In this tabu section of the vessel, his curiosity had been whetted even further, and he had forgotten all about the future and his place in it. Or at least he pretended that he had..

As he drifted through the circular port of the guidance deck, into the tubeway that led to the next room, the alien voice spoke to him like sand spilling down a marble slope: whispers, whispers, whispers...

CHAPTER 16.

"... del esseda esseda esseda del esseda esseda esseda ... ... quaol mi o esseda quaol mi o esseda ... ... esseda esseda ..." ..."

He came to an abrupt halt, the submerged fear rising as the cold, quiet voice echoed softly through the tubeway. He looked back into the room he had just left. There did not seem to be anything there, though the darkness made it difficult to tell for certain. He uncapped his psionic talents and searched that chamber, questing for the spark of life, the jumble of thoughts and impressions that would have accompanied even an alien mind. But he could find nothing.

Even as he searched ahead, he began to realize that the words had not been spoken, that they had impressed themselves in his mind without need for verbalization. That meant the speaker, using ESP powers, might not even be present.

He stood quite still for several minutes, waiting for a repet.i.tion of the words. When he was met with only silence and an uncomfortable feeling of being watched, he started forward again. Before he had progressed another half dozen feet further along the tubeway, the same, alien, cold whisper began again: "... saysi del esseda esseda esseda saysi del esseda esseda esseda ... ... quaol mi o" quaol mi o"...

He stopped to listen but heard nothing more. At last he found his throat sufficiently unconstricted enough to say, "I can't understand you."

He did not think to impart the words without speaking them, as the alien had done. He was not yet quite accustomed to the new abilities of his mind. He had never even considered the possibility of telepathy, and he was more than a little stunned by the prospect now.

There was another minute during which nothing was said. Then another. Finally, when his patience had worn thin and he was prepared to advance to see if that would spark interest in the alien's part where there now seemed to be none, the soft, ethereal whisper came again-this time with the same sort of English that Timothy might have used himself.

"I thought that you were one of us." Despite the English, the voice was eerie, thin, rasped like the voice of a man stricken with some disease of the vocal cords.

"No," he said. "No." And for a horrible moment he was certain that his powers of concentration would desert him, that he would be able to do nothing more than babble inanely, like some mentally deficient child, at what was most certainly a historical moment, this first meeting of man and extraterrestrial. His feeling of inadequacy had been resurrected. He had not felt this insecure and worthless since his days in the hospital and the first year or so after his release. But then there were words, issued haltingly but nonetheless sensibly. Not profound, to be sure. He did not have the presence of mind, right then, to be philosophical. But sensible, at least. "I'm from this world-not yours," he said.

"In what manner did you gain entrance?"

"Teleportation," he said. That gave him at least a little pride. "Just as your kind used to travel from the rear portion of the ship to these private chambers."

"You know of us."

It was not a question so much as a statement, but he said, "Some. Not very much."

"How?"

"From deduction," he said. He recounted the things he had found since entering the starship, speaking swiftly in hopes that he was not boring the disembodied voice with ramblings which might seem relatively petty to it. For two races to meet and speak, though they were of different and distant star systems, was a thing for wonder. Not for boredom.

He found he was perspiring. He felt as if he were on a great stage before an audience whose faces were invisible beyond the brilliant footlights, but which must number in the thousands.

"You speak of the Brethren," the whispering voice said, picking that piece of datum out of the information Timothy had supplied. "Explain them, please."

He obliged, explaining the nature of Brethren hierarchy, then of the Brethren activity itself. It was not that he felt all of the minute facts should be transmitted to the listening alien or that-once transmitted-they would serve any purpose through their illumination; it was more of a fear, actually, that if he stopped talking for even a short moment, the creature would have learned all that it wished to know and would send him on his way without satisfying his own curiosity. Or destroy him. That was what one expected, that was the stereotype procedure for all extraterrestrials. He was not surprised to realize that he would prefer being destroyed, just as in all the cliche horror stories, to being patted on the head and sent blithely on his way...

Again, a pause when he was finished. Then: "And this PBT which you describe-what is the source of the name?"

"From the words 'Perfectly Beautiful Trip,' which users coined when they learned the stuff had no chemical formula-known, anyway-from which to devise a catchphrase." It now seemed to be time for him to ask something instead of waiting for the next question. It was time to get at least a little of the situation under his control He said, "What is the drug? What is it made from?"

"It is not a drug at all," the voice whispered. " the voice whispered. "It is ... ... plasma plasma ... ... blood. It is the blood of one of the six non-psionic races of the Inner Galaxy. Intelligent race, but no extrasensory perception. The medical room keeps a constant supply of it on hand for emergencies in which our guests might be injured. It is produced through our biological engineering module blood. It is the blood of one of the six non-psionic races of the Inner Galaxy. Intelligent race, but no extrasensory perception. The medical room keeps a constant supply of it on hand for emergencies in which our guests might be injured. It is produced through our biological engineering module."

Timothy tried to envision a race so alien in its physical makeup that its blood was a powerful narcotic and hallucinogen to earthmen. He wanted to ask the speaker what they were like, then decided that was only infantile curiosity and that there were more important matters at hand.

"Where are you speaking from?" He asked. "I can't see you." He was anxious to examine the alien in its living state, to see how it walked, how its face moved when it talked, thousands of minutiae such as that.

"My cube. If you move into the next chamber, you will see me in my cube-you will see all of us."

Timothy floated down the corridor and into a large chamber, fully as extensive as the theater in the far rear of the starship. Suspended midway between the high domed ceiling and the floor, on single, finger-thick strands of coppery metal, were cubes of a smoky green transparent material in which the bodies of nearly two hundred aliens hung like flies in amber, staring out at the room without actually seeing anything there, immobile, quiet, but not dead. There was no doubt that life still seethed within these beings, for their faces were caught, not in slackness, but with expressions of fear, antic.i.p.ation, and relief. The brother of theirs, in the other half of the ship, in the morgue drawer, was dead. Not these.

"The dead man in the drawer?" he asked as he recalled that frozen husk. "What happened to him?"

"A little over a thousand years ago, we ventured forth to explore your world, to see if it had changed in the million and a quarter years we had been sleeping here. He was killed by a bow and arrow. The wound was too sudden and penetrating for our psionic powers to go to his aide. When we saw the creatures of that time possessed intelligence but would require dozens of centuries to develop into anything we could contact, we entered these cubes again to wait. We wanted to solicit help for the repair of this vessel, but such would have been impossible with those semi-savages little over a thousand years ago, we ventured forth to explore your world, to see if it had changed in the million and a quarter years we had been sleeping here. He was killed by a bow and arrow. The wound was too sudden and penetrating for our psionic powers to go to his aide. When we saw the creatures of that time possessed intelligence but would require dozens of centuries to develop into anything we could contact, we entered these cubes again to wait. We wanted to solicit help for the repair of this vessel, but such would have been impossible with those semi-savages."

"And you have all been here, except for that short time, inactive for a million and more years?" It was impossible to conceive of that, and he felt old and tired when he tried.

"Hardly. We have frozen our bodies, but not our minds. We remain in intimate mental contact with our homeworlds, with those we love. Our mates, our relatives and friends, have all died, of course. They lived their proper eight thousand years and pa.s.sed on. But we keep in touch with our ancestors and with developments on the homeworlds. We take turns keeping watch over these inner sanctums of the ship. Life, you see, is much more than having a body whose metabolism continues."

He had always felt that way himself, of course. It would have destroyed him, quite early in life, if he had contained the physical egotism of a beach b.u.m muscleman.

"But now it is possible for us to leave these cubes and seek aid from your people."

"No," Timothy said, realizing how harsh that word must sound to the creature in the cube, to all of them who had been waiting such an unimaginably long time. "Explain?"

"I'm the only one of my kind who has the psionic powers you spoke of." He went on to explain his heritage, the artificial womb, and his expansion of ESP powers achieved through the application of alien blood. "I'm certain, now, that it was only because of my latent ESP that the chemical composition of the blood expanded my powers. It can do absolutely nothing for the others of my race-of that race. It can only lead to addiction and death. You've got to tell me how it can be rejected, with what counter drugs its hold on my people can be broken."

"May I scan your mind? I ask for this privilege only because I wish to ascertain the nature of your race, biologically, in order to deduce what effect the drugs of this blood could have had. It will be simpler than a question and answer period, and I'll learn more. If you wish your privacy unviolated, I will understand. But I a.s.sure you that I will only scan for what subject is in question."

Since the alien could have initiated the scan without his permission and, more than likely, without his knowledge, Ti could see no reason why it would violate its promise now. "Go on," he said.

He felt nothing as the unearthly fingers sifted through his large store of knowledge, though he did wonder what sort of a.n.a.logue the mind of this alien created to explain Timothy's thoughts. What would the a.n.a.logue of his own subconscious mind look like? He did not mind the alien sopping up his life history so much as he was perturbed by the possibility of the creature seeing what condition his innermost mind was in, what hideous and twisted longings it might possess.

He was relieved when the voice hissed: "I am satisfied."

"What did you find?"

"Cold withdrawal," the alien said.

"But that's agonizing. They say it can even lead to death if someone is completely addicted."

"It's the best method and the most sure. There is no drug to combat addiction, for no earthly chemicals could have such effect and we never created such a drug, not having seen the need for one. The PBT, as you call it, latches on to the red corpuscles of the human blood. Each corpuscle-like cell of the alien plasma piggy-backs a human cell. If one withdraws, totally, the production of new blood will eventually do away with the old cells which have the alien corpuscles attached to them. The alien cells cannot transfer allegiance in their piggy-backing."

"Then by cutting the Brethren off from the source, we put an end, theoretically, to the problem."

"Not theoretically. Actually."

He realized, even as the alien whisper reinforced the certainty of its a.s.sumptions, that the time he had been dreading had arrived at last. He had achieved this interim goal and must now take time to worry over the future, to decide what it was to be like. How was he to cope with a world in which he was vastly superior to everything and everyone? There was no question that he was destined to be an outcast, without even the friendship of the most intelligent men, like Taguster. Mankind had spent centuries proving its disdain and often downright hatred for anyone different, anyone not conforming to the norm, whether that norm be dress, hair length, accent, political beliefs, or physical condition. It was easy to imagine, then, how great the hatred of a superman would be. Because, basically, the reason the average man hated anyone different could easily be deduced. He hated anyone who seemed to have met the forces of normalcy, of conformity, of oppression and authoritarianism, who had met them and defeated them. It made him seem somehow less important, less of an individual, less worthy. The reaction to a superman who not only disregarded the rules of conformity, but who could smash them at whim, would be a thousandfold more vicious.

And then, how was he to find any task challenging enough to make it worth wrestling with? If his psionic powers made all things possible, then it must be true that they also made all things uninteresting. And a man needed something to motivate him, something to conquer. Otherwise he rotted.

Quickly, before he could wind his way into the maze of problems awaiting him, he asked, "May I return to speak with you further once I have taken care of the Brethren? I will not announce your presence. I'll buy the farm, if necessary, to a.s.sure the secret of the ship."

"You are avoiding your decision," the whispering voice berated him, the tone somewhat accusatory.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You know perfectly well. You must decide whether or not to go back into the world as you know it, back where you will be a greater freak than ever. A physical abnormality makes a man an outcast in your world. But a mental abnormality-be it either for better or worse, r.e.t.a.r.dation or genius-leads to the same rejection, though even more swiftly and with more vehemence on the part of those expunging the undesirable element."

Ti nodded, having reached the same conclusion some time ago, even before he had fully developed his psionic awareness through the PBT. Mentally deficient men were d.a.m.ned to lives of ridicule, forced into lives of loneliness in bas.e.m.e.nt rooms or in inst.i.tutions. Society ignored them and patted its own back for, at least, not chaining them in dungeons as once was done. Men falling into the upper limits of genius were scorned by those less fortunate in intellect who demeaned them and their opinions at every possible opportunity. They preferred the blandness of the average. The less-than-average was worthy only of disdain by the middle. The more-than-average was a target of jealous anger and petty accusations. It should not be that way, of course. But it was. And there was nothing he could do, even with his psionic powers, to change the thinking of an entire society.

Then, as if his mind had just finished mulching the fodder of the alien's comments, he turned to other things and suddenly remembered a forgotten morsel, one phrase with more meaning than he had at first attributed to it: "... whether or not to go back..." Whether or not That implied that he had a choice of leaving the starship or remaining within its emerald metal walls.

"But I can't stay here!" he said, the words far louder and sharper than they had been intended, ringing on the cold walls with an echo of the panic and excitement building in him.

"Why not?"

Why not...?

He almost laughed at the whispered brevity of that. Why not? The alien had made it seem like a black-and-white question when there were so many shades of gray involved! Should a man retreat from a world because he fears that he cannot easily cope with it? Should a man deny his race, the nature of the soul within him, simply because there is an alternative that may lead to less heartache than continuing as he has continued in the past? Should a man relinquish all the material comforts which have required years to acquire, all the most lavish luxuries of his society, in return for some esoteric, intangible benefits of the intellect which might be gained in the exchange? Should a man leave that which he is certain of for that which is mysterious, unsure?

Yes. His own calm and reasoned reply to the questions he had been posing startled him. Yes, a man should retreat from a world he fears he cannot cope with-if the reasons for his inability to cope lay with the nature of that world and not within himself. Yes, a man should deny his race and the heritage of it if his own race and its history deny him the right of that peace of mind. Yes, a man should exchange material possessions, no matter what the degree of status they represent, for intangible ones if joy lies with the latter and not the former. Yes, a man should tackle that which is mysterious and frightening, for only in that manner can a man ever find satisfaction in himself and in the personal world which he has constructed around him.

"You would accept me?" he asked.

"It would be an easy matter on our part. We have accepted others of far stranger races than yours. Perhaps it would be difficult for you to accept us. You will have to learn and embrace our customs, language, and basic patterns of reasoning-which are all different than yours. It will be far more difficult for you to adjust than it was for me to adapt your language and cultural patterns. Our culture is far more complex. It is possible that, confronted with its intricacy, you could go mad."

"I doubt it," he said.

"I agree."

"But why do you want me? Why bother?"

"There are cubes. They are empty. You are the first psionic of your race. You will make an excellent emissary when the time comes for us to meet the rest of your race. And what reasons, on the other hand, could be argued against your acceptance?"

"But your shipmates-"

"Have heard every word that has been spoken between us, heard with a part of their minds, either as a major focus or a minor point."

"And they feel the same?"

"They do."

Timothy looked around the chamber at the hundreds of other dangling cubes, trapped between coppery strands of webbing, like surreal horses on an other-world merry-go-round. He was not frightened or repulsed by the prospect of spending centuries within one of those while his mind functioned in disembodiment on some far and nonhuman world.

"I would like that," he said.

"There are things you must attend to."

"Yes. The Brethren. The newspaper. It will not take very much time."

"When you return, all will have been prepared for your entombment," the alien said. The greenish cubes glinted with stray pieces of light, their edges soft, now smooth, now struck with light again as they turned slowly, slowly, first to the left, then the right, too slight a movement to be easily discerned.

"I'll hurry," he said.

When the whisper did not reply, Timothy closed his eyes and gathered about himself the cloak of serenity necessary to a leap into the nonmatter continuum of teleportation. He conjured up a vision of the Brethren farm, of the darkling earth around it.

He teleported.

He had work to do...

CHAPTER 17.

He found himself standing beneath the same willow tree where he had first arrived when he had teleported from the Brethren house in New England, though he had not made a conscious effort to return to the exact same terminus. He drifted quickly across the lawn, onto the porch where he found the slumbering bodies of Richard Boggs and the unnamed henchman who had been sitting in the swing. He entered the mind of the surgically created killer and wiped away whatever knowledge the man had possessed of the starship and the origins of PBT.

Richard Boggs's mind was somewhat more intricate. The a.n.a.logue which Timothy's own mind established to deal with it was of a junkyard, where rusting, useless articles of the man's life rested in varying states of decay. Richard Boggs was a dreamer, a man with a million schemes all contained within him at once-none of them workable. He would be, until the end of his days, exactly what he was now: a second-rate hired man. In the junkyard, among the rust and the twisted metal, Timothy located that which he wished to expunge, and left the man ignorant of not only the source of the drug, but of its existence as well. When he woke, the letters PBT would have no meaning whatsoever for him.

He drifted into the house and did the same with Thelma Boggs, wiping out all knowledge of the drug and the starship.

Her mind was similar to her husband's, and the hopeless schemes she had were often ones he had cultivated first.

He went to the three Brethren whose minds he had explored earlier, and took away the selected bits of data from two of them. Moving faster now, more anxious to get this finished, he went outside and eradicated the starship and PBT from the memories of the rear door guard and from the mind of the man who had been patrolling the white picket fence.

When all of this had been accomplished, within a matter of ten minutes, he returned to the living-room, where the gray-haired Brother who had shot at him through the window lay on his face, his mind as yet untouched. Timothy delved deeply into the ancient library a.n.a.logue and stirred through the thousands of books of thoughts, discarding them, throwing them on the floor when he discovered they were not what he wanted. In time he knew the name of every Brother who knew of the existence of the starship below the house. There were only four of them, all members of the Inner Circle of the organization. There was Leopold, of course. And three others who. shared in the policy-making of the Brethren structure. He collected their addresses, permanent and alternate, then wiped the starship and the PBT out of the gray-haired gentleman's memories.

He floated into the darkness, over the dew-damp lawn, taking a moment or two to enjoy the fresh, untainted fragrance of the country air. The anti-pollution laws had slowly begun to have their intended effect on the cities, but they were not nearly so clean as this. He was well aware, as he filled his lungs and savored the crispness, that this might well be the last chance he would have for reverie for the next few centuries-or longer.

He looked at the stars overhead. They no longer seemed cold and distant and uncaring, but warm and close. They were things to be viewed as guiding beacons in the darkness. And soon, quite soon now, he would be there, among them, if only with his psionic abilities. He understood, looking at those far points of light, why the aliens could not simply teleport to their homeworld. Even the superhuman talents of the fully developed mind could not cope with those vast reaches of s.p.a.ce.

He closed his eye, blocking out the stars and concentrating on finishing what must be done here on earth.

He tensed every muscle.

The night was cool; he left it.

He dematerialized on that Iowa lawn...

... And materialized in the study of the New England house where he had so recently been a captive. The four men were still in the room, much the same as he had left them, though Leopold had awakened and was sitting on the couch with his head propped between his hands, trying-it seemed-to press the fog out of his brain in order to get his thoughts clicking properly once more. Margle was groaning and tossing his head restlessly from side to side, though he was still unconscious. The two apemen, Baker and Siccoli, were as contented as babes newly fallen into slumber.

Timothy slipped into the minds of the two henchmen and erased their knowledge of the existence of PBT. He did the same with Jon Margle, then pinched the nerves in the base of the man's neck again, sending him down into perfectly still sleep.

Next he entered Leopold's mind, as cautiously as possible, fearing that the bloated, roachlike insects that had poured out of the walls of the conscious mind might still be running free. But the things had either been driven back into the walls of the conscious mind or had returned of their own free will. The subconscious must fear and detest the conscious, he thought, as much as the aware portion refuses to have anything to do with the seamier concerns of the subconscious. In this manner, all of us may be schizophrenics in a private way, and thus cope with life far better than if we had to face it straight on, without compromises.