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The words from one member of a group of people talking nearby caught her ear. “Ah, yes, but it would have been a different thing if this country hadn’t overcome its internal squabbles and resisted the English.” The speaker, a roundly built man with thinning hair and a pugnacious bulldog jaw, stood holding a cigar in one hand and a brandy glass in the other. He spoke with an English accent; his voice had a rasping tone and a hint of a lisp. “Ireland might even have gone solidly over to Rome when Henry VIII went the other way.”

  “Oh, impossible!” one of the listeners exclaimed.

  “Seriously. Purely out of defiance. Then who knows what we might have seen today? The Reversion might never have happened, and England could conceivably have dominated the Irish Isles. Then, America might have been started by some kind of Protestant, Puritan, monogamy cult. Then where would all of the freedoms be that we take for granted today?”

  Gina stared in sudden astonishment as she recognized the speaker. It was Winston Churchill, one of her favorite historical figures.

  The glowering, stormy-faced man with thick side-whiskers, sitting talking with two women on a sofa facing the fire, was Ludwig van Beethoven.

  Shaken, Gina moved her head to take in others. “Nein. Zat is not really true, vat zey say. Only two ideas do I haff in my life, unt vun off zem vass wrong.” Albert Einstein was talking to Mark Twain.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I abhor war as much as anyone-more than most, I suspect. But the reality is that evil people exist, who can be restrained only by the certainty of retaliation…” Edward Teller, nuclear physicist.

  “Let’s face it. Most decisions that matter are made by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.” Ayn Rand, to someone who looked like Mencken.

  Another voice spoke close behind her. “Splendid to see you again, Gina. Doubtless dinner will be up to the usual standard.” She turned, now feeling bewildered. It was Benjamin Franklin, easily identified even in his dark, contemporary suit and tie. He leaned closer to whisper. “Tell the secret. What are you surprising us with this time?”

  “Er, venison.” Gina found that she had a complete set of pseudomemories: deciding the menu; consulting with the caterers; planning the seating. The picture of the dining room was clear in her mind.

  “Wonderful. One of my favorites. And my congratulations on the new book. It’s bound to raise a few hackles, but somebody needed to say it. Nothing could be more obvious than that individuals are not equal. They differ in size, shape, speed, strength, intelligence, aptitude, and in the disposition to better themselves. Of course, the opportunities to all should be the same. But to demand equality of results as a right is absurd. Since it is impossible for anything to grow beyond its inherent potential, the only way of achieving it would be to cut all trees down to the size of the shortest.”

  Amazingly, Gina knew exactly what he was talking about. “I’m glad you agree,” she said, forcing a thin smile.

  Franklin leaned forward again and covered his mouth with a hand. “Ayn is livid that she didn’t write it. You ought to try and find some way to console her.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” Gina promised, puffing herself together at last and managing a conspiratorial smile.

  “Good… And how are your husbands? Well, I trust?”

  Husbands?

  Gina’s smile froze as a new tapestry of recollections unfurled itself. “The last time I saw-” She balked. The image in her mind of the man she had driven to the airport had Vic Hunt’s face.

  “Yes, which one? The Englishman?” Franklin inquired genially.

  “VISAR, what does this mean?”

  “You tell me.”

  Heads turned toward the door. Gina followed their gaze. A lithe, athletic figure, resplendent in tuxedo and evening dress, had appeared and was beaming at the company with arms extended wide. He had piercing blue eyes, a droopy mustache, and hair that fell in yellow waves to his shoulders. “We thank all of you for coming. Dinner will be just a few minutes. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves. Feel that this home is all your homes.” Appreciative murmurs came from around.

  Gina gaped at him with a mixture of disbelief and confusion. He came over to her, assured, confident, mocking behind the laughing eyes, and offered his arm. “Excuse us. May I have my wife back?” he said to Franklin.

  “But of course.” Franklin bowed his head and moved back. They moved away.

  “What are you doing here, Larry?” Gina hissed.

  “You brought me here. I’m just obliging.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe yourself, then.”

  “Why do you always insist on acting like an asshole?”

  “Why did you marry an asshole?”

  “That was a long time ago. It’s been over between us for years.”

  “Only because you made it that way.”

  “We weren’t suited.”

  “Wrong. We could have had fun. You had the curiosity, but you didn’t know how to handle it. So you turned the problem into something else.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gina told him.

  “Oh no? Come on, you’re not really interested in listening to this bunch all night. Let’s move the night along.”

  The reception room and the guests vanished. Larry was dominating the situation, the way he always had. Gina started to rebel, the way she always had. Why had it always had to be his way?

  They had been transported upstairs to the master bedroom. Larry’s jacket and tie hung on a chair, and he was standing by her. Another of his wives was lying propped against pillows on the bed. She smiled invitingly, her breasts and legs outlined through a thin, white robe that contrasted with her dark hair. Larry grinned at Gina challengingly. Despite herself, she felt an excitement rising inside her.

  The woman stretched out a hand. “It’s only a dream, Gina. We can do anything we like. Haven’t you always been curious about everything?”

  It was Sandy.

  Gina felt Larry’s arm slide around her waist. She pulled back. “No, I don’t want this.”

  “Oh, but you do,” VISAR’s voice said from somewhere distant.

  Sandy started untying the belt of her robe.

  “Get me away from here!”

  And Gina was back in the coupler cubicle. She tore herself up from the recliner and fled into the corridor. Farther along, she passed Alan and Keith, who were just leaving the bar; she did not even see them. They exchanged baffled looks, shrugged, and continued on their way.

  Ten minutes later, her chest was still thumping as she sat on her bed, smoking a tranquilizer. Yes, she thought. She had a pretty good idea of what could have deranged a planetful of Jevlenese. Small wonder that half of them seemed to have lost touch with reality.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In a rocky hollow below the mountainside, Thrax stood before the Rock of Decision, staring at the stone pillar that rose almost to the level of his head and concentrating his inner energy into his hand as he held it before him. To one side, the Master, Shingen-Hu, looked on impassively, while the three other initiates of the school sat watching from behind and the monks stood in a silent circle, projecting sympathetic thought rays.

  “Believe now,” Shingen-Hu told him. “There must be no holding back. Let no part of you doubt.”

  This had to be the moment of complete faith. Thrax focused all the effort that he had learned to muster. His hand glowed, then shone with an inner light.

  “Now!” the Master commanded.

  Thrax drove his hand against the solid rock. The rock yielded, and his hand passed through. He held it steady, inside the pillar, feeling the strange sensation of directed energy coursing through him, and the exhilaration of matter being subordinated to his will.

  The power was starting to ebb. If he faltered now, the rock would rematerialize with all the crushing force that bound its particles together. Gathering his remaining strength, he passed his hand slowly sideways, causing the rock to part before and recons
titute itself behind, flowing over him as if it were water, until his hand emerged unscathed from the other side of the pillar. The glow flickered and died. Exhausted but ecstatic, Thrax stood while Shingen-Hu placed across his shoulder a sash bearing the emblem of the purple spiral. He then moved to take his place among the new adepts on one side of the circle.

  Later, when the rites were over, the new adepts sat facing the Master across a hearth of stones in which a fire had been lit. From the night sky above, Nieru looked down upon his own. A few filaments of currents traced their lines toward it-Thrax had learned to see them by now. In earlier times, the longer-established monks said, to the eyes of an adept the entire vista of the skies had writhed and twisted in fantastic patterns of glowing currents.

  “What shall we find in Hyperia?” one of the novices asked the Master. Shingen-Hu had seen the visions borne by the currents.

  “It will happen suddenly,” Shingen-Hu answered. “You will emerge as a new being, a being born to the ways of Hyperia. All will be new and strange.”

  “Is it true that madness lurks to afflict the unwary?” another asked.

  “There are risks. You will be tested. The being which thou art must subdue the being which thou strivest to become. Madness indeed lies in wait for those who ride up on the currents, but whose training is not complete. Beware those of divided minds, whom the conflict rages within. Seek strength from Nieru when troubles assail.”

  “What?” Thrax queried. “Does Nieru exist, then, even in the world beyond Waroth, also?”

  “Seek his sign of the purple spiral,” Shingen-Hu replied. “For that shall be the sign under which his followers gather. Know then that these are thy kind, and let that be the source of thy strength.”

  “And will they teach us of the Hyperian magic?” the next asked.

  “Hyperia will teach you its own magic.”

  “Magical laws?” Thrax said. “Artifacts that repeat? Objects that spin?”

  “Artifacts beyond your wildest imaginings,” the Master answered. “Everywhere? So does Hyperian magic extend over the whole world?”

  “The whole world… and places far beyond, and across the voids between. Hyperians journey among many, magical worlds.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ayultha, the leader of the Jevlenese cult that called itself the Spiral of Awakening and used the device of a purple spiral as its emblem, had come to Shiban. It was the same Ayultha who had led the demonstration in the city of Barusi on the southern continent, which had led to Garuth’s calling Hunt.

  The SoA had been founded over two hundred years previously by a woman called Sykha, a hitherto unheard-of office clerk who had undergone an abrupt personality change. The sect’s basic creed was an involved doctrine of reincarnation, which held that the individual developed through a series of “phases” of existence on successively higher planes, each one representing a step farther along a transition that progressed away from the purely material and mechanistic, and toward the spiritual and willful. The series of lives experienced in this universe, or plane, therefore added up to merely the preparation that was necessary to proceed to the next phase. Everybody had thus lived in other, lower phases in other forms before emerging into the realm of existence as presently perceived, and after a number of cycles at the human level, which could vary and depended on how diligently the SoA’s teachings were attended to and practiced, they would go on to enter higher ones. The early theoreticians of the movement had given it all a scientific-sounding basis by tying it in to the transitions of physical particles between i-space and normal space as described by the physics of the Thuriens.

  The initial appearance of Ayultha to the faithful at the start of his tour of the Shiban area would also be the first event to be held in the arena of a just-completed sports complex, west of the city, next to the three-level highway connecting the center to the spaceport at Geerbaine. The complex had been built at their own initiative by a combination of public and private Jevlenese agencies since the Ganymean takeover of the planet’s administration. Thus, it had come to symbolize the policy of self-help that the Ganymeans were trying to encourage.

  To insure adequate public recognition of the Success of the venture, a formal opening ceremony had been scheduled to precede the commencement of the Spiral of Awakening rally. However, because of a sudden illness resulting from a toxic mold that was found unaccountably to have contaminated the cheese in a salad served for his lunch, Shiban’s chief of police would not be attending as planned. Instead, his place would be taken by his deputy, Obayin.

  On the day before the opening, a gray limousine pulled off the high-level throughway and halted on an unfinished access ramp overlooking the approaches into the sports complex.

  Scirio, who ran the syndicate’s operations on the west side and in Shiban center, motioned with a hand to indicate a slender, two-lane, flying bridge curving away from the midlevel trafficway below and connecting into a delivery area on one side of the two main buildings at the front of the complex, between the arena and the dome housing the gymnasium.

  “It works like this,” he said to Grevetz, the regional boss, who was sitting next to him in the rear compartment. “Ten minutes before he gets here, a truck breaks down on the main ramp up to the front entrance.”

  “They’re not gonna be letting any trucks up through there,” Grevetz declared. “Not when the big names are due to show up. It’ll be sealed off.”

  “Special delivery of stuff they’ll need for the born-again concert that’s starting afterward,” Scirio said. “We’ve got a pass for the driver. And just to be sure, the captain who’ll be in charge of traffic duty tomorrow has been fixed to make sure it’s let through. He’s on the payroll.”

  Grevetz nodded unsmilingly. “Okay. Then what?”

  Scirio pointed. “The other front ramp up from ground isn’t finished yet. So he’ll be diverted up to the middle level and routed over that bridge. It’s the only other way in from this side right now.”

  “Okay.”

  Scirio shrugged. “The job was done in too much of a hurry. The Ganymeans were more interested in getting nice pictures in the papers instead of letting the contractor concentrate on getting the job right.” He indicated the center section of the bridge, which was of metal construction, supported by cantilevers projecting from pylons on one side. “Tonight some people are gonna make a few changes underneath there. The wrong kind of some sorta pins that they use got ordered, and only half of ’em were put in. So that whole section comes unstuck.” He waved a hand at the drop below, which went down past the ground-level trafficway and into the cutting where a ramp emerged from a cross-tunnel. “It’s over a hundred feet straight down onto concrete. Plus he’ll be going down in the middle of a hundred tons of junk. There won’t be enough left of him to fill his shoes. Everyone writes it off as just another screwup.”

  Grevetz studied the layout in silence for a while. “How are you going to stop some other bozo from going across there first?” he asked at last. “The opening isn’t due until ten-thirty. Whoever does the job will have to be out by six at the latest. That’s four and a half hours.”

  “The Ramp Closed sign will be lit from midnight on. A tech down a hole turns it off just before Obayin gets there. Plus there’ll be a construction barrier set up across the entry until he’s on his way.”

  Grevetz nodded that he was satisfied.

  Later that day he met with Eubeleus, the Deliverer, at a house in Shiban that the Axis of Light owned, and went over the plan with him. “It is going to be busy there tomorrow morning,” he warned. “More people could get hurt.”

  “Most of whom will be purple,” Eubeleus replied. “So if a few of them are in the wrong place, Ayultha should be grateful to us. We’ll be giving him some martyrs.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  So much had been new and strange. It seemed impossible to the Vishnu’s Terran passengers as they passed through the ship’s docking bays to board the surface lander that
only two days had passed since they had come aboard and seen their first views inside the Thurien starship. They had reentered normal space something like twenty Earth hours previously, five thousand million miles from Jevlen’s parent star, Athena, and were now riding in high orbit above the planet itself. Kalor and Merglis, the two Thurien officers who had met the UNSA group on their arrival, reappeared to see them off. Hunt and his group had taken up their invitation to visit the Vishnu’s command center after breakfast on the second day.

  The craft that carried them down to the surface was a silent, flattened, gold ovoid, with an interior more like a hotel lounge area than a passenger cabin-nothing that the Thuriens did took much heed of conserving space. Alan, one the marketing executives from Disney World, sat across from Danchekker for the descent. “That VISAR system is something else,” he said, making conversation. “It’s incredible. We ought to think about getting something like that into

  One of the schoolchildren from Florida, a girl of about twelve, with freckles and braces, was listening from a seat nearby. “It can make you think you’re as small as an ant and see everything from that size,” she told them.

  “Yeah. It’s real neat,” the boy next to her opined.

  “You see. The kids really go for it,” Alan declared.

  “Hmnm.” Danchekker considered the suggestion. “Well, as long as you don’t try and make the world simply the way it is at our level, but merely scaled down in size,” he conceded. “I presume the intention would be to inform rather than mislead.”

  “How do you mean?” Alan asked, frowning.

  Danchekker took off his spectacles and examined them. “Simply by the fact of getting smaller, an object’s volume, and hence its weight, decreases much faster than its area,” he explained. “Hence its bulk becomes a negligible factor, and its surface properties rule the style of its existence-an elementary fact, but one which is apparently beyond the ability of our illustrious creators of popular movies to grasp.”