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pretzel with his heels behind his ears.
"There. Thus."
He receives the "voice" distinctly but at some receptor-focus separate from
his normal center, like an ear held out.
"Speak so. I have assisted you to form a receptor-node. Place a
thought here to pass it on."
Good grief, is this what telepaths do? Feeling like an untrained
contortionist, Dann tries to form a thought of gratitude and hold it apart,
"there," at this new center of his mind.
"Where are my friends?"
"They are nearby. You are Tanel. A message: You must all join Father
Heagran. That way."
A sense of direction imprints itself together with the words, coupled with an
impression of stretching or flowing across points.
"Where are we? What is this place?"
he tries to ask, but in his urgency forgets the correct procedure. When he
recovers himself and goes through the new convoluted channel, nothing answers
him. He receives only a sense of disapproving departure. Father Ustan has gone
away.
Very well. To go that way. Trying to hold his strange new configuration, he
reaches out and finds himself able to flow from base to charged base.
As he masters this mode of locomotion, he tries to call or send out as
discreetly as he can the names of the others.
"Someone from Earth, are you there? Please answer if you can."
And suddenly, delightingly, someone is here, saying soundlessly at his new
"ear."
"Doctor Dann!"
It's Valerie, he's sure of it, the warmth, the indefinable flavor of
personality. Forgetting composure, he rushes at the touch and is rewarded by a
startling buffet of reproof-laughter-drawing-away, coupled with a picture of
himself, absurdly shaggy, falling in a bear-hug onto Valerie's figure.
"Excuse me, please, I'm sorry I don't know how
" Awkwardly he pulls back, reforming his configuration, terrified that he
will lose her.
"Think about just touching hands lightly."
The tiny gentle "voice"
comes in his brain.
It is like Tyree all over again, with no body. He tries to comply, and is
rewarded by a definite sense of impalpable contact.
"Frodo is here. And Chris is around but he won't talk. Now we better go. I'll
lead, right?"
"Yes."
He feels the touch pull or draw delicately, and flows himself with it,
marveling. The quality of the contact is Valerie's but not the same defensive
young mind he had known before. Strength flows gently from her, and something
like elation. Leading them through this lightless, soundless, senseless place
beyond life she is excited, unafraid. And far
more skilled than he. The vulnerability was left on Earth, he thinks. Here
nothing scares her.
He flows or leaps along in her wake, exerting all his efforts to hold the
contact lightly. Once or twice she checks and changes direction, and he has a
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fleeting sense of other presences. She must be guiding them around groups of
Tyrenni in their path. Or over or under all directions have the same valence
here. How could a disembodied mind know weight?
Preoccupied, he blunders into the outskirts of another mind, a quick bright
impression of many words mixed with musics, and an unmistakably hostile laugh.
"Frodo!"
Trying to transmit apology, he swerves away. His new "posture" is becoming
slightly more natural, but he still feels like a man trying to bicycle a
tightwire while holding out an ear-trumpet with both hands.
And Earthly questions are waking in him again. What in God's name is this
place? It has physical existence, he is sure of that. They are actually
moving. But what and where are they?
As if in answer, another light contact jolts him and a strange word jumps into
his mind.
"Superconductive circuits."
Who's there? He lunges awkwardly for an instant before recalling how to
project?
"Chris? Chris Costakis?"
The absurdity of human names here in astral nothingness.
A cryptic emanation brushes him, flavored with acidity and wistfulness.
"Keep moving, Doc."
It's gone. So what had been the little man is still here, still his
characteristic self.
Dann resumes his progress, pondering. Superconductors? Chris must have "heard"
him puzzling over this place, he must be puzzling too.
Superconductors are something that happens in extreme cold, he recalls.
Currents cycle endlessly. No friction... He knows nothing of such things.
Could they in fact be sustained by, be moving among, some such cold circuitry
of space? Could a living mind be compatible with such energies?
It seems as likely as anything... The words ghost-program come back to him; he
thrusts them away. Lost, gone forever, with everything else. Don't think of
her. Keep moving in this unreality, it's all that's left.
Without knowing it, he must have sent out a sign or squeak of pain. A
firmness brushes him, palpable as a finger laid on his lips. Not human, he
thinks. Some passing Tyrenni has admonished him. Anguish is not permitted.
Well, perhaps he can learn. He must; there are no drugs here.
Just then he becomes aware of a new extraordinary thing: For some time he has
not been in total lightlessness. Out on the edges of his mind he has been
sensing something, like seeing at night from the corners of the eye. It is not
in his visual system at all, really but there is something spatial, blurs or
presences. Faint swirls, the memories of reflections in dark water; ghostly
differentiations too faint to make out except that three of them seem to be
moving with him against a background of others. He tries to "look" harder, and
they vanish. He thinks of closing his eyes, and slowly they come back: dim,
moonlit glimmers, but there. Is this perhaps what they meant by the
life-bands, is he starting to "see" life?
Excitedly he tries again and again, failing more often then he succeeds.
He is trying too hard, maybe. Relax. Think away. Yes there they are again,
moving with him. What he takes to be Valerie ahead is clearest, if any of this
can be called clear. But what happiness to have something like vision again,
even in this faint mode!
At this moment she checks and he has to strive away from colliding.
"Look."
He can "see" nothing, but somehow the space before them seems different, as if
it framed or led up to something. And then he becomes aware that he is
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