'What do you want? Why did you do this to me?'

'Do what?'

'I can't move, d.a.m.n you!'

Sam hesitated, looked about the room, sensing a ghost scene of what must have transpired. 'I paralyzed you?'

Breadloaf's thin lips moved, and his eyes revolved like ball bearings in well-oiled grooves. Yet the rest of his body was carved from wood, stiff and immovable. 'You and the darts beneath your fingernails. What the h.e.l.l kind of man are you!'

Sam lifted his hands and looked at them. The nails were discolored as if fine bits of flesh had puffed into ashes beneath them, leaving blackened pits. He rubbed one, but the color was definitely not on the surface.

'What kind of man are you!' Breadloaf roared this time, panic flushing every word, every word cored with fear.

'I don't know,' Sam said finally. 'Is there some way I can help you?'

Breadloaf was breathing heavily. 'Yes! Go get help!'

'I can't do that,' Sam said. He stood on the carpet, shuffling one foot over the other, feeling somewhat the hypocrite.

'Why? Why can't you?'

'It won't let me.'

'It?'

Briefly, he recounted his story-the jelly-ma.s.s, the hypnotic commands. When he finished, the other man's eyes were wide-too wide to contain anything but horror. 'The Prisoner!' he croaked.

'What?'

'The Prisoner of the Shield. You're under its direction!'

Sam turned instinctively toward the portal of wavering colors. 'Then they are are alive!' alive!'

Breadloaf was laughing, and Sam could not get him to stop. It was not the laughter of him and Hurkos and Gnossos in the Inferno. Inferno. This was laughter at the inevitability of some unknown tragedy. He could sense that, but he could not stop the other man. Neither could he leave to get help. His feet would carry him toward the doorway but not through it. There was a mental block that kept him within the room. His memory began to clear slightly, and he could remember what else he had done in this building. He had planted some sort of bomb in the machinery below. And it must be the machinery that kept this* this Shield going. This was laughter at the inevitability of some unknown tragedy. He could sense that, but he could not stop the other man. Neither could he leave to get help. His feet would carry him toward the doorway but not through it. There was a mental block that kept him within the room. His memory began to clear slightly, and he could remember what else he had done in this building. He had planted some sort of bomb in the machinery below. And it must be the machinery that kept this* this Shield going.

'A thousand years,' Breadloaf shouted between whoops of laughter. 'For a thousand years it tried the same things over and over, and we thought it was too dense to attempt anything different. Instead, it was pretending stupidity, making us lax. And it worked. Just when we were feeling secure, it takes you and breaks in with ridiculous ease. A thousand years to the Prisoner are like but a day to us.' He laughed again, harshly.

There was sweat on Sam's upper lip. He wiped it off and became aware of perspiration all over him. He was frightened. A thousand years behind the Shield. And it had only been playing around, using the time as a diversion. A score of centuries had meant nothing to it. He watched it with a loathing that touched the deepest part of him. Were the colors its true appearance or merely the effects of it filtered by the Shield? He thought the colors were a front, not the true nature of it. The true nature could not be something so beautiful and vibrant, surely. A blue splotch rippled up from the bottom, seemed to form a question mark like one would find on a large tronicsign- Tronicsign!

He remembered seeing the high tronicsign band that ran around all four sides of the Breadloaf Building, carrying letters twenty feet tall. Perhaps the control console was up here. If it was, he could spell out a message for Gnossos and Hurkos. Surely they would be looking for him. It was almost a certainty they could see the towering tronicsign from anywhere in this part of the city. If they were in this part of the city*

'The tronicsign controls,' he asked-said.

'What?' Breadloaf's eyes slid back and forth in the sockets liked trapped animals.

'The advertising screen. The light letters. Where are the controls for the light letters?'

'Why?'

'Where are they?' There was a tone of command in his voice that he had not known he possessed.

'There's a master set in the main lounge, but I have a secondary plug-in set in the wall cabinet-over there.'

He found it, plugged it in, began typing out a message that the big boards would hold in glowing-red? amber? blue?-letters. He decided on crimson words against a black background. GNOSSOS/HURKOS* 'What floor is this?' he asked Breadloaf.

'Top.'

TOP FLOOR. EXECUTIVE OFFICE. COME QUICKLY. SAM.

There would be waiting then. He paced the carpet briskly, now and then trying to go out of the door but always discovering that the hypnotic suggestions prohibited that. Finally, they came. And they demanded explanations.

He gave them the few he could, told them about the bomb planted below, the bomb that would wreck the machinery, shut down the Shield, and set the Prisoner free-whatever the Prisoner might be. He gave them the location of it, told them how to remove it and how to handle it: gently. They ran to get it. It seemed like a very long time that they were gone-time enough to construct a thousand possible deaths that might result if the bomb exploded. Just when he was ready to count them as deserters, they returned with the bomb and the timer, carrying it as if it were a piece of delicate and expensive crystal.

Carefully, Sam disconnected the timer, lifted the halves of the casing apart, and poured the volatile liquid out of the single window behind Breadloaf's ma.s.sive desk. Four breaths were released simultaneously as he turned and said, 'It's okay.'

'Then this is it!' Gnossos said, the first to recover completely. He paced back and forth, looking at the Shield, stopping to touch it, to examine the point where it went flush with the wall. 'This is the thing that has been directing you. But if it is trapped behind this Shield, how did it get to you to hypnotize you? And how did it whip up that jelly-cored ship?'

'I think I can* shed some light on that,' Breadloaf grunted. He was still paralyzed, but his fingers were tingling, and he could move his thumbs. The effects were beginning to wear away.

They turned to him. Gnossos crossed the room. 'What light?'

'He-' Breadloaf began.

'Sam,' Sam identified himself.

Breadloaf blinked appreciation. 'Yes. Sam. I think you are all operating under a false a.s.sumption. The Prisoner did not get get Sam. He did not kidnap Sam. Sam is the Prisoner's creation.' Sam. He did not kidnap Sam. Sam is the Prisoner's creation.'

'Creation?' Gnossos snorted.

'Yes. The Prisoner imagined Sam, built his imaginings into a concrete ent.i.ty. It was probably done with a last big burst of the Prisoner's energies.'

'That's absurd!'

Breadloaf tried to shake his head, only succeeded in making his lips quiver and his eyes tremble. 'No. The Prisoner concentrated, summed up all his resources, and shaped a man and a ship. The ship was not a machine, for machines are alien to the Prisoner's mind. Some places, the dimensions are rather close, due to the warping of the higher dimension. Perhaps at one of these places he forced his thoughts through the thin barrier and made Sam and the ship.'

'But why not force himself through at one of those spots?' Hurkos asked.

'He could not do that with what energies he had left. You see, he is much, much larger than the ship and Sam put together, larger by an infinite degree. He is the entire higher dimension!' He is the entire higher dimension!'

Ocher birds flittered over green and blue oceans*

'One creature is an entire dimension?'

Breadloaf coughed. 'If that creature is G.o.d, yes. And that is precisely who the Prisoner of the Shield is!'

X.

'G.o.d!' Gnossos shouted.

Hurkos wandered next to the Shield, pressed his face to it, looking into the colors that swirled, folded upon themselves and became new colors, Here, brought to him through modern science, was the being that prayer could not yield. Technology had replaced faith and with far better results.

'The dreams,' Gnossos said, turning to the dazzling display on the screen. 'The dreams Hurkos took from it were the dreams of a paranoid, then; they were the dreams of a being obsessed with demon-persecution.'

Sam's mind whirled in a nighmare landscape of doubt and nearly unconquerable mountains of unbelief. 'And the machines were not machines at all, for G.o.d is not the Father of the machine. G.o.d is the Father of life, the Father of man who makes the machines. G.o.d could imitate the exterior of a machine, but the only way He could make it work was to create a life form-the jelly-ma.s.s-to imitate the workings of one. He knows us, physically, but He doesn't know what we have within us.'

'And G.o.d feared machines because they were something above His abilities. He feared the Mues and chose to ignore their existence in your training because they were things beyond His powers-the results of men usurping His rights.'

'A thousand years,' Breadloaf muttered.

'How could you stand it?' Gnossos asked, turning from the Shield. 'How could you sit there, knowing?'

'Sometimes, after I had left here and gone into the streets and smelled the fresh air, I thought I could never come back. But when I thought of how much worse it would be if He ever escaped*'

'Of course,' Gnossos said sympathetically. 'For a thousand years, men have grown gradually saner, have broken communications with their barbaric past. It's all because He's been trapped in your warped dimension tank and can't influence anything. Isn't that it?'

Breadloaf sighed. He was able to make fists of his hands now, and he sat exercising them. 'That's it exactly. My father thought he could enslave the Prisoner and make Him work for the family. We knew who He was. He wasted no time in telling us that, in demanding to be set free. But we could not master Him. It became clear that we could never let Him out. At first, of course, it was for the family's safety. He could, and would, wipe out every Breadloaf. Then, after a few hundred years, when we saw what the empire was becoming, how much better it seemed, how much saner were the councils of man, we realized that much of the ugliness of life had been G.o.d's doing. We had even stronger reasons for keeping Him locked up. If He were ever released'-Breadloaf wriggled an arm at last-'war would come again. Famine as we have never known it. Pestilence. Disease. We have but one choice: keep Him contained.'

'Correction, please. You have no choice but to release Him!'

The voice drew their attention to the door. A man stood there-a Christian judging from his beard. There were a dozen others standing behind him, dirty, unshaven, dressed in the rags of self-denial. One of them was the sign-carrier Gnossos had argued with in the streets what seemed like an eternity ago. He was smiling now, sans sign. He stepped into the room. 'Isn't it strange whom G.o.d should choose as His liberators?'

'How did they-' Breadloaf began, struggling against his stiff body.

'I told them!' Sam shouted. The series of hypnotic orders flashed through his memory now. What G.o.d had ordered him to do was a burning clarity. He recited the posthypnotic commands that had followed their landing on Hope: 'Find a temple and tell the Christians that G.o.d is being held prisoner by the Breadloaf family in the Breadloaf Building; I will give you flames upon your tongue as a sign to convince them. In a Sell-All Hardwaremat, purchase these chemicals and pieces of equipment: ester of glycerin, nitric acid, a watch, a spool of number twenty-six copper wire, and a small construction detonator. Next prepare a bomb of glyceryl tinitrate. Next, break into the Breadloaf Building, plant the bomb by force pump A3A45 in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Next, render Alexander Breadloaf III helpless via drug darts.' He had told the Christians then. They were here on his word.

'It isn't your fault,' Gnossos said.

Then the echo of an explosion rumbled through the floors of the building, shook the walls. The Christians were destroying the machinery that maintained the Shield. They were planting new bombs to do what Sam's first one didn't have a chance to do.

A second explosion rocked the floor even more violently*

And the Shield blinked*

* was gone*

Breadloaf screamed a piercing scream, a thing that he had only half finished with when the black bird with the forty million eyes and the claws of bra.s.s swept from the vacant spot in the wall, swooped out on the cold winds and descended on him. The room had expanded, it seemed, to the size of a dozen galaxies. The room was erupting on the way to becoming the macrocosm itself. Yet all of it was filled with them and this thing from beyond their dimension so that it seemed, in another and confounding way, that the chamber had shrunk to the size of a small closet.

There was no up or down.

The stars had lost their glitter and consumed themselves.

With a tongue of sequined pebbles, the darkness ate the light.

Sam was tumbling around within and yet without G.o.d, smashing against the pinions of the tremendous feathers, caught alternately in winds as cold as ice and as hot as volcano hearts. On and off, as he fought the crushing expanses of blackness that clutched at him with a million oiled talons, he saw Alexander Breadloaf. He saw him first without skin-peeled and b.l.o.o.d.y. Next he saw him blackened and a thing of ash. The ashes became other dark birds that bored into the belly of the omnipotent black bird and revitalized it with their frenzy. He saw lightning flashing from Breadloaf's charred nostrils and worms eating the man's black tongue. He saw him undergo all the punishments of all imagined h.e.l.ls. And he feared greatly the moment when G.o.d would turn on the rest of them, come with claws and with fangs to eat out their livers with His silver-plated teeth.

Feathers sprouted from Breadloaf, black feathers that were oily and bent. With His beak, the thing that was G.o.d plucked the feathers from the man, leaving gaping holes that seeped yellow*

There was no warmth; neither was there cold.

Everywhere was fear.

Then, abruptly and without announcement, there were words in his mind. They were Hurkos' familiar tones: Listen. Listen to me. I can see Him. I can see G.o.d! Listen. Listen to me. I can see Him. I can see G.o.d!

I can see Him too! Sam thought-screamed. Sam thought-screamed.

No. I mean, I can see Him with my psionic powers. There is nothing to Him! He's so d.a.m.ned small!

Clarify yourself! This was from Gnossos. This was from Gnossos.

He is puny. He is not large and forceful. The room is not expanding. Breadloaf is not being charred or eaten by worms. G.o.d is trying to frighten Breadloaf to death. Fear and illusions are the only weapons He has left. He has lost His greatest powers. Perhaps from centuries of confinement and the last surge of energy needed to create Sam. He is drained.

But all this, Sam thought. Sam thought.

A d.a.m.n fake! I'll send you the true picture. I'm looking, directly through His illusions and delusions. I can see. I'll broadcast.

In an eye blink, the room was normal. Breadloaf was uncharred. But he was was dead. His eyes were blank, fish-belly things. His hand clutched his chest above his heart. The tiny transmitter in his heart would be yelling for the medics. He would be reached in time-here in the city-to be given a new heart before brain damage occurred. He would live again. dead. His eyes were blank, fish-belly things. His hand clutched his chest above his heart. The tiny transmitter in his heart would be yelling for the medics. He would be reached in time-here in the city-to be given a new heart before brain damage occurred. He would live again.

'Where?' Gnossos asked.

Then they saw it. It was poised on the rim of the Shield itself. It was a small, pink, formless thing. It had not refrained from transferring itself simply because it was too big. It had sent Sam first for the simple reason that Sam would be more effective than it would have been. For a moment the dreams surged back, but Hurkos used his own, greater powers to fight them away. Then the Mue raised a chair, smashed it into the pink slug. Again, again, and again. He mashed with a fury that Sam would not have guessed him to possess.

And Hurkos killed G.o.d.

XI.

Breadloaf came through the door of the saloon, stopped a moment to search them out, then smiled as he sighted them. Only seven hours had pa.s.sed since he had died, but he looked healthy and cheerful. More cheerful, in fact, than they had ever seen him look. He made his way through the crowd, nodding to friends, stopping now and again to shake hands with those who were oblivious to his recent adventure. Finally he reached their table, sat down. 'I pa.s.sed the church on the way. The Christians are moving out of their homes in the bas.e.m.e.nts, bundles on their backs. In a way, it's a shame. Their lives have amounted to nothing.'

'They can take the shots now,' Hurkos said. He was relaxed for the first time in a long, long while. He had gotten his revenge, more revenge than any man could hope for. Sam had wondered, at first, if Hurkos could be deranged, for he had, after all, killed. But he had not killed a man. Therein lay the key. What he had had killed was a rung lower than Man, really, therefore an animal. 'They can live eternally.' killed was a rung lower than Man, really, therefore an animal. 'They can live eternally.'

'Some of them probably will. But they are old, remember. Fifty, some sixty, while the rest of us are thirty or under. It will not be completely pleasant to be eternally near-old in an age of eternal youth.'

'Tragic and ironic,' Gnossos said, sipping his drink. 'How do you you feel?' feel?'

'Better than ever,' Breadloaf answered punching the robotender for drinks and trying unsuccessfully to ward off Gnossos' hand as it thrust coins into the machine.

'I guess so,' Hurkos said. Then: 'Gnossos, I killed G.o.d tonight. How's that for an epic poem?'