David Drake - Balefires

At this point he stopped pacing and returned to the control consol, motioning me to join him. Most of its eight-foot length was covered with dials, but to one end a helmet much like the one on the bed was connected. There were only two other things built into the three feet of the consol nearest the helmet, a large three-position switch and a small red indicator light similar to the generator lights of most new cars.

"You'll wear this helmet," Denkirch said. "With it on you'll be in perfect contact with all my senses as long as the switch is in the second position. That is, as long as I'm on Deneb everything I experience in any way will be as clear to you as if it were you who were undergoing it. The only difference is that you won't be able to control the new body, as I will. In ten minutes or so-you'll be able to use your own eyes when they're open, though things may look like a double exposure-make sure the red light isn't on and pull the switch to the third position to turn on the cones. The light is connected to the radar, and if it's on, a plane is nearly overhead. Just wait till it blinks out before pulling the switch."

Then, always a scientist, his mind picked up the puzzling thread it had brushed and he asked a simple, musing question that caused me to break out into a sweat again:"I wonder why I can only pick up the identities of the dead? You'd think that either all the surface thoughts would come through, or none at all. Surely members of other races don't spend all their time repeating their human names, do they?"

But this seemed only a minor matter, soon to be clarified along with much greater mysteries, and Denkirch returned to the business at hand.

"All you have to do," he repeated, "is put your helmet on, move the switch to the second jog to free my mind, and then to the third in ten minutes to bring me back."

I waited a moment, locking my hands across my knees to keep them from shaking, and asked the question whose answer I already feared: "When do you plan to try it out?"

"When?"he echoed, surprised. "Why tonight, of course. The sky is clear, the static level is low-what more could we ask?"

For the next forty-five minutes I waited in silent resignation as Denkirch gave his equipment a final check, until at last he stepped back, and regarded it for a moment, arms akimbo, and said, "Well, I guess all that remains is to turn it on and let it warm up."

He touched a switch on the far end of the consol and the room shook as the nearby generator picked up speed. The shaking died away again to a low purr after a few minutes and Denkirch explained, "That was just the capacitors charging. The cones will soak up a lot of power when they kick in. There's a light switch above the consol that you ought to flip before you turn on the apparatus. It turns off everything but the necessary instruments, to keep the load down when you turn on the cones. The dial lights will be enough for you to see by when your eyes adjust, and besides, most of what you'll see will be through my eyes."

With that Denkirch sat down on the bed, slipped on the helmet there, and lay down full length with his arms at his sides."Would you strap me in, Johnnie?" he said with his words somewhat muffled by the chinstrap of the helmet. "I doubt that it makes much difference, but there is a slim chance that my body might move a little after my mind is disconnected, and I wouldn't want to damage my helmet and keep you from seeing what is going on, you know."

The clasp clicked shut and I walked from the bed to the consul trying to think of words to explain to Denkirch what I feared. But it wasn't a fear that could be explained; it was too basic for that.

The helmet leads were too short for me to reach the light switch with the helmet on, so I turned out the lights and then sat down to wait until I could see again before attempting to put the cumbersome thing on… perhaps more, and in a way that minute was the most horrible thing I underwent that night. It was as if I had awakened an instant before my alarm went off in the morning, still comfortably composed in bed but knowing the strident clamor would burst out at any moment. This and more, for it was the ultimate blissful dream that was about to be shattered, and my subconscious knew it though it could not speak.

Denkirch called out from the darkness behind me, "Are you ready?"

The hours of fear I had been feeling finally broke through my dignity and I cried,^" Denny, this is wrong! For God's sake forget about this and just publish the rest of your findings. Those alone are enough to make you as rich and famous as you could want."

^" No," he answered, "I already am as rich and famous as I want to be. I just want truth. I'm not taking a wild risk, but even if I were it would be worth it for the chance of advancing human understanding as much as this will. Pull the switch, Johnnie."

Just as he finished, the red aircraft-warning light winked on in front of me.

"There's a plane overhead," I said eagerly, certain now of at least a short delay. If we had delayed… But it might have made no difference.

"That doesn't matter for the first stage and it will be gone before I come back. Pull the switch."

And, God help me, I did. But there is no god, is there? No god, no heaven, only the hells that glitter down on us every clear night. It was obvious as soon as I closed the switch that Denkirch had been perfectly correct. What neither of us had realized until then was how completely powerless the terran ego would be in the new body. I had not even begun to move my hand before it yanked down the switch almost of its own accord and I sat, quivering in the darkness with my own and Denkirch's screams still echoing through my mind.

Can you imagine-can you begin to imagine!-what it is to be totally alien? Your body, your world, even your mind except for that tiny, impotent speck of ego that screams, "This is not I," and screams the louder for knowing that it is and it will be forever, body after body, eon after eon, until space and time are no more! And that is why I no longer sleep on cloudless nights, for the stars in their myriads greet me in my dreams whispering, "Soon you will be with us, every one of us," and a high, thin scream from the Pleiades tells me where Denkirch is now.

An unlikely story, I know, and I myself might have thought it a dream had I not turned and seen in the green witchlight of the glowing dials the last earthly remains of Samuel Denkirch. Then I hurled my helmet into the consol and fled from the cellar that blazed behind me as sputtering arcs from the shattered instruments ignited the frame walls; nor do I remember anything afterwards but my own screams until a highway patrol car stopped me in Indiana. Perhaps the return itself had been fatal, but I rather think it was the atmosphere; for Denkirch had returned to Earth as the tentacled abomination he had become on Deneb…

The False Prophet

Latin has been my soul's anchor ever since my second semester of college. I don't know why that should be, but I can tell you how it happened.

I took two years of Latin in high school because it was that or Spanish. Neither option appealed to me, but I had to take some foreign language. My grades were adequate but nobody was going to mistake me for a Latin scholar, and I don't recall getting any particular pleasure from the classes.

My plan in college (the University of Iowa) was to major in chemistry, go to law school, and become a patent attorney. Chemistry required German, so I started German with the expectation that I'd never read another line of Latin.

I pretty quickly realized that I wasn't cut out to be a chem major (or, I suspected, a patent attorney), so I switched to history. I continued with German (which I didn't actively dislike), because I didn't believe that I could ever get back into Latin after a year away from the language.