“Who are you?” Babble said hoarsely.
The man said in a low, mild voice, “I just arrived here in my noser. My name is Ned Russell. I’m an economist.” He held out his hand toward Babble, who accepted it reflexively.
“I thought everyone was here,” Babble said. “We have thirteen people; that’s all there’s supposed to be.”
“I applied for a transfer and this was the destination. Delmak-O.” Russell turned to Seth Morley, again holding out his hand. The two men shook.
“Let’s see your transfer order,” Babble said.
Russell dug into his coat pocket. “This is a strange place you’re operating here. Almost no lights, the automatic pilot inoperative… I had to land it myself and I’m not that used to a noser. I parked it with all the others, in the field at the edge of your settlement.”
“So we have two points to raise with Belsnor,” Seth Morley said. “The made-at-Terra inscription on the miniaturized building. And him.” He wondered which would prove to be the more important. At the moment he could not see clearly enough ahead to know one way or the other. Something to save us, he thought; something to doom us. It—the equation of everything—could go either way.
In the nocturnal darkness Susie Smart slipped by degrees in the direction of Tony Dunkeiwelt’s living quarters. She wore a black slip and high heels—knowing that the boy liked that.
Knock, knock.
“Who is it?” a voice mumbled from within.
“Susie.” She tried the knob. The door was unlocked. So she went ahead on in.
In the center of the room Tony Dunkelwelt sat crosslegged on the floor in front of a single candle. His eyes, in the dim light, were shut; evidently he was in a trance. He showed no sign of noticing her or recognizing her, and yet he had asked her name. “Is it all right for me to come in?”
His trance-states worried her. In them he withdrew entirely from the regular world. Sometimes he sat this way for hours, and when they questioned the boy about what he saw he could give little or no answer.
“I don’t mean to butt in,” she said, when he did not answer. In a modulated, detached voice, Tony said, “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” she said, relieved. Seating herself in a straight-backed chair she found her package of cigarettes, lit one, settled back for what she knew would be a long wait.
But she did not feel like waiting.
Cautiously, she kick-kicked at him with the toe of her high heeled shoe. “Tony?” she said. “Tony?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Tell me, Tony, what do you see? Another world? Can you see all the busy gods running about doing good deeds? Can you see the Form Destroyer at work? How does he look?” No one ever saw the Form Destroyer except Tony Dunkelwelt. He had the principle of evil all to himself. And it was this frightening quality about the boy’s trances which kept her from trying to interfere; when he was in a trance-state she tried to leave him alone, to work his way back from his vision of pure malignancy to their normal and everyday responsibility.
“Don’t talk to me,” Tony mumbled. He had his eyes squeezed shut, and his face was pinched and red.
“Knock off for a while,” she said. “You ought to be in bed. Do you want to go to bed, Tony? With me, for example?” She placed her hand on his shoulder; by degrees he then slid away, until she was holding nothing. “You remember what you said about me loving you because you’re not yet a real man? You are a real man. Wouldn’t I know? Leave the deciding up to me: I’ll tell you when you’re a man and when you’re not, if you ever happen to be not. But up until now you’ve been more than a man. Did you know that an eighteen-year-old can have seven orgasms in one twenty-four-hour period?” She waited, but he said nothing. “That’s pretty good,” she said.
Tony said raptly, “There is a deity above the Deity. One who embraces all four.”
“What four? Four what?”
“The four Manifestations. The Mentufacturer, the—”
“Who’s the fourth?”
“The Form Destroyer.”
“You mean you can commune with a god that combines the Form Destroyer with the other three? But that’s not possible, Tony; they are good gods and the Form Destroyer is evil.”
“I know that,” he said in a sullen voice. “That’s why what I see is so keen. A god-above-god, which no one can see but me.” Again, by degrees, he drifted back into his trance; he ceased speaking to her.
“How come you can see something that no one else can, and still call it real?” Susie asked. “Specktowsky didn’t say anything about such a super Deity. I think it’s all in your own mind.” She felt cross and cold, and the cigarette burned her nose; she had, as usual, been smoking too much. “Let’s go to bed, Tony,” she said vigorously, and stubbed out her cigarette. “Come on.” Bending, she took hold of him by the arm. But he remained inert. Like a rock.
Time passed. He communed on and on.
“Jesus!” she said angrily. “Well the hell with it; I’ll leave. Goodnight.” Rising, she walked rapidly to the door, opened it, stood half inside and half out. “We could have so much fun if we went to bed,” she said plaintively. “Is there something about me you don’t like? I mean, I could change it. And I’ve been reading; there’re several positions I didn’t know. Let me teach them to you; they sound like a lot of fun.”
Tony Dunkelwelt opened his eyes and, unwinkingly, regarded her. She could not decipher the expression on his face, and it made her uneasy; she began rubbing her bare arms and shivering.
“The Form Destroyer,” Tony said, “is absolutely-not-God.”
“I realize that,” she said.
“But ‘absolutely-not-God’ is a category of being.”
“If you say so, Tony.”
“And God contains all categories of being. Therefore God can be absolutely-not-God, which transcends human reason and logic. But we intuitively feel it to be so. Don’t you? Wouldn’t you prefer a monism that transcends our pitiful dualism? Specktowsky was a great man, but there is a higher monistic structure above the dualism that he foresaw. There is a higher God.” He eyed her. “What do you think about that?” he asked, a little timidly.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Susie said, with enthusiasm. “It must be so great to have trances and perceive what you perceive. You should write a book saying that what Specktowsky says is wrong.”
“It’s not wrong,” Tony said. “It’s transcended by what I see. When you get to that level, two opposite things can be equal. That’s what I’m trying to reveal.”
“Couldn’t you reveal it tomorrow?” she asked, still shivering and massaging her bare arms. “I’m so cold and so tired and I had an awful run-in with that goddam Mary Morley tonight already, so come on, please; let’s go to bed.”
“I’m a prophet,” Tony said. “Like Christ or Moses or Specktowsky. I will never be forgotten.” Again he shut his eyes. The weak candle flickered and almost went out. He did not notice.
“If you’re a prophet,” Susie said, “perform a miracle.” She had read in Specktowsky’s Book about that, about the prophets having miraculous powers. “Prove it to me,” she said.
One eye opened. “Why must you have a sign?”
“I don’t want a sign. I want a miracle.”
“A miracle,” he said, “is a sign. All right, I’ll do something that will show you.” He gazed around the room, his face holding a deeply-ingrained resentment. She had awakened him now, she realized. And he didn’t like it.