"I think so."
"Now!" Howe brought to bear everything he had learned in one hundred and thirty busy years, concentrated on the single problem of telekinetic control. He avoided, refused contact with the mind of the evil thing before him and turned his attention to destroying its physical envelope.
The thing stopped.
Slowly, slowly, like a deepsea diver caught in an implosion, like an orange in a squeezer, the spatial limits in which it existed were reduced. A spherical locus in space enclosed it, diminished.
The thing was drawn in and in. The ungrown stumps of its legs folded against its thick torso. The head ducked down against the chest to escape the unrelenting pressure. For a single instant it gathered its enormous perverted power and fought back. Joan was disconcerted, momentarily nauseated, by the backwash of evil.
But Howe withstood it without change of expression; the sphere shrank again.
The eyeless skull split. At once, the sphere shrank to the least possible dimension. A twenty-inch ball hung in the air, a ball whose repulsive superficial details did not invite examination.
Howe held the harmless, disgusting mess in place with a fraction of his mind, and inquired "Are you all right, my dear?"
'Te-y, Senior. Master Ling helped me once when I needed it."
"That I anticipated. Now for the others." Speaking aloud he said, "Which do you prefer: To join your leader, or to forget what you know?" He grasped air with his fingers and made a squeezing gesture,
The man with the cigar screamed.
"I take that to be an answer," said Howe. "Very well, Joan, pass them to me, one at a time."
He operated subtly on their minds, smoothing out the patterns of colloidal gradients established by their corporal experience.
A few minutes later (he room contained four sane but infant adults and a gory mess on the rug.
Coburn stepped into a room to which he had not been invited. "School's out, boys." he announced cheerfully. He pointed a finger at one occupant. "That goes for you." Flame crackled from his finger tip, lapped over his adversary. "Yes, and for you." The flames spouted forth a second time. "And for you." A third received his final cleansing.
Brother Artemis, "God's Angry Man," faced the television pick-up. "And if these things be not true," he thundered, "then may the Lord strike me down dead!"
The coroner's verdict of heart failure did not fully account for the charred condition of his remains.
A political rally adjourned early because the principal speaker failed to show up. An anonymous beggar was found collapsed over his pencils and chewing gum. A director of nineteen major corporatons caused his secretary to have hysterics by breaking off in the midst of dictating to converse with the empty air before lapsing into cheerful idiocy. A celebrated stereo and television star disappearedObituary stories were hastily dug out and completed for seven members of Congress, several judges, and two governors.
The usual evening sing at Camp Mark Twain took place that night without the presence of Camp Director Moulton. He was attending a full conference of the adepts, assembled all in the flesh for the first time in many years.
Joan looked around as she entered the hall. "Where is Master Ling?" she inquired of Howe.
He studied her face for a moment. For the first time since she had first met him nearly two years before she thought he seemed momentarily at a loss. "My dear," he said gently, "you must have realized that Master Ling remained with us, not for his own benefit, but for ours. The crisis for which he waited has been met; the rest of the work we must do alone."
A hand went to her throat. "You .,. you mean ... ?" "He was very old and very weary. He had kept his heart beating, his body functioning, by continuous control for these past forty-odd years."
"But why did he not renew and regenerate?" "He did not wish it. We could not expect him to remain here indefinitely after he had grown up." "No." She bit her trembling lip. "No. That is true.
We are children and he has other things to do ... but Oh, Ling! Ling! Master Ling!" She buried her head on Howe's shoulder.
"Why are you weeping. Little Flower?" Her head jerked up. "Master Ling!"
"Can that not be which has been? Is there past or future? Have you learned my lessons so poorly? Am I not now with you, as always?" She felt in the thought the vibrant timeless merriment, the gusto for living which was the hallmark of the gentle Chinese.
With a part of her mind she squeezed Howe's hand. "Sorry," she said. "I was wrong." She relaxed as Ling had taught her, let her consciousness flow in the revery which encompasses time in a single deathless now.
Howe, seeing that she was at peace, turned his attention to the meeting.
He reached out with his mind and gathered them together into the telepathic network of full conference. "I think that you all know why we meet," he thought. "I have served my time; we enter another and more active period when other qualities than mine are needed. I have culled you to consider and pass on my selection of a successor."
Huxley was finding the thought messages curiously difficult to follow. I must be exhausted from the effort, he thought to himself.
But Howe was thinking aloud again. "So be it; we are agreed." He looked at Huxley. "Philip, will you accept the trust?"
"What?!!"
"You are Senior now by common consent."
"But... but ... I am not ready."
"We think so," answered Howe evenly. "Your talents are needed now. You will grow under responsibility."
"Chin up, pal!" It was Coburn, in private message.
"It's all right, Phill." Joan, that time.
For an instant he seemed to hear Ling's dry chuckle, his calm acceptance.
"I will try!У he answered.
On the last day of camp Joan sat with Mrs. Draper on a terrace of the Home on Shasta, overlooking the valley. She sighed. Mrs. Draper looked up from her knitting and smiled. "Are you sad that the camp is over?"
"Oh, no! I'm glad it is."
"What is it, then?"
"I was just thinking ... we go to all this effort and trouble to put on this camp. Then we have to fight to keep it safe. Tomorrow those Boys go home then they must be watched, each one of them, while they grow strong enough to protect themselves against all the evil things there are still in the world. Next year there will be another crop of boys, and then another, and then another. Isn't there any end to it?"
"Certainly there is an end to it. Don't you remember, in the ancient records, what became of the elders? When we have done what there is for us to do here, we move on to where there is more to do. The human race was not meant to stay here forever."
"It still seems endless."
"It does, when you think of it that way, my dear. The way to make it seem short and interesting is to think about what you are going to do next. For example, what are you going to do next?"
"Me?" Joan looked perplexed. Her face cleared. "Why ... why I'm going to get married!"
"I thought so." Mrs. Draper's needles clicked away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN " and the Truth Shall Make You Free!"
THE GLOBE STILL SWUNG ABOUND THE SUN. The Seasons came and the seasons went. The sun still shone on the mountainsides, the hills were green, and the valleys lush. The river sought the bosom of the sea, then rode the cloud, and found the hills as rain. The cattle cropped in the brown plains, the fox stalked the hare through the brush. The tides answered the sway of the moon, and the gulls picked at the wet sand in the wake of the tide. The earth was fair and the earth was mil; it teemed with life, swarmed with life, overflowed with life a stream in spate.