'My freedom. Melinda's freedom. We'd stay in the city.
I'd do whatever you want.'
'Oh, I hardly believe you would,' he said.
'Look, Morsfagen, I'm not kidding you. I have something to tell you that could make a very big difference to the Alliance. I am not lying, and you must believe that.'
'I'd love to hear it,' he said, dragging this out to relish every moment of my groveling. 'But you must choose some other reward besides your freedom.'
'Let the girl and me live here together. At least don't keep us in separate apartments.'
He smiled, seemed to consider it. 'All right. She is some nice piece, I'll tell you. That ought to be a big enough reward. Now tell me what this secret is?'
I started to speak, then stopped abruptly, just as I had planned, examining him with a great deal of suspicion. I must have looked pathetic, hunched there on the edge of the bed, unshaven, trying to bargain for petty favors that would come without question to a free man. It was the image I wanted him to have of me. 'How do I know I can trust you?' I asked. 'How do I know you'll keep your promise?'
He laughed sharply, deeply. 'You don't.'
'But that's not right!' I said. There was just the edge of a whine in my voice. I was a broken man, yes I was. I was just so many pieces for him to break further into dust.
'Fairness doesn't apply here,' he said. 'You'll just have to trust me. Or forget it all.'
I hesitated. 'I have nothing to lose, I guess,' I said. 'So I'll tell you.' I hesitated again. Then I spoke: 'I lied to you when I saw it was dangerous for me to go back into Child's mind. I just said that to get back into my own body and to get out of the AC complex. I can go back into him any time that I want, and I can bring a great deal of valuable data out to you.'
He burst into loud, almost uncontrolled laughter, his face growing red. He slapped his sides with his hands, almost dropping the sheaf of papers, and finally the laughter turned into a choking cough. When he looked up at me again, he said, 'I thought that much all along. I hadn't yet decided to risk sending you back, 'cause you're too valuable to lose. In a police state, an esper has more duties hunting the enemy at home than abroad. Now I can take the risk and clean out that freak's mind too. I thank you for your kind assistance in this decision.' He nodded sarcastically.
'When will the girl be brought to me?' I asked, though I knew the answer already.
'You trusted me,' he said. 'I appreciate that. It shows that we will be getting along better than anticipated.'
'I hope so.'
'But there is one thing I think you should learn, for your own good,' he said. He waited until there was no alternative but for me to ask him what that lesson was.
'What's that?' I asked.
'Trust no one,' he said. 'The girl will remain in a separate apartment.'
I made a lunge for him, and the guard beside him slapped me across the face with the butt of a rifle. It was a deal more than I had bargained for. My jaws snapped together, banging my teeth painfully into my gums. I saw stars, multicolored one with a thousand points each, and crashed back onto the bed.
I tasted blood, spat it on the sheets. It was curiously bright there, glistening.
'Have you learned the lesson?' he asked.
'You lied,' I said.
'I guess you've learned the lesson, then.'
'That all military men are emasculated power freaks who can't make it with a woman but dig beating up on other men with guns.'
'Keep it up,' he warned.
'Sexless bastard!' I hissed.
'Larry,' he called to the young soldier. The boy stepped forward, holding his rifle ready. Morsfagen motioned to me, quite the cavalier, and conveyed the necessity of what must be done.
Larry took two more paces, stepped in front of me, drew the rifle over his head-all of this happening so slowly, so measuredly that it seemed like a ballet-and brought the square butt down on my left shoulder so hard that I felt tissue separating.
I did not see the pretty stars at all this time, only a velvety and total darkness
When I woke up, it was to the acrid odor of smelling salts which I rebelled against, gagging and pushing back from the stuff. But aside from that quite natural rejection, I offered no opposition. For the moment, Morsfagen was convinced he knew me. He suspected nothing and thought my anger was genuine.
I followed docilely to the corridor, the elevator, and the filming studios, where I played dead for them. Quite convincingly, he told me. They even let me bleed a little for them
By late afternoon, the films had been made. There was a team waiting to rush the product to the city's main broadcasting facilities, where it would be shown for the edification and entertainment of the consensus citizenry sitting safe at home this night.
From there, we went to Child's room, where nothing had changed: lights dim, bedclothes rumpled, the mutant husk still lying there in the smell of sickness, antiseptics, and starch.
'Are you ready?' Morsfagen asked.
I'm not only ready, but anxious! I thought. But I did not say anything. It seemed the time to be petulant, snippy, moody. And he seemed to relish my performance.
The lights were dimmed, the recorders started, Child raised a little in his bed, and I was at last within reach of the godhood I had been seeking all my life
FOUR
Man As God
I
I touched the sheen of His mental surface, drew back from the cold, humming tune of ultimate power.
In the darkness of the empty conscious mind, I hovered over the bending amber shell, slid along its eternal curve toward the horizon which always danced just beyond my grasp. In time, I found the weak spot on that amber smoothness, saw the moving shadows of things beneath, of things in the id and ego below. I pried at that weak spot, slit it open, sailed through and into God's mind
Imagine:
Imagine the largest mirror in the universe, a million light-years from edge to beveled edge (no matter who the artisans were who created such a marvel, it is only the mirror itself which engages us). On such a great glass, there would be literally countless millions of visions, bits and pieces of colorful landscapes and peoples, events and futures and pasts and even moments of sundry presenttunes. Further imagine a cosmic hammer as large as a star (again, we care not of the men who forged that instrument, but only of its actions) brought to bear on the very center of that fantastic mirror. And then imagine the flying shards of silvered glass clattering down, down, down into the bottom of Existence, to the end of Time, and there to lie in pools of pitch blackness with their wild reflections frozen in them.
This was the mental landscape inside of Child this time, far different from what it had been. It was a mind of superhuman dimensions, fractured into near uselessness, the mind of God, the Being who had made the Earth, the galaxy, the universe, and each of us in it, the god who had forged the first DNA and RNA and begun the craziest dream ever. And yet it was the most disorganized place I had ever seen-disorganized and brilliant at the same moment, wilder, stranger, more fearful than any mind I had seen in all my years of head-tripping.
I settled through glazes of amber? ? through ice spicule clouds the color of freshly spilled blood? ? through a fine
