He concentrated on remembering Jacob Westblom as an animal, a l.u.s.t-crazed, power-mad creature with no human qualities whatsoever, a comic book creation of evil.

He remembered the look of the stroke-damaged brain tissue, but he blanked that memory immediately.

He ordered the tape erased.

He tried to be careful, tried not to destroy the mind and the brain beyond that. His goal was still not Westblom's destruction, but the erasure of this information from the storage vaults of his mind. If he could preserve the man's life at the same time, so be it.

He wished that he could heal Westblom with his ESP power. But, again, he knew that the brain was too intricate, too mysterious, for his still coltish powers to heal. And injury there was permanent.

The lights dimmed.

Cracks appeared in the walls.

Timothy held down on the erasure control, though he was weeping and gagging and desperately wanted out of that place. He had never been in a dying mind before, and the absolute terror of the destruction almost drove him beyond the bounds of his own sanity.

Part of the a.n.a.logue roof tumbled down around him, dust exploding in great, obscuring clouds. Above the roar of the demolition, there echoed a faint and distant scream...

When he was done and had left the mind of the dead man, not bothering to finish erasing the tape, he knew that the trick of pretending that the subconscious was representative of the whole man had worked to help him get the necessary job done, had given him the ability to kill-but that it was a delusion that would not help to a.s.suage his own guilt in the years to come. That was something no number of tricks could cope with.

The electrocardiograph had stopped its incessant bleeping and was humming a sharp, electronic note.

The nurse still slept.

Otherwise, still quiet.

He looked at Westblom, although he did not want to. He wanted only to get out of there, to be away from the smells of sickness, the white walls, the starched and supercleanly nurse, the low humming of the heart-watching machine which meant death, death, death...

He saw that the stroke had twisted the thin, aristocratic nose, setting it out of line. There was a darkening of the facial flesh, and in some areas, especially just under the eyes, it was perfectly blue-black. The mouth was still open. One hand had clenched the sheets in the last moments of life, had twisted them up and through bony, white fingers, as if they could save him.

He tried to recall the picture he had gotten of Westblom from his subconscious, all the l.u.s.ts and perversions, all the ugly, twisted desires that had been the inner core of the man. But he could not get that all together again.

Strangely, the vision that appeared was of the naked black girl, lying on Leland's bedroom floor. He shook that off.

He tensed. Teleported...

CHAPTER 19.

His house was a painful place now, for more than one reason. Looking at it, he saw the old Timothy, the man he had once been but could never be again. The flowering of his ESP and the centuries to come with the aliens had and would continue to change him beyond recognition-at least mentally and emotionally. Also, he was pained at having to leave this place. Even if it was no longer he, no longer relative and important to the man he had become, it was a link with the past, a tenuous connection to the rest of humanity. Leaving it would be the final, indisputable indication that there would never be any going back.

He went into the bas.e.m.e.nt and sat through a senso-tape show on his tri-dimension screens. But he flicked it off, bored, a few moments before it was to end. In the shooting range he pulled off a couple dozen rounds into the targets, but gained no flush of achievement when they were all bull's eyes. Upstairs in the library he still felt a faint glimmer of belonging, among the books and tapes and knowledge. But even this was not as strong as it had once been.

He slid the panel back on the comscreen controls and dialed George Creel's home number. He had to wait only a short moment before the dark man answered.

"h.e.l.lo, George."

He could see that Creel was startled. He remembered, then, that he had been gone for several days. They had kidnapped him and taken him to that New England house, and for three days or more he had been fed PBT. Somehow that seemed like a hundred years ago. None of it mattered any more, and it had retreated to the depths of his mind. Creel, too cool and self-a.s.sured to lose his sense of calm, did not burst into a list of hysterical questions.

"You been gone awhile," he said.

Timothy nodded. "Longer, it seems, than I really was."

"You didn't leave a message. And after the SAM thing the day before, I didn't know exactly what was coming down. So I contacted the police. Not publicly. I knew you wouldn't want that in the event it wasn't some sort of foul play."

"Fine. And you can call the police off the trail."

Creel nodded.

"No time for explanations, George. And, besides, I'm not up to it. George, I want you to turn on your tape machine. Record the rest of this call."

Creel's eyebrows raised a little, but he complied. "Go ahead," he said a moment later.

"George, I am using this call as a legal transaction. You've got the picture and a vocal record. Pattern checks can be run on my voice. I am delivering control of Enterstat Enterstat and all related companies and stocks into your hands." and all related companies and stocks into your hands."

For the first time in their long a.s.sociation, Timothy thought that he saw Creel totally disarmed and confused. The dark man was normally granite; he had suddenly become jelly. Ti watched, amused, well aware that the transition back to granite would require only seconds. George Creel was not a weak man.

"You can't mean that you-"

"Let me talk, George. I'm handing everything over to you, and I'm appointing you president and sole maker of company policy in my absence. You will draw a salary either seven times that which you now receive or fifteen percent of the yearly net profits on a projected scale, whichever is is higher. In the event that I should not return or make my whereabouts public before the end of your lifetime, you will make arrangements for a capable member of your staff to pick up these reins when you retire or die. There shall be no question, upon your abdication of the seat of power, who shall take your place. Is that clear?" higher. In the event that I should not return or make my whereabouts public before the end of your lifetime, you will make arrangements for a capable member of your staff to pick up these reins when you retire or die. There shall be no question, upon your abdication of the seat of power, who shall take your place. Is that clear?"

"But-" The jelly state was metamorphosing swiftly into a granite facade again. The only thing that betrayed Creel's confusion was his voice. His face was in repose, his hands still and without any visible nervous spasms.

"Is that clear?"

"h.e.l.l, yes! But you can't-"

He interrupted and continued. "This company must be established so that it may never be sold by the government, tax structure under the a.s.sumption that I am deceased. No matter what length of time has pa.s.sed. Clear? No matter how many years, even hundreds of them. If precedents must be set, use our legal equipment to try it. And if the courts decide against us, then turn the company into a nonprofit organization, with thirty percent of the yearly profits, after investments and debt payments, to be put into a bank account in my name and the name of a second nonprofit organization. Sixty percent of the interest of the account will go to some other charitable cause. The princ.i.p.al must never be touched."

Creel was jotting notes.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Not that I can think of."

"May I ask a question or two."

"What?"

"What has happened?"

"The ESP," Timothy said.

Creel nodded. "I suspected that much. Fully developed?"

"I can't imagine it going any further. Teleportation. Telepathy. Levitation of any weight You name it." Creel showed no surprise. "So I'll not be seeing you again?" I'll not be seeing you again?"

"I doubt it."

"You will be drawing on this account?"

"Not that I know of."

Creel looked at his notes. "I'm not sure what I should say. Thanks, I guess."

"Don't say anything."

"I envy you," Creel said.

"I know."

Creel nodded. "You make what I have achieved look like nothing. I had color to overcome. You had everything."

"I've admired you, George. And for the same reasons."

They were quiet awhile.

"So." Creel dropped his pencil.

"Goodbye, George," Timothy said. And it was one of those rare times when he broke the comscreen connection between them first.

He left the comscreen and went back through the house. He drifted across the darkened rooms to the sliding gla.s.s doors, opened them, and went onto the terrace which overlooked the descending blanket of pine trees. The smell of pine was rich and refreshing. Distantly, in the night, there was the sound of a pa.s.sing grav-car, the flickering light traversing from east to west, then gone.

He had stood here not too very long ago, watching a flock of birds settling into these trees. He had been using servo-hands then, and he had been a confused, disturbed man who had managed to cope with the world but only by ignoring certain things about it Now he was grown. Taguster had died, and he had avenged his death. And he had grown...

Several minutes later, he realized that he had not directed Creel to close the house and board the windows. Then he smiled, remembering the man's efficiency. Creel would not have to be told.

At last, there was no reason to delay any longer. And he was more eager than ever to begin the new life ahead. Memories could be abandoned, or anyway, wrapped and stored. They were the memories of another existence. Tonight he would be reborn. He held down the intangible lump in his throat, the wad of nostalgia that-unreasonably-threatened to rise and plague him.

He tensed.

He smelled the pine.

He teleported...

In the great main chamber of the alien ship, the cubes of mysterious green smoke hung, still on the metal threads, like the art forms of a primitive man-or of a supermodern one. The feeling of belonging rose in Timothy again, a sense of companionship he had never known anywhere before-not even when he was with Leonard Taguster. This was his home, with these people from another star-if only until his own race evolved into the creatures that time and history meant them to be.

"You have settled your affairs-the things of which we spoke before?" the whisper asked.

"I have," he said. He felt more at peace than ever in his life, and his even, unemotional voice was evidence of that.

"The cube is ready."

"I see," he said, his eye circling to the cube that rested at floor level, the smoky green within seeming to curl and move.

"You are afraid?"

"Somewhat."

He realized he had spoken silently, with his telepathic ability. It was the first time he had slipped into this mode of communication as naturally as he had always used speech before.

"Do not be afraid. Ignorance and darkness are the only things to fear. You are leaving those things behind. You are entering a world of knowledge and light."

He entered the empty cube which rested at floor level, a circular port open in its side. The portal slid shut behind him, and the cage began to rise on the bra.s.s cable, up toward the median point between ceiling and floor where the other inhabited cells waited.

As it rose, the air within it began to grow thick, roiling about him much like a gas. Soon the stuff filled the cube. In moments, the atmosphere was like water, so thick he could feel it, run hands through it, name a texture for it. Then it was much like syrup...

He began to lose conscious awareness of his body, though his mind functioned on a higher plane than ever before. It was as if the mind's energy, freed completely from control of the temporal sh.e.l.l, could now be directed solely into conscious thought.

At last, the inside of the cell was as solid as the walls which formed it, a brick of cloudy emerald in which he was suspended. The cube stopped rising and rested beside the others which contained these men from a distant time and place.

"Welcome," a great many whispering voices said, all the same, cool and smooth like polished ice. They were friendly voices.

He could not think what he should say, how he should react. He had been born unwanted and unloved, an object rather than a living human being. The king had sent his men to kill the baby Timothy, and he had been rescued at the last moment by others more sympathetic to human need. He had gained fame as a troublemaker while entering the years of his young adulthood. Then he had been persecuted. And now, in a strange way, he had died and been resurrected. Now, after he had left his bodily form behind, he had found a place where he was wanted and in which he might, someday, be loved.

"Yes," the voices said, cool voices, voices of a limitless people accepting him. the voices said, cool voices, voices of a limitless people accepting him.

"Let's go," the most familiar of the whispers said. " the most familiar of the whispers said. "There's nothing more of interest here."

"Go? Where?"

"To the stars. Let your mind follow in the wake of mine. I will show you how."

Ahead: infinity. Behind: the past...

... And maybe the future too, when the time came for mankind to know of the starship below the quaint Iowa farm, to know of the creatures who had waited so long within.

But that was a long time from now-and the stars laid in between.

Proofed by someone.

Additional proofing after rescan by Highroller.

Berkley t.i.tles by Dean Koontz