Part 22 (1/2)

Brooding over the contingencies kept Hagen alert throughout most of the night. But around the dead hour, 0400, when human vital energies burn lowest with the depletion of blood sugar, even a metapsychic tended to falter. The mind's eye glazed and looked inward to a world of shadows, to memories and fearful imaginings concretized in nightmare ...

Trudi takes his hand and leads him along an unfamiliar path to a place where the soil is churned and raw and a new building thrusts up huge against the morning sky, sparkling and humming. He begins to whimper as they go inside and the terrible ineffabilities threaten (he is only three and his metapsychic receptors are untrained and clumsy), and the nurse says, ”Hush. It's all right. We must say 'Welcome back' to Papa.”

The walk on a strange slick floor into dim coolness, and grownups crowd tall about him, ignoring his weak telepathic queries, mind-whispering of matters incomprehensible: Sta.r.s.earch ... Lylmik? ... MADNESS! ... G.o.ddam he did it! 1700 lightyear scan first try!

And back with brains nonfriedCan't believe he got rig work b.l.o.o.d.y jungle.

NevergetMEusef.u.c.kingh.e.l.lrigMarcMad2yearsrecovernowstart (MoverGet that imbecile out of here.

But how long a sta.r.s.earch?

MADNESS! MADNESS!.

We've got nothing but time sweetheart.

6,000,000 friggerty years.

It'll work ... sta.r.s.earch ... rescue us!

... new beginning ... coadunation ... coerce them or appeal altruismethic ...

MADNESS!.

Mental Man ... we still may know Him!

The kid you b.o.o.by.

Oh ...

Let Hagen upfront to see.

Let him see!

Let him see!

MADNESS! LET THE CHILD SEE THE MADNESS THAT BROUGHT US TO THIS EXILE! LET HIM SEE HIS OWN FUTURE ...

It was only a dream. A dream of an enormous captive thing, a brain shucked from its body. Glad to be! Energized artificially, scorning true Unity, glorying in loneness.

In the dream, Trudi lifted him to see the thing, and said, ”It's your Papa.” The three-year-old-boy screamed and tried to run away.

Only a dream. That was why he didn't try to run now as he saw the thing again, outside the c.o.c.kpit windscreen of the modular combine. It seemed to be resting on the impeller access hatch, between the twin housings of the sonic disruptors. A hulking form, dully gleaming, having the rough shape of a man. Powercables and armoured hoses sprouted from its blind head and melted into the greying sky.

In his dream, Hagen arose from his seat at the navigation console, opened the c.o.c.kpit door, and stepped outside. He seemed to float toward the phantom CE rig on the foredeck, and as he approached, it became transparent, and the operator in his pressure-envelope coverall extended his arms, bending down, and smiled at the frightened three-year-old.

”It's only me. It's only Papa.”

But he held back, knowing he could not risk the embrace, even in the dream aware that the real body of a man wearing that armour would be refrigerated to a point near absolute zero, almost completely divorced from the transcendent brain.

”I think I finally understand,” Hagen said. ”Jack was your model. It wasn't possible for you to permanently modify yourself. You were too old for a successful adaptation. But you were determined to be more than Mental Man's brother.”