Fear That Man

across the Shield while looking for a non-matter force for construction purposes, when they discovered, to their horror, what lay beyond. The old man took the practical angle. He knew there was a fortune to be made here, more than his already formidable masses of wealth. He had only to enslave the powers already trapped behind the Shield and turn them to work for him. The Shield was maintained. But the powers could never be enslaved. To agree to slavery, the slave must have fear of his master. There was no fear in the Prisoner. Absolutely none.

Brilliant flashes of white rippled like fish through a sudden sea of smoky burgundy…

His heart thudded at the bright light, even though he knew the Shield was impenetrable. Take one molecule and expand it. Expand it some more. Make it bigger and bigger and bigger — but don’t disturb its natural particle balance. You have a Shield. It will hold back anything, stand against even nuclear power of the highest magnitude. But you also have a doorway into a higher dimension. A barred doorway. No, really more like an unbreakable window. But that window turns the higher dimension into a prison, squeezes it into a confined space (a law of opposites which equalizes the pressure created by the expanding first molecule). The higher dimension is then bound within the tiny limits. It and its inhabitants are trapped, unable to move or to get out.

Brilliant white on yellow like cat’s-eye marbles…

No, his father had never sat here like this. He was too practical for melancholia. Along about the second hundred years of the Prisoner’s confinement, the old fellow had realized — probably with a great deal of bitterness — he could never enslave it and demand things of it. And as the years passed he came to maintain the Shield only because to let it go off would mean the end of his family and possibly all human life. The Prisoner would be seeking revenge — an omnipotent, terrible revenge of finality. By the days of Alexander the Third, this fear of the Prisoner had been compounded by a feeling of moral obligation. The sanity and progress of the empire depended on keeping the Prisoner imprisoned. Always, in the rear of his mind, was the fear that the thing would escape. Sometimes that fear surged to the fore. Times like this. He wanted to run into the streets and scream about the charge behind the Shield. But the Breadloafs had done this thing, had trapped this beast. It would be up to them to watch it for all eternity. And perhaps beyond.

Finally, when watching was not quite enough, Alexander walked to the Shield, stood with a hand upon the coursing energy. “How did you,” he said at length to the thing beyond, “become like this?”

It could only thought-speak to him when he was touching the Shield. Even then, the words were tiny and distant: Letmeout, letmeout…

“How did you become like this?”

Letmeout, letmeout, letmeout…

That was its constant cry. Sometimes there were bloodcurdling threats. But he knew — and it knew — that the threats could not be carried out. Not as long as the Shield was there. It would never answer his question: “How did you become like this?” Not today. It had answered previously, but only when it thought it had something to gain.

“How did you become like this?”

And it had said: I have always been like this…

On hydro-beds, reclining, they opened their ears. The hotel room was pleasant and spacious. Gnossos lay before the door so that Sam would have to crawl over him to get out. The lights were soft but adequate, the wine sweet upon their tongues. It was certainly a time for verses.

“Look through the window
to the streets below;
It’s the age of sorrow,
babies in the snow.

Look through any window
across a sea of dust;
Time lies shattered
in a mobius rust…”

Then it was time to sleep. The wine had been drunk, the verses spoken, and the darkness crept over them. For a time, at least…

A dream. A dream of an empty tomb and rotting bodies. Except for one single body which stood and walked for the doorway. But there were demons that sprang from nowhere, grasping the body and flinging it down among the corpses, and commanded it to stay dead. Always and everywhere there were slavering, keening demons…

Then Hurkos lost the thread of the alien thoughts and the trio woke as one. They were all perspiring. The dim glow of the lamps seemed suddenly too dim for the circumstances.

“Not mine again?” Sam asked.

“Relayed from whatever implanted your hypnotic commands. Very far away.”

But the odor of spoiled flesh had carried over into reality.

“Well,” Gnossos said, grumbling and standing, “I can’t sleep now.”

They agreed.

“So let’s go sightseeing again. Maybe the next command will be coming along soon now anyway.”

“Where to?” Hurkos asked. “Is it far? My feet still hurt.”

“Not far,” Gnossos assured them. But they knew a short step to this giant was two steps to them and a little stroll might turn into an arch-breaking trek. “There are a number of these places we could go. This one’s just around the corner. It’s called the Inferno.”

VIII

The Inferno was a bar. But more than a bar, a total experience. Everything in the place was geared to some sensory stimulation. Ebony and silver clouds drifted through the rooms and half-rooms, sifted in and out of alcoves and cubbyholes, some just for effect, some carrying scantily dressed performers. Floor panels popped open unexpectedly like the tops of jack-in-the-boxes, spewing out clowns in imagi-color costumes that were purple, yellow, red, green, or white, according to one’s mood. The shimmering fabrics manifested themselves in many ways, shifting color to match your feelings, even as they cheered you up. The floor revolved at a different speed than the walls and in a different direction than the ceiling. Strobe lights flashed. Smello- symphonies flushed through the room, twisting the patrons’ senses to moments of synasthesia where music became an olfactory sensation of indescribable delectability. The erotic cygian perfumes seeped through the air in blue mists, enflaming nostrils and tying the mass of total experience into a congealed whole that throbbed with each wave of the odoriferous substance.

They took a table in the corner, one almost hidden by shadows. The robotender in the center of the table delivered their drinks once Gnossos had compiled an order, punched it out on the silver keys, and deposited the proper amount of coins. They sat sipping the cool liquids and watching the two dozen or so characters in the bar.

“What’s so special about this place?” Sam asked, almost choking on a heavy breath of the perfume. “It isn’t unlike the Grande Hotel Lounge or a dozen other places we’ve been, for that matter.”

“Look at the people,” Gnossos said enigmatically.

Sam did. He could see no way in which they differed from empire norm in dress or habit. He said so.

“Look more closely,” the poet urged. “Look at their faces.”

Sam swung his gaze from the ruddy face to the more distant visages. And it was in their faces. The longer he watched, the clearer it became to the eye. But what, exactly, was it? He searched his