E.C Tubb: Iduna

Now all he could do was to hold his wife and kiss her and wait for the sobbing to quiet and give her what comfort he could until, finally, she slipped into a doze. Chasing the illusion of a lost daughter, perhaps. He had no way of knowing.

But, perhaps, he could give her news when she next woke.

Tamiras was where he had left him, a small figure in the harsh confines of the chamber, flanked by guards who watched as he studied the Tau. From the bank of instruments standing to one side Marita studied dials and called figures at his command.

"No change." Tamiras sucked in his cheeks. "No discernible lift in emitted radiation. No alteration in temperature. No-a complete stasis, my friend. As I could have told you. As I have told you many times in the past. The Tau is a closed system and so, by definition, cannot be affected in any way. If it could it wouldn't be a closed system." His shrug added a single word.

Elementary.

Gustav said tightly, thinking of Kathryn, "This isn't a lecture hall, Tamiras, and you don't have to be clever. As our foremost electronic expert I'd hoped you could help."

"If I could I would-can you doubt that?" Tamiras met his stare, his own eyes direct. "From the beginning I have worked on the problem but, always, the answer is the same. To began investigating the Tau I must risk destroying it. In fact it is possible that only by destroying it can anything be learned."

"No!"

"You refuse as you have done before and I can understand the reasons for your refusal. Can you understand mine for not wanting to waste time on a problem I have no hope of solving? And you could be wrong. Destruction of the Tau could be the only method of achieving the desired end."

"Can you be positive as to that?"

"No. How could I be? The Tau is a mystery which we, as yet, have only tackled with measurements and the application of logic. The measurements prove, if they prove anything, that we are dealing with a closed system. As yet that is the sum total of our knowledge. The rest is speculation. Is Iduna within the Tau? For want of any better explanation as to what happened to her we must assume that she is. Can others follow her? We have idiots and the dead to prove the inadvisability of trying. Can she be rescued? A question without an answer and one based on the viability of the original speculation. If Iduna did not enter the Tau then she cannot be rescued. If she did we do not know how." He ended bleakly,

"There you have it, my friend. The poor fruit of what you are pleased to term an expert mind."

"Logic," said Gustav impatiently. "Pick your premise and by the use of logic you can prove anything you want to. Forget logic-what we need here is intuition. Logic will tell us a thing is impossible but still that thing can be done. Too often logic is nothing but a wall halting progress."

Gently Tamiras shook his head, "No, Gustav, you are wrong?"

"Wrong? What of your own field-baths? I remember when to mention them was to invite scorn and laughter. How could invisible energies relax and comfort? And rafts? They are heavier than air and so obviously could never fly. It is against all logic-so why bother to look for an answer? The men who found it in use of antigrav units didn't listen to that kind of logic and neither will I. We have facts. Work on them. Iduna is in the Tau. How?"

Old ground and Tamiras sighed as he answered the question. But Gustav was strained, too tense for his own good, and the answer might serve to unwind him a little.

"There is only one way. Physically, of course, she remained here so all that could have been transmitted is the mesh of electromagnetic micro-currents housed by her brain. Not all of them, some residue must have remained to activate the autonomic process and we can speculate that the residue must belong to the sub-frame of human development and is in fact a part of the basic metabolic structure. Elg Barham has done some work on the subject and read a paper at the Arteshion University which I was fortunate enough to hear. He contends that the mind, the intelligence, is a later addition to the actual physical body, and therefore could be divorced from it. If true this would explain certain claims made by those who swear they had left their own bodies either to travel vast distances to observe events or to have actually inhabited others and shared their lives and experiences. There could also be an association with the belief that individual awareness does not become erased at death but moves on in some way as a disembodied intelligence. An intelligence which retains, perhaps, the conviction that physically it is still alive which would account for the phenonema we know as "ghosts." The intelligence, trying to communicate, adopts a familiar form or impresses itself on another's sensory apparatus in a recognizable shape."

"A ghost," said Gustav. "You are saying Iduna is a ghost."

"In a manner of speaking she can be nothing else." Tamiras gestured at the Tau. "A mind trapped in a closed environment. A charge in an accumulator, an intermeshed potential-how can I describe it?"

A drop of water in a soaking wet sponge-Gustav could provide his own analogies but none of them helped.

Distance seemed to be important, when she wasn't close it was possible to obtain a degree of detachment and now, lying on the edge of a beach of glittering sand, Dumarest watched the girl as she sported in the surf.

A lovely woman and one who dispensed madness so that when they were close he was helpless to do other than obey her wishes.

Turning he looked at the sky, a bowl of clear azure tufted with fleecy cloud, the sun a glowing ball of lambent yellow fire. The clouds shifted as he concentrated, merging to form a pattern, a construction of lace which shielded the glare of the sun and sent patches of shadow scurrying over the sand. A triumph, but it brought no satisfaction. If anything it demonstrated the magnitude of his power. A few clouds, the wash of the sea, the shape of the dunes-all things of no importance. Yet when he tried to oppose her will Iduna was always the victor.

"Earl!" She came running toward him over the sand. "Earl, come and join me!"

A vision of loveliness, white skin glowing with a rich, soft sheen, dappled with the pearl of water which also graced the dancing tresses of her hair. The uptilted breasts bounded in their pride and her thighs were twin columns of artistic yearning. Naked, unblemished, unashamed. A woman who reached her hands toward him.

"Come, Earl. Let us ride the waves."

A moment and then he was standing on a narrow, pointed board riding the rolling crest as the wave surged to break on the shore. To be back again this time with the girl, her arms locked around his waist as, legs straddled, he maintained his balance on the shifting support. To fall and spout water and laugh and be back again on the long, smooth slope of a breaker.

Pleasure without pain. Joy without effort.

And later, when the heat of her body had consumed him and they lay on a bed of scented heather there was time for talk and words hung like glittering spangles in the sultry summer air.

"This is wonderful!" Iduna stretched, satiated, muscles writhing beneath velvet skin, eyes half-closed in sensual delight. "Earl, you must never leave me. You don't want to leave me, do you? No, of course you don't. You will stay and be my consort and together we shall rule. Rule and have fun."

Live and play games and after? When she had tired of the games?

"Don't you ever miss anyone, Iduna? Your father, for example?"

"Daddy comes to visit me often. We talk and then he goes away but he always comes back when I need him."

"Anyone else? A friend? A-" Dumarest broke off, knowing it was useless. What she wanted she created and if the people were less than real what difference did it make? They were her conception of reality and so far more satisfying than any other. In her universe Gustav would never scold, her friends never be less than attentive, her lovers other than ideal. "Travel, then," he said. "Have you never wanted to travel? To see other worlds and other ways of living?"