There was a blue field of sparks crackling above his
head, and psychic energies shot thin sporadic flames from
his nostrils, the steam to hang there afterwards.
“Leave a monster his only privacy!”
I too am a monster.
“Look at your face, Monster. It is not wrinkled like a
dried fig; it is not old beyond its years with seeing; it is not
caked with the dust of unlived centuries. You pass for
human in your world. You pass. At least, you pass.”
Child, listen to me. I am—
He charged and grasped at me with hoof-hands. I
fashioned a sword from my own fields of thought and
smashed him broadside on the head.
The sound rang in the stone corridors.
My arm reverberated with the force of the blow.
And he was gone, a vapor in the darkness, a phantom.
Holding the green glow of the weapon, I advanced
slowly down the twisting halls toward the inner part of
him, where his theories would bubble, where thoughts
would run in molten rivers. I came out, finally, on an
earthen shelf above a yawning pit. Far below, eternities
away, drifting and glowing, was a circular mass, and the
heat it threw into my face was great.
From here had come the Minotaur. From here came
everything.
I reached out and grasped for anything, a subcur-
rent, a cracked image, the shell of a daydream, and I
caught a Hate River ebbing and flowing. HATE, HATE,
HATE HATEHATEHATEHATE-HA-TE-HATEHATE
HATE . . . Somewhere in the middle of it, a two-headed
thing swam, cutting the foul waters with a viciously spined
neck. I caught the “T” in HATE and traced it along the
currents, searching. T leads ToThumb and a suckling
mouTh . . . and The sucking mouTh suddenly To a brown
nipple and a moTher’s breasT . . . and again The T
dominaTed . . . and I allowed The river To carry me
ineviTably on Toward Theorem. . . .
Theory Through Tees … Through Thousand Times
Tedious Tiring . . . Ten Times one Times Two To Sub-
OughT-seven in drepshler Tubes now being used . . .
The flood was too fast. I could see the theory, but I
could not divert it fast enough toward the ocean in the
distance where a waterspout whirled (taking the thoughts
to the little bit of conscious mind he possessed). The
thoughts that were now being spoken in dust whispers in a
room far away—the thoughts being recorded by serious
men with serious faces who listened, no doubt, quite
seriously.
Then the drug must have finally taken hold of him, or I
would have been swallowed alive by a mind construct and
destroyed in his cauldron of insanity. The two-headed
beast had swum near without drawing my notice. It
caught my eye, now, as it moved swiftly, its mouth
gaping, a giant cave that drooled. . . .
I lifted my sword as it raised its huge head above me to
strike. Then there was a sudden, jerky slip like an old
movie reel that has been spliced, and everything went into
slow motion. It was like an underwater ballet. At that
rate, it would have taken an hour for the beast’s jaws to
reach me and snap me up, and I slew him as his red eyes
glistened and as a strange THRIDDLE THRIDDLE
came out of his throat. Or hers.
Turning back toward the river, I directed thoughts
toward the slow-moving waterspout until so much time
had passed that I thought I had better get out before I lost
my own character identity.
I turned away from the screaming Id pit.
I walked back the gray tunnel.
Cobwebs brushed my face.
But there were stairs leading upward this time….
VI
There were candles in her green eyes, reflections of
those on the table. The same flickering amber glinted from
her hair, made the smooth flesh of her one bared shoulder
glow with health. Her sequined, well-cut, Oriental some-
thing-or-other was dazzling.
“I’d want nothing held back,” she said over the remains
of two Cornish game hens of that special diminutive and
fleshy mutant strain. Bones and gravy contrasted with her