Part 11 (1/2)

The ebony, leathery, bat's wings rising from the shoulder blades-quivering-completed the frightening picture.

Wisps of smoky, filmy garments were draped over the woman-thing's shoulders, around her waist.

She stood unmoving.

Then she spoke to them. It was not mental.

It actually sounded; but not from the body before them. They knew it was-her?-but it did not come from her at all. The fearful mouth remained almost shut, propped slightly open on the sharp tiers of teeth.

The voice issued from the walls, from the tips of the stalagmites, from the high, arching roof of the volcano; it boomed from the rocky floor-it even floated down the length of the infinitely-stretching Corridor.

The voice spoke in thunder, yet softly.

Well, Gentlemen?

Krane stared for a second at the woman-thing; then he looked about wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. His head swung back and forth as though it was manipulated by strings from above.

”Well, what?” he shouted to no one.

Have you realized the truth yet?

”What truth? What are you talking about? Who is that? Is it you?” chimed in Marmorth, bathed in sudden fear. He pointed an accusing finger at the woman-thing. The Corridor s.h.i.+mmered oddly. It lived just behind the stone walls of the volcano.

I'm a voice, Gentlemen. A voice and an illusion. Just an illusion, that's all, Gentlemen. Just an illusion from both of your minds. Made of equal portions of your minds. For you are one as strong as the other.

There was a pause. Then: But tell me, have you realized what you should have known before you were foolish enough to enter the Corridor?

Krane looked at Marmorth with suspicion. For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps this was a trick on the other's part. Marmorth, recognizing the glance, shrugged his shoulders eloquently. ”No!

Tell us, then! What should we have known?”

The only real answer as to who is right; which Theorem is the correct one!

”Tell me, tell me!” they shouted, almost together.

There was silence for a moment. The woman-thing ran a scarlet-tipped hand across the hideous lizard snout, as though searching for a way to phrase what was coming. Then the single word sounded in the heart of the volcano.

Neither.

Krane and Marmorth stared past the woman-thing, stared at each other in confusion. ”N-neither?”

shouted Marmorth incredulously. ” Are you mad! Of course one of us is right! Me!” He was shaking fists at the gruesome being before him. Illusion, perhaps; but an illusion that was goading him.

”Prove it! Prove it!” screamed Krane, stepping forward, flat-footedly, as though seeking to strike the woman-thing. Then the voice gave them the solution and the proof that neither could contest, for both knew it to be true on a level that defied mere conviction.

You are both egomaniacs. You could not possibly be convinced of the other's viewpoint. Not in a hundred million years. The message dies between you. You are both too tightly ensnared in yourselves!

The woman-thing suddenly began to s.h.i.+mmer. She became indistinct, and there were many shadow-forms of her, surrounding her body like halos. Abruptly, she disappeared from between them.

Leaving them alone in the quickening darkness of the volcano's throat.

Alone. Staring at each other with dawning comprehension, dawning belief.

They both realized it at the same moment. They both had the conviction of their cause, yet they both knew the womanthing had been right.

”Krane,” said Marmorth, starting toward the black-bearded man, ”she's right, you know. Perhaps we can get together and figure...”

The other had started toward the older man as he had spoken. ”Yes, perhaps there's something in what you say. Perhaps there's a...”

At the instant they both realized it-the instant they considered the other's viewpoint-the illusion barriers shattered, of course, and the red-hot lava poured in on them, engulfing both men in a blistering inferno.

”Repent, Harlequin!”

Said the Ticktockman

THERE ARE ALWAYS THOSE WHO ASK, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know ”where it's at,” this:

The ma.s.s of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others-as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders-serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as G.o.d. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

HENRY DAVID Th.o.r.eAU.

Civil Disobedience

That is the heart of it. Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.

But because it was the very world it was, the very world they had allowed it to become, for months his activities did not come to the alarmed attention of The Ones Who Kept The Machine Functioning Smoothly, the ones who poured the very best b.u.t.ter over the cams and mainsprings of the culture. Not until it had become obvious that somehow, someway, he had become a notoriety, a celebrity, perhaps even a hero for (what Officialdom inescapably tagged) ”an emotionally disturbed segment of the populace,” did they turn it over to the Ticktockman and his legal machinery. But by then, because it was the very world it was, and they had no way to predict he would happen-possibly a strain of disease long-defunct, now, suddenly, reborn in a system where immunity had been forgotten, had lapsed-he had been allowed to become too real. Now he had form and substance.

He had become a personality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades before.

But there it was, and there he was, a very definitely imposing personality. In certain circles-middle-cla.s.s circles-it was thought disgusting. Vulgar ostentation. Anarchistic. Shameful. In others, there was only snickering, those strata where thought is subjugated to form and ritual, niceties, proprieties. But down below, ah, down below, where the people always needed their saints and sinners, their bread and circuses, their heroes and villains, he was considered a Bolivar; a Napoleon; a Robin Hood; a d.i.c.k Bong (Ace of Aces) ; a Jesus; a Jomo Kenyatta.

And at the top-where, like socially attuned s.h.i.+pwreck Kellys, every tremor and vibration threatening to dislodge the wealthy, powerful and t.i.tled from their flagpoles-he was considered a menace; a heretic; a rebel; a disgrace; a peril. He was known down the line, to the very heartmeat core, but the important reactions were high above and far below. At the very top, at the very bottom.

So his file was turned over, along with his time card and his cardioplate, to the office of the Ticktockman.

The Ticktockman: very much over six feet tall, often silent, a soft purring man when things went timewise. The Ticktockman.

Even in the cubicles of the hierarchy, where fear was generated, seldom suffered, he was called the Ticktockman. But no one called him that to his mask.

You don't call a man a hated name, not when that man, behind his mask, is capable of revoking the minutes, the hours, the days and nights, the years of your life. He was called the Master Timekeeper to his mask. It was safer that way.

”This is what he is,” said the Ticktockman with genuine softness, ”but not who he is. This time- card I'm holding in my left hand has a name on it, but it is the name of what he is, not who he is. The cardioplate here in my right hand is also named, but not whom named, merely what named. Before I can exercise proper revocation, I have to know who this what is.”