I do not know how long the battle lasted. It seemed that perhaps days passed, though there was no sunrise and sunset down there-and I did not tire in my analogue body, did not need to stop for food and drink. I was the irresistible force, wading into the legs and tails and shining carapaces. In time, the numbers of the scorpions began to grow smaller, and at last the air refused to disgorge more of them. I knew they were not gone forever, because they were nothing more than psychic energy, and that could never be truly destroyed. But by then, I would not care if they encircled him.
Child still sat on the ice, staring where the scorpions had marched but where there was now nothing but scored ice. Approaching his analogue cautiously, I touched him, hunkered before him.
"Child?"
Quiet.
"Child? Speak to me?"
He looked at me. He blinked his eyes. And then chaos broke loose as his insanity boiled through the surface tension of the analogue and swept over me!
I was swept up, up, on a tide of human flesh, of torn arms and legs, of bleeding mouths, broken teeth, shattered bones, burning flesh, splintered eyeballs. Monsters rose in the swell and came toward me, lumbering ogres and swimming reptilian horrors. The arms and mouths in the ocean of human parts attacked me, grasped me and tried to pull me down, bit me and chewed at my unreal psychic flesh.
I felt myself losing hold of my own equilibrium. In a moment, I would spiral over the edge, into madness for the second time. I had recovered only recently, and I knew a second plunge to the bottom of that well would be the last I would ever make. I would fall back into gibbering incoherency, and I would remain there forever. Twice mad is once too often, and the shores of detached logic would never be available to me again.
The nearest ogre reached for me, with his sevenfingered hands, each finger tipped with the fanged mouth of a yellow-eyed snake.
I rolled across the rippling floor of human parts, kicking pieces of bodies up as I went.
The snake fingers missed by inches.
A flurry of mutilated corpses clutched me and pulled me under the surface of the sea.
I fought to air again, through nightmare conglomerations of dead men and women,
"CHILD!" I screamed.
Another ogre thundered down on me.
In the last moment before I could be grasped and dismembered, I did the only thing that would save me. Giving myself over to the basest of my id lusts, radiating bloodhunger and sexual need of the vilest sort, I repelled the ogres and the dragons, forced back the tide of human bodies that tore at me. In seconds, I was back on the blue ice floor where again the analogue of Child sat, tranced.
I circled him. Now I was in the form of one of the great scorpion beasts, mandibles chattering, forked stinging tail raised above my back, ready to attack.
His psychic energy formed a wall against me, but I danced on, broached that wall with my own mind, and leaped upon him, thrashing with him on the floor. This time, rather than argue with him, rather than plead with him, I devoured his psychic energy, destroyed him, absorbed him, and dissipated his shattered mind throughout my own.
Child no longer existed. I had killed him. But now I was in total control of his body. I left that place, made it dissolve around me. I made the mountain appear, and I climbed it, entered the caves through which I had first come down into Child's subconscious mind. In moments, I had freed myself, and was looking out at the world through Child's eyes, encased, again, in real flesh
THREE
The Incomplete Creation
I
I found myself in Child's body, lying in a hospital bed with the barred sides raised to provide the illusion of a prison. The room was a private one, somewhere far up in the tower of Artificial Creation, no doubt. There was no light but that from a small blue bulb plugged directly into a floor socket. In that eerie glow, I could see that there was no nurse in attendance. How long had Child lain like this, dazed, almost comatose, unable to speak or see or hear anything of the real world as his madness kept him sealed in the analogue of his subconscious? Days or weeks? Perhaps even years?
Somewhat frantic at that last thought, I pushed up, weak and dizzy. My frail, bony arms felt as if they would crack, but they got me to the edge of the bed just the same. My short legs dangled a foot from the tiles after I got the barred slats down, and that measly twelve inches looked more like two or three miles. I built my courage, dropped, felt skinny legs buckle. I crashed forward on my face and lay there for a while, collecting my wits.
Was this what it was like for Child, this inability to cope with the inadequacies of his own body, this helplessness and dependence? No wonder his own search for a purpose and identity had been so much more thorough and extensive than my own.
I got on hands and knees and gripped the edge of the bed for support, gained my feet again. The door was but a dozen steps away. I toddled toward it, collapsed against it, holding on to the knob to keep from taking another serious fall.
Opening the door was a major chore, compounded by the fact that I wanted to do it quietly. I didn't want anyone to know that I was awake now and moving around. First, I wanted to find out a few things, attempt to discover how long I had been trapped in Child's mind.
And if I could somehow locate my own body-for, surely, they were keeping it somewhere close at hand, in another dark hospital room-and re-enter it before they were aware I had returned, I would be in a better position to take care of myself. I didn't trust Morsfagen or any other super-patriot professional soldier. The more ignorant I was about what had transpired since I had gone mad within Child, the further removed I was from my own body and, therefore, autonomy, the more power they would hold over me, the more they could demand and perpetrate.
The door finally opened and gave a view of an empty corridor that was painted a flat, unreflective blue. I stepped out of the room, closed the door, and hung by the wall, breathing heavily and trying to ignore the pain in the sunken chest of the mutant body which I inhabited.
I didn't care if I destroyed Child's body during this trek, for I had already destroyed Child himself by absorbing his psychic energy back there in that blue-floored room beneath the broken, ebony plain. He would never own his body again. I could feel his intellect, devoid of any personality now, within my own mind, magnifying my intelligence and perceptions. But that was the only minim of Child's real self that would ever survive.
Pushing away from the wall, I started down the corridor. I could not expect it to remain empty for long, and I would gain nothing by being seen here, before I had learned anything of my situation. I weaved from wall to wall, barely managing to keep my feet. And when the tall, uniformed man appeared at the head of the stairwell and shouted in surprise, I collapsed on my face
When I woke, I was in the same hospital room, in the same bed, with the metal slats raised around the sides to keep me from falling out. There were differences, though.
There was plenty of light, and there was a nurse, a buxom, gray-haired matron with a bland, pleasant face and a concerned look plastered all over it. There was a guard by the door, on the inside, his holster unsnapped.
Why I should be considered that much of a threat when I could hardly even walk, I did not know. Morsfagen and a white-smocked physician stood by the right side of my bed, looking down at me. The physician exhibited concern and professional interest. Morsfagen had a look of hatred and sheer animal cunning.
"Welcome back," he said.
"I'm thirsty," I croaked, realizing for the first time how parched my throat was.