Orbit 2

“You’re curious about me, aren’t you? Well, so am I. Partly I make up the rules and partly I discover them. This is a very primitive world, Kinross.”

“It’s prehuman,” Kinross said. “You took us deep.”

“Had to, for people like us.”

“You’re just a voice in the air to me,” Kinross said. “How do you experience yourself?”

“I have a body, but I suppose it’s a private hallucination. I can’t animate my real body. It must be some result of my not having been in deep trance when we crossed over.”

“Is that good or bad, for you?”

“Depends. I have unique powers but also special responsibilities. For instance, I am forced to animate this world and my capacity is limited. That’s the reason for the taboo on looking closely or trying to use things.”

“Oh. Silva then. . can you restore his sight?”

“Yes, his blindness is purely functional. But I won’t. He’d destroy us.all. He’d look and look until our world fell apart. He gave me a bad time, Kinross.”

“I was scared too. Tell me, what would have happened if—?”

“Back in the boat, perhaps. Or some kind of limbo.”

“Is your existence purely mental now, Kruger?”.

“No. I told you, I have an hallucinated body which seems perfectly real to me. But it cannot use the substance of this world the way you and the others do. Kinross, I still have the same thirst I had when we came over. It is like — what you remember. I can’t quench it and I can’t endure it. This world is a kind of hell to me. .”

“Holy Moses, Kruger! That’s too bad. Can we do anything?”

“I have one hope. It’s why I brought you here.”

“Tell me.”

“I want to put you into still deeper hypnosis, deep as man can go. I want to set up such a deep rapport between us that I will share with you the animation of your body and you will share with me the animation of this world. Then I will be able to eat and drink.”

“Granting it’s possible, how would that seem to me?”

“You mean animating the world? I can’t describe it to you. A joy beyond words.”

“No, I mean you in my body. How do you know I won’t have your thirst then? Which of us would be dominant?”

“We could quench the thirst, that’s the point. I would grant you dominance in the body and retain my dominance in the world.”

Kinross tugged at his shaggy brown hair. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “You scare me, Kruger. Why me ?”

“Because of your mind, Kinross. You’re an engineer. We must build natural law into this world if I am ever to have rest. I need intimate access to your world-picture so that it can inform this world.”

“Why can’t I help you just as I am?”

“You can, but not enough. I need to superimpose your world-picture on mine in complete interaction.”

Decision welled up in Kinross. “No,” he said. “Take one of the others. Except for Garcia and maybe Silva they hardly seem to know they’re alive, but they eat and drink.”

“I’ve taken a large part of them into the world already, and something of you and Garcia too. But I want you intact, as a unity.”

“No.”

“Think of the power and the joy. It is indescribable, Kinross.”

“No.”

“Think of what you can lose. I can blind you, paralyze you.”

“I’ll grant that. But you won’t. In a way I can’t explain I know you need us, Kruger. You need our eyes and ears and our understanding minds in order to see and appreciate this world of yours. Your sight dimmed when you blinded Silva.”

“That isn’t wholly true. I needed you absolutely in order to get across, in order to form this world, but not now.”

“I’ll gamble you’re lying, Kruger. You don’t have a large enough population to afford playing tyrant.”

“Don’t underestimate me, Kinross. You don’t know me and you never can. I have a fierce will in this matter that must not be denied. From childhood on I have worked toward this culmination with absolute ruthlessness. I deliberately did not send a distress message from the Ixion because I wanted the chance I got. Does that impress you?”

“Not in your favor, Kruger. So little Ratface was right.

“I don’t want your favor or your pity, Kinross. I want your conviction that you cannot stand out against me. I’ll tell you more. I planted the bomb in the Ixiorfs cargo hold. I dumped the food and water out of the launch. I ran down the battery and jammed the fuel pump. I timed the explosion so that you would be just coming off watch. That convinces you. Now you know that you cannot stand out against such a will as mine.”

Kinross stood up and squinted his brown eyes into the emptiness before him. “I’m convinced that you made your own world but now you can’t get all the way into it. I’m convinced that you should not. Kruger, to hell with you.”

“It is my world and I’ll come all the way into it in spite of you,” Kruger said. “Look at me!” On the command the voice rang out strong and silvery, a great singing.

“You’re not there,” Kinross said, standing up.

“Yes I am here. Look at me.”

The air before Kinross became half visible, a ghostly streaming upward.

“Look at me!” the chiming, silvery voice repeated.

There came a sound like tearing silk. The hair stood up on Kinross’ neck and a coldness raced over his skin. The streaming air thickened and eddied, became a surface whorled and contoured in a third dimension, became vibrantly alive, became the shape of a great face.

“Kinross, look at me!” the Face commanded in a voice like great bells.

Kinross took a deep breath. “I learn my lessons well, Kruger,” he said in a trembling voice. “You’re not there. Idon’t see you.”

He walked directly into the Face and through it, feeling an electric thrill in his cringing flesh as he did so. Then he was clambering down the sheer face of the pinnacle.

As Kinross crossed the high plain on his way back, rain began to fall from the overcast. Gusts of wind buffeted him. There was no surface runoff of the rain and no clear effect of the wind in the indefinite trees and shrubbery. “Kruger’s learning,” Kinross said to himself. Then darkness came suddenly and he lay down and slept. When he awoke he was back beside the little stream and Garcia told him he had been gone four days.

“Four days?” Kinross asked in surprise. “Doesn’t everything still happen yesterday?”

“Not anymore,” the Mexican said. “Where in hell have you been?”

“Outside somehow, arguing with Kruger,” Kinross said, looking around. “Damn it, this place feels different. And where’s Kruger’s body and the others?”

“It is different,” Garcia said. “I’ll tell you. First, Fay found a cave. .”

The cave was the source of the stream, which now ran out of it, Garcia explained. Fay and Bo Bo had carried Kruger’s body into it and now spent most of their time in there. Fay claimed that Kruger awoke at intervals to eat and drink and that he had made Fay his spokesman. Fay and Bo Bo had piled up a cairn of rocks before the cave mouth and had commanded Kerbeck and Garcia to bring fruit and place it there every morning. Silva now sat beside the cairn, rocking and wailing as before.

“I couldn’t make Kerbeck understand,” Garcia added. “He roams the hillsides now like a wild man. So I’ve been supplying them by myself.”

“The place is bigger,” Kinross commented. The valley floor extended now for several hundred yards on either side of the little stream and the walls rose hundreds of feet. The oppressive regularity of outline was relieved by a hint of weather sculpturing and meaningful groupings of plant life.