In his Theosophical studies, Lebachuck had come across a concept from Tibetan Buddhism, a middle ground between death and reincarnation called the Bardo, a land without time and place, haunted by hungry ghosts and guiding angels, beings of pure white light. Normally the Bardo was restricted to the newly dead, but by submitting themselves to regimes of austerity, celibacy, special diet and even physical torture, certain holy men or “shamans” managed to gain entrance to the Bardo during life.
Those who did enjoyed immortality, since in the land of the dead no man could die. The past and the future lay open to them, since this was a world without time. They were, in effect, godlike, and they were precisely what Lebachuck would have liked the Lifestylers to be.
After careful study of the austerities practiced by the shamans, Lebachuck came to the conclusion that subtle changes in the chemistry of the brain were brought about, particularly in the fluids which governed conductivity of the synapses. These changes, he reasoned, could be effected instantly, and with far less pain, through the creation of a “trans-dimensional” gene. RNA.
Naturally, between the gene’s conception and its perfection came many many years of painstaking experimentation, of unsuccessful attempts ending in insanity and death for the subjects. And when at last success did come, the scientific community expressed doubts as to whether it was the Buddhist Bardo which had been reached; some believed it was a slight displacement of time, others that it was the antimatter universe which backed our own. Lebachuck himself said the distinction was semantic.
Years later, when Lebachuck was feeble and found his mind failing, he had himself injected with the transdimen-sional gene, opened a window in the air beside his wheelchair and rolled himself through it, never to be seen nor heard of again.
When Nick had finished his story, Hali was silent for some time, thinking. Finally she said, “We make things happen through concentration. It is a finite thing within the body, like blood or bile. It is a nimbus of energy which moves along the nervous system to wherever it is needed. When we eat, it moves to the stomach for digestion. When we think, it rises to the head. And when we make love”—she paused to smile languidly at Nick—“it goes to our sex. But usually,” she continued, “usually concentration is diffused throughout the body. To gather it for a special task, we must make the body—and the mind—motionless. One-pointed. Sit like this.”
Nick followed her example, assuming a crosslegged position on the soft moss, folding his hands in his lap as though he were holding an egg.
“Close the eyes, make the breath slow and even, turn the mind inward. Gather the concentration and move it through the body, along the limbs, up the spine, around the skull, until you find something—something which wasn't there before.”
Nick opened his eyes. “Can’t you be more specific?”
“Nicholas, darling, if I could I would flow inside you myself and search for it. but there are limits, yes? An Alta-Ty who had never associated with humans might have the power to do that; I do not.”
All morning Nick sat in the striped shade of a palm and searched inside himself. He was surprised to find that by remaining physically motionless and cultivating a stillness of the mind, he became slightly euphoric. Perhaps he found the energy which was his concentration—he couldn't be sure; he certainly found nothing in the way of a transdimensional window. Perhaps the gene hadn't taken effect yet. When he stopped at noon his knees ached and his legs were filled with pins and needles. The inside of his mouth tasted like sandpaper. He decided to take a swim before returning to his inner exploration.
Pushing aside a screen of whisper ferns, he saw Althea kneeling by the side of the pool. He was about to call to her when he changed his mind and watched curiously. She was bending over a large, flat rock, grinding small piles of plants with a second stone which she moved with both hands, circularly.
There was whisper-fern blossom which she had ground into a red paste, a rich brown from the palm bark, purple from the Brinko fruit of course, and white powder from a brittle white crystal which grew on the north face of certain rocks.
She dipped her fingers in the white powder and, peering at her own reflection in the pond, carefully smeared it all over her face. She tried to leave an even coat, but the powder clung in certain places and fell away in others, leaving a mottled surface. Next she dipped her index finger into the red and wiped her lips with it, working the upper and lower lips together as though she were sucking a lemon. The juice of the Brinko fruit caked the powder around her eyes and the brown bark simply refused to grind finer than peppercorns. She took one last look at the grotesque mask she had made, like some circus clown, or the decorated savage of a jungle planet, and, frustrated beyond endurance, threw herself on the ground and wept and wept. “Damn you, Nicky Harmon,’’ she sobbed, “oh damn you, damn you.’’
He turned and crept away.
V
That afternoon he sat for hours, interrupting himself only to stretch his legs when the pain of bent knees became unbearable. Around dusk he began feeling ill, a queasiness he attributed to sitting in one place all day; but as the night wore on, the queasiness increased. The right side of his head ached and his vision was overbright and flickery, as though someone were shining a penlight in his eyes. These were, he realized dismally, only the beginnings of the side effects Scolpes had promised him. He had been hoping that perhaps he would be excepted; no such luck.
Each day was worse than the previous. The throbbing in his head grew so severe that he considered killing himself; the brightness of his vision increased until he had difficulty seeing; and something was happening to his throat which made breathing an effort. When he sat in the manner Hali had shown him and tried to turn his consciousness inward, all he could perceive was discomfort. It was the pain of giving birth and the pain of being born combined, for he was giving birth to his new self. He imagined that he could feel his body being renovated, DNA dividing, duplicating itself again and again in a thousand million cells throughout the body.
Sleep was difficult and when it came, restless and uneasy. Nick had a recurring dream of a stone dungeon with oak door, iron hinges, oily black lock. Usually in these dreams he had a keyring with a hundred keys and he had to try them one by one; other times, having no keys, he could merely pound on the door with his fists. He awoke unrefreshed, sunlight streaming like an ice pick into his brain.
After three days of this, a gleaming black police saucer sailed by some twenty miles east of them. Seeing it, Althea ran to the very edge of the island and began jumping up and down and screaming with all the voice she had. Her weight cracked the thin shelf of earth she was standing on and it gave way like a trap door. Fortunately the roots of the Brinko palms kept it hinged, and more of them, trailing above the ground, made convenient handholds for her to hang by until Nick could reach her and drag her back to solid ground.
The sight of the saucer must have rekindled thoughts of escape in Althea’s mind; the following night Nick was awakened from one of his dungeon dreams (in this one he had a keyring, but the keys were all wormy and refused to stay still to be fit into the keyhole) by the sporadic firing of an internal-combustion engine. Hali rose first and started after the sound. She could run fast as an animal, even in the dark. Nick, trying to keep pace, stubbed his toes on roots and stones.
By the time they reached the moonlit clearing where they had left the airplane, that beautiful machine was lurching and bouncing toward the edge of the island. Althea must have sneaked the ignition key from Nick’s pocket while he slept. Starting it had been no problem for her—the control array was similar to that of an MHD saucer—but flying it would be, particularly since there was not enough room for a takeoff. She probably didn’t understand that an airplane needed more space than an MHD craft; after all, the only airplane she had ever seen before was in the Technological Museum, side by side with a steamboat and a Model T Ford.