It would never really get dark on the Woodstock Road, but from a comparatively early hour night held full sway in the narrow tributaries which disgorged into it. The lamps were feebler and much further apart in those lesser streets. Some of the lights had fallen into disrepair without attracting the attention of the council’s engineering and maintenance departments, others had been vandalised for pleasure or with an eye to clandestine profit. It was only necessary to walk a hundred yards from the main road, and perhaps make a couple of turns, to enter a black region where pedestrians were few. Those who did venture out at night tended to walk quickly, with their heads down, and to keep themselves to themselves.
And there was nobody at all abroad in Raby Street, nobody to pay any attention or to pass any comment, when lights suddenly began to glimmer behind the curtains of the house with the numerals 131 above its blistered brown door.
For a moment Redpath was looking down at an expanse of green-and-cream floor tiles and he feared the nightmare had begun again, but this time there was a qualitative difference in the experience. He was able to interpret the visual pattern almost immediately, and he knew with utter certainty that the radiant squares were part of a huge machine.
The display panel of a computer and the instrumentation of an aircraft were the nearest parallels he could envisage, but the engineering principles employed here were far removed from anything which had originated in human minds. It was likely that information was being presented, and yet both form and content were unintelligible to Redpath. There were signs of continuous, furtive movement beneath some of the translucent slabs, and he knew that its origins were neither mechanical nor electronic—the machine incorporated living organic components which served it in ways beyond his understanding.
The complex image held steady before him—not a memory, not an illusion, not a dream.
This is a reality. It isn’t my reality, but it’s a reality nevertheless, and I’m sharing it.
As had happened before, a brown slurry surged across the glowing checkerwork, like a tide of clotting blood, and in places the light from brighter panels shone upwards through it with the redness of port wine, revealing a thready internal structure. At the advancing edge of the mass there was a constant agitation of pseudopods which probed and tested the surface before filling out with dark fluids and being reabsorbed. But Redpath felt no fear, no revulsion.
That is part of my body, in this reality. I am a Thrice-born, in this reality, and I have travelled far in pursuit of a Once-born, an abomination who sought to break the decreed cycle of in-gestion, purification and renascence. He committed the ultimate crime against my kind, the crime of permitting his bioplasm to degenerate with age. The disease, for that is what he has become, must be eradicated because it would be almost as great a crime to allow such malignancy to exist.
I have been scry-sensing for him very carefully during these latter years of the pursuit, in this reality, and I know that he is injured, or that the process of degeneration has greatly advanced, because he has not made use of his higher powers in all that time. He must, therefore, be close to his ship. It will be sufficient to locate the ship…
As had happened before, four squares near the centre of the vari-coloured pattern grew darker and merged into one, taking on the semblance of a transparent hatch which covered a well of night. But now the blackness was far from complete. It formed the background and setting for the brilliant blue-white disc of a planet which was quickly identifiable as Earth. The planet was growing close.
It will be sufficient to locate the ship, and then…
Something bad happened to Redpath.
There was a loosening, a flicker-shifting of geometries. The image before him twitched and altered its colours and proportions, and suddenly he was at a remove from that reality, and the thoughts he had been share-thinking—cold, ascetic, dispassionate—were obliterated in a vortex of dark emotions. Fear mingled with hatred, anger and contempt, but the fear was ever dominant, engulfing him in a writhing, raging blackness which was shot through with memory fragments, partial images, shards of an unimaginably alien existence. For an instant that life was congruent with Redpath’s life.
He began to scream. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Redpath was running in a twisted corridor. The corners were sharp and difficult to negotiate at speed, and his progress was further hindered by the fact that the corridor had been designed to resemble a series of connected rooms, such as would be found in an ordinary dwelling. There was a hall, a kitchen and a living-room—endlessly repeated—and in the living-room was a television set which shone in the dimness like a miniature stained glass window. Close to the television was a girl who sat huddled on a settee, rocking backwards and forwards in terror, her hands covering her face. He became aware of the faint sounds of her distress, then there came the shock of recognition, a sense of guilt and responsibility.
“Leila?” Redpath clung to the jamb of the kitchen door, less for support than to quell the remnants of a blind instinct to flee. “Don’t cry, Leila—I know it all now. I know everything.”
She continued to cower, to make herself as small as possible.
He crossed the room, turned off the television and knelt in front of her. “Don’t cry, Leila. We’ve both got things to do, and there’s very little time. Look at me, please.”
She raised her head slowly. Her face was wan and miserable, robbed of beauty, and he knew at once that the first vital step in his plan would be to calm her down and restore her confidence in him. The necessary task which lay ahead of Leila Mostyn was even more demanding than his own in some ways, and she would be unable to face it unless he armed her with knowledge and trust.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “I got a bad shock, but I’m all right now and we’ve got to talk. Will you listen to me for a while and try to understand what I’m saying, no matter how fantastic it might seem? Will you?”
“What is it, John?” Her lips seemed to be numb, scarcely moving as she spoke.
He took a deep breath. “I said some incredible things today, and nobody would believe me—and then I came up with concrete proof. Just remember that and trust me and hear me out. The telepathy project was more successful than any of us expected, Leila—the fact is that I’ve been in mental contact with beings from another planet. Does that sound too fantastic for words?”
“Not if you say so.”
“Good! We’re making progress. The next thing to understand is that these beings are totally unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They don’t look like us and they don’t think like us. Their bodies are soft, almost entirely liquid. They can flow like syrup, or jam that hasn’t set, but that doesn’t stop them being intelligent and having a social structure. Are you still with me?
“The contact I made didn’t last long, but it was clear—too clear—and I know that their society is based on a form of cannibalism. When an individual reaches a certain age he allows himself to be eaten or absorbed by a younger being, and somehow he seems to survive the experience and be reborn or reincarnated. Though maybe he doesn’t really survive it. Maybe it’s a matter of faith with them, like a religion, and that could be where the trouble started—I think I’d be inclined to run away when my time came round. Maybe I ought to feel some sympathy for that thing in Raby Street.”