To Open the Sky

And there is light, before and beyond our vision, for which we give thanks.

And there is heat, for which we are humble.

And there is power, for which we count ourselves blessed.

Blessed be Balmer, who gave us our wavelengths. Blessed be Bohr, who brought us understanding. Blessed be Lyman, who saw beyond sight.

Tell us now the stations of the spectrum.

Blessed be long radio waves, which oscillate slowly.

Blessed be broadcast waves, for which we thank Hertz.

Blessed be short waves, linkers of mankind, and blessed be microwaves.

Blessed be infrared, bearers of nourishing heat.

Blessed be visible light, magnificent in angstroms. (On high holidays only: Blessed be red, sacred to Doppler. Blessed be orange. Blessed be yellow, hallowed by Fraunhofer’s gaze. Blessed be green. Blessed be blue for its hydrogen line. Blessed be indigo. Blessed be violet, flourishing with energy.)

Blessed be ultraviolet, with the richness of the sun. Blessed be X-rays, sacred to Roentgen, the prober within.

Blessed be the gamma, in all its power; blessed be the highest of frequencies.

We give thanks for Planck. We give thanks for Einstein. We give thanks in the highest for Maxwell.

In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom, peace!

one

There was chaos on the face of the earth, but to the man in the Nothing Chamber it did not matter.

Ten billion people—or was it twelve billion by now?—fought for their place in the sun. Skyscrapers shot heaven-ward like sprouting beanstalks. The Martians mocked. The Venusians spat. Nut-cults flourished, and in a thousand veils the Vorsters bowed low to their devilish blue glow. All of this, at the moment, was of no significance to Reynolds Kirby. He was out of it. He was the man in the Nothing Chamber.

The place of his repose was four thousand feet above the blue Caribbean, in his hundredth-story apartment on Tortola in the Virgin Islands. A man had to take his rest somewhere. Kirby, as a high official in the U.N., had the right to warmth and slumber, and a substantial chunk of his salary covered the overhead on this hideaway. The building was a tower of shining glass whose foundations drove deep into the heart of the island. One could not build a skyscraper like this on every Caribbean island; too many of them were flat disks of dead coral, lacking the substance to support half a million tons of deadweight. Tortola was different, a retired volcano, a submerged mountain. Here they could build, and here they had built

Reynolds Kirby slept the good sleep.

Half an hour in a Nothing Chamber restored a man to vitality, draining the poisons of fatigue from his body and mind. Three hours in it left him limp, flaccid-willed. A twenty-four-hour stint could make any man a puppet. Kirby lay in a warm nutrient bath, ears plugged, eyes capped, feed-lines bringing air to his lungs. There was nothing like crawling back into the womb for a while when the world was too much with you.

The Mondschein ticked by. Kirby did not think of Vorsters. Kirby did not think of Nat Weiner, the Martian. Kirby did not think of the esper girl, writhing in her bed of torment, whom he had seen in Kyoto last week. Kirby did not think.

A voice purred, “Are you ready, Freeman Kirby?”

Kirby was not ready. Who ever was? A man had to be driven from his Nothing Chamber by an angel with a flaming sword. The nutrient bath began to bubble out of the tank. Rubber-cush-ioned metal fingers peeled the caps from his eyeballs. His ears were unplugged. Kirby lay shivering for a moment, expelled from the womb, resisting the return to reality. The chamber’s cycle was complete; it could not be turned on again for twenty-four hours, and a good thing, too.

“Did you sleep well, Freeman Kirby?”

Kirby scowled rustily and clambered to his feet. He swayed, nearly lost his balance, but the robot servitor was there to steady him. Kirby caught a burnished arm and held it until the spasm passed.

“I slept marvelously well,” he told the metal creature. “It’s a pity to return.”

“You don’t mean that, Freeman. You know that the only true pleasure comes from an engagement with life. You said that to me yourself, Freeman Kirby.”

“I suppose I did,” Kirby admitted dryly. All of the robot’s pious philosophy stemmed from things he had said. He accepted a robe from the squat, flat-faced thing and pulled it over his shoulders. He shivered again. Kirby was a lean man, too tall for his weight, with stringy, corded arms and legs, close-cropped gray hair, deepset greenish eyes. He was forty, and looked fifty, and before climbing into the Nothing Chamber today he had felt about seventy.

“When does the Martian arrive?” he asked.

“Seventeen hours. He’s at a banquet in San Juan right cow, but he’ll be along soon.”

“I can’t wait,” Kirby said. Moodily he moved to the nearest window and depolarized it. He looked down, way down, at the tranquil water lapping at the beach. He could see the dark line of the cord reef, green water on the hither side, deep blue water beyond. The reef was dead, of course. The delicate creatures who had built it could stand only so much motor fuel in their systems, and the level of tolerance had been passed quite some time ago. The skittering hydrofoils buzzing from island to island left a trail of murderous slime in their wake.

The U.N. man closed his eyes. And opened them quickly, for when he lowered the lids there appeared on the screen of his brain the sight of that esper girl again, twisting, screaming, biting her knuckles, yellow skin flecked with gleaming beads of sweat. And the Vorster man standing by, waving that damned blue glow around, murmuring, “Peace, child, peace, you will soon be in harmony with the All.”

That had been last Thursday. This was the following Wednesday. She was in harmony with the All by now, Kirby Thought, and an irreplaceable pool of genes had been scattered to the four winds. Or the seven winds. He was having trouble keeping his clichés straight these days.

Seven seas, he thought. Four winds.

The shadow of a copter crossed his line of sight.

“Your guest is arriving,” the robot declared.

“Magnificent,” Kirby said sourly.

The news that the Martian was on hand set Kirby jangling with tension. He had been selected as the guide, mentor, and watch-dog for the visitor from the Martian colony. A great deal depended on maintaining friendly relations with the Martians, for they represented markets vital to Earth’s economy. They also represented vigor and drive, commodities currently in short supply on Earth.

But they were also a headache to handle—touchy, mercurial, unpredictable. Kirby knew that he bad a big job on his hands. He had to keep the Martian out of harm’s way, coddle him and cosset him, all without ever seeming patronizing or oversolicitous. And if Kirby bungled it—well, it could be costly to Earth and fatal to Kirby’s own career.

He opaqued the window again and hurried into his bedroom to change into robes of state. A clinging gray tunic, green foulard, boots of blue leather, gloves of gleaming golden mesh—he looked every inch the important Earthside official by the time the annunciator clanged to inform him that Nathaniel Weiner of Mars had come to call.

“Show him in,” Kirby said.

The door irised open, and the Martian stepped nimbly through. He was a small, compact man in his early thirties, unnaturally wide-shouldered, with thin lips, jutting cheekbones, dark beady eyes. He looked physically powerful, as though he had spent his life struggling with the killing gravity of Jupiter, not romping in the airy effortlessness of Mars. He was deeply tanned, and a fine network of wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes. He looked aggressive, thought Kirby. He looked arrogant.

“Freeman Kirby, it’s a pleasure to see you,” the Martian said in a deep, rasping voice.

“The honor is mine, Freeman Weiner.”

“Permit me,” Weiner said. He drew his laser pistol. Kirby’s robot scurried forward with the velvet cushion. The Martian placed the weapon carefully on the plush mound. The robot slid across the floor to bring the gun to Kirby.

“Call me Nat,” the Martian said.

Kirby smiled thinly. He picked up the gun, resisted the insane temptation to ash the Martian on the spot and briefly examined it. Then he replaced it on the cushion and flicked his hand at the robot, who carried it back to its owner.

“My friends call me Ron,” Kirby said. “Reynolds is a lousy first name.”

“Glad to know you, Ron. What’s to drink?”

Kirby was jarred by the breach of etiquette, but he maintained an equable diplomatic mask. The Martian had been punctilious enough with his gun ritual, but you’d expect that with any frontiersman; it didn’t mean that his manners extended beyond that. Smoothly Kirby said, “Whatever you like, Nat. Synthetics, realies—you name it and it’s here. What about a filtered rum?”

“I’ve had so much rum I’m ready to puke it, Ron. Those gabogos in San Juan drink it like water. What about some decent whiskey?”

“You dial it,” Kirby said with a grand sweep of his hand. The robot picked up the console of the bar and carried it to the Martian. Weiner eyed the buttons a moment and stabbed almost at random, twice.

“I’m ordering a double rye for you,” Weiner announced. “And a double bourbon for me.”

Kirby found that amusing. The rude colonial was not only selecting his own drink but one for his host. Double rye, indeed! Kirby hid his wince and took the drink. Weiner slipped comfortably into a webfoam cradle. Kirby sat also.

“How are you enjoying your visit to Earth?” Kirby asked.

“Not bad. Not bad. Sickening the way you people are crammed together here, though.”

“It’s the human condition.”

“Not on Mars it isn’t. Not on Venus, either.”

“Give it time,” Kirby said.

“I doubt it. We know how to regulate our population up there, Ron.”

“So do we. It just took us a while to get the idea across to everybody, and by that time there were ten billion of us. We hope to keep the rate of increase down.”

“You know what?” Weiner said. “You ought to take every tenth person and feed ‘em to the converters. Get some good energy back out of all that meat Cut your population by a billion over-night.” He chuckled. “Not serious. Wouldn’t be ethical. Just a passing joke.”

Kirby smiled. “You aren’t the first to suggest it, Nat And some of the others were plenty serious.”

“Discipline—that’s the answer to every human problem. Discipline and more self-discipline. Denial. Planning. This whiskey is damned good, Ron. How about another round?”

“Help yourself.”

Weiner did. Generously.

“Damned fine stuff,” he murmured. “We don’t get drinks like this on Mars. Got to admit it, Ron. Crowded and stinking as this planet is, it’s got comforts. I wouldn’t want to live here, mind you, but I’m glad I came. The women—mmmm! The drinks! The excitement!”

“You’ve been here two days?” Kirby asked.

“That’s right. One night in New York—ceremonies, banquet, all that garbage, sponsored by the Colonial Association. Then down to Washington to see the President. Nice old chap. Soft belly, though. Could stand some exercise. Then this idiot thing in San Juan, a day of hospitality, meeting the Puerto Rican comrades, that kind of junk. And now here. What’s to do here, Ron?”

“Well, we could go downstairs for a swim first—”

“I can swim all I like on Mars. I want to see civilization, not water. Complexity.” Weiner’s eyes glowed. Kirby abruptly realized that the man had been drunk when he walked in and that the two stiff jolts of bourbon had sent him into a fine glow of intoxication. “You know what I want to do, Kirby? I want to get out and grub in the dirt a little. I want to go to opium dens. I want to see espers have ecstasies. I want to take in a Vorster session. I want to live the life, Ron. I want to experience Earth—muck and all!”

two

The Vorster hall was in a shabby, almost intolerably seedy old building in central Manhattan, practically within spitting distance of the U.N. buildings. Kirby felt queasy about entering it; he had never really conquered his uneasiness about slumming, even now when most of the world was one vast teeming slum. But Nat Weiner had commanded it, and so it must be. Kirby had brought him here because it was the only Vorster place he had visited before, and so he didn’t feel too sharply out of place among the worshipers.

The sign over the door said in glowing but splotchy letters:

Brotherhood of the Immanent RadianceAll WelcomeServices DailyHeal Your HeartsHarmonize With the All

Weiner snickered at the sign. “Look at that! Heal your hearts! How’s your heart, Kirby?”

“Punctured in several places. Shall we go in?”

“You bet we shall,” Weiner said.

The Martian was sloshingly drunk. He held his liquor well, Kirby had to admit. Through the long evening Kirby had not even tried to match the colonial envoy drink for drink, and yet he felt hazy and overheated. The tip of his nose prickled. He yearned to shake Weiner off and crawl back into the Nothing Chamber to get all this poison out of his system.

But Weiner wanted to kick over the traces, and It was hard to blame him for that. Mars was a rough place, where there was no time for sell-indulgence. Terraforming a planet took a maximum effort. The job was nearly done now, after two generations of toil, and the air of Mars was sweet and clean, but no one was relaxing up there yet. Weiner was here to negotiate a trade agreement, but it was also his first chance to escape from the rigors of Martian life. The Sparta of space, they called it. And here he was in Athens.

They entered the Vorster hall.

It was long and narrow, an oblong box of a room. A dozen rows of unpainted wooden benches ran from wall to wall, with a narrow aisle down one side. At the rear was the altar, glowing with the inevitable blue radiance. Behind it stood a tall, skeleton-thin man, bald, bearded.

“Is that the priest?” Weiner whispered harshly.

“I don’t think they’re called priests,” said Kirby. “But he’s in charge.”

“Do we take communion?”

“Let’s just watch,” Kirby suggested.

“Look at all these damned maniacs,” the Martian said.

“This is a very popular religious movement.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Watch. Listen.”

“Down on their knees—groveling to that half-pint reactor—”

Heads were turning in their direction. Kirby sighed. He had no love for the Vorsters or their religion himself, but be was embarrassed at this boisterous desecration of their shrine. Most undiplomatically, he took Weiner’s arm, guided the Martian into the nearest pew, and pulled him down into a kneeling position. Kirby knelt beside him. The Martian gave him an ugly glance. Colonists didn’t like their bodies handled by strangers. A Venusian might have slashed at Kirby with his dagger for something like that. But, then, a Venusian wouldn’t be here on Earth at all, let alone cutting capers in a Vorster hall.

Sullenly, Weiner grabbed the rail and leaned forward to watch the service. Kirby squinted through the near darkness at the man behind the altar.

The reactor was on and glowing—a cube of cobalt-60, shielded by water, the dangerous radiations gobbled up before they could sear through flesh. In the darkness Kirby saw a faint blue glow, rising slowly in brightness, growing more intense. Now the lattice of the tiny reactor was masked in whitish-blue light, and around it swirled a weird greenish-blue glow that seemed almost purple at its core. It was the Blue Fire, the eerie cold light of the Cerenkov radiation, spreading outward to envelop the entire room.

It was nothing mystical, Kirby knew. Electrons were surging through that tank of water, moving at a velocity greater than light in that medium, and as they moved they hurled forth a stream of photons. There were neat equations to explain the source of the Blue Fire. Give the Vorsters credit: they didn’t say it was anything supernatural. But it made a useful symbolic instrument, a focus for religious emotions, more colorful than a crucifix, more dramatic than the Tables of the Law.

The Vorster up front said quietly, “There is a Oneness from which all life stems. The infinite variety of the universe we owe to the motion of the electrons. Atoms meet; their particles entwine. Electrons leap from orbit to orbit, and chemical changes are worked.”

“Listen to the pious bastard,” Weiner snorted. “A chemistry lecture, yet!”

Kirby bit his lip in anguish. A girl in the pew just in front of theirs turned around and said in a low, urgent voice, “Please. Please—just listen.”

She was such a numbing sight that even Weiner was struck dumb for once. The Martian gasped in shock. Kirby, who had seen surgically altered women before, scarcely reacted at all. Iridescent cups covered the openings where her ears had been. An opal was mounted in the bone of her forehead. Her eyelids were of gleaming foil. The surgeons had done things to her nostrils, to her lips. Perhaps she had been in some terrible accident. More likely she had had herself maimed for cosmetic purposes.

Madness. Madness.

The Vorster said, “The energy of the sun—the green life surging in plants—the bursting wonder of growth—for this we thank the electron. The enzymes of our body—the sparking synapses of our brains—the beating of our hearts—for this we thank the electron. Fuel and food, light and heat, warmth and nourishment, everything and all, rising from the Oneness, rising from the Immanent Radiance—”

It was a litany, Kirby realized. All around him people were swaying in rhythm with the half-chanted words, were nodding, even weeping. The Blue Fire swelled and reached to the sagging ceiling. The man at the altar raised his long, spidery arms in a kind of benediction.

“Come forward,” he cried. “Come kneel and join in praise! Lock arms, bow heads, give thanks for the underlying unity of all things!”

The Vorsters began to shamble toward the altar. It woke memories of an Episcopalian childhood for Kirby:

going forward to take communion, the wafer on the tongue, the quick sip of wine, the smell of incense, the rustle of priestly robes. He hadn’t been to a service in twenty-five years. It was a long way from the vaulted magnificence of the cathedral to the dilapidated ugliness of this improvised shrine, but for a moment Kirby felt a flicker of religious feeling, felt just the faintest urge to move forward with the others and kneel before the glowing reactor.

The thought stunned and shocked him.

How had it stolen upon him? This was no religion. This was cultism, a wildfire movement, the latest fad, here today, gone tomorrow. Ten million converts overnight? What of it? Tomorrow or the next day would come the newest prophet, exhorting the faithful to plunge their hands into a scintillation counter’s sparkling bath, and the Vorster halls would be deserted. This was no Rock. This was quicksand.

And yet there had been that momentary pull—Kirby tightened his lips. It was the strain, he thought, of shepherding this wild Martian around all evening. He didn’t give a damn for the supernal Oneness. The underlying unity of all things meant nothing to him. This was a place for the tired, the neurotic, the novelty-hungry, for the kind of person that would cheerfully pay good money to have her ears cut off and her nostrils slit. lit was a measure of his own desperation that he had been almost ready to join the communicants at the altar.

He relaxed.

And in the same moment Nat Weiner burst to his feet and went careening down the aisle.

“Save me!” the Martian cried. “Heal my goddam soul! Show me the Oneness!”

“Kneel with us, Brother,” the Vorster leader said smoothly.

“I’m a sinner!” Weiner howled. “I’m full of booze and corruption! I got to be saved! I embrace the electron! I yield!”

Kirby hurried after him down the aisle. Was Weiner serious? The Martians were notorious for their resistance to any and all religious movements, including the established and legitimate ones. Had he somehow succumbed to that hellish blue glow?

“Take the hands of your brethren,” the leader murmured. “Bow your head and let the glow enfold you.”

Weiner looked to his left. The girl with the surgical alterations knelt beside him. She held out her hand. Four fingers of flesh, one of some turquoise-hued metal.

“It’s a monster!” Weiner shrieked. “Take it away! I won’t let you cut me up!”

“Be calm, Brother—”

“You’re a bunch of phonies! Phonies! Phonies! Phonies! Nothing but a pack of—”

Kirby got to him. He dug his fingertips into the ridged muscles of Weiner’s back in a way that the Martian was likely to notice, drunk as he was.

In a low, intense voice Kirby said, “Let’s go, Nat. We’re getting out of here.”

“Take your stinking hands off me, Earther!”

“Nat, please—this is a house of worship—”

“This is a bughouse! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Look at them! Down on their knees like stinking maniacs!” Weiner struggled to his feet. His booming voice seemed to batter at the walls. “I’m a free man from Mars! I dug in the desert with these hands! I watched the oceans fill! What did any of you do? You cut your eyelids off and wallowed in muck! And you—you fake priest, you take their money and love it!”

The Martian grabbed the altar rail and vaulted over it, coming perilously close to the glowing reactor. He clawed at the towering, bearded Vorster.

Calmly the cultist reached out and slipped one long arm through the pinwheeling chaos of Weiner’s threshing limbs. He touched his fingertips to the Martian’s throat for a fraction of a second.

Weiner fell like a dead man.

three

“Are you all right now?” Kirby asked, dry-throated.

Weiner stirred. “Where’s that girl?”

“The one with the surgery?”

“No,” he rasped. “The esper. I want her near me again.”

Kirby glanced at the slender, blue-haired girl. She nodded tensely and took Weiner’s hand. The Martian’s face was bright with sweat, and his eyes were still wild. He lay back, head propped on pillows, cheeks hollow.

They were in a sniffer palace across the street from the Vorster hail. Kirby had had to carry the Martian out of the place himself, slung across his shoulders; the Vorsters did not let robots in. The sniffer palace seemed as good a place as any to take him.

The esper girl had come over to them as Kirby staggered into the place. She was a Vorster, too—the blue hair was the tip-off—but apparently she had finished her worship for the day and was topping things off with a quick inhalation. With instant sympathy she had bent to peer at Weiner’s flushed, sweat-flecked face. She had asked Kirby if his friend had had a stroke.

“I’m not sure what happened to him,” Kirby said. “He was drunk and began to make trouble in the Vorster place. The leader of the service touched his throat.”

The girl smiled. She was waif-like, fragile, no more than eighteen or nineteen. Cursed with talent. She closed her eyes, took Weiner’s hand, clutched the thick wrist until the

Martian revived. Kirby did not know what she had done. All this was mystery to him.

Now, strength flowing back into him visibly from moment to moment, Weiner tried to sit up. He seized the girl’s hand and held it. She did not attempt to break free.

He said, “What did they hit me with?”

“It was a momentary alteration of your charge,” the girl told him. “He turned off your heart and brain for a thousandth of a second. There will be no permanent damage.”

“How’d he do it? He just touched me with his fingers.”

“There is a technique. But you’ll be all right.”

Weiner eyed the girl. “You an esper? You reading my mind right now?”

“I’m an esper, but I don’t read Mondschein. I’m just an empath. You’re all churned up with hatred. Why don’t you go back across the street? Ask him to forgive you. I know he will. Let him teach you. Have you read Vorst’s book?”

“Why don’t you just go to hell?” Weiner said casually. “No, don’t. You’re too cute. We got some cute espers on Mars, too. You want some fun tonight? My name’s Nat Weiner, and this is my friend, Ron Kirby. Reynolds Kirby. He’s a stuffed shirt, but we can give him the slip.” The Martian’s grip on the slender arm grew tighter. “What do you want?”

The girl didn’t say anything. She simply frowned, and Weiner made a strange face and released her arm. Kirby, watching, had to repress a grin. Weiner was running into trouble all over the place. This was a complicated world.

“Go across the street,” the girl whispered. “They’ll help you there.”

She turned without waiting for a reply and faded into the dimness. Weiner passed a hand over his forehead as though brushing cobwebs from his brain. He struggled to his feet, ignoring Kirby’s proffered arm.

“What kind of place is this?” he asked.

“A sniffer palace.”

“Will they preach to me here?”

“They’ll just fog your brain a little,” said Kirby. “Want to try?”

“Sure. I told you I wanted to try everything. I don’t get a chance to come to Earth every day.”

Weiner grinned, but it was a somber grin. He didn’t seem to have the bounce he had had an hour ago. Of course, getting knocked out by the Vorster had sobered him some. He was still game, though, ready to soak up all the sins this wicked planet had to offer.

Kirby wondered whether he was making as big a mess of this assignment as it seemed. There was no way of knowing—not yet. Later, of course, Weiner might well protest the handling he had received, and Kirby might find himself abruptly transferred to less sensitive duties. That was not a pleasant thought. He regarded his career as an important matter, perhaps the only important matter in his life. He did not want to wreck it in a night

They moved toward the sniffer booths.

“Tell me,” Weiner said. “Do those people really believe all that crap about the electron?”

“I really don’t know. I haven’t made a study of it, Nat.”

“You’ve watched the movement appear. How many members does it have now?”

“A couple of million, I guess.”

“That’s plenty. We have only seven million people on all of Mars. If you’ve got this many joining this nutty cult—”

“There are lots of new religious sects on Earth today,” Kirby said. “It’s an apocalyptic time. People are hungry for reassurance. They feel the Earth’s being left behind by the stream of events. So they look for a unity, for some way out of all the confusion and fragmentation.”

“Let them come to Mars if they want a unity. We got work for everybody, and no time to stew about the alieness of it all.” Weiner guffawed. “The hell with it. Tell me about this sniffer stuff.”

“Opium’s out of fashion. We inhale the more exotic mercaptans. The hallucinations are said to be entertaining.”

“Said to be? Don’t you know? Kirby, don’t you have firsthand information about anything? You aren’t even alive. You’re just a zombie. A man needs some vices, Kirby.”

The U.N. man thought of the Nothing Chamber waiting for him in the lofty tower on balmy Tortola. His face was a stony mask. He said, “Some of us are too busy for vices. But this visit of yours is likely to be a great education for me, Nat. Have a sniff.”

A robot rolled up to them. Kirby clapped his right thumb against the lambent yellow plate set in the robot’s chest. The light brightened as Kirby’s print-pattern was recorded.

“We’ll bill your Central,” the robot said. Its voice was absurdly deep: pitch troubles on the master tape, Kirby suspected. When the metal creature rolled away, it was listing a bit to starboard. Rusty in the gut, he figured. An even chance that he wouldn’t get billed. He picked up a sniffer mask and handed it to Weiner, who sprawled out comfortably on the couch along the wall of the booth. Weiner donned the mask. Kirby took another and slipped it over his nose and mouth. He closed his eyes and settled into the webfoam cradle near the booth’s entrance. A moment passed; then he tasted the gas creeping into his nasal passages. It was a revolting sour-sweet smell, a sulfuric smell.

Kirby waited for the hallucination.

There were people who spent hours each day in these booths, he knew. The government kept raising the tax to discourage the sniffers, but they came anyway, even at ten, twenty, thirty dollars a sniff. The gas itself wasn’t addictive, not in the metabolic way that heroin got to you. It was more of a psychological addiction, something you could break if you really tried, but which nobody cared to try to break: like the sex addiction, like mild alcoholism. For some it was a kind of religion. Everyone to his own creed; this was a crowded world, harboring many beliefs.

A girl made of diamonds and emeralds was walking through Kirby’s brain.

The surgeons had cut away every scrap of living flesh on her body. Her eyeballs had the cold glitter of precious gems; her breasts were globes of white onyx tipped with. ruby; her lips were slabs of alabaster; her hair was fashioned from strings of yellow gold. Blue fire flickered around her, Vorster fire, crackling strangely.

She said,“You’re tired, Ron.You need to get away from yourself.”

“I know. I’m using the Nothing Chamber every other day now. I’m fighting off a crackup.”

“You’re too rigid, that’s your trouble. Why don’t you visit my surgeon? Have yourself changed. Get rid of all that stupid meat. For this I say, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”

“No,” Kirby muttered. “It isn’t so. All I need is some rest. A good swim, sunshine, decent amount of sleep. But they dumped that mad Martian on me.”

The hallucination laughed shrilly, rippled her arms, performed a sinuous convolution. They had sliced away fingers and replaced them with spikes of ivory. Her fingernails were of polished copper. The mischievous tongue that flicked out from between the alabaster lips was a serpent of gaudy flexiplast. “Behold,” she crooned voluptuously, “I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

“In a moment,” Kirby said. “In the twinkling of an eye. The trumpet shall sound.”

“And the dead shall be raised incorruptible. Do it, Ron. You’ll look so much handsomer. Maybe you can hold the next marriage together a little better, too. You miss her—admit it. You ought to see what she looks like now. Full fathom five thy loved one lies. But she’s happy. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

“I’m a human being,” Kirby protested. “I’m not going to turn myself into a walking museum piece like you. Or like her, for that matter. Even if it’s becoming fashionable for men to have it done.”

The blue glow began to pulse and throb around the vision in his brain. “You need something, though, Ron. The Nothing Chamber isn’t the answer. It’s—nothing. Affiliate yourself. Belong. Work isn’t the answer, either. Join. Join. You won’t carve yourself? All right, become a Vorster, then. Surrender to the Oneness. Let death be swallowed up in victory.”

“Can’t I just remain myself?” Kirby cried.

“What you are isn’t enough. Not now. Not any more. These are hard times. A troubled world. The Martians make fun of us. The Venusians despise us. We need new organization, new strength. The sting of death is in sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Grave, where is thy victory?”

A riotous swirl of colors danced through Kirby’s mind. The surgically altered woman pirouetted, leaped and bobbed, flaunted the jewel-bedecked flamboyance of herself in his face. Kirby quivered. He clawed fitfully at the mask. For this nightmare he had paid good money? How could people let themselves become addicts of this sort of thing—this tour through the swamps of one’s own mind?

Kirby wrenched the sniffer mask away and threw it to the floor of the booth. He sucked clean air into his lungs, fluttered his eyes, returned to reality.

He was alone in the booth.

The Martian, Weiner, was gone.

four

The robot who ran the sniffer palace was of no help.

“Where’d he go?” Kirby demanded.

“He left,” came the rusty reply. “Eighteen dollars sixty cents. We will bill your Central.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“We did not converse. He left. Awwwrk! We did not converse. I will bill your Central. Awwwrk!”

Sputtering a curse, Kirby rushed out into the street. He glanced involuntarily at the sky. Against the darkness he saw the lemon-colored letters of the timeglow streaming in the firmament, irregularly splotched with red:

Two hours to midnight. Plenty of time for that lunatic colonial to get himself in trouble. The last thing Kirby wanted was to have a drunken, perhaps hallucinated Weiner rampaging around in New York. This assignment hadn’t entirely been one of rendering hospitality. Part of Kirby’s job was to keep an eye on Weiner. Martians had come to Earth before. The libertarian society was a heady wine for them.

Where had he gone?

One place to look was the Vorster hall. Maybe Weiner had gone back to raise some more hell over there. With sweat bursting from every pore, Kirby sprinted across the street, dodging the rocketing teardrops as they turbined past, and rushed into the shabby cultist chapel. The service was still going on. It didn’t seem as tough Weiner were there, though. Everyone obediently knelt in his pew, and there were no shouts, no screams of boozy laughter. Kirby silently loped down the aisle, checking every bench. No Weiner. The girl with the surgical face was still there, and she smiled and stretched a hand toward him. For one bizarre moment Kirby was catapulted back into his sniffer hallucination, and his flesh crawled. Then he recovered himself. He managed a faint smile to be polite and got out of the Vorster place as fast as he could.

He caught the slidewalk and let it carry him three blocks in a random direction. No Weiner. Kirby got off and found himself in front of a public Nothing Chamber place, where for twenty bucks an hour you could get wafted off to luscious oblivion. Perhaps Weiner had wandered in there, eager to try every mind-sapping diversion the city had to offer. Kirby went in.

Robots weren’t in charge here. A genuine flesh-and-blood entrepreneur came forward, a four-hundred-pounder, opulent with chins, Small eyes buried in fat regarded Kirby doubtfully.

“Want an hour of rest, friend?”

“I’m looking for a Martian,” Kirby blurted. “About so high, big shoulders, sharp cheekbones.”

“Haven’t seen him.”

“Look, maybe he’s in one of your tanks. This is important. It’s

U.N. business.”

“I don’t care if it’s the business of God Almighty. I haven’t seen him.” The fat man glanced only briefly at Kirby’s identification plaque. “What do you want me to do—open my tanks for you? He didn’t come in here.”

“If he does, don’t let him rent a chamber,” Kirby begged. “Stall him and phone U.N. Security right away.”

“I got to rent him if he wants. We run a public hall here, buddy. You want to get me in trouble? Look, you’re all worked up. Why don’t you climb into a tank for a little while? It’ll do wonders for you. You’ll feel like—”

Kirby wheeled and ran out. There was nausea in the pit of his stomach, perhaps induced by the hallucinogen. There was also fright and a goodly jolt of anger. He visualized Weiner clubbed in some dark alley, his stocky body expertly vivisected for the bootleg organ banks. A worthy fate, perhaps, but it would raise hob with Kirby’s reliability rating. More likely was it that Weiner, bashing around like a Chinese bull—was that the right simile, Kirby wondered?—would stir up some kind of mess that would be blasphemously difficult to clean up.

Kirby had no idea where to look. A communibooth presented itself on the corner of the next street, and he jumped in, opaquing the screens. He rammed his identification plaque into the slot and punched for U.N. Security.

The cloudy little screen grew clear. The pudgy, bearded face of Lloyd Ridblom appeared.

“Night squad,” Ridblom said. “Hello, Ron. Where’s your Martian?”

“Lost him. He gave me the slip in a sniffer palace.”

Ridblom became instantly animated. “Want me to slap a televector on him?”

“Not yet,” Kirby said. “I’d rather he didn’t know we were upset about his disappearance. Put the vector on me, instead, and keep contact. And open up a routine net for him. If he shows, notify me right away. I’ll call back in an hour to change the instructions if nothing’s happened by then.”

“Maybe he’s been kidnapped by Vorsters,” Ridblom suggested. “They’re draining his blood for altar wine.”

“Go to hell,” Kirby said. He stepped put of the booth and put his thumbs briefly to his eyeballs. Slowly, purposelessly, he strolled toward the slidewaik and let it take him back to the Vorster hall. A few people were coming out of it now. There was the girl with the iridescent earshells; she wasn’t content to haunt his hallucinations—she had to keep intersecting his path in real life, too.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was gentle, at least. “I’m Vanna Marshak. Where’d your friend go?”

“I’m wondering that myself. He vanished a little while ago.”

“Are you supposed to be in charge of him?”

“I’m supposed to be watching him, anyhow. He’s a Martian, you know.”

‘I didn’t. He’s certainly hostile to the Brotherhood, isn’t be? That was sad, the way he erupted during the service. He must be terribly ill.”

“Terribly drunk,” Kirby said. “It happens to all the Martians who come here. The iron bars are lifted for them, and they think anything goes. Can I buy you a drink?” he added mechanically.

“I don’t drink, thanks. But I’ll accompany you if you want one.”

“I don’t want one. I need one.”

“You haven’t told me your name.”

“Ron Kirby. I’m with the U.N. I’m a minor bureaucrat. No, I’ll correct that: a major bureaucrat who gets paid like a minor one. We can go in here.”

He nudged the doorstud of a bar on the corner. The sphincter whickered open and admitted them. She smiled warmly. She was about thirty, Kirby guessed. Not easy to tell, with all that hardware where her face used to be.

“Filtered rum,” he said.

Vanna Marshak leaned close to him. She wore some subtle and unfamiliar perfume. “Why did you bring him to the Brotherhood house?” she asked.

He downed his drink as though it were fruit juice. “He wanted to see what the Vorsters were like. So I took him.”

“I take it you’re unsympathetic personally?”

“I don’t have any real opinion. I’ve been too busy to pay much attention.”

“That’s not true,” she said easily. “You think it’s a nut-cult, don’t you?”

Kirby ordered a second drink. “All right,” he admitted, “I do. It’s a shallow opinion based on no real information at all.”

“You haven’t read Vorst’s book?”

“No.”

“If I give you a copy, will you read it?”

“Imagine,” he said. “A proselyte with a heart of gold.” He laughed. He was feeling drunk again.

“That isn’t really very funny,” she said. “You’re hostile to surgical alterations, too, aren’t you?”

“My wife had a complete face job done. While she was still my wife. I got so angry about it that she left me. Three years ago. She’s dead now. She and her lover went down in a rocket crash off New Zealand.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Vanna Marshak said. “But I wouldn’t have had this done to myself if I had known about Vorst then. I was uncertain. Insecure. Today I know where I’m heading—but it’s too late to have my real face back. It’s rather attractive, I think, anyway.”

“Lovely,” Kirby said. “Tell me about Vorst.”

“It’s very simple. He wants to restore spiritual values in the world. He wants us all to become aware of our common nature and our higher goals.”

“Which we can express by watching Cerenkov radiation in rundown lofts,” Kirby said.

“The Blue Fire’s just trimming. It’s the inner message that counts. Vorst wants to see mankind go to the stars. He wants us to get out of our muddle and confusion and begin to mine our real talents. He wants to save the espers who are going insane every day, harness them, put them together to work for the next great step in human progress.”

“I see,” said Kirby gravely. “Which is?”

“I told you. Going to the stars. You think we can stop with Mars and Venus? There are millions of planets out there. Waiting for man to find a way to reach them. Vorst thinks he knows that way. But it calls for a union of mental energies, a blending, a—oh, I know this sounds mystical. But he’s got something. And it heals the troubled soul, too. That’s the short-range purpose: the communion, the binding-up of wounds. And the long-range goal is getting to the stars. Of course, we’ve got to overcome the frictions between the planets—get the Martians to be more tolerant, and then somehow reestablish contact with the people on Venus, if there’s anything human still left in them—do you see that there are possibilities here, that it isn’t mumbo jumbo and fraud?”

Kirby didn’t see anything of the kind. It sounded hazy and incoherent to him. Vanna Marshak had a soft, persuasive voice, and there was an earnestness about her that made her appealing. He could even forgive her for what she had let the knife-wielders do to her face. But when it came to Vorst—The communicator in his pocket bleeped. It was a signal from Ridblom, and it meant call the office right away. Kirby got to his feet.

“Excuse me a minute,” he said. “Something important to tend to—”

He lurched across the barroom, caught himself, took a deep breath and got into the booth. Into the slot went the plaque; trembling fingers punched out the number.

Ridblom appeared on the screen again.

“We’ve found your boy,” the pudgy Security man announced blandly.

“Dead or alive?”

“Alive, unfortunately. He’s in Chicago. He stopped off at the Martian Consulate, borrowed a thousand dollars from the consul’s wife, and tried to rape her in the bargain. She got rid of him and called the police, and they called me. We have a five-man tracer on him now. He’s heading for a Vorster cell on Michigan Boulevard, and he’s drunk as a lord. Should we intercept him?”

Kirby bit his lip in anguish. “No. No. He’s got immunity, anyway. Let me handle this. Is there a chopper in the U.N. port I can borrow?”

“Sure. But it’ll take you at least forty Mondschein to get to Chi, and…”

“That’s plenty of time. Here’s what I want you to do: get hold of the prettiest esper you can find in Chicago, maybe an empath, some sexy kid, Oriental if possible, something like that one who had the burnout in Kyoto last week. Plunk her down between Weiner and that Vorster place and turn her loose on him. Have her charm him into submission. Have her stall him in any way possible until I can get there, and if she has to part with her honor in the process, tell her we’ll give her a good price for it. If you can’t find an esper, get hold of a persuasive policewoman, or something.”

“I don’t see why this is really necessary,” Ridblom said. “The Vorsters can look out for themselves. I understand they’ve got some mysterious way of knocking a troublemaker out so that he doesn’t—”

“I know, Lloyd. But Weiner’s already been knocked out once this evening. For all I know, a second jolt of the same stuff tonight might kill him. That would be very awkward all around. Just head him off.”

Ridblom shrugged. “Thy will be done.”

Kirby left the booth. He was cold sober again. Vanna Marshak was sitting at the bar where he had left her. At this distance and in this light there was something almost pretty about her artificial disfigurements.

She smiled. “Well?”

“They found him. He got to Chicago somehow, and he’s about to raise some hell in the Vorster chapel there. I’ve got to go and lasso him.”

“Be gentle with him, Ron. He’s a troubled man. He needs help.”

“Don’t we all.” Kirby blinked suddenly. The thought of making the trip to Chicago alone struck him abruptly as being nasty. “Vanna?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Are you going to be busy for the next couple of hours?”

five

The copter hovered over Chicago’s sparkling gaiety. Below, Kirby saw the bright sheen of Lake Michigan, and the splendid mile-high towers that lined the lake. Above him blazed the local timeglow in chartreuse banded with deep blue:

“Put her down,” Kirby ordered.

The robopilot steered the copter toward a landing. It was impossible, of course, to risk the fierce wind currents in those deep canyons; they would have to land at a rooftop heliport. The landing was smooth. Kirby and Vanna rushed out. She had given him the Vorster message all the way from Manhattan, and at this point Kirby wasn’t sure whether the cult was complete nonsense or some sinister conspiracy against the general welfare or a truly profound, spiritually uplifting creed or perhaps a bit of all three.

He thought he had the general idea. Vorst had cobbled together an eclectic religion, borrowing the confessional from Catholicism, absorbing some of the atheism of ur Buddhism, adding a dose of Hindu reincarnation, and larding everything over with ultramodernistic trappings, nuclear reactors at every altar, and plenty of gabble about the holy electron. But there was also talk of harnessing the minds of espers to power a stardrive, of a communion even of non-esper Minds, and—most startling of all, the big selling-point—personal immortality, not reincarnation, not the hope of Nirvana, but eternal life in the here-and-now present flesh. In view of Earth’s population problems, immortality was low on any sane man’s priority list. Immortality for other people, anyway; one was always willing to consider the extension of one’s own life, wasn’t one? Vorst preached the eternal life of the body, and the people were buying. In eight years the cult had gone from one cell to a thousand, from fifty followers to millions. The old religions were bankrupt. Vorst was handing out shining gold pieces, and if they were only fool’s gold, it. would take a while for the faithful to find that out

“Come on,” Kirby said. “There isn’t much time.”

He scrambled down the exit ramp, turning to take Vanna Marshak’s hand and help her the last few steps. They hurried across the rooftop landing area to the gravshaft, stepped in, dropped to ground level in a dizzying five-second plunge. Local police were waiting in the street. They had three teardrops.

“He’s a block from the Vorster place, Freeman Kirby,” one of the policeman said. “The esper’s been dragging him around for half an hour, but he’s dead set on going there.”

“What does he want there?” Kirby asked.

“He wants the reactor. He says he’s going to take it back to Mars and put it to some worthwhile use,”

Vanna gasped at the blasphemy. Kirby shrugged, sat back, watched the streets flashing by. The teardrop halted. Kirby saw the Martian across the street.

The girl who was with him was sultry, full-bodied, lush-looking. She had one arm thrust through his, and she was close to Weiner’s side, cooing in his ear. Weiner laughed harshly and turned to her, pulled her close, then pushed her away. She clutched at him again. It was quite a scene, Kirby thought. The street had been cleared. Local police and a couple of Ridblom’s men were watching grimly from the sidelines.

Kirby went forward and gestured to the girl. She sensed instantly who he was, withdrew her arm from Weiner, and stepped away. The Martian swung around.

“Found me, did you?”

“I didn’t want you to do anything you’d regret later on?

“Very loyal of you, Kirby. Well, as long as you’re here, you can be my accomplice. I’m on my way to the Vorster place. They’re wasting good fissionables in those reactors. You distract the priest, and I’m going to grab the blue blinker, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Just don’t let him shock you. That isn’t fun.”

“Nat—”

“Are you with me or aren’t you, pal?” Weiner pointed toward the chapel, diagonally across the street a block away, in a building almost as shabby as the one in Manhattan. He started toward it.

Kirby glanced uncertainly at Vanna. Then he crossed the street behind Weiner. He realized that the altered girl was following, too.

Just as Weiner reached the entrance to the Vorster place, Vanna dashed forward and cut in front of him.

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go in there to make trouble.”

“Get out of my way, you phony-faced bitch!”

‘Please,” she said softly. “You’re a troubled man. You aren’t in harmony with yourself, let alone with the world around you. Come inside with me, and let me show you how to pray. There’s much for you to gain in there. If you’d only open your mind, open your heart—instead of standing there so smug in your hatred, in your drunken unwillingness to see—”

Weiner hit her.

It was a backhand slap across the face. Surgical alteration jobs are fragile, and they aren’t meant to be slapped. Vanna fell to her knees, whimpering, and pressed her hands over her face. She still blocked the Martian’s way. Weiner drew his foot back as though he were going to kick her, and that was when Reynolds Kirby forgot he was paid to be a diplomat.

Kirby strode forward, caught Weiner by the elbow, swung him around. The Martian was off balance. He clawed at Kirby for support. Kirby struck his hand down, brought a fist up, landed it solidly in Weiner’s muscular belly. Weiner made a small oofing sound and began to rock backward. Kirby had not struck a human being in anger in thirty years, and he did not realize until that moment what a savage pleasure there could be in something so primordial. Adrenalin flooded his body. He hit Weiner again, just below the heart. The Martian, looking very surprised, sagged and went over backward, sprawling in the street.

“Get up,” Kirby said, almost dizzy with rage.

Vanna plucked at his sleeve. “Don’t hit him again,” she murmured. Her metallic lips looked crumpled. Her cheeks glistened with tears. “Please don’t hit him any more.”

Weiner remained where he was, shaking his head vaguely. A new figure came forward: a small leathery-faced man, in late middle age. The Martian consul. Kirby felt his belly churn with apprehension.

The consul said, “I’m terribly sorry, Freeman Kirby. He’s really been running amok, hasn’t he? Well, we’ll take jurisdiction now. What he needs is to have some of his own people tell him what a fool he’s been.”

Kirby stammered, “It was my fault. I lost sight of him. He shouldn’t be blamed. He—”

“We understand perfectly, Freeman Kirby.” The consul smiled benignly, gestured, nodded as three aides came forward and gathered the fallen Weiner into their arms.

Very suddenly the street was empty. Kirby stood, drained and stupefied, in front of the Vorster chapel, and Vanna was with him, and all the others were gone, Weiner vanishing like an ogre in a bad dream. It had not, Kirby thought, been a very successful evening. But now it was over.

Home, now.

An hour and a half would see him in Tortola. A quick, lonely swim in the warm ocean—then half an hour in the Nothing Chamber tomorrow. No, an hour, Kirby decided. It would take that much to undo this night’s damage. An hour of disassociation, an hour of drifting on the amniotic tide, sheltered, warm, unbothered by the pressures of the world, an hour of blissful if cowardly escape. Fine. Wonderful.

Vanna said, “Will you come in now?”

“Into the chapel?”

“Yes. Please.”

“It’s late. I’ll get you back to New York right away. We’ll pay for any repairs that—that your face will need. The copter’s waiting.”

“Let it wait,” Vanna said. “Come inside.”

“I want to get home.”

“Home can wait, too. Give me two hours with you, Ron. Just sit and listen to what they have to say in there. Come to the altar with me. You don’t have to do anything but listen. It’ll relax you, I promise that”

Kirby stared at her distorted, artificial face. Beneath the grotesque eyelids were real eyes—shining, imploring. Why was she so eager? Did they pay a finder’s fee of salvation for every lost soul dragged into the Blue Fire? Or could it be, Kirby wondered, that she really and truly believed, that her heart and soul were bound up in this movement that she was sincere in her conviction that the followers of Vorst would live through eternity, would live to see men ride to the distant stars?

He was so very tired.

He wondered how the security officers of the Secretariat would regard it if a high official like himself began to dabble in Vorsterism.

He wondered, too, if he had any career at all left to salvage, after tonight’s fiasco with the Martian. What was there to lose? He could rest for a while. His head was splitting. Perhaps some esper in there would massage his frontal lobes for a while. Espers tended to be drawn to the Vorster chapels, didn’t they?

The place seemed to have a pull. He had made his job his religion, but was that really good enough now, he asked himself? Perhaps it was time to unbend, time to shed the mask of aloofness, time to find out what it was that the multitudes were buying so eagerly in these chapels. Or perhaps it was just time to give in and let himself be pulled under by the tide of the new creed. The sign over the door said:

Brotherhood of the Immanent RadianceCome Ye AllYe Who May Never DieHarmonize With the All

“Will you?” Vanna said.

“All right,” Kirby muttered. “I’m willing. Let’s go harmonize with the All.”

She took his hand. They stepped through the door. About a dozen people were kneeling in the pews. Up front the chapel leader was nudging the moderator rods out of the little reactor, and the first faint bluish glow was beginning to suffuse the room. Vanna guided Kirby into the last row. He looked toward the altar. The glow was deepening, casting a strange radiance on the plump, dogged-looking man at the front of the room. Now greenish-white, now purplish, now the Blue Fire of the Vorsters.

The opium of the masses, Kirby thought, and the hackneyed phrase sounded foolishly cynical as it echoed through his brain. What was the Nothing Chamber, after all, but the opium of the elite? And the sniffer palaces, what were they? At least here they went for the mind and soul, not for the body. It was worth an hour of his time to listen, at any rate.

“My brothers,” said the man at the altar in a soft, fog-smooth voice, “we celebrate the underlying Oneness here. Man and woman, star and stone, tree and bird, all consist of atoms, and those atoms contain particles moving at wondrous speeds. They are the electrons, my brothers. They show us the way to peace, as I will make clear to you. They—”

Reynolds Kirby bowed his head. He could not bear to look at that glowing reactor, suddenly. There was a throbbing in his skull. He was distantly aware of Vanna beside him, smiling, warm, close.

I’m listening, Kirby thought. Go on. Tell me! Tell me! I want to hear. God and the almighty electron help me—I want to hear!