CroMagnons underestimated the Neanderthals for a while.
For a while.
I stood up, suddenly less angry than I had been, and more determined. Okay, so I was not a god. I was not omniscient and omnipotent and superior to the military. I could not excuse past stupidity, but I could improve my outlook until I was able to be something which they could not cope with. The reason Morsfagen and other men could trip me up was simple to see: they were less powerful men, but they were fully developed, capable, and sure and confident. And I was fractured and unsteady and filled with doubts beneath the sheen of smugness. It was time to get to know myself, understand what I was and what I could expect to accomplish. After countless circuits of the main room of the apartment, I sat down on the bed again and relaxed. And that night, I came to know myself better than I ever had in my life.
I turned esp fingers back among the streaming thoughts of my own conscious mind. It was something I had never attempted before, though it now seemed the most natural exercise in the world. Perhaps I had always felt that I knew what I WPS thinking, that I was aware of myself.
But, of course, like every man, I hadn't the faintest damn idea of what was going on inside my head. Head- tripping in countless other minds, I had left the territory of my own thoughts sacrosanct. Perhaps because I was afraid of what I might find.
In those rambles, stirring down into my own id and ego and superego, I found that I was purer, cleaner, less rotted than I might even have hoped for. There were things, of course, that terrified me and revolted me. But I took heart in that they indicated my basic humanness, my basic brotherhood with men, despite the fact I was made from chemical sperm and chemical ovum.
In that one long night, I finally understood the nature of society as I never had before. I had wrongly judged men. I had labeled them as inferior to me, when this was not the case. Some were inferior, some my equal, some even my superior in ways. Each minim of intelligent life on this planet was such an individual spark, such a varying quantity and quality that no sweeping comparison could ever be made. What I had always sensed and what I had misinterpreted was that society was inferior to me. No man. Society.
Society was an agglomeration of individuals equaling less than its separate parts. In governments and institutions, the men chosen to rule, chosen to make policy and enforce decision, were those elected by the society that supported them-and because each member of society is different, because some median must be reached through the ballot, mediocre men assume office. The very intelligent vote for the intelligent candidates, but no one else does, for everyone else distrusts intellect. The reactionary and blind vote for their own slogan shouters, but no one else does. In the end, the people in the middle range elect their people, simply because they are in the majority. We get the mediocre. And because the mediocre are ill-gifted to deal with the problems of all factions of society, they make bad government and bad institutions. They distrust the intellectual and do not rely upon his wisdom. They fear the reactionary and the blind because such people threaten progress (a commodity the middle has been told to embrace all its life). They repress the intellectuals and the reactionaries and embrace their own people. But because they are mediocre, their own people are not served well, and corruption flourishes. Where each individual of society may be capable of governing his own sphere, the agglomerate government is incapable of governing anything except through intimidation and pure luck.
It may have been something that most people understand early in life, but it was a revelation to me. To win the games of existence, one must not attempt to fight by society's rules, because in most cases, one is fighting individuals, and not society. To win, one must attack the game on individual terms-not against a stereotype, not against a societal image, but against the other man, the single adversary.
The way to deal with Morsfagen was not as a tendril of the military plant, but as a man. His weaknesses did not lie in his adherence to the consensus-the consensus was too huge ever to be weak at all-but with himself, in his own human psyche.
Still, my problem was not solved. If I was not god, not the superior creature I had thought I was, how could I act at all? How could I function as an ordinary man? From birth, I had come to think of myself as something special, something sacred and superhuman. The attempt, now, to operate as just another man, would run against the grain of a lifetime of smug theory and self-delusion.
And then, quite suddenly, I knew what I had to do. It came like the nick of a razor in the morning, making me jerk with more surprise than it deserved. I should have understood what had to be done some time ago. I had to, finally, become the supreme being, the god, that I had always thought I was!
I began pacing the room again. My feet swished on the thick carpet. A clock ticked in the wall. Otherwise: heavy silence.
Be God.
God lay inside Child's mutant body, insane as He had always been, trapped as Child and I had been for that month. And though I did not want His madman's personality, I could make a great deal of use of His psychic energy. It was there to be tapped, the power that had made worlds, had generated galaxies and universes, that had established the infinitely fine balance of the cosmic scale. I could delve back into Child's twisted body and find the core of God's being, absorb Him and dissipate Him throughout my own mind, as I had Child. God would be part of me, a deeply threaded part without His own identity. I would, indeed, for all purposes, be God.
I could not sleep for the rest of that night. I wanted to see Morsfagen, wanted to try to work him as a human being long enough to have him get me to Child. Then, once he had done that, I would not have to deal with him on a man-to-man basis. I would be above that.
I was frightened that night, seeing hulking creatures in every shadow. In God's mind, down in that colossal id and ego, what would things be like? Would I be able to handle them, or would I be swamped and driven down, consumed? I forced the latter possibility from my mind and thought more positively. But the fear remained. It was not unlike the fear a child feels the first time he enters a great cathedral and sees the towering, somewhat menacing figures of the saints carved in great pillars of marble.
Morsfagen came at nine o'clock, smiling. 'I thought you'd like to hear today's schedule,' he said.
I said nothing, playing the role I had decided on.
'We start with a press release about the gun battle you had with the police last night. Did you know that you were seriously injured in that, perhaps fatally injured?'
He wanted some response that he could slap me down for, but I didn't give him the satisfaction. I accepted.
'Later in the day, we'll release some film of that shootout,' he said. 'We've already staged it. Looks very real with lots of blood. We found a fairly good double for your part, and we kept him mostly in the shadows so that it's hard to tell, really, who he is.'
I said nothing.
He shuffled the papers in his hand, went on. 'According to the reports, three officers will have died under your guns. We've made up life histories for them, all very touching. Two of them had large families and one had a brother who was a priest We've put together composite photographs of various real officers to release to the press.
Later tonight, word will be flashed to an outraged nation that you have died on the operating table. Even though you slaughtered the howler crew and three other policemen, we were trying to save you, see? Now, the first order of business today is for you to come along and help us film the operating room sequences. A double won't work in bright lights. I hope you can die convincingly, or at least pretend to look dead while you're lying there.
Otherwise, you'll have to be drugged for it.
He stopped, watching me. It was time for my part, and my lines were crystal clear to me. 'Look, how about a bargain,' I said. I sounded fairly desperate.
He smiled. He was eating this up. Morsfagen's weakness was not in his rigid acceptance of military codes and consensus views, but in his need for power over other human beings, his delight at being on top of another man.
I was giving him exactly what he wanted.
Maybe he would just hang himself with it.
'I fail to see,' he said, 'just what you have to bargain with.' He motioned around at the windowless walls.
'Something you don't know,' I said. 'Something that, if you knew, would help you a great deal.'
He frowned, smiled again. 'And what would you want for this valuable piece of information?'
