had marched but where there was now nothing but scored
ice. Approaching his analogue cautiously, I touched him,
hunkered before him.
“Child?”
Quiet.
“Child? Speak to me?”
He looked at me. He blinked his eyes. And then chaos
broke loose as his insanity boiled through the surface
tension of the analogue and swept over me!
I was swept up, up, on a tide of human flesh, of torn
arms and legs, of bleeding mouths, broken teeth, shattered
bones, burning flesh, splintered eyeballs. Monsters rose in
the swell and came toward me, lumbering ogres and swim-
ming reptilian horrors. The arms and mouths in the ocean
of human parts attacked me, grasped me and tried to pull
me down, bit me and chewed at my unreal psychic flesh.
I felt myself losing hold of my own equilibrium. In a
moment, I would spiral over the edge, into madness for
the second time. I had recovered only recently, and I
knew a second plunge to the bottom of that well would be
the last I would ever make. I would fall back into gibber-
ing incoherency, and I would remain there forever. Twice
mad is once too often, and the shores of detached logic
would never be available to me again.
The nearest ogre reached for me, with his seven-
fingered hands, each finger tipped with the fanged mouth
of a yellow-eyed snake.
I rolled across the rippling floor of human parts, kicking
pieces of bodies up as I went.
The snake fingers missed by inches.
A flurry of mutilated corpses clutched me and pulled
me under the surface of the sea.
I fought to air again, through nightmare conglomer-
ations of dead men and women,
“CHILD!” I screamed.
Another ogre thundered down on me.
In the last moment before I could be grasped and dis-
membered, I did the only thing that would save me. Giving
myself over to the basest of my id lusts, radiating blood-
hunger and sexual need of the vilest sort, I repelled the
ogres and the dragons, forced back the tide of human
bodies that tore at me. In seconds, I was back on the blue
ice floor where again the analogue of Child sat, tranced.
I circled him. Now I was in the form of one of the
great scorpion beasts, mandibles chattering, forked sting-
ing tail raised above my back, ready to attack.
His psychic energy formed a wall against me, but I
danced on, broached that wall with my own mind, and
leaped upon him, thrashing with him on the floor. This
time, rather than argue with him, rather than plead with
him, I devoured his psychic energy, destroyed him, ab-
sorbed him, and dissipated his shattered mind throughout
my own.
Child no longer existed. I had killed him. But now I was
in total control of his body. I left that place, made it
dissolve around me. I made the mountain appear, and I
climbed it, entered the caves through which I had first
come down into Child’s subconscious mind. In moments, I
had freed myself, and was looking out at the world
through Child’s eyes, encased, again, in real flesh….
THREE
The Incomplete
Creation…
I
I found myself in Child’s body, lying in a hospital bed
with the barred sides raised to provide the illusion of a
prison. The room was a private one, somewhere far up in
the tower of Artificial Creation, no doubt. There was no
light but that from a small blue bulb plugged directly into
a floor socket. In that eerie glow, I could see that there
was no nurse in attendance. How long had Child lain like
this, dazed, almost comatose, unable to speak or see or
hear anything of the real world as his madness kept him
sealed in the analogue of his subconscious? Days or
weeks? Perhaps even years?
Somewhat frantic at that last thought, I pushed up,
weak and dizzy. My frail, bony arms felt as if they would
crack, but they got me to the edge of the bed just the
same. My short legs dangled a foot from the tiles after I
got the barred slats down, and that measly twelve inches