverberated with the dying squeal of his prey.

In that instant, as the agony of death pierced the air and the pride of a successful hunt shook me, I was more wolf than man, and the danger began to grow more imminent.

I stepped next to him and snuffled at his catch, watched him rend the flesh. Blood fountained up as an artery was struck, spurted crimson across his dark snout, stained his teeth, dotted the snow around us. It steamed in the cold air, this blood, and it had a smell uniquely its own.

I howled.

We tore at the animal together, and he kept his eyes on me for a long while, cold gray eyes that did not disclose the thoughts behind them. When we were done, our noses red and the snow around us sodden, I did not feel disgusted, but rather invigorated.

We turned back to our original pursuit and gained the shifting walls of mists through which I would have to pa.s.s.

"I want to return," I growled.

"So?" His breath reeked.

"May I return?"

"For what purpose?"

"To join your pack."

"That is most unwise. That is foolish, and you know it, and you must journey. Be gone."

Then he turned and loped away, head hunched between his rugged shoulders, eating up yards in a single bounding leap.

Looking up at the even gray of the sky, I felt a hollow longing within me, and I pawed the snow away from the earth, dug the ground into a crosshatch of runnels. I wiped my bloodied snout in the snow and lapped the stained whiteness. I wanted to remain here forever, without regard to my true heritage and nature, to bound after the disappearing wolf and follow him to his pack. In the night hours, there would be deep dens in hidden caves to sleep in warmth and to climb upon some sleek and lovely female with gray eyes and a shiny black snout. During the daylight hours, there would be prowling in the fields and in the spa.r.s.ely treed grounds before the thickness of the forests themselves. There would be blood and camaraderie, running together, killing together, defying the leaden skies with my fellows*

Yet there was some nagging reason why I should go beyond the mists to the next segment of this landscape, though I could not remember what it was. I stepped through the mists, tensed, but found no danger, only cool wetness. I growled deep in my throat and broke through to the other side.

The journey continued.

In the new section of the subconscious universe, there was a taste of Ireland: stony ground, rolling hills so low that one could be seen beyond the other, the smell of the sea, flat areas of land marshy with the backwash of the tidelands. Waiting for me by a column of limestone that stood like a proscenium pillar without benefit of its stage, was a centaur. His head was ringed with golden curls which fell to his shoulders and framed a face of striking masculinity: broad forehead above deep black eyes that spoke of perserverance and a strong will, high aristocratic cheekbones, a proud Roman nose, a blocky chin. His shoulders were brawny, his arms rippling with muscles that seemed to possess a will and intent of their own. From the middle of his flat belly on down, he was a black stallion of formidable proportions, the lines of a thoroughbred in his long legs.

"My name is Kasostrous, and you may call me Kas," he said.

"Call me Simeon," I growled, my voice a tangled hiss of barely understandable guttural syllables.

"You must now acquire the form of the centaur," Kas said, leaving the limestone thrust and ambling toward me.

His hooves clacked on the stony ground, sent sparks up once or twice. His long, flashing length of tail whipped in the breeze, tossed from side to side with lazy power.

"I like wolfhood," I said, pawing the ground, my nails whispering on the dew-damp rock. I continued to stroke, sharpening them for later kills.

"You like it too well," Kas said. "That is the trouble."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, staring up at him with my flint eyes, hoping to strike terror in him. I failed.

"You have fallen into the danger of identifying too closely with the a.n.a.logue you permit your psychic energy to a.s.sume. Though such energy is malleable, the surface tension can grow stronger with time, sap the will to return to any other a.n.a.logue, any other shape. Too long a time as a wolf, and you will find yourself trapped not only in the form, but in the character of the creature."

"Nonsense." But the word was said without conviction and in such a guttural rumble that it only reinforced what Kas said.

"You disprove your own words."

"I'm an esper," I said.

"So?"

"I understand these things."

"You do not grasp the difference of this subconscious universe," he said. "There is a certain thing about it which will trap you-you especially, given your past and your mental condition."

I pawed the earth. "Help me grasp it," I said at last, doubtful. I did not want to have to believe what he was saying. I only wanted to be free to run and tear flesh and mount the sleek females in the dark shadows of the dens.

"Child's mental landscape is peopled only with creatures from legends and mythology. He read extensively in those areas from the moment he could understand language, and he viewed hundreds of senso-tapes on the subject. It interested him, because he thought he might find a purpose even stronger than the one which was connected with the Christian mythos: the Second Coming which he believed was himself."

"But this wolf does not take the form of a mythological creature," I argued with my wolf-mouth.

"There is a Tibetan legend which tells of monks transformed to wolves. They were men who loved luxury and betrayed the true intentions of their religion. They indulged in women and in drink, in jewels and in food, and all that was pretty and satisfying to the senses. Their G.o.d came to them after they had defiled mere children in a brothel contaminated with all manners of evil. In the disguise of demons, their G.o.d offered them immortality for their souls. It was a test to see if they were completely depraved, or whether there was still some minim of decency within them. But all nine of the monks eagerly grasped the straw of endless life at the sacrifice of nirvana, of eternal life on another plane. And so he gave them immortality and crushed their souls. But he gave them immortality as wolves, as vicious reeking creatures hated and feared by all, creatures who could no longer know a woman's form but must run in dank dens, creatures unable to make or appreciate the taste of wine or of a succulently prepared roast."

"And you want me now to be a centaur."

"Yes. The oftener you change, the less chance you have to be absorbed by any one particular mythical prototype.

And you, seeking some purpose beyond your human one, are ripe for such an end as threatens you now."

"I can withstand the pressure."

"You can't," Kas said. He shook golden curls but of his eyes. "You especially. All your life, just like Child, you have relied heavily upon a mythological ill-logic to justify your existence."

"Christian mythos," I corrected, wondering why I was still trying to defend it.

"These are of the same level of value as the Christian one. One will snare you as easily as the other. In all of them, you will find the same simplicity and attractive lack of complication as you found in Christianity's legends.

And you will never leave this place."

I thought, for the first time, of Melinda. I had been forcing her and everything else out of my mind, refusing to acknowledge her no-nonsense interviews in that other world, her quick wit, and her supple and willing body.

Now they all rose and crowded into my consciousness at the same moment, almost overwhelming me.

In time, as we stood there on the rolling earth under the flat sky, listening to the sea, Kas said, "Will you?"

"What?"

"Change?"

"I guess* guess so."

"Soon, then."

I hesitated.

"Soon."

And I changed.

Together, we started off across the hilly land, galloping under the steel blue of looming thunderhead clouds. My own golden hair streamed behind me. My tail rode straight out behind, fluttering in the fingers of the seatinged air.

If anything, this was better than the form of a wolf, carried more of a sense of freedom and delight.

Child was not to be found here, either. We searched everywhere, including the flat white beach where the surf curled. We trotted through the shushing foam of the sea, kicking up sh.e.l.ls and sending crabs in frantic flight. We left our hoofprints in the sucking mud of the moors, in the rich black earth of the gra.s.slands, in the sand by the ocean.

Sure-footed, we climbed the few small peaks and surveyed this sector of the world, looked for caves and came back down again. In time, when it was apparent there was no blue-floored room and no exit to Child's conscious mind, we reached the curtain of mist to another climate, another segment of the fractured reality that const.i.tuted Child's mind.

I was forced to say goodbye to Kas the centaur, though I longed to stay here and enjoy the horseman form a while longer. He lectured me about disa.s.sociating from my centaur form upon leaving this plane, and I listened and made my promises.

In the next landscape, I returned to my human a.n.a.logue, though shedding the horseman form was painful and filled me with a sad need to feel my hooves striking stone.

There was no life here to imitate, so I did not have to worry about becoming inextricably meshed with a myth figure. This was the land of the broken black mountains which jagged up in slabs as big as houses, some even larger than that, like a world of broken crockery and shattered bottles. The sunlight was discolored by the refracting stone and became a depressing brown. The air was flat, as if it had been bottled for a long while, and no breeze moved in it. There were no sounds, no movements.

The sky was an even, ugly yellow, like dark mustard, and not a single cloud marked its expanse.

I walked forward.

The onyx rocks were smooth and cold against my bare feet.

As I scrabbled up the terrain, my fingers squeaked on the shiny surfaces. Those sounds seemed unendurably long in the ghostly silence. I did not like this place at all, wanted out of it as fast as I could move to the next veil of mist. But it was here that I found Child, found the place where he was trapped in his own madness*

IV.

As I made my way over the ebony land, I reached a chasm in the shattered rocks, perhaps a thousand yards long and three yards wide at the top, narrowing to two feet at the bottom. Down there, some three hundred feet below, a soft blue light glowed. It seemed to be the gentle blue of shallow water, but even this slight color branded my eyes in contrast to the sameness of the terrain I had been struggling across for some minutes.

I called down, listened to the flat echo, but received no answer. If this was the place where Child waited, bound by his own insanity, circled by unnamed demons, he was unable to speak.

I swung over the jagged edge, looked to the bottom, then grew wings like those I had seen on the batlike creatures of the mountain. I descended gently, pulled the wings in and absorbed them as the way grew too narrow to glide. I dropped the last few feet onto the blue floor, found it was made of ice.

To the right, the rock wall cut off three feet above the ice, and the pa.s.sage this created seemed to go on for some distance. Lying on my stomach, I slid along the shimmering ice; I was cold but not uncomfortable, exhilarated by the freshness of the air here. A hundred feet further on, the ceiling of black rock thrust suddenly upward, and I found myself in a full-sized cavern where I could stand.

On my feet again, I crossed the barren room to the far side where the ice-encrusted rock seemed to warp downward. There, I discovered steps roughly chiseled in the ice.

I went down them, cautiously, eventually came out in a shadowy chamber with another blue floor, though this one was not empty: Child sat in the center of it in an a.n.a.logue version of his real body.

And*

And: the things crawled around him, circling in mindlessness, yet with a certain uncompromising evil that terrified me even though I knew they could not do me any physical harm. They were much like scorpions though somewhat longer than a man's arm, with flared, knifeedged carapaces shielding their backs, and twenty spindly legs on either side. Their stinging tails forked at the end, each of the two p.r.o.ngs tipped with a trio of wicked spurs as long as my little finger and tapered to needle points.

They did riot look at me, nor did their sensory cilia, bursting like whiskers around their beaked mouths, in any way indicate that they realized my presence.

Their legs hissed on the ice, and their constant parade had worn shallow grooves in the cold floor.

There were different numbers of them at different moments. Now there might be as few as a dozen describing the wide circle-now a hundred of them, magically crystallizing out of the crisp air-now thirty, now a dozen, now two dozen. No matter how hard I looked, I could not catch one of them appearing or disappearing, though their numbers fluctuated with every pa.s.sing second. I had the feeling that I was in a funhouse where there was a complicated array of trick mirrors and that there was actually but one of these creatures whose presence was magnified to one degree or another by ingenious, mirrored pyrotechnics.

"Child?" I called.

The withered dwarf paid no attention to me, but stared with morbid fascination at the nightmarish scorpion guards which kept him ringed in and obedient.

Since I had first been trapped in this subconscious reality, I had not spared the time or the energy to consider the reason and psychology behind many of the mental a.n.a.logues that const.i.tuted this inner universe. I had merely accepted and tried to deal with them, to search through them for a way out, a way to freedom and my own body.

Now, as I watched the grisly parade before me, I began to wonder what this collection of monsters was representative of. Why was Child's core of energy and intelligence trapped in this place, bound to this single minim of his entire subconscious universe? What were these scorpions that surrounded him and maintained their constant, evil vigil?

I examined them more closely and discovered that they did not have that surface sheen of reality that the centaur and the wolf had possessed. They shifted, as if they were liquid, and fragments of thought a.s.sociations whirled inside of them. It took only a moment to discover their true nature.

Consider the human mind: three main parts to it: the ego, the superego, and the id. The first is what we are and what we have reached through the ordeals of life; the second is what we think we are and what we attempt to delude others into considering us as; the third is all the things we want to be and do but which-either because of public condemnation or a conflict with our own superegos and guilt-we never dare consider. In the id, there are the dark facets of our human soul, pieces of racial heritage and other parts uniquely ours: blood l.u.s.t and the desire to rend flesh; s.e.xual longings of grotesque sorts and on grotesque scales; the urge to cannibalism, the hunger for the taste of human meat We repress the id and most of us do not even realize that it stirs within us like a worm in the apple, so complete is our veil of civilization.

These scorpion-tailed monstrosities were Child's id l.u.s.ts, his ugly needs which he, like everyone, had always kept repressed. It was impossible to say how they had gotten free, how they had encircled him like this, but I ventured a guess or two as I watched them clack h.o.r.n.y mandibles and lift rattling, bony legs. Perhaps, when he had considered himself the Second Coming, he had been unable to pretend the id l.u.s.ts did not exist. Perhaps, finally, in order to continue thinking of himself as a deity, he had to rip the id from the other parts of his mind, tear it free of the ego and the superego. And now those l.u.s.ts were attempting to integrate themselves with his mind, to establish contact with the ethereal fragments of his thought processes, where they belonged. Or perhaps the id had been broken loose of the rest of his mind when he had tipped into insanity. Either way, they had found him again, and they had spell-bound him with their evil. He held them off with his psychic energy, still unable to tolerate their being a part of him. (Did he still nurture the Second-Coming fantasy-or perhaps some equal legend from another mythology?) "Child?" I asked again.

Again: no answer.

If I could free him, if only for a moment, could contact him and jar him into a moment of sanity, perhaps I could get him to open a way into his conscious mind, a path to lead me out of his body. But as long as the scorpions were there, as long as he was transfixed by the sight of these l.u.s.ts he had forgotten, I could not reach him.

For the third time since I had first entered his mind that day so long ago, I fashioned a sword from the air, a shimmering blue luminosity with a curving blade and a hilt of dazzling light. Stepping forward, I hacked at the first of the scorpions in my way, halved it. It vanished. I turned to a second of them, tore it through, then swung furiously, wading through the spinning members of the huge creatures, destroying them as fast as the magic mirrors brought them to my attention.

Their sound was a screeching cacophony, and their mandibles punctuated the wailing fury with a drumbeat of irregular snapping, thrumming clacks against the ice floor.