friendly with these men. It
3
Images played on a golden screen bracketed to a wall near the inner end of Zone H. Rawlins saw his father’s face take form, coalesce with an underlying pattern of bars and crosses, burst into flame. The screen was externally primed; what it showed was in the eye of the beholder. The drones, passing this point, had seen only the blank screen. Rawlins watched the image of a girl appear. Maribeth Chambers, sixteen years old, sophomore in Our Lady of Mercies High School, Rockford, Illinois. Maribeth Chambers smiled shyly and began to remove her clothes. Her hair was silken and soft, a cloud of gold; her eyes were blue, her lips were full and moist. She unhinged her breast-binders and revealed two firm upthrust white globes tipped with dots of flame. They were high and close together, as though no gravity worked on them, and the valley between them was six inches deep and a sixteenth of an inch in breadth. Maribeth Chambers blushed and bared the lower half of her body. She wore small garnets set in the dimples just above her plump pink buttocks. A crucifix of ivory dangled from a golden chain around her hips. Rawlins tried not to look at the screen. The computer directed his feet; he shuffled along obediently.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” said Maribeth Chambers in a husky, passionate voice.
She beckoned with the tips of three fingers. She gave him a bedroom wink. She crooned sweet obscenities.
Step around in back here, big boy! Let me show you a good time…
She giggled. She wriggled. She heaved her shoulders and made her breasts ring like tolling bells.
Her skin turned deep green. Her eyes slid about in her face. Her lower lip stretched forth like a shovel. Her thighs began to melt. Patterns of flame danced on the screen. Rawlins heard deep throbbing ponderous chords from an invisible organ. He listened to the whispering of the brain that guided him and went past the screen unharmed.
4
The screen showed abstract patterns: a geometry of power, rigid marching lines and frozen figures. Charles Boardman paused to admire it for a moment. Then he moved on.
5
A forest of whirling knives near the inner border of Zone H.
6
The heat grew strangely intense. One had to tiptoe over the pavement. This was troublesome because none who had passed this way before had experienced it. Did the route vary? Could the city introduce variations? How hot would it get? Where would the zone of warmth end? Did cold lie beyond? Would they live to reach Zone E? Was Richard Muller doing this to prevent them from entering?
7
Maybe he recognizes Boardman and is trying to kill him. There is that possibility. Muller has every reason to hate Boardman, and he has had no chance to undergo social adjustment. Maybe I should move faster and open some space between Boardman and myself. It seems to be getting hotter. On the other hand, he would accuse me of being cowardly. And disloyal.
Maribeth Chambers would never have done those things.
Do nuns still shave their heads?
8
Boardman found the distortion screen deep inside Zone G perhaps the worst of all. He was not afraid of the dangers; Marshall was the only man who had failed to get past the screen safely. He was afraid of entering a place where the evidence of his senses did not correspond to the real universe. Boardman depended on his senses. He was wearing his third set of retinas. You can make no meaningful evaluations of the universe without the confidence that you are seeing it clearly.
Now he was within the field of the distortion screen.
Parallel lines met here. The triangular figures emblazoned on the moist, quivering walls were constructed entirely of obtuse angles. A river ran sideways through the valley. The stars were quite close, and the moons orbited one another.
What we now must do is close our eyes and not be deceived.
Forbidden fruit tempted him. All his life he had tried hard to see clearly. The lure of distortions was irresistible. Boardman halted, planting each foot firmly. If you hope to get out of this, he told himself, you will keep your eyes closed. If you open your eyes you will be misled and go to your death. You have no right to die foolishly here after so many men have struggled so hard to teach you how to survive.
Boardman remained quite still. The silent voice of the computer, sounding a little waspish, tried to prod him on.
“Wait,” said Boardman quietly. “I can look around a little if I don’t move. That’s the important thing,
The ship’s brain reminded Mm. of the geyser of flame that had sent Marshall to his death.
Boardman opened his eyes.
He was careful not to move. All about him he saw the negation of geometry. This was the inside of the Klein bottle, looking out. Disgust rose like a green column within him.
You are eighty years old and you know how the universe should look. Close your eyes now, C.B. Close your eyes and move along. You’re taking undue risks.
First he sought Ned Rawlins. The boy was twenty meters ahead of him, shuffling slowly past the screen. Eyes closed? Of course. All of them. Ned was an obedient boy. Or a frightened one. He wants to live through this, and he’d rather not see how the universe looks through a distortion screen. I’d like to have had a son like that. But I’d have changed him by this time.
Boardman began to lift his right leg, checked himself, reimplanted it on the pavement. Just ahead, pulsations of golden light leaped in the air, taking now the form of a swan, now the form of a tree. Ned Rawlins’ left shoulder rose too high. His back was humped. One leg moved forward and the other moved backward.
