—”No time!” snapped Phil. “Yourself, Senior, and all others that can. Rendezvous! Hurry!”
—”We come.” The thought was still calm, unhurried. But there were two ragged holes in the roof of Moulton’s tent. Moulton and Howe were already out of sight of Camp Mark Twain.
Slashing, slicing through the air they came, the handful of adepts who guarded the fire. From five hundred miles to the north they came, racing pigeons hurrying home. Camp councilors, two-thirds of the small group of camp matrons, some few from scattered points on the continent, they came in response to Huxley’s call for help and the Senior’s unprecedented tocsin. A housewife turned out the fire in the oven and disappeared into the sky. A taxi driver stopped his car and left his fares without a word. Research groups on Shasta broke their tight rapport, abandoned their beloved work, and came—fast!
“And now, Philip?” Howe spoke orally as he arrested his trajectory and hung beside Huxley.
Huxley flung a hand toward Brinckley. “He has what we need to know to strike now! Where’s Master Ling?
“He and Mrs. Draper guard the Camp.”
“I need him. Can she do it alone?” Clear and mellow, her voice rang in his head from half a state away.
—”I can!”
—”The tortoise flies.” The second thought held the quality of deathless merriment which was the unmistakable characteristic of the ancient Chinese..Joan felt a soft touch at her mind, then Master Ling was among them, seated carefully tailor-fashion on nothingness. “I attend; my body follows,” he announced. “Can we not proceed?”
Whereupon Joan realized that he had borrowed the faculties of her mind to project himself into their presence more quickly than he could levitate the distance. She felt unreasonably flattered by the attention.
Huxley commenced at once. “Through his mind —” He indicated Brinckley, “I have learned of many others with whom there can be no truce. We must search them out, deal with them at once, before they can rally from what has happened to him. But I need help. Master, will you extend the present and examine him?”
Ling had tutored them in discrimination of time and perception of the present, taught them to stand off and perceive duration from eternity. But he was incredibly more able than his pupils.
He could split the beat of a fly’s wing into a thousand discrete instants, or grasp a millenium as a single flash of experience. His discrimination of time and space was bound neither by his metabolic rate nor by his molar dimensions.
Now he poked gingerly at Brinckley’s brain like one who seeks a lost jewel in garbage. He felt out the man’s memory patterns and viewed his life as one picture. Joan, with amazement, saw his ever-present smile give way to a frown of distaste. His mind had been left open to any who cared to watch. She peered through his mind, then cut off. If there were that many truly vicious spirits in the world she preferred to encounter them one at a time, as necessary, not experience them all at once.
Master Ling’s body joined the group, melted into his projection.
Huxley, Howe, Moulton, and Bierce followed the Chinese’s delicate work with close attention. Howe’s face was bleakly impassive; Moulton’s face, aged to androgynous sensitivity, moved from side to side while he clucked disapproval of such wickedness. Bierce looked more like Mark Twain than ever. Twain in an implacable, lowering rage. Master Ling looked up.
“Yes, yes,” said Moulton, “I suppose we must act, Ephraim.”
“We have no choice,” Huxley stated, with a completely unconscious disregard of precedent.
“Will you assign the tasks, Senior?”
Howe glanced sharply at him. “No, Philip. No. Go ahead. Carry on.”
Huxley checked himself in surprise for the briefest instant, then took his cue. “You’ll help me. Master Ling. Ben!”
“Waiting!” He meshed mind to mind, had Ling show him his opponent and the data he needed.—”Got it? Need any help?”
—”Grandfather Stonebender is enough.”
—”Okay. Nip off and attend to it.”
—”Chalk it up.” He was gone, a rush of air in his wake.
—”This one is yours, Senator Moulton”
—”I know.” And Moulton was gone. By ones and twos he gave them their assignments, and off they went to do that which must be done.