The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (72 page)

He glanced at his watch. What time was it? He had stepped into the tank at 9 o’clock. The hands read 9 o’clock. He had surely been dead ten minutes…The hands read 9:10. Or had it only been a single minute? And the time was 9:01. The time was whatever he chose it to be. Very well then. Back to Earth. At this rate there would be ample time for exploration.

He was in space, diving for Earth—a glorious sensation of freedom! Don sang in exultation. It was fun to be dead! Earth—lovely familiar old Earth. There it was, laden with its two billion souls!

Was it Earth, or was it a thought?…For the first time it occurred to him to wonder: where were all the other souls? The spirits of all the dead? The angels? Jesus Christ? Mohammed and his houris? And he vibrated up into a fantastic golden land, flowered with white clouds. There indeed walked radiant winged beings, and there indeed, off in the distance, was a shining city of glass and gold; and there indeed was an effulgence, a blinding bright figure with a merciful face…Only an instant. Then an instant of a great garden, with lawns and flowers and marble pavilions, rows of cool cypress and poplar, turbaned shapes sipping sherbets, sublimely beautiful maidens…Don thought, there is no false religion; whatever Man believed, that was; whatever stage of abstraction Man could conceive, he could attain…Religion was, God was. But they were functions of Man; the mind of Man was the Creator.

Where was Molly Toogood, Ivalee’s control? And the wandering spirits of the dead?…He saw Molly, a pleasant-looking woman: perhaps not as bright or hard as he was. She nodded. He sensed other shapes, flimsier than Molly. Where was Art Marsile? He looked around him, and—wonder of wonders—he stood in front of the old Marsile home under the pepper trees. He walked up to the door. Art looked out. “Hello, Don. I been waiting for you. Got time for a chat?”

Don looked at the house, half-expecting to see Jean come running out, blonde and fresh and pretty. “No,” said Art. “She’s not here, Don. It’s not her time yet. Maybe you’d better go check. There’s trouble down there. Hugh as usual.”

A flicker of thought. Don stood on the porch of 26 Madrone Place. In the street were numerous pellets of human beings, with their souls attached like frail balloons. All except one. Don recognized it: Hugh Bronny. Bronny’s soul was tall, broad, and glowed with fiery intensity. The pellet of Hugh Bronny came up to the house; the soul—call it a soul, for lack of a better word—looked Don in the eye.

“Go away,” said Don.

The soul opened its mouth, but the pellet squeezed shut the natural channel of its brain, ignored the message, knocked on the door.

Don thought himself into the laboratory. He watched while the Hugh Bronny pellet marched into the room; he tried to speak to the lovely wraith anchored in the Jean pellet, but she was too absorbed and upset.

The pellets moved, like shining quicksilver. He examined his body. Dead—but with the potential for life. He tried to slip his feet back into the cold pellet, but there was no purchase; he slipped away.

The Hugh Bronny pellet destroyed the Don Berwick pellet. Jean’s wraith shimmered and twisted. Her body pellet seized the gun.

Don heard the shots as dull clicks, stones tapped under water. Hugh’s soul seemed to bulge, to sparkle, to take on mass. It was a monstrous ominous presence—it looked like Hugh, but it was strong and tough and muscular. The face was Hugh’s face as Hugh must have conceived it: hard, fervent, unyielding.

The Hugh pellet was dead. The Hugh Bronny soul was free. It came toward Don. They looked eye to eye an instant.

Hugh reached out his powerful arms; Don knocked them aside. The contact was solid, but elastic, like two pieces of heavy rubber colliding.

Hugh moved off, and was gone. Don looked back to the house. It was in flames. The men who had worked with him—where were they? Cogswell—“Hello Doctor,” said Don to the pale soul which stood beside him. “I see you’re dead.”

“Yes,” said the soul of Dr. James Cogswell. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?” The soul looked Don over with a trace of surprise. “My word, you look hard and strong! It’s amazing.”

“We worked enough for it,” said Don. “Lots of people believe in me.”

“Not too many believe in me!” said Cogswell in wonder. “Yet here I am!”

“You believed in yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s the most important.”

“Interesting,” said Cogswell. “This is a most fascinating place. Well, I must be off to explore.”

“See you around,” said Don.

The house was in flames. The wraiths of Jean and Ivalee Trembath shifted, as Jean and Ivalee ran around the house.

Jean’s wraith looked at Don beseechingly.

“Of course,” said Don gently. He dropped low, stood inside the room. He concentrated, materialized.

The women were drooping like flowers at twilight. The fire crackled behind him.

Jean raised her head, looked into his face with vast surprise. He lifted her—how light she was!—went to the window.

A problem! He was now a material body, and subject to the material laws of gravity…He could no more descend the thirty feet to the ground than could Jean.

Don thought himself to the roof. He materialized, tore down the ancient radio aerial, lowered it past the window, let it hang.

He materialized again inside the room, and now the smoke was thick. He wrapped Jean and Ivalee with drapes from the windows, looped the aerial first around Jean’s body, lowered her to the ground. He thought himself down, released her, repeated the process with Ivalee Trembath. Then he carried the two of them through the back entrance to the alley.

He motioned to a man driving past in a car. The man ignored him. Don materialized in the seat beside him. The man’s jaw dropped, strangled words came from his throat.

“Stop the car,” said Don. “There are people hurt back there.”

The man gasped out his acquiescence. Don put the two women in the back seat.

“Take them to emergency hospital.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

Don relaxed his clutch on reality, expanded away into the after-life.

XIX

The police jailed as many Christian Crusaders as they could identify; the next day they were fined $100 apiece, lectured by the judge and released. Tramping out of the court house they defiantly broke into their hymn,
Onward Christian Soldiers
.

The Reverend Walter Spedelius attempted to rent Orange City Auditorium, but was turned down. He called a mass-meeting on the farm of one Thomas Hand, at the outskirts of the city. And there in a great square framed by eight bonfires, the Reverend Spedelius took up Hugh Bronny’s torch.

“Verily, brothers,” he cried in the brassy sing-song monotone of the evangelist, “our brother Hugh lived and died like a Christian saint—like a crusader of old! He gave all his earthly life to show us the way—just as many years ago Jesus Christ, yea, Jesus Christ, did the same—and brothers, I say unto you, Hugh Bronny, Fighting Hugh Bronny, is here with us tonight—and I say unto you, brothers, we won’t let him down—we’ll fight in the name of Jesus and Moses and the Prophet Elijah and the Prophet Hugh Bronny—and we’ll fight till we bring the Kingdom of God to this wonderful land of ours…”

The Christian Crusaders were news; reporters and photographers were on hand, and the papers and news-magazines throughout the United States announced the new crusade. Segregationists, anti-Semites, America-Firsters thronged to ally themselves with the movement.

The opposition stirred. A dozen liberal organizations denounced the movement, editorials appeared in the great newspapers, bitterly critical of Fighting Hugh Bronny, Walter Spedelius and the Christian Crusade. In the tumult Lucky Don Berwick was almost forgotten. He was no longer news.

XX

In the region beyond time, Donald Berwick lived and moved. He became aware of a tug, a pull; and since he was no more than a thought, dwelling in the massive composite of all the thoughts that ever were, he responded.

Ivalee Trembath was calling him. She and Jean sat in the living room of the old Marsile house.

Don looked into the face of the swaying soul that stood with feet anchored in Ivalee’s body-pellet. The soul spoke, “Release me, Donald, and take my place for a while, and I’ll roam; and when you want to leave, I’ll be back…”

It was strange speaking with Ivalee’s mouth, hearing with her ears. Sight and muscle coordination, at the moment, seemed impossible.

“Hello, darling Jean,” said Don.

“Hello, Don. How are you?”

“I’m very well. Things over here are just as we expected. I’ve got pictures for Kelso.”

“Don—I miss you terribly.”

“I miss you too, Jean…”

“You helped us out of the fire. You materialized.”

“Yes.”

“Is that hard?”

“It wasn’t then. I was at the height of my intensity. I’m not so strong now.”

“I don’t understand, Donald.”

“I don’t either. The stronger I am, the easier it is for me to materialize.”

“Are you weaker—because people aren’t thinking about you so much?”

“Yes. I believe so. More or less.”

Jean’s voice quavered. “Then Hugh must be very strong.”

“Yes,” said Don. “I’ve seen him. He glows with strength. You’d never recognize him.”

“Is he—as wretched as he was on Earth?”

“He’s different. He’s as evil. But the smallness, the petty detestable part of Hugh has dwindled. Hugh is now something magnificently evil.”

“What happens when he sees you?”

Don paused, then said matter-of-factly. “He tries to kill me.”

“Kill you!”

“Sounds odd, doesn’t it? I’m already dead. But that’s how it works.”

“How can he kill you? You’re immaterial—a thought!”

“A thought can drown another thought out; reduce it to oblivion, make it something furtive and despised.”

“Hugh is trying to do that—to you?”

“Yes.”

Jean was silent a moment. Then: “You know what’s going on down here?”

“Not altogether. I’ve been—out, away.”

Jean explained, and Don was silent for several minutes.

“Don,” said Jean diffidently, “are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m thinking.”

There was another minute of silence. Jean sat tense, watching the limp form of Ivalee, her hands twisting and knotting a ribbon.

“Jean.”

“Yes, Don.”

“The battle is between a pair of ideas. Hugh represents one, I represent another. I must fight Hugh. Kill him. Kill the idea of Hugh.”

“But Don—are you strong enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you fight?”

“Just as on Earth. Tooth and nail.”

“If you lose—will I ever see you again?”

The voice was fading, indistinct. “I don’t know, Jean. Wish me luck. I can see Hugh now…He’s coming.”

Ivalee Trembath twitched, mumbled, then lay quiescent.

There was a sudden roar in the room, like a train passing through. The roar subsided to a rumble, faded.

“Iva,” said Jean gently. “Iva.”

No response. Jean listened. The air was very still, but seemed to be stiff and it crackled like cellophane.

Jean slowly got to her feet, went to the telephone.

Hugh Bronny stood over Donald Berwick. They were on a featureless expanse, a plain without end; it might have been the Ukrainian Steppe, or the perspective of a surrealist painting.

Hugh was wearing his black double-breasted coat. His enormously muscular arms filled out the shoulders. His eyes blazed like electric arcs, his face was the size of a shield; his legs were knotted with strength.

“Donald Berwick,” said Hugh, “I’ve hated you in life and I hate you here in the after-life.”

“You could not help but hate me,” said Don, “because you’re the personification of hate—here as you were on Earth.”

“No,” said Hugh, “I was a great religious leader; now I am a saint.”

“Words can’t conceal facts.”

Hugh took an ominous step forward. “I will expunge you, you miserable sick pap-mouthed chicken.”

Jean telephoned Godfrey Head. “Godfrey—I must see you.”

“Sorry, Jean, can’t make it…I’m bound for a meeting of the Faculty Association. Two of the University Regents have become Crusaders; can you believe it?”

“Godfrey—I’ve just talked to Donald. He’s fighting Hugh Bronny right now. We’ve got to help him.”

The telephone line buzzed with silence. Then: “Help him? How?”

“Let me come with you to your meeting…I take it you’re all anti-Bronny?”

Godfrey Head snorted. “Naturally. But what can you do?”

Jean laughed bitterly. “I’m several times a millionaire. There’s a lot I can do.”

Hugh snatched out, caught hold of Don’s shoulder. Fingers dug into flesh like tongs into a bale of hay.

A sword, thought Don, and he held a sword. He swung, hacked; the blade clanged against Hugh’s neck. Hugh reached out his other hand, seized the blade, snatched it from Don.