'Please!' he screamed. 'Please!'

The last screams brought them out of sleep, breathing hard. Sam pushed himself up, looked about the ship to rea.s.sure himself. Then he turned to Hurkos. 'What sort of dream was that?'

Gnossos looked curious.

'He's a telepath,' Sam explained. 'Irregular talent. But what the h.e.l.l kind of dreams were those?'

'That's what I'd like to know, Sam,' Hurkos said. 'I was getting them from you!'

VI.

'Me?'

'Well, not really from your mind. Through Through your mind. The generator of those thoughts is very distant. No one in this room. And the mind of that generator is horribly large. Immeasurable. This was only a fraction of the thoughts in it, a small corner of them. In this case, I picked up this trace of thoughts and for some reason my subconscious talent began boosting their vividness and re-broadcasting them.' your mind. The generator of those thoughts is very distant. No one in this room. And the mind of that generator is horribly large. Immeasurable. This was only a fraction of the thoughts in it, a small corner of them. In this case, I picked up this trace of thoughts and for some reason my subconscious talent began boosting their vividness and re-broadcasting them.'

'But I wouldn't have dreamed them without your help.'

Hurkos smiled sadly. 'You would have dreamed them just the same and just as completely. You would not have been aware aware of dreaming them, is all.' of dreaming them, is all.'

'But then what was it? It reminded me of the man on the cross you toppled after Belina's death.'

'It's the Christ legend,' Gnossos said. They turned to stare at him. 'I make legends my business. Poets work in all sorts of mythologies. There have been a large number of them-and a large number of wild ones too. The Christ legend is not so ancient. There are still Christians, as you know, though d.a.m.n few. Most of the religion, along with all the others, died out about a thousand years ago, shortly after the Permanent Peace and the immortality drugs. According to legend, the G.o.d-figure Christ was crucified on a dogwood cross. This dream seems to be a reenactment of that myth, though I do not recall that the man hung there that long or that there were administering angels and tempting demons.'

'This could be another clue,' Hurkos offered.

'How so?' Sam was ready to clutch at the smallest straw.

'Perhaps your mystery hypnotist is a neo-Christian, one of those who refuse the immortality drugs. That would certainly explain why he would want to overthrow the empire. He would want to convert the pagans, bring the savages into the fold. That's us.'

'Good point,' Gnossos said. 'But that doesn't explain the blob.'

Hurkos lapsed into silence.

Bong-bong-bong!

PREPARE FOR NORMAL s.p.a.cE AND MANUAL CONTROL OF THIS VESSEL!.

'We're almost to Hope,' Gnossos said. 'Perhaps we will soon be having more clues.'

The flight-control system of the planet-wide city locked them into its pattern and began bringing them down to a point of its own choosing since they had not requested any particular touchdown spot. Ships fluttered above, below, and to all sides of them. Bubble cars spun across the great elevated roadway, zipping between the buildings, sometimes slipping into tunnels in the skysc.r.a.pers from which they often emerged going another direction. They settled onto a gray pad where the flames of their descent were soaked up, cooled, dissipated.

Beyond the pad, on all sides, lay Hope. Super-city. The hope, literally, of a new way of life for billions. They stood at the open portal, waited while the attendant marked their checkslip so that they would have the proper ship to return to, tore it in half and gave them their portion.

'Well,' Gnossos said, 'where to?'

'No orders yet,' Sam said.

'Let's just wander around a bit.'-Hurkos.

'Okay, we will.'-Gnossos.

And they did.

He sat before the thick window that was not really a window at all, and he looked at the thing beyond. It raged, lashing, screaming, roaring like a thousand bulls with pins in their brains. How long? How long had it fought against the Shield, trying to get out? Breadloaf peered deeper into the Shield, clutched his chair and leaned farther back in it. The ma.s.sive desk nearly concealed his slumped form. A thousand years and more. That was how long. His father had constructed the barrier and the chamber beyond, which dipped into the other dimension. No, not another dimension either-a higher higher dimension. Not another alternate scheme of things, just a different layer of this particular scheme. And when his father had died in a freak accident that the medics could not undo the damage of, dimension. Not another alternate scheme of things, just a different layer of this particular scheme. And when his father had died in a freak accident that the medics could not undo the damage of, he he had come into possesssion of the family fortune, the family buildings, the family office structure here in the Center of Hope, the Shield and the tank beyond. The last two things were something one did not advertise. It was a family secret-a big, h.o.a.ry skeleton in the family closet. The burden was his, and only his. had come into possesssion of the family fortune, the family buildings, the family office structure here in the Center of Hope, the Shield and the tank beyond. The last two things were something one did not advertise. It was a family secret-a big, h.o.a.ry skeleton in the family closet. The burden was his, and only his.

For six hundred years he had come here every week, sometimes for stretches that lasted days, most often for just a few hours. He came to look at the Shield. And what lay beyond, trapped by it. It was a weight that rested heavily on his shoulders at all times. It was insane to worry. He knew that. The Shield had held for over a thousand years; it would hold forever. It could not fail. It was maintained by machines, and machines had not been known to fail since his grandfather's time. And these machines were tended, not by unreliable men, but by other machines that gained their power from still more machines. It was foolproof.

Still, Alexander Breadloaf III came once a week, sometimes staying a long time, sometimes just for a few hours. Still he worried. Still-he was afraid.

Crimson exploded across the screen, washed down and turned to ocher at the bottom. Explosions would not shatter the Shield, no matter how violent they might be. Didn't it understand this by now? A thousand years of explosions, and it still did not understand. That thought left a sorry spot on his soul, but he reminded himself of what his father always said (said so often that it became the family motto): 'There is no longer ignorance in men.' Maybe. Evidently. Although he feared that ignorance lurked just below the surface, waiting for a chance*

There was a lovely pattern of blue and silver as it applied certain stress pattern sequences to the Shield. But it had tried that before. It had tried everything before*

Breadloaf pushed himself out of the chair, walked toward the door that led into the hallway. He would get some simple foods, some coffee. And he would return. This was one of those times when a brief glance at it was not going to be enough. It was going to be one of those weeks. One of those long long weeks. weeks.

VII.

In their wandering, they came across many things that amazed Sam despite the fact that he wholly or partially remembered most of them. It was as if he had been told of these things but had never actually seen them. In the seeing lay the wonder. They had gone to the light shows, the toto-experience places. They had seen the parks, the avenues of art. Gnossos knew the city well, that being one of the qualifications of a true poet-to know the beating heart of the metropolis. Or megalopolis? No matter. He explained all things they did not understand, clarified things they thought they knew. It was a marvelous time, save for the constant awareness that another hypnotic trance and order could be on the way, minutes from them, ready to swallow Sam into noisy chaos and use him.

So it was, in the course of their aimless ramblings, they came upon the Christian. Sam noticed that Hurkos bristled at the sight of the man-not because of this individual, but because of the heedless G.o.d that supposedly stood behind him.

The Christian was old. He was fifty, ancient in a world where all were eternally thirty or younger. He had evidently been a child of a strong Christian family, for he had not even received anti-beard elements; the heavy shadow on his face gave him an eerie, seldom-seen metallic look. His teeth were yellow and chipped. His skin was wrinkled. Across his chest and back hung the halves of a sandwich sign. The front said: G.o.d IS ASHAMED! When the man saw them coming, he executed a small heel-turn to reveal the letters on the back of the sign: HE SHALL COME AGAIN TO JUDGE!

'I can't understand them,' Hurkos said.

Gnossos smiled a thin smile. 'Some day, they will all be gone.'

'But why are there these people?' Sam asked. 'Don't the medics prevent mental infirmities in babies?'

'Well,' the poet said, shortening his giant strides to match the smaller steps of his companions, 'the original concept of the empire was complete freedom. Mental infirmities were weeded out, true. As a result, the number of religious people dropped over the years. But one cannot limit another man's beliefs under a system of complete freedom. Religious persons were allowed to practice their beliefs. Though their children might be born as mentally sound as possible, the parents raised them and pa.s.sed their own superst.i.tions on to their offspring. The number of religious dwindled. But as long as they procreated-and this is a strong part of their faith, these Christians-they would always have children to indoctrinate, to warp. It's a pity, certainly. But, after all, they are responsible and it is their life and their child. A man can waste what is his if he so choose. I guess.'

'Know the Word,' the Christian said as they drew abreast of him. He handed Gnossos and Sam pamphlets-yellow paper with red print. They were so wrinkled and tattered that it was evident many people had handed them right back in the past. The short-lived traffic of each pamphlet had worn it severely.

'I'll take one too,' Hurkos said, holding his hand out.

The Christian made no reply. Hurkos asked again.

'Will you ask this person of tainted blood to cease speaking to me?' the bearded one asked Sam. He was obviously distressed, running his thin, bony hands up and down the edges of the chest sign, toying with little splinters projecting from the edge of the plastic square.

'Tainted blood?'

'They don't like Mues,' Gnossos explained. 'They would never speak to one unless they were dying and needed help. Then, it would be G.o.d's will that they spoke.'

'Why are Mues-tainted?' Sam asked.

'A Mue is not a creation of G.o.d, but the work of man,' the Christian snapped. 'A Mue is a violation of G.o.d's holy powers of creation.' His eyes gleamed fanatically.

'Prejudice,' Gnossos said. 'It's part of the dogma of every religion-sometimes heavily disguised but always there. Do you know the history of your church, old man?'

The Christian shuffled his feet. He was beginning to feel that it might be best to stay out of an argument with these particular pagans, but his fanatic devotion could not be totally denied. 'Of course I do. In the beginning there was-'

'It doesn't start that far back.' Gnossos laughed. He licked his lips, anxious to launch into the old man. 'It doesn't start with the darkness and the light and the first seven days. It comes along much later. Millennia later. There's no church until man decides he needs a means of social climbing, something to make him superior to his neighbors. So he forms a church, a religion. By forming it, he can say that he knows what and why G.o.d is. He can say he knows the purpose of all things and can, therefore, be a cut above other men.'

'G.o.d chose chose Saint Peter to start the church, to be above other men.' Saint Peter to start the church, to be above other men.'

Gnossos smiled patronizingly, almost a saint himself-except for the sharp blade that was his tongue. 'I doubt that. You'll pardon me if I sound distrustful, but I doubt that very much. History is simply littered with men who said G.o.d had chosen them to be a leader. Most of them fell flat on their faces. Most of them got trampled down and smashed in the flow of Time and History, which are two things bigger than any any man.' man.'

'False prophets!' the sign-carrier growled.

'So what makes you think Saint Peter wasn't a false prophet?'

'What he started is still with us.'

'Duration does not prove worth. Wars lasted a d.a.m.n sight longer than your religion has, but they were finished and done away with because they were not good things. Besides, your faith is just barely with us. It seems Saint Peter's work is facing the end that war faced.'

Sam made a face, launched into the conversation again. 'But why hate Hurkos for not being directly G.o.d-created? If G.o.d gave men the power to invent and use the Artificial Womb, then He was involved in the creation of the Mues, though-'

'Men usurped the power,' the Christian said.

'But if G.o.d is all-powerful, men could not usurp anything of His. Why, He would crush men who tried-'

Gnossos put a hand on Sam's shoulder. 'It is not for this reason that Christians hate Mues. As I said, they have to feel superior. There are so few people they can look down on anymore; the Mue offers a perfect scapegoat. Because he is often abnormal physically-whether it be a detrimental physical difference or a beautiful, functional difference-they have something to feel superior about. I am not like you,' they say. I am normal. I am whole.''

A crowd had begun to form around the debate. People strained over one another's shoulders, trying to hear and get a look at the verbal combatants. This seemed to please Gnossos, but it irritated the Christian.

'And my dear fellow,' Gnossos continued in a friendly tone raised a bit for the benefit of those at the back of the crowd, 'do you know who started many of the worst wars in the past three thousand years?'

'Satan's forces'

'No. G.o.d, it should be so simple as you say. No, it was Christians, the very people who preached against war. In-'

The bearded man showed his teeth in what could have been a snarl if he had added sound. 'I will not pursue this argument any longer. You are in Satan's employ.' He moved quickly, pushing at the crowd that had gathered. They hesitated, then parted to let him through. He had, very shortly, been lost in the breast of the night to be suckled by its darkness.

'You don't imagine you did any good,' Hurkos said as the crowd around them dispersed and they began walking again. 'You don't imagine you got through that bony structure he calls a head, do you?'

'No. But I can't resist trying. He is unreachable by this time. Besides, even if he doubted his faith, he would not allow himself to give that doubt prominence in this thoughts. He has forsaken concrete eternity via the immortality drugs, and now he has nothing to cling to but the hopes of his religion, the promises of his G.o.d.'

'Gives me the shivers,' Sam said.

'This is all getting much too morbid,' Gnossos said. 'Let's find a hotel and settle down. My feet are killing me, and there is no telling how much running we might have to do to catch Sam if he gets another order.'

Breadloaf finished the last morsels of his sandwich, licked his gums to remove the sticky salad dressing, took a long swallow of hot, black coffee, and leaned back in his chair as if it were a womb he was asking to swallow him. The room was dark, for the thing behind the Shield was not a thing for well-lighted rooms. Its details were brought out too fully in light. Blackness allowed merciful obscurity.

Cinnabar hors.e.m.e.n riding green stallions exploded across the screen, were gone in a wash of lavender*

He liked to pick out patterns in the explosions of color, choose and name them as a young boy might do with clouds seen seen from a green gra.s.s-covered hill in summer. from a green gra.s.s-covered hill in summer.

A dragon's mouth holding the broken body of an amber* amber* amber* amber knight* amber knight*

Alexander Breadloaf III wondered whether his father had sat like this, watching the patterns and trying to make something of them. It was a seeking after order, certainly, that was the purpose of watching them. Had his father sat, his great leonine head bowed in contemplation, his heavy brows run together from the forehead-wrinkling concentration? Had he laced his thick fingers behind his waterfall of white hair and watched-actually studied-the Prisoner of the Shield, as the family had come to speak of it?

He doubted it. His father had been a man of hard work and strenuous action. He had built his father's small fortune into a very large fortune, an almost incalculable sum of money. When his engineers accidently stumbled across the Shield while looking for a non-matter force for construction purposes, when they discovered, to their horror, what lay beyond. The old man took the practical angle. He knew there was a fortune to be made here, more than his already formidable ma.s.ses of wealth. He had only to enslave the powers already trapped behind the Shield and turn them to work for him. The Shield was maintained. But the powers could never be enslaved. To agree to slavery, the slave must have fear of his master. There was no fear in the Prisoner. Absolutely none.

Brilliant flashes of white rippled like fish through a sudden sea of smoky burgundy*

His heart thudded at the bright light, even though he knew the Shield was impenetrable. Take one molecule and expand it. Expand it some more. Make it bigger and bigger and bigger-but don't disturb its natural particle balance. You have a Shield. It will hold back anything, stand against even nuclear power of the highest magnitude. But you also have a doorway into a higher dimension. A barred doorway. No, really more like an unbreakable window. But that window turns the higher dimension into a prison, squeezes it into a confined s.p.a.ce (a law of opposites which equalizes the pressure created by the expanding first molecule). The higher dimension is then bound within the tiny limits. It and its inhabitants are trapped, unable to move or to get out.

Brilliant white on yellow like cat's-eye marbles*

No, his father had never sat here like this. He was too practical for melancholia. Along about the second hundred years of the Prisoner's confinement, the old fellow had realized-probably with a great deal of bitterness-he could never enslave it and demand things of it. And as the years pa.s.sed he came to maintain the Shield only because to let it go off would mean the end of his family and possibly all human life. The Prisoner would be seeking revenge-an omnipotent, terrible revenge of finality. By the days of Alexander the Third, this fear of the Prisoner had been compounded by a feeling of moral obligation. The sanity and progress of the empire depended on keeping the Prisoner imprisoned. Always, in the rear of his mind, was the fear that the thing would escape. Sometimes that fear surged to the fore. Times like this. He wanted to run into the streets and scream about the charge behind the Shield. But the Breadloafs had done this thing, had trapped this beast. It would be up to them to watch it for all eternity. And perhaps beyond.

Finally, when watching was not quite enough, Alexander walked to the Shield, stood with a hand upon the coursing energy. 'How did you,' he said at length to the thing beyond, 'become like this?'

It could only thought-speak to him when he was touching the Shield. Even then, the words were tiny and distant: Letmeout, letmeout Letmeout, letmeout*

'How did you become like this?'

Letmeout, letmeout, letmeout*

That was its constant cry. Sometimes there were bloodcurdling threats. But he knew-and it knew-that the threats could not be carried out. Not as long as the Shield was there. It would never answer his question: 'How did you become like this?' Not today. It had answered previously, but only when it thought it had something to gain.

'How did you become like this?'

And it had said: I have always been like this* I have always been like this*

On hydro-beds, reclining, they opened their ears. The hotel room was pleasant and s.p.a.cious. Gnossos lay before the door so that Sam would have to crawl over him to get out. The lights were soft but adequate, the wine sweet upon their tongues. It was certainly a time for verses.

'Look through the window to the streets below; It's the age of sorrow, babies in the snow.

Look through any window across a sea of dust; Time lies shattered in a mobius rust*'