Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 18

Bad…

It is very bad. Radiation poisoning is unbelievably painful, Dann is discovering that His brave jokes about being used to dying have ceased to comfort him; they were all part of the euphoric haze, the happy unreality of his first life in the winds of Tyree.

Now he is meeting instead the reality of searing sonic gales, of burned and poisoned flesh; nausea and hemorrhage and the ruin of his glorious new body. The reality of shortly dying, with Tivonel and his fellow-humans, in those same winds turned lethal.

He looks at them, his six once-human patients—seven if he counts the dog—huddled in the useless shelter of the few plants that grow here at the bottom of the wind-wall. They are quiet now. Hours, or days ago, he doesn’t know which, they had moved down by stages to this final refuge from the blasting radiation of the sky. Useless; the Sound is growing every minute fiercer even here. They are in a storm of audible light. And from above he can hear the grey death-moaning of stricken plant and animal life. A world is dying around him.

Nearby is another cluster of giant alien forms: Hearer Lomax and the senior Tyrenni, their bodies scorched and dark. Only their life-fields now and again gather strength to flare strongly upward. Dann supposes they are still desperately searching for some means of psychic escape. He does not feel hopeful. The loathesome Destroyer, it seems is still blocking the sky.

Tivonel hovers near them, silently intent. Still hoping for her lost Giadoc, no doubt. It hurts Dann to see the damage to her once-graceful form, the warped and blistered vanes. Scattered beyond are groups of the surviving Tyrenni. Frantic Fathers are still trying to protect their young, or reaching put to shelter some orphaned youngster. A cluster of females hovers together, giving each other comfort in their pain. Dark bodies hang all the way up the vegetation-zone above, grim markers of their painful trek down here. The Tyrenni had been slow to grasp the danger of the sky.

One of his human patients stirs; a green flicker moans. Oh God; soon it will be time to use his dreadful “gift” again. Doctor-Dann-that-was laughs at the irony of it, a laugh that is a dull crimson gleam on his injured mantle. To discover now the “gift” that had apparently made him a doctor once, and that will do nothing but make his death more agonizing still.

Not to think about it. Wait till they awaken.

To distract himself he lets himself think back to how it was. A lovely time then, a time of beauty, comedy and surprise, high up in the winds of Tyree.

He and Tivonel had been beside a big male body when the mind within it woke. The body was that of Colto, one of the two young Fathers he had seen fleeing on the beam. Now it houses, incredibly, a human mind. Whose? A Deerfield guard, Major Fearing? the president of General Motors, for all Dann knows. Its mantle is glimmering with vague golden words. “Where… ? What…?”

“Ah, hello,” says Dann, feeling ridiculous. “Don’t be alarmed, I’m here like you. We seem to have got—mixed up. I’m a doc—a Healer, Daniel Dann. Can you tell me your name?”

The huge being sighs or grunts colorfully, and then seems to come more alert. “Oh, Toctor-Tann,” it says in dreamy high light yellows. “You look just the way I always saw you! Can’t you tell? I’m Winona.”

The light-signs that are her voice ring so Winonalike that he is staggered. Winona as this great male thing? He begins a confused joke about not knowing he had looked like such a monster.

“No, I mean your—” she interrupts him, the alien language garbling. “You, your mind. I could always see it, you know. It’s lovely.”

“Well, thank you,” he says helplessly. These telepaths seem to be more prepared for alien transmogrifications than he. “Have they, ah, told you where we are?”

“Why, I can see that,” Winona says. “We’re in the spirit world.”

The tone is so exactly like her voice when they walked together talking of seances, auras, ectoplasm, telepathy—she’s right at home; he almost chuckles. But he ought to prepare her somehow.

“It’s also a real world, called Tyree,” he says gently. “They have a bad problem here, Winnie. That’s why some of them have stolen our bodies, trying to escape.”

“Oh no,” she says, troubled now. “Stolen? You mean—” her speech stumbles, sounds a green plaint of fear.

At this Tivonel exclaims, and the big Father who has been watching them commands sharply, “Do not upset him, Tanel!”

An edge of his field flows to hers, the green hue dies.

“Right,” says Dann. “But she’s not a male. May I introduce you? Winona, this is my young friend Tivonel, a female of Tyree.” There doesn’t seem to be any politer term. To the huge presence above he says, “I’m sorry I don’t know your name. This is Winona, a female of my world.”

“Greetings. I am Elix. But how can you say this?” he demands. “Do I not know a male when I see one? Look at him. Untrained, but obviously a Father.”

“But I’m not!” Winona protests. “I’m a female, a—a—I’m a female Father!”

“Nonsense!” Elix says loftily. “Is he insane?”

Tivonel is laughing incredulously, and several Tyrenni who have been watching the exchange jet closer. “See his field,” one says. Dann recalls his lessons, and scans the life-energies streaming from Winona’s big form. There does seem to be a lot of it, in intricate play. In fact it’s more copious than his own.

“But she’s a female,” he says stubbornly. “I swear it.”

“A female Father!” Tivonel’s mantle laughs amazedly. “Whew! Marockee, Iznagel! Come over here!”

Huge Elix has dropped down closer, scanning hard.

“If this be true, stranger, how many children have you Fathered?”

“Four,” Winona signs firmly. “And seven, ah, children’s children.’’

“And you’re really a female!” Marockee demands. “Really, truly?”

“I certainly am! What’s wrong about that?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dann tells her, trying not to laugh. “They’re surprised because on this world raising children seems to be done by males. That’s why they haven’t a word for you. And your, ah, your mind-aura seems to be very large, like a Father’s, and since you’re in a male body, they can’t believe you’re not.”

“The males here raise babies?”

“That’s right. I believe you’ll find you have an, ah, a pouch.”

“You mean, they feed them and cuddle them and clean them and take care of them every day, all day!” Winona demands in tones of glittering skepticism. “And teach them to talk and do everything, all the time for years? I don’t believe it.”

“Indeed yes,” big Elix tells her. “I now see you understand well. But I myself have only reared one. Strange female Father-of-four, I salute you.”

He planes down before her, his mantle a respectful lilac.

“Well!” Winona softens. “I certainly didn’t mean to be rude. I’d love to hear about your baby.”

“But this is against nature!” Another Father protests. “It’s unwindly! Before I accept such nonsense I’d like to see this female do some Fathering. Let her try to calm this one if she can!”

His field ripples, his mantle lifts slightly. Dann sees that he is gingerly controlling a Tyrenni child. The young one suddenly contorts violently, its little mantle breaking into bright green cries. “What—what are you doing to me? Get out of my mind you, get out—!” It rises to terrified yells.

“Is that one of my people?” Dann asks above the din.

“Yes. It was Colto’s daughter.”

“That could be anybody,” he tells Winona, and then cries “Look out! Stop!”

She has moved straight at it, her field streaming toward its small lashing one.

“Don’t get caught in its panic. I know.”

Winona pauses, marshaling her energies.

“These people have mind methods,” Dann tells her. “You have to watch out it doesn’t grab you.”

“Poor little thing,” she murmurs absently. And then to his consternation she advances on the screamer, her big field arching out. “Get away!” howls the small one. The other Father recoils, releasing it. Finding itself free the angry youngster jets its small body hard at Winona’s midsection.

They collide in a confusion of airborne membranes and roiling fields. And then Dann sees that Winona has awkwardly extruded her small claspers and grasped the attacker. Meanwhile her big field has formed a strange dense webwork, englobing and somehow smothering the flailing energies.

“No, no,” he hears her say calmly above the green squeals. “Stop that, dear. Listen to Winnie. You’re all right now dear, you’re all safe.”

Her voice is only faintly shaky as the two struggling bodies tumble slowly, fields merged. Dann sees with astonishment that she is mastering the situation; she’s going to be all right. When they come to rest on the wind; the panicky one is calm and quiescent under her grasp.

“It attacked her!” Elix is saying indignantly. “Fathers, did you see that?”

Dann realizes now that he has never seen physical conflict, only rare body-contact on this world. More wonders.

“Who is it, Winnie?” he asks. “Can you tell?”

“It’s Kendall Kirk,” she replies. The creature gives a last convulsive leap. “No, no, Kenny dear. Don’t worry, you’re in a nice safe place. Winnie’s here. Winnie won’t let them hurt you.”

Kendall Kirk? Oh, no! thinks Dann. To his ears, the muffled out-cries sound like garbled swearing. What to do with Kirk, here?

“He’s changed,” Winona murmurs fondly. “He’s like a baby. They frightened him, touching his mind. He wants his—I can’t say it. His pet animal.”

“Pet animal?” Suddenly Dann remembers. “Tivonel, can you bring over the body that has that animal’s mind? I think it may belong to this one here.”

“You mean poor old Janskelen’s? Come on, Marockee.”

As they go, Dann asks Elix, “What did you do to this mind?”

“I had to drain it very deeply, Tanel, It was wild with fear and rage, you saw it attack your Winona. We re-formed it to a younger plane. It will recover. But is it not one of your wild ones, or a crazy female?”

“No,” Dann admits. “What you have there is an adult male of my world. Quite a high-status one, in fact.”

At this news several Fathers’ mantles chime with incredulous disdain. “Surely Young Giadoc spoke the truth when he said other worlds were brutish,” one comments. But Elix adds more gently, “You are not like this, Tanel. Why?”

He doesn’t know.

Tivonel and her friends are guiding in the body of old Janskelen. Its small field stirs, its mantle flickers with wordless whining.

“Winnie, I think Kirk’s animal, its mind or whatever, maybe in here. Do you want them together?”

At his words the body comes to life. With a flurry of vanes it jets down under Winona and snuggles up beneath her sheltering mantle. Dann can see its field joining with Kirk’s.

Fantastic. So dogs operate on the spirit plane too, he thinks a trifle crazily. The Labrador’s mind seems calm; perhaps it is a “father” too. He admires the creature’s fidelity while deploring its taste.

“There now, Kenny dear,” Winona soothes. “Here’s your little old friend! You’re happy now, aren’t you?”

“Kenny dear,” indeed. Is it possible that the wretched ex-lieutenant before them is to Winnie’s motherly spirit an appealing small boy? More power to her. Live in the absurd moment. Don’t think of the dread rising Sound, forget what’s ahead for them all.

The curious Fathers have crowded close.

“I believe you now, Tanel.” It’s a male he recognizes as Ustan. “The female’s power is there, if poorly formed. But which of us could have coped with such a bodily assault?” His big vanes shiver.

“Our world is very different,” Dann tells him. “We live without wind and with much contact with many hard things. And we cannot see minds as you do; we deal with each other only by speech and touch.”

As he says this, a tendril of doubt sneaks through his materialist soul. That really was quite a demonstration Winnie put on with Kirk. Is it possible he has disbelieved too much?

“Amazing,” the Fathers are murmuring. “I for one would like to learn more of your strange Father-ways,” Ustan says. “They touch our deepest philosophy.”

“I too,” Elix agrees, and other Fathers echo him.

“I’m sure she’d love to tell you,” Dann says. “Winona! If Kirk has calmed down, may I present Father Ustan and some friends? It seems they want to talk with you about the fine points of raising kids. By the way, you better get used to being a top-status person here. You’re something like a visiting—” He wants to say “official” but has to settle for “Elder.”

“Oh, my!” Winona’s tone has the old flutter, but it doesn’t sound quite so silly here. “Of course, I’d love to. Caring for babies and people is the one thing I know. Now Kenny dear, you’ll be all right. Winnie’s not going away. How do you do, ah, Father—”

“Ustan.” Dann completes the introduction and moves off, mentally chortling. From surplus person to instant celebrity. Enjoy it while it lasts. If Fathers here are anything like mothers on Earth, Winona will be occupied indefinitely. And he has others to look after.

Tivonel jets alongside him.

“Why are you laughing, Tanel?”

“It’s hard to explain. On my world, fathering is so low-status it isn’t even part of the—” Garble warns him that he simply cannot say “Gross national product.” “It’s fit only for females,” he concludes lamely, aware that nothing is getting through.

“So your females must be very big and strong, to take the eggs.”

“No, they’re generally weaker than males.”

“But then why do you let them take them? You must be very unselfish. Or is it your religion? Oh, Giadoc would love to hear about that!”

“I’ll explain sometime if I can. Where are the rest of my people?”

“Down there. Oh, look, by Iznagel! How weird.”

The scarred female who had been guarding Ron is now nervously hovering over a tangle of two confusingly mingled forms. One figure is smaller—a female. For a minute Dann thinks he is seeing some sexual attack, then recalls this world’s ways. Their mental fields are coalescing in a most peculiar way.

“She came right at him!” Iznagel cries. “I couldn’t stop her!”

“It’s a mind-push,” Tivonel exclaims. “We better get a Father.”

“Wait.” Dann planes down beside the rolling figures, half-suspecting what he will find.

“Ron? Ron? Rick, is that you?”

From the subsiding swirl of mantles breaks the lacy orange effect Dann hears as laughter, but no words come.

“Ricky? Ron, I’m Dann. Tell me who’s there.”

Both mantles break into an echoing golden sound. “We’re here. It’s us. We’re… we’re… at last.”

“Don’t worry, Iznagel,” Dann tells her. “That’s his ah, egg-brother with him. I think they need to be close.”

The combined life-energies are settling, forming into a quiet wreath around the two joined forms. The smaller body is plastered on the other’s back.

“It’s like one big person,” Tivonel exclaims.

“Well, I never saw that before,” Iznagel comments, scandalized. “You say they’re actually egg-brothers? I thought that was a myth.”

“No, we have them on our world. Ron, Rick, are you really all right?”

A vague muttering, and suddenly the topmost, half-hidden form speaks alone. “Ron wants me to do the talking, Doc. Yes, we’re all right. Maybe we really are.” Its tone is bright with joy. “Hey, you better call us something new now, we’re not two people anymore.”

“What shall I call you?”

Again the laughter.

“How about Wax, Waxma—you know, Waxman.”

The prosaic earthly sound coming from this figure of nightmare in the realms of dream is too much for Dann. He begins to laugh helplessly, hears himself joined by Tivonel. Iznagel, recovering from her shock, joins too.

“Hey, that’s neat,” the new “Waxman” chuckles. “Waxing means growing. We just did.”

“Well.” Dann finally composes himself. It’s hard, even in the face of what must come; this world of Tyree seems apt for joy. “I have to find the others. You’ll be all right with Iznagel. Ask her to give you a memory, by the way. A memory about this world. She’ll explain. You’ll love it. I’ll be back later.”

“Right down there,” says Tivonel, and planes out in a beautiful swerving helix down past huge rafts of twinkling vegetation.

Dann follows, conscious again of the power and freedom of his new body, refusing to feel the twinges of what must be oncoming ill. How extraordinary that this supernatural disaster has brought joy, even if temporary—joy for Winona, joy for Ron and Rick, joy for himself. Will it be worth it? Don’t think of it. Find out who else is here.

They draw up beside three bodies well anchored in a plant-thicket, guarded by the old male Omar who had lamented the loss of Janskelen. A big male, a female, and probably a child, Dann decides. As Tivonel sees the male body she checks and draws aside, grey-blue with grief.

“That was Giadoc’s son, Tanel. Our son Tiavan. He is a criminal, on your world now.”

“Don’t grieve, Tivonel. As a matter of fact so far your people seem to have made mine very happy. Maybe this will work out well too.”

She sighs; but the bright spirit cannot stay dimmed long. Tiavan’s foreign life is stirring restlessly, its mantle murmuring with waking lights.

“Greetings, Father Omar,” says Tivonel. “This is Tanel, the strange Healer.”

“Greetings, Healer Tanel,” intones the huge old being. “Good. I will leave these to you, with pleasure.”

“Oh no, please don’t,” Dann protests. “I am only a healer of bodies. We have no skills of the mind like yours.”

“H’mmm. Well, if you are a Body-healer, do you not feel that the mind grows dangerous at this level?”

“Yes, I do,” Dann admits. How can he say that they are already probably dead? “We should try to find shelter soon. But first I want to find out who these people of mine are and reassure them.”

“But don’t you recognize their fields?” Omar’s words are astonished cerise.

“No, Father,” Tivonel puts in. “He says they can only see their bodies on his world. And they talk, of course. Isn’t it weird?”

“Weird indeed.” Again the grey eyebrow-lift. “You mean you cannot see that this mind in Tiavan’s body is ill formed, in need of remolding? The product of a criminally inept Father, I should say; possibly a wild orphan. Poor thing, see how it attempts to—”

The alien speech becomes incomprehensible to Dann; evidently concepts for which no earthly equivalents exist. As he studies the “orphan,” Tivonel gathers her vanes.

“I’m going back to Lomax, Tanel. Maybe they’ve found Giadoc.”

“Right. I’ll stay close.”

She flashes warmth, jetting away.

An unwelcome suspicion has come to Dann as he notices the close, burrlike way in which this being’s energy hugs its big body. Little exploratory tendrils dart out, recoil snakelike; the mantle is resolutely mute. Does this represent, say, secrecy? Paranoid fears? Or hatred? Is he looking at Major Fearing? Oh no! Well, perhaps better than to have some innocent meet the fate that lies ahead here.

“Fearing?” he calls reluctantly. “Major Fearing, is that you? It’s Dann here. If you care to talk, maybe I can help you.”

No response, but an ambiguous contraction of the field. Paranoids don’t want help, Dann reminds himself. But this isn’t Fearing, maybe it’s a Navy workman, some total stranger. On the other hand, so far the Tyrenni Beam seems to have been attracted to Noah’s subjects; their “telepathic” trait perhaps. Try them.

“Ted? Ted Yost, is that you? Frodo—ah, Fredericka? Val? Valerie Ahlstrom, are you there?”

Still no reaction from the creature. This feels like the craziest thing he’s ever done. But wait; he almost forgot the little man.

“Chris! Chris Costakis, is that you?”

The mind quivers significantly, contracts itself to a knot.

“Chris? If that’s you, don’t be afraid. It’s Dann here, Doctor Dann, even if I don’t look it. We’ve all been, well, mixed up. Can you speak to me?”

The mind seems to relax slightly. After a pause a faint syllable forms on its mantle.

“Doc?”

The dry nasal light-tone is unmistakable.

“Yes, it’s me, Chris. How do you feel?”

“Where are we, Doc? What’s going on?”

As Dann fumbles through an explanation he realizes this is the first time one of these telepaths have asked him to explain anything. But Chris was different. His specialty was numbers. “These people are friendly, Chris,” he tells him. “They don’t approve of the one who switched bodies with us. There’s seven of us here so far as I know. And Kirk’s, ah, pet animal,” he concludes, thinking the craziness of it might help Chris.

It seems to work. “The—!” His words garble, apparently trying to say “dog.” “Poor old boy.”

Inappropriate term for the visibly female Labrador; Dann recalls the little man’s mysognyny. I can’t pick up anything from a woman. Was this what old Omar meant?

The alien body before him seems to be coming more alive; subvocal murmurs flicker across its mantle. But its field is still furled close. Suddenly Chris whispers sharply: “Doc. Are these characters all—you know—can they read your mind?”

A sick telepath indeed.

“Only if you want them to, Chris. See that hazy stuff around my body? They call it your field. No one can see your thoughts unless your field touches theirs. Then you can read them too.”

At these words the little man’s life-aura contracts even closer, his great form furls so that he drops abruptly into the nearest; plant.

“Wait, Chris.” Dann follows, trying to think of some way to calm him. “They never do it unless you want them to. It’s considered rude. I assure you, there’s nothing to be frightened of here, in that way.”

Incomprehensible pursing from the body in the thicket. A telepath frightened of telepathy. Get his mind off it.

“By the way, Chris, it may interest you to know that you’re in the body of a very large young male. You should come out and try the air. I’ve had a glorious time, flying. Look at your wingspread, you’re huge.”

More mutters, but presently Dann sees one big vane spread cautiously out. “Yeah? You mean I’m, I’m not…?” The secondary vanes lift, the big body lofts upward. After a moment of confusion Costakis is hovering over the plant-roots, tilting and testing his jets.

“Hey, you meant it.” The life-field has expanded raggedly, the cursing has stopped.

“Yes, you got the best bargain of us all. Watch it, it’s intoxicating.” It comes to Dann that he isn’t talking to a dream or even a patient, but to a fellow human in a situation that however fantastic is dreadfully real. How sad that this new deal for poor Costakis won’t last.

Chris seems to be slowly scanning round. Dann becomes conscious that the background drone from the sky has risen, and the painful signals of dying life seem much stronger.

“What were you and big boy there talking about?” Costakis asks.

“Well, there’s a problem here, Chris. The energy, I mean, the transmissions from the Sound—this language doesn’t have words. I’m trying to say that this world is getting too much sky-energy. Can you get what I mean at all?” An idea strikes Dann; Costakis knew electronics, maybe some physics. Perhaps the facts will distract him from his other fears. “The people here don’t understand these things. I—we need your advice.”

The scanners of the big body before him extrude, membranes shift.

“You’re not telling me the whole story, Doc.”

The voice is so exactly that of the lonely, suspicious, jaunty little man that Dann can almost see his balding head.

“Yes. I think it’s bad. I didn’t want to alarm the others, I haven’t told anybody else. You know more than I about energy. I’d be grateful for your help. For instance, how much time do you think we have?”

At this moment an inarticulate cry flares from the female body beyond the thicket. Overhead, big Omar gives a monitory grunt, spreading his field.

“T-T-Tokra! Docra! Tann!”

Someone is clearly trying to call him.

“I’m coming. Excuse me, Chris.”

He jets over to the wakening form, so intent that he almost forgets to keep his mind away from its big, out-reaching field.

“Who are you? I’m Dann, Doctor Dann. Who’s there?”

“Oh, Doctor! Can’t you tell, I’m Valerie!”

He surveys the writhing manta-form—vanes, membranes, strange stalked appendages—and a sudden visual revulsion strikes him. Valerie, in that! A poignant memory rises of the girl in her own form, the darling curves of breast and waist, the little yellow-covered mons, the charming smile. To be in this thing—this giant monster that has eaten a human girl. Oh, vile!

He reels on the wind—and without warning, literally falls through her mind.

He has no idea what is happening, though afterwards he thinks it must have been like two galaxies colliding, two briefly interpenetrating webs of force. Now he knows only that he is suddenly in another world—a world named Val, a strange vivid landscape in space and time, composed of a myriad familiar scenes, faces, voices, objects, musics, body sensations, memories, experiences—all centered round his Val-self. His self incarnated in a familiar/unfamiliar five-foot-three body; tender-skinned, excitable, occasionally aching, with sharp sight and and hearing and clever, double-jointed hands; the only, the normal way to be. And all these are aligned in a flash upon dimensions of emotion—hope, pride, anxiety, joy, humor, aversion, a force-field of varied feeling-tones, among which one stands out for which his mind has no equivalent: fear, vulnerability everywhere. This world is dangerous, pervaded by some intrusive permanent menace, a lurking, confining cruelty like an occupying enemy. A host of huge crude male bodies ring it, rough voices jeer, oblivious power monopolies all free space, alien concepts rule the very air. And yet amid this hostile world hope is carried like a lamp in brave, weak hands; a hope so bound with self that it has no name, but only the necessity of going on, like a guerilla fighter’s torch.

All this reality unrolls through him instantly, he is in it—but it is background for one central scene: Five bare toes in sunlight, his living leg cocked up on the other knee above a yellow spread. And on his/her/my naked stomach is resting an intimately known head of brown hair. A head which is We Love—is a complex of tenderness, ambiguous resentments, sweet sharing, doubts, worry, wild excitements, resolves, and dreams. All existent in a magic enclave, a frail enchanted space outside which looms the injustice called daily life—and within which, gleaming in the sunshine, lie two Canadian travel folders and a box of health biscuits, about to be shared with love.

Almost as all this penetrates Dann, the vision of strange self shimmers, dissolves its overwhelming reality. Doubleness slides back and grows. The invading mental galaxy is withdrawing itself out and away.

Daniel Dann comes back to himself, spread on the winds of Tyree beside another alien form.

But he is not himself; not as he was nor ever will be again. For the first time he has really grasped life’s most eerie lesson:

The Other Exists.

Cliché, he thinks dazedly. Cliché, like the big ones. But I never understood. How could I? Only here, forever removed from Earth in perishing monstrous form, could I have felt the reality of a different human world. A world in which he is a passing phenomenon, as she was in mine. And to have mistaken that charged world-scape for a seductive little belly in a yellow bathing suit! Shame curdles him.

But now he must act, repair his irreparable blunder, attend to the business at hand.

“Valerie? I, I’m sorry—”

“It’s all right. You aren’t… You didn’t…” Gently, her thought brushes his. How could he have thought her wind-borne form ugly? The mind is all, it really is.

“But listen,” she is saying, her voice tinged pale with fear. “Major Fearing isn’t here, is he? The one you were talking to?”

“No. It’s Chris Costakis.” Irrationally he feels cheered that at least one of these telepaths has made the same mistake. Maybe he’s learning. “I don’t think you have to worry about Fearing ever anymore.”

“Oh.” Her voice-color mellows. “But we are in some kind of trouble, aren’t we? I mean, this isn’t a dream?”

“I’m afraid not. Didn’t your guardian up there tell you where we are?”

“He started to, I think, but I went to sleep.”

“Well, so far it’s been rather pleasant, believe it or not. Winona is here, she’s in a crowd of Fathers who want to talk with her about raising babies. Kirk is here too, but they regressed him to infancy. Winona thinks he’s cute. And Rick and Ron have found each other, they call themselves one person named Waxman now. Only Chris seems to be horrified that someone will read his mind.”

Time enough to mention the bad stuff later. He watches her glow and stretch her new body, becoming more fully awake. She must be in that state of dreamy euphoria that seems to attend waking up oh Tyree. Come to think of it, he’s still in it himself.

“Now who’s this, do you know?” He floats over to the body lying close by big Omar’s protective field. It has to be a much younger person; the mantle is short, the vanes half-grown. Protruding from the central membranes are a set of strong-looking claspers. Do Tyrenni children make much more use of their manipulative limbs? A section of pouch is exposed too, this must be a male child, one of the children he had seen carried up and away. He remembers to look at the life-aura; it seems to be sizable, cautiously eddying out. But odd, lop-sided.

“I dreamed something,” Val is saying, “before I got so scared. But then I went to sleep. They do that, don’t they?”

“Yes. It’s their way of fixing up fear and bad feelings.”

“How wonderful!” She stretches again, laughs gaily. “Don’t worry about what happened, you know. Oh, I feel so free!” She makes an experimental caracole above the plants, lifts all her vanes. “Free and strong—why, I could go miles and miles, couldn’t I? Anywhere in the sky!”

“That’s right. As a matter of fact, on this world the females seem to do all the traveling and exploring while the males tend the kids.”

“Oh, wow!” Then she sobers. “But we should wake up—whoever this is.”

They hover together over the quiet form. Dann notices again the peculiar tight-held formation of parts of its life-energies. Another frightened one like Costakis?

Suddenly the dark, mantle lights concisely.

“Don’t bother,” says the voice of Fredericka Crespinelli. “Are you all right, Val?”

“Frodo! I dreamed, I was sure you were here.”

“I heard you. Hello, Doc.”

“Hello Frodo. Have you been awake long?”

“Awhile. Listen, what in the name of the Abyss—now why did I say that? What did they do to me?” The words glimmer with the tinge of fear.

“Don’t be scared, Frodo,” Val says loftily. “They didn’t do anything, to your mind, it’s just that you can say what they have words for. I figured that out right away.”

“All right.” Dann can see she is much more disturbed than Val. “What are we here for, Doc? What’s going on?”

To distract her he says the first thing that comes into his head.

“Well, for one thing you’re a young male now. Your body, I mean. A boy, like twelve or fifteen I’d guess.”

“Who, me?”

She twists in midair, trying to see all of herself at once, and succeeds in blowing into a tangle of vanes and vines. Val laughs merrily, trying to help, but there seems to be no easy way of physical assistance in this world. Frodo finally jets free.

“When you grow up you’ll be like that enormous old chap up there. He’s a Father, that’s the highest rank here.” Grinning to himself, Dann can’t resist adding, “As a male your main job will be raising babies. It’s the high-status thing here. The females like Val aren’t allowed to touch them.”

“What?!” The rainbow-hued exclamations end in delicious laughter. Dann joins in. Enjoy while we can, the absurd delight in the magical winds of Tyree. The others are experimentally flying barrel-rolls.

“Wait a minute, you two. I suggest you learn more about this world before you make the mistakes I did. The way you do it is to ask someone for a memory.”

“A memory?”

“The most amazing teaching method you ever saw. Wait. Father Omar!” he calls. “May I present Valerie and Frodo, two former females of my world? They would like to be given a memory, but we are ignorant of the correct way to receive. Would you instruct them?”

“Very well,” the old being replies, and a sad sigh gleams on his sides. “Perhaps I too will ask a memory of your world, since my Janskelen has gone there.”

“Now you’ll be fine,” Dann tells them. “Just do what he says and you’ll be astounded. I’m going to check on the others. Maybe I can bring back my friend to meet you, a real young female of Tyree.”

… And so it had gone, a dreamlike happiness in the high beauty of the Wall. But then another fireball had crashed close, and started a precipitous exodus down, and down again.

Tivonel will not stray far from Lomax and the old Hearer stays bravely above the rest, still reaching his mind to the sky.

Dann feels duty-bound to stay near, since he has Giadoc’s body; privately he is sure all this is futile. Meantime his human friends are one by one beginning to feel the burning in the wind.

“Chris, will you take charge? Make them get under what shelter they can and get them lower down the Wall. I have to stay by the Hearers because the person who owns my body may be trying to come back.”

“You leaving us, Doc?’

“I doubt it. I even doubt I want to, believe it or not.”

Suddenly Costakis displays an unChrislike opalescent laugh; a true laugh of human acceptance.

“I believe you, Doc.”

He planes off down the wind, to round up Winona’s group. Costakis “believes”? Dan has a momentary realization of what sheer size and strength has done for Chris. The simple fact of presence that he himself unthinkingly enjoyed so long. To be listened to, to have no need to strive.

It is in fact Chris who gives them concrete help.

He presently reappears by Dann and Heagran, towing a thorny-looking bundle of plant-life.

“Doc, I’ve been looking around. This stuff must have some, what’s the word, hard matter in it, it blocks off the energy pretty well. You know, the sky-sound. If we make a big raft of it we’d have a shelter from the burning. Trouble is, I’ve got everything but, uh, manipulators.”

He flaps his mantle, wiggling his weak claspers as if to say, “No hands.” Several nearby Fathers color embarrassedly.

“What are you doing with that frikkon-weed?” Tivonel jets up. “That’s awful stuff, it tears your vanes.”

“Yeah, but it’ll stick together without weaving,” Chris replies. “You have that long vine, too. We can throw lines over the mats to hold them down by. Doc, these people ought to make some for themselves if they want to last much longer. Tell them.”

Heagran has been following the conversation with distant puzzlement. Now he says haughtily, “Stranger, it seems you do not know that making objects and weaving is children’s work. This is no time for child-play!”

“Suit yourself. I’m trying to show you how to keep from being burned alive.”

“Wait, Chris,” Dann puts in. “They won’t understand at all, we’ll never get anywhere with words. Can you form a mental picture of the danger and exactly the kind of shelters you mean?”

“And let them read my mind?” Chris jets backward nervously.

“Just that one single item, Chris. I guarantee it, these people have deep respect for privacy. Just form a picture of the damage from the energy, and how the mat should be made to hold it off. Show it protecting children.”

“I don’t want anyone in my head,” Chris says. Dann hears the shifting colors of indecision.

“Please, Chris. At least for the kids’ sake. Father Heagran, my friend here is expert at such energy-dangers. He wishes to show you how to protect your young. But he is frightened that his whole life will be known. Can you assure him that you will take only this information?”

Big Heagran is a rainbow of exasperation, weariness, skepticism, and worry.

“If you can form an engram, stranger, naturally no Tyrenni would seek more.” His tone carries convincing repugnance.

“See, Chris? An engram, he means a kind of concentrated image—”

“I know what an engram is,” Chris says sullenly. “All right. But not til I say go.” His big body has become quiet, the immaterial energy of his life tight-held around it. Then Dann sees the hazy field begin to bulge toward Heagran, swirling and condensing a small nucleus, rather like an amoeba preparing to divide. Heagran’s field extends a leisurely energy-tendril toward the bulge.

“Remember about the children,” Dann calls.

“Go,” says Chris muffledly, and at that instant his bulge seems to explode toward Heagran.

Dann is blinded by a sudden brilliant stop-sequence like a film display—pictures of the radiation-storm, and progressively burned bodies, extraordinary, detailed images of the making of protective floating rafts, with ropes of gura-vine to anchor them. It’s like a vivid how-to book, even to insets showing enlarged details. The final image shows a raft holding off the burning rays above a crowd of bodies who are odd amalgams of human and Tyrenni children.

“Whew!” Tivonel is exclaiming. “Tanel, your friend is one fierce sender!”

“Well done, Chris! I think everybody around got that. Father Heagran, do you now see the usefulness of his plan?”

The great being muses for a moment. “Yes,” he admits. “I am sorry to say, I understand. Yet it seems a hopeless hope, if matters are as bad as he shows. Unless the Destroyer moves away soon we will all die. And how are we Tyrenni to construct such things?”

“Any hope is better than none,” a young Father says firmly. “This will protect our children as long as possible. What if Lomax succeeds, after the children are all dead? I say we do it. We Fathers can shelter our young ones while they weave the plants.”

“Very well. So be it.”

“And we females can go get the stuff?” Tivonel flexes her blistered vanes. “Whew! I never thought I’d be hauling in frikkon-weed. Marockee! Iznagel!” She jets off. “Round up a team. You won’t believe this.”

“I better get our people started on ours.” Chris sails away. Dann looks after his expanding life-field. Clearly, a leader has been born. Or a potential dictator? Well, there won’t be time to worry about that. The raft-making scheme strikes him as useful only for morale.

It has in fact occupied many hours of the timeless time, while Lomax searches the skies in vain. The Destroyer still lingers, blocking the sky, and the scream of the Sound becomes all-pervasive. But once working, the Tyrenni sort themselves out well. They soon find that the raft-shelters offer perceptible comfort. The chief problem has been to persuade the adults to take their turns under cover before they become too painfully exposed. Dann circulates about trying to persuade them of the reality of the danger and to make Heagran take some shelter himself.

As he is helping stabilize a protective shield for Lomax, a body comes cartwheeling down the wind—and at the same instant Dann becomes aware of a searing pain through his own left side. Half-dazed by agony, he watches three females wind-block the body, as he himself had once been halted. It is screaming blue with pain; someone has been badly burned.

But why does he himself hurt so? Painfully he scans himself, finding no damage.

“Healer! Healer Tanel!”

Slowed by the burning in his side, Dann manages to jet over.

Oh God, it’s Chris. The fine young body is horribly burned, the left mantle and vanes are black and shriveled. What can he do? In Dann’s mind the image of his old office with its dermal sealants and analgesics glimmers like a lost jewel.

And elder Father is watching him.

“Father,” Dann says through his pain, “have you no substances to relieve this hurt, to cure wounds?”

“Substances?” the other echoes, “but are you not a Healer?”

“Yes. But in my world injuries like this are treated with, with relieving materials.”

“I know nothing of this. If you are a Healer, heal.”

Heagran and others have drifted up, looking agitated. Scarcely able to think above the screams and the pain, Danri moves toward the mutilated body.

“Chris? Chris, what happened?”

“I guess I went too high,” the other gasps. “I—I—

But what he is saying Dann will never know. Pain unbelievable shoots through him, his whole side from head to vanes is aflame, scorching, raked by steel claws. His body contorts in air, infolding itself around the torment. He realizes dimly that his field must have touched Chris’. It is an eternity before the fiery contact breaks, leaving him choking on pain, trying to control the screaming from his mantle.

When he masters himself somewhat he finds old Heagran beside him, transmitting a wave of calm.

“A true Healer!” the old being exclaims solemnly. “Fathers, observe! Is this not Graph, come again from the skies?”

Writhing in subsiding agonies, Dann understands nothing of this.

“Hey, Doc. Thanks.”

That seems to be Chris before him. But what’s happened? The burn-damage looks minimal, even the mantle has smoothed out. All vanes are opening normally as Chris’ body rides the air.

“Our Healers today can do nothing like this,” Heagran is saying. “To drain another’s pain so that the damage is undone! The legend of Graph lives again before our eyes. Healer Tanel, I salute you. Your gift will be of great value to your people at the end.”

“My gift?” Confusedly, Dann inspects his still-burning side. It appears perfectly intact. Only the pain is real. What the hell kind of “gift” is this?

Suddenly his old years of useless empathy flash before him. His weird troubles with other people’s pain. Had he actually done—something? Probably not, he thinks; only here in the mind-world of Tyree. Doomed Tyree. Oh Jesus, what lies ahead?

Is he expected to share seven other radiation deaths before his own?

“The Great Wind has sent him, Heagran,” an old Father is saying. “He alleviates our guilt at the fate of his people. But we must not ask his aid, even for our children; we who brought them here.”

“Winds forbid,” says Heagran. “He is theirs alone.”

But what about me, Dann laments to himself. The Great Wind doesn’t seem to give a damn about doctors. Oh Christ, can I really make myself take that much pain again—and again and again?

But even as he cringes, there is obscure satisfaction. At least he hadn’t been crazy. His joke about being a receiver; apparently true. Specialized to pain, I’m pain’s toy. But at least it’s real. Probably a lot of doctors have it. I’m a doctor—and the sole materia medico here is myself. I’ll have to try. Chris is telling him something.

“—so I went up to look the situation over. It’s bad. We have to get deeper, fast.”

They move the clumsy rafts downward, with the children beneath them. And later move down again, and again down, til they end here, almost at dread wind’s bottom. Lower than this the updraft is too weak to support their great forms, and the protective rafts are now barely airborne in the feeble wind. Here is where they will die.

On the way down Dann has to exercise his horrid “gift” twice more; first Winona becomes badly seared, then Val. Her pain is especially fierce; he has to force himself to the utmost to hold contact. And she is so ashamed. Val alone seems to understand that the pain is not abolished but merely exchanged, while the mysterious healing works.

And now he can hear weak moaning from the sleeping form of Ron and Rick; blisters are suppurating on “Waxman’s” vanes. When he wakes up Dann will have to help him, will have to do the whole damn bit again.

Unfair, unfair; the oldest plaint: Why me? Isn’t one death all a mortal should be asked to bear? Why can’t he end it all, soar out on the updraft to his own single, personal incineration? The prospect strikes him as blissful, the temptation is strong.

Well, but I’m a doctor, he thinks. At least I can hold on long enough for one more try. Maybe if I take them earlier, before the burns are so bad, maybe I can stand smaller, more frequent increments of pain? Physician, kid thyself… There’s no way to make it anything but awful.

Dully, he watches the slow action around the raft where the Hearers are. Through the burning murk Dann can see Lomax and his surviving aides bravely taking turns outside the shelter, their weakened fields combined in brief attempts to probe the sky. Nearby Tivonel hovers under a little bundle of frikkon-weed, still keeping watch for a sign from Giadoc. Her once-charming form is blackened and scarred. Dann has persuaded her to let him help her once only. Overhead, the fire-storm from the Sound is a torrent of angry roaring.

Suddenly it stills, and the whole landscape shudders through a dreamlike change. Startled, beyond thought, Dann finds himself riding again the high winds of Tyree, seeing a Tivonel grown sleek and graceful. Coral laughter rings out—why, there is Winona’s form, and Father Elix! He hears himself saying, “May I present Winona, a female of my world?”

But—but—what’s happening? In his total disorientation Dann is conscious of one overwhelming sensation: Joy. Somehow, he is living again the magic time of waking on Tyree. He pumps air, trying to savor the wonder of this release, only vaguely attending to the remembered action unreeling around him. But just as he hears his own voice speak, the illusion shivers and fades out, the joy evaporates.

He is back in reality, hanging in the dark wind-bottom of a burning world. Around him others are stirring; did they feel the strange thing too?

“Tivonel! What happened?”

She jets effortfully closer to him, towing her inadequate protection. Her burns and scars are back; all is as before.

“A great time eddy,” she tells him in the ghost of her old laughing voice. “They happen here. That One was nice, wasn’t it? I hope it comes back.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, look. How nasty.”

Dann has been noticing a sharp but oddly different squeal of pain from one of the Tyrenni groups. “What is it?”

“That child is draining its hurt into a plenya. What’s its Father thinking of?”

Probably of his child’s pain, like any normal parent, Dann thinks. But he admires this world’s ethics. Never add to another’s pain—even here in a world conflagration. He watches a nearby Father rouse himself and separate the child from its crying pet. The Father seems to be sheltering a child of his own, but he holds the errant one in contact beneath the shelter.

“Probably an orphan,” Tivonel says. “Poor thing.”

She goes back to the Hearers, and Dann nerves himself to “heal” Waxman’s blistered vanes. It’s not quite so bad this time; maybe he can do one more. Frodo is exposing her young body recklessly, trying to hold the shield in place over Val. He bullies her into letting him take over at the ropes.

The painful hours drag by. Two more time eddies pass, but they only yield brief interludes from their long progress down the Wall. It is eerie to see dead bodies stir to life. Dann hears again old Omar’s dying words: “Winds of Tyree… I come alone.”

The Sound is a frightful shriek now and the very air is scorching them. The shelters are all but useless. Dann can see a few crippled figures moving painfully from group to group; perhaps Tyrenni Healers. As he watches, one of them crumples and its field goes dark. All around, other Tyrenni bodies are drifting down toward the Abyss. Lomax and his Hearers are still at their vain efforts, their forms horribly blistered, their great fields weak and pale.

Winona’s voice speaks quietly beside him. “We’re dying, aren’t we, Doctor Dann?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m glad I… knew it.”

“Yes.”

Not much longer now. They can’t take much more. Dann finds he cannot look toward the sad form of Tivonel. Under the human shelter, someone is trying not to groan. Dann can feel the pain that means he must act again. He sees that it’s Frodo; her small body has developed great rotted-out burns. Oh, no.

“Chris, take this rope a minute.”

He goes through the dreadful routine again. The sharp young agonies that jolt through him are almost beyond bearing, mingled with the real pain of his own now-blistered vanes. I can’t take this again; I can’t. Let it end.

As he is emerging from the invisible fires he becomes conscious of screaming or shouting outside. It’s coming from the Hearer group, but it is Tivonel’s burned mantle flashing wildly.

“That’s Giadoc! I heard him! Listen!”

“Be silent, female.” The big form beside her is barely recognizable as Bdello.

“It was his life-cry!” Tivonel flares stubbornly. “Listen, Lomax! It’s Giadoc, I know it.”

“It is only the Destroyer’s emanations,” Bdello says. “It calls us to our deaths.”

“Wait, Bdello.” The wounded form of Lomax struggles out of the shelter. “Wait. Help me.”

His weakened life-field probes painfully upward, reluctantly joined by Bdello’s. Tivonel hovers impatiently beside them, so excited that she dares to join her smaller energies to theirs.

After a long interval Lomax’ mantle lights.

“It is from the direction of the deathly one,” he signs feebly. “But it is Giadoc He calls us to come to him in the sky. We must form a Beam.”

His field collapses, and he drifts for a moment inert.

Bdello’s life-energy drops down and enfolds his chief. “How can we form a Beam?” he demands. “Most of our Hearers are dead.”

Lomax stirs, and disengages his mind-field from Bdello’s. “Thank you, old friend. This is our last chance. For the children, we must try. Call Heagran.”

“It is hopeless,” Bdello says angrily, making no move.

“Then I will go!” exclaims Tivonel, and she struggles off through the smouldering dark to where the senior Fathers lie. Dann can hear faint golden light from her burned mantle. “Oh, I knew he would come!”

But Giadoc has not come, Dann thinks. And how are they to raise the energy to get to him? Nevertheless, a wild hope begins to stir in him.

But as the Elders make their way to Lomax, Dann sees with dismay how few they are, how damaged and weak in field-strength. Has this hope come too late, much too late?

Old Lomax is saying with heart-lifting vigor, “Heagran, all your Fathers must serve as Hearers now. Help me form a bridge, a Beam. Giadoc has found some refuge in the sky. If we can send our children there they will live.”

“What if it is a trap of the Destroyer?” Bdello demands.

“Then we will be no worse than we are,” Lomax replies. “Heagran, will you help? We cannot surround the pole now, but we can concentrate here.”

“Yes.” Dann can see the old being’s pain and weakness, but his voice is strong. “Those of you who can still ride the wind, go and summon the people here in my name. Tell the Fathers we have a last chance for the children’s lives. Now, Lomax, instruct me in the method of our help.”

Despite himself, Dann feels a growing hope. Have the powers of these people really found some magical way out of this nightmare?

He watches the surviving Tyrenni jetting painfully in to Lomax through the deadly air. Many Fathers have two, even three children in tow; orphans whose Fathers died protecting them. Here and there he sees a female trying to guide and shelter a child… If this hope does not materialize, he is seeing the last hours of a wondrous race.

They crowd around Lomax and Heagran in silence; Dann senses the odd faint jolts of energy he has come to associate with the touch of life-fields. The Tyrenni must be transmitting Lomax’ instructions directly mind-to-mind; an emergency mode of communication, perhaps. Presently they disperse somewhat, and Dann senses a gathering of strength, as if a field of athletes were each preparing for some ultimate exertion. Can they really do something, achieve a real escape from this death?

Suddenly the silence is broken by a flash from Tivonel. “Lomax! Remember the strangers!”

“Ah, yes,” says Lomax. “Strangers, come near. Be ready to send your lives out when you feel the power. I will help you if I can.”

The other humans have heard the call, are struggling out. Dann shepherds them to a position near Lomax. No one says anything. A feeling of effortful, building power is already charging the air, riding over the sears of pain. It is thrilling, formidable. For the first time Dann lets himself truly hope.

“Now!” calls Lomax. “Fathers, Tyrenni all—give me your lives!”

And his mind-field flares up in splendor, towering toward the dark sky. But not alone—the massed energies around rise with him, building, joining chaotically, forming a great spear of power launching up through inferno. Dann feels his life sucked upward with it, drawn up and out of his dying body, hurtling into immaterial flight.

Exulting, he feels the lives meshed round him, knows himself a part of a tremendous striving, a battle of essence against oblivion, a drive toward unknown salvation beyond the sky. And they are winning! The surge is immense, victorious. Far behind them dwindles the burning world bearing their destroyed flesh. And from ahead now he can sense a faint welcoming call. They have made it, they are winning through! In an instant they will be saved!

But even as the sense of haven reached opens to his unbodied mind, a terrible faintness strikes through him. The rushing energy upbearing him begins to weaken, to wane and dissolve. In utmost horror he feels the life-power sinking back through hostile immensities. Oh God. Oh no—it was too far, too far for the exhausted strivers. They have failed. With dreadful speed the fading Beam collapses, back, back alid down, losing all cohesion.

In deathly weariness and disarray, the minds that formed it faint and fall back into their dying bodies in the hell-winds of Tyree.

Silence, under the fire-roaring sky. Only the occasional green whimper of a child comes from the stricken crowd. Their last hope has failed, there can be no more. Ahead lies only death.

After a time old Heagran stirs and orders the others to seek what shelter they can. His voice is drained, inexpressibly weary. Painfully, by ones and twos, the crowd obeys.

“Of what use?” says Bdello bitterly. But he too goes to help secure their abandoned shelter.

“We were so close, so close,” Tivonel cries softly. Her mantle is so burnt she can barely form the words. “He would have saved us. He tried.”

“Yes.”

“You understood, Tanel. I am to die with you, as you said.”

“I’m sorry, Tivonel. I too loved your world. Now you must let me heal you one last time.”

“No.” Her weak light-tones are proud. But he persists, and finally she allows him to restore the worst of her burns, though he all but faints with her pain.

The next hours or years drag on through nightmare. The agonizing death-signals are louder and closer now; Tyrenni are dying all around. So far he has been able to preserve all of his little band of humans, and Tivonel. But his strange ability to heal seems to be weakening as his own body suffers more damage, and his courage to bear their pain is failing him fast.

Frodo seems to be worst off; he forces himself to summon the will to make his healing will touch her mind-field. But the effort effects only a slight improvement, at the cost of agonies he hadn’t believed bearable. She must be, he sees, about to die. They all are. End this, he prays to emptiness. End this soon.

As if in answer to his plea, another huge fireball comes screaming down through the murk. Dully he realizes that this one is coming close. Close—closer—the air is in flames. All in one roaring shock he feels his own flesh burning and sees it explode among the Tyrenni beyond.

Oh God, it hasn’t killed him. He is in pain beyond his power to feel it; even as he hears his own voice screaming he finds himself existent as a tiny mote of consciousness somehow apart from the incineration of his flesh. He has heard of such terminal mercies, can only hope that others are finding it too. But it is perilously frail, is passing. In a moment he will be swallowed in mindless pain.

He can see darkly where the charred bodies of the hearers and the Senior Fathers drift. A few death-moans rend his mind. This is the end. Goodbye, fair dream-world. He wishes he could send or receive a last warm touch. But an overwhelming agony is cresting up, is about to fall on him forever.

He waits. Still it hangs over him, an unbreaking wave. Around him the world seems to be quieting, a strange effect of lightening and darkening at once. His senses must be dying. Let me die too, before I recover the full power to feel the pain. Disorientation washes over him. Death, take me.

But strangely he still lingers in crepuscular consciousness. And then a horrible perception penetrates his agony. The blackened, shriveled bodies in his view are beginning to stir. They change, expand, are again limned in living energies. Others too seem to be coming back to ghostly life. And his own pain is slackening, receding back.

Oh God of horrors, no. It is a last time eddy, contravening the release of death.

The savagery of it. Are they doomed to be brought back endlessly, to die again and again?

He can only watch helplessly, too horror struck to think. But then he notices that this time-change seems different. The others had transported him instantaneously to the past. This seems to be a strange, slow, regress, as though time itself was somehow being rolled backward in a dreamlike stasis.

The death-cries around him have faded, the world is hushed. Even the all-devouring shrieking of the Sound has stilled. A sense of something unimaginable impends.

With a lightless flash the sky splits open. Through the hush there strikes down on them a great ray or beam of power beyond comprehension, pouring in on them from beyond the world.

From the heart of death a call comes without voice.

COME TO ME. COME!