He Who Shapes (12 page)

But today her hair was simply drawn back and knotted behind

her head, and her lips and her eyes were pale; and her exposed

ears were tiny and white and somewhat pointed.

"Observe the scalloped capitals," he whispered. "In their

primitive fluting they anticipated what was later to become a

common motif."

"Faugh!" said she.

"Shh!" said a sunburnt little woman nearby, whose face

seemed to crack and fall back together again as she pursed and

unpursed her lips.

Later, as they strolled back toward their hotel, Render said,

"Okay on Winchester?"

"Okay on Winchester."

"Happy?"

"Happy."

"Good, then we can leave this afternoon."

"All right."

"For Switzerland..."

She stopped and toyed with a button on his coat.

"Couldn't we just spend a day or two looking at some old

chateaux first? After all, they're just across the Channel, and

you could be sampling all the local wines while I looked. . ."

"Okay," he said.

She looked upa trifle surprised.

"What? No argument?" she smiled. "Where is your fighting

spirit?to let me push you around like this?"

She took his arm then and they walked on as he said,

"Yesterday, while we were galloping about in the innards of

that old castle, I heard a weak moan, and then a voice cried out,

'For the love of God, Montresor!' I think it was my fighting

spirit, because I'm certain it was my voice. I've given up der

geist der stets verneint. Pax vobiscumi Let us be gone to

France. Alors!"

"Dear Rendy, it'll only be another day or two . . ."

"Amen," he said, "though my skis that were waxed are

already waning."

So they did that, and on the morn of the third day, when she

spoke to him of castles in Spain, he reflected aloud that while

psychologists drink and only grow angry, psychiatrists have

been known to drink, grow angry, and break things. Construing

this as a veiled threat aimed at the Wedgwoods she had

collected, she acquiesced to his desire to go skiing.

Free! Render almost screamed it.

His heart was pounding inside his head. He leaned hard. He

cut to the left. The wind strapped at his face; a shower of ice

crystals, like bullets of emery, fired by him, scraped against his

cheek.

He was moving. Ayethe world had ended at Weissflujoch,

and Dorftali led down and away from this portal.

His feet were two gleaming rivers which raced across the

stark, curving plains; they could not be frozen in their course.

Downward. He flowed. Away from all the rooms of the world.

Away from the stifling lack of intensity, from the day's hundred

spoon-fed welfares, from the killing pace of the forced

amusements that hacked at the Hydra, leisure; away.

And as he fled down the run he felt a strong desire to look

back over his shoulder, as though to see whether the world he

had left behind and above had set one fearsome embodiment of

itself, like a shadow, to trail along after him, hunt him down,

and to drag him back to a warm and well-lit coffin in the sky,

there to be laid to rest with a spike of aluminum driven through

his will and a garland of alternating currents smothering his

spirit.

"I hate you," he breathed between clenched teeth, and the

wind carried the words back; and he laughed then, for he

always analyzed his emotions, as a matter of reflex; and be

added, "Exit Orestes, mad, pursued by the Furies . . ."

After a time the slope leveled out and he reached the bottom

of the run and had to stop.

He smoked one cigarette then and rode back up to the top so

that he could come down it again for non-therapeutic reasons.

That night he sat before a fire in the big lodge, feeling its

warmth soaking into his tired muscles. Jill massaged his

shoulders as he played Rorschach with the flames, and he came

upon a blazing goblet which was snatched away from him in

the same instant by the sound of his name being spoken

somewhere across the Hall of the Nine Hearths.

"Charles Render!" said the voice (only it sounded more like

"Shariz Runder"), and his head instantly jerked in that

direction, but his eyes danced with too many afterimages for

him to isolate the source of the calling.

"Maurice?" he queried after a moment, "Bartelmetz?"

"Aye," came the reply, and then Render saw the familiar

grizzled visage, set neckless and balding above the red and

blue shag sweater that was stretched mercilessly about the

wine-keg rotundity of the man who now picked his way in their

direction, deftly avoiding the strewn crutches and the stacked

skis and the people who, like Jill and Render, disdained sitting

in chairs.

Render stood, stretching, and shook hands as he came upon

them.

"You've put on more weight," Render observed. "That's

unhealthy."

"Nonsense, it's all muscle. How have you been, and what are

you up to these days?" He looked down at Jill and she smiled

back at him.

"This is Miss DeVille," said Render.

"Jill," she acknowledged.

He bowed slightly, finally releasing Render's aching hand.

". . . And this is Professor Maurice Bartelmetz of Vienna,"

finished Render, "a benighted disciple of all forms of dialectical

pessimism, and a very distinguished pioneer in neuroparticipa-

tion although you'd never guess it to look at him. I had the

good fortune to be his pupil for over a year."

Bartelmetz nodded and agreed with him, taking in the

Schnappsflasche Render brought forth from a small plastic bag,

and accepting the collapsible cup which he filled to the brim.

"Ah, you are a good doctor still," he sighed. "You have

diagnosed the case in an instant and you make the proper

prescription. Nozdrovia!"

"Seven years in a gulp," Render acknowledged, refilling their

glasses.

"Then we shall make time more malleable by sipping it."

They seated themselves on the floor, and the fire roared up

through the great brick chimney as the logs burnt themselves

back to branches, to twigs, to thin sticks, ring by yearly ring.

Render replenished the fire.

"I read your last book," said Bartelmetz finally, casually,

"about four years ago."

Render reckoned that to be correct.

"Are you doing any research work these days?"

Render poked lazily at the fire.

"Yes," he answered, "sort of."

He glanced at Jill, who was dozing with her cheek against

the arm of the huge leather chair that held his emergency bag,

the planes of her face all crimson and flickering shadow.

"I've hit upon a rather unusual subject arid started with a

piece of jobbery I eventually intend to write about."

"Unusual? In what way?"

"Blind from birth, for one thing."

"You're using the ONT&R?"

"Yes. She's going to be a Shaper."

"Verfluchter!Are you aware of the possible repercussions?"

"Of course."

"You've heard of unlucky Pierre?"

"No."

"Good, then it was successfully hushed. Pierre was a

philosophy student at the University of Paris, and he was doing

a dissertation on the evolution of consciousness. This past

summer he decided it would be necessary for him to explore the

mind of an ape, for purposes of comparing a moins-nausee

mind with his own, I suppose. At any rate, he obtained illegal

access to an ONT&R and to the mind of our hairy cousin. It was

never ascertained how far along he got in exposing the animal

to the stimuli-bank, but it is to be assumed that such items as

would not be immediately trans-subjective between man and

apetraffic sounds and so weiterwere what frightened the

creature. Pierre is still residing in a padded cell, and all his

responses are those of a frightened ape.

"So, while he did not complete his own dissertation," he

finished,
 
"he may provide significant material for someone

else's."

Render shook his head.

"Quite a story," he said softly, "but I have nothing that

dramatic to contend with. I've found an exceedingly stable

individuala psychiatrist, in factone who's already spent time

in ordinary analysis. She wants to go into neuroparticipation

but the fear of a sight-trauma was what was keeping her out.

I've been gradually exposing her to a full range of visual

phenomena. When I've finished she should be completely

accommodated to sight, so that she can give her full attention

to therapy and not be blinded by vision, so to speak. We've

already had four sessions."

"And?"

". . . And it's working fine."

"You are certain about it?"

"Yes, as certain as anyone can be in these matters."

"Mm-hm," said Bartelmetz. "Tell me, do you find her

excessively strong-willed? By that I mean, say,, perhaps an

obsessive-compulsive pattern concerning anything to which

she's been introduced so far?"

"No."

"Has she ever succeeded in taking over control of the

fantasy?"

"No!"

"You lie," he said simply.