Then he was back with the girl, watching through her eyes a butterfly as it fluttered to rest on a flower and perched there, gently waving its gaudy wings.
He had not been cast out. The young woman herself had gone on that wild journey to the heavens, not only with her mind, but with her entire being, attuned to the rest of creation. There was a continuity, he realized, a oneness between herself, the mother-to-be, and the Universe. With her, then, he felt the stirrings of new life, and he was proud and content.
He forgot for the moment that he had been a failure.
The soft breeze seemed to turn chill. The Sun was still high and unclouded, but its warmth was gone. With the girl, he felt a prickling along the spine. She turned her head slightly and, through her eyes, he saw, a few yards away in tall grass, a creeping man.
The eyes of the man were fixed on the girl’s body and the traveler felt her thrill of terror. The man lay there for a moment, hands flat on the ground under his chest. Then he moved forward, inching toward her.
The girl screamed. Her terror gripped the visitor. He was helpless. His thoughts whirled into chaos, following hers.
The eyes of the creeping man flicked from side to side, then up. The visitor quivered and cringed with the girl when she screamed again. As the torrent of frightened sound poured from her throat, the creeping man looked into her eyes. Instantly the visitor was sucked into his mind.
It was a maelstrom. A tremendous conflict was going on in it. One part of it was urging the body on in its fantastic crawl toward the young woman frozen in terror against the sky. The visitor was aware of the other part, submerged and struggling feebly, trying to get through with a message of reason. But it was handicapped. The visitor sensed these efforts being nullified by a crushing weight of shame.
The traveler fought against full identification with the deranged part of the mind. Nevertheless, he sought to understand it, as he had understood the other minds he’d visited. But there was nothing to understand. The creeping man had no plan. There was no reason for his action.
The visitor felt only a compulsion which said, “You must! You must!”
The visitor was frightened. And then he realized that he was less frightened than the man was. The terror felt by the creeping man was greater than the fear the visitor had experienced with the girl.
There were shouts and barking. He heard the shrill cry of a boy. “Go get him, Max!”
There was a squeal of brakes from the road and a pounding of heavy footsteps coming toward them.
With the man, the visitor rose up, confused, scared. A great shaggy weight hurled itself and a growling, sharp-toothed mouth sought a throat.
A voice yelled, “Don’t shoot! The dog’s got him!”
Then blackness.
“Mersey.” The voice summoned the visitor, huddling in a corner of the deranged mind, fearing contamination.
The eyes opened, looked up at the ceiling of a barred cell.
“Dr. Cloyd is here to see you,” the voice said.
The visitor felt the mind of his host seeking to close out the words and the world, to return to sheltering darkness.
There was a rattle of keys and the opening of an iron door.
The eyes opened as a hand shook the psychotic Mersey by the shoulder. The visitor sought escape, but the eyes avoided those of the other.
“Come with me, son,” the doctor’s voice said. “Don’t be frightened. No one will hurt you. We’ll have a talk.”
Mersey shook off the hand on his shoulder.
“Drop dead,” he muttered.
“That wouldn’t help anything,” the doctor said. “Come on, man.”
Mersey sat up and, through his eyes, the traveler saw the doctor’s legs. Were they legs or were they iron bars? The traveler cringed away from the mad thought.
A room with a desk, a chair, a couch, and sunlight through a window. Crawling sunlit snakes. The visitor shuddered. He sought the part of the mind that was clear, but he sought in vain. Only the whirling chaos and the distorted images remained now.
There was a pain in the throat and with Mersey he lifted a hand to it. Bandaged—gleaming teeth and a snarling animal’s mouth—fear, despair and hatred. With the prisoner, he collapsed on the couch.
“Lie down, if you like,” said Dr. Cloyd’s voice. “Try to relax. Let me help you.”
“Drop dead,” Mersey replied automatically. The visitor felt the tenseness of the man, the unreasoning fear, and the resentment.
But as the man lay there, the traveler sensed a calming of the turbulence. There was an urgent rational thought. He concentrated and tried to help the man phrase it.
“The girl—is she all right? Did I…?”
“She’s all right.” The doctor’s voice was soothing. It pushed back the shadows a little. “She’s perfectly all right.”
The visitor sensed a dulled relief in Mersey’s mind. The shadows still whirled, but they were less ominous. He suggested a question, exulted as Mersey attempted to phrase it: “Doctor, am I real bad off? Can…?”
But still the shadows.
“We’ll work together,” said the doctor’s voice. “You’ve been ill, but so have others. With your help, we can make you well.”
The traveler made a tremendous effort. He urged Mersey to say: “I’ll help, doctor. I want to find peace.”
But then Mersey’s voice went on: “I must find a new home. We need a new home. We can’t stay where we are.”
The traveler was shocked at the words. He hadn’t intended them to come out that way. Somehow Mersey had voiced the underlying thoughts of his people. The traveler sought the doctor’s reaction, but Mersey wouldn’t look at him. The man’s gaze was fixed on the ceiling above the couch.
“Of course,” the doctor said. His words were false, the visitor realized; he was humoring the madman.
“We had so much, but now there is no future,” Mersey said. The visitor tried to stop him. He would not be stopped. “We can’t stay much longer. We’ll die. We must find a new world. Maybe you can help us.”
Dr. Cloyd spoke and there was no hint of surprise in his voice.
“I’ll help you all I can. Would you care to tell me more about your world?”
Desperately, the visitor fought to control the flow of Mersey’s words. He had opened the gate to the other world—how, he did not know—and all of his knowledge and memories now were Mersey’s. But the traveler could not communicate with the disordered mind. He could only communicate through it, and then involuntarily. If he could escape the mind… but he could not escape. Mersey’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He would not look at the doctor.
“A dying world,” Mersey said. “It will live on after us, but we will die because we have finished. There’s nothing more to do. The Change is upon us, and we must flee it or die. I have been sent here as a last hope, as an emissary to learn if this world is the answer. I have traveled among you and I have found good things. Your world is much like ours, physically, but it has not grown as fast or as far as ours, and we would be happy here, among you, if we could control.”
The words from Mersey’s throat had come falteringly at first, but now they were strong, although the tone was flat and expressionless. The words went on:
“But we can’t control. I’ve tried and failed. At best we can co-exist, as observers and vicarious participants, but we must surrender choice. Is that to be our destiny—to live on, but to be denied all except contemplation—to live on as guests among you, accepting your ways and sharing them, but with no power to change them?”
The traveler shouted at Mersey’s mind in soundless fury: “Shut up! Shut up!”
Mersey stopped talking.
