"Quite a reaction you had there," said Jase, "after it was all over. We didn't expect to see you go down like that."
Paul focused on the Necromancer.
"You didn't?" he said. He frowned. "You certainly didn't expect me to stay on my feet?"
It was Jase's turn to frown, slightly.
"Why not?" he said. "If you'd stood up to things while it was going on, why collapse after it's all over?"
Paul faced it then. Jase and the other watchers had remained unaware. He closed his eyes wearily and a little bitterly, for he felt the beginnings of some sort of understanding seep into him at last; and understanding, he was discovering, like money, does not always bring happiness.
"Of course. Why not?" he agreed. "You must be right. I'm still suffering from the reaction."
Chapter 12
Dressed in ordinary jacket and slacks, one week later Paul sat with three other journeymen Chantry Guild members in a conference room of the orthodox part of Station Springboard. Talking to them was a brisk athletic young man with a short haircut and no older than Paul. Younger, in fact, than two of the journeymen, who looked disconcertingly like overfed salesmen in their thirties, except that one, who smelled strongly of after-shaving lotion, was twice as tall as the other.
"You can't teach the Alternate Laws," the instructor had begun by saying, as he half-perched on the edge of a table, facing the low, comfortable chairs in which the four sat. "Any more than you can teach the essential ability to create art, or the essential conviction of a religious belief. Does that make sense to you?"
"Ah, teaching!" said the fourth member of the journeymen group, a pleasant-faced, brown-headed young man, in an entirely unexpected, bell-toned bass. "What crimes have been committed in thy name!"
Since he had not spoken previously, the rest - even including the instructor - appeared somewhat startled, not only by his pronouncement, but by the volume and timbre of it. The young man smiled at them.
"True enough," said the instructor, after a slight pause. "And very true to the Alternate Laws. Let's simplify the Laws to a ridiculous extreme and say that the point they express is that as a rule of thumb, if it works best one way for everybody else, chances are that way won't be the best for you. In other words, if you want to get to the top of a mountain and you see a broad, well-marked, much-traveled road headed straight for it, the last route you should choose to the top of the mountain would be up that road."
He stopped talking. They all looked at him expectantly.
"No," he said, "I'm not going to tell you why. That would be teaching. Teaching is good only for learners, not for discoverers. Right now is the one and only time in the Chantry Guild that you're going to encounter anything like a question-and-answer period." He looked them over. "You're at liberty to try and tell me why, if you want to."
"Ah," said the large salesman sort with the shaving-lotion smell. He got the interjection out hurriedly, and it was at once noticeable to all his audience that his voice, though loud and determined, was neither bass nor bell-toned. "I-ah-understand that the Alternate Laws are parapsychological in nature. Can it be that involvement with the ordinary, that is to say-ah-scientific, laws has an inhibiting effect upon the person's... I mean the different sort of person who is able to take advantage of the powers of the Alternate Forces?" He drew a quick breath and added quickly, "I mean, his. essential difference, so to speak?"
"No," said the instructor, kindly.
"No? Oh," said the other. He sat back, cleared his throat, crossed his legs, got out a handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly.
"The area of parapsychology," said the instructor, "is only a small part of the universe of time and space. The Alternate Laws cover all this and more."
"They mean what they say, don't they?" asked the smaller salesman-type unexpectedly. "Alternate Laws - other laws. And the only way to find the other ways is by deliberately avoiding the established way."
"That's right," said the instructor.
"Creative," rang the young man with the bass voice.
"And that's very right," said the instructor. He ran his glance from right to left over them. "None of you here would have got this far if you hadn't each demonstrated some capability in the area of the Alternate Laws. That capability may be parapsychological - say, teleportation. Or it might be an ability to write truly creative poetry, say. It might even be a particular sensitivity to the needs of growing plants. Not that I mean to give you the impression that creativity is all of the Alternate Laws, or even the key to them."
"Ah," said the large salesman, uncrossing his legs determinedly, "you certainly don't expect us just to write poetry or grow plants, or even teleport."
"No," said the instructor.
"Then-ah-can it be that you mean," said the large salesman, perspiration beginning to stand out on his brow, "that these things - whatever they may be - are a part, only a part, of the Alternate Laws? And it's the rest we have to go after? We have to try? We have to get?"
"Yes," said the instructor. "That's very good. It's not a full answer by any means..."
"No, no, of course not," said the large salesman, flushing and smiling, and pulling out his handkerchief. He blew his nose again as if it were a soldier's bugle.
"-a full answer by any means," said the instructor. "In fact, if there is a full answer, I don't know it. Everyone, in this, is on his own. And now," he said, standing up, "I think you've already had enough discussion about an inherently undiscussable subject to last you a lifetime. If indeed we haven't already done the damage of setting up some artificial concepts. Remember" - his whole voice and manner changed abruptly; it was almost as if he had reached out and wrapped some invisible cloak about him - "life is an illusion. Time and space and all things are an illusion. There is nothing, nothing but the Alternate Laws."
He ceased speaking suddenly. The journeymen got up automatically and began to file out. As Paul walked past, however, he felt his arm touched by the instructor.
"Just a minute," the instructor said. Paul turned. The other waited until the three other journeymen were out of the room. "You didn't say anything at all."
"Yes," said Paul. "That's right. I didn't."
"Mind if I ask why?"
"If I remember rightly," Paul said, "the key word of Walter Brant's book is destruct."
"Yes, it is."
"And we," said Paul, looking down at the instructor from his own greater height, "were talking about creativity."
"Mmm," said the instructor, nodding his head thoughtfully, "I see. You think somebody's lying?"
"No," said Paul. He felt a sudden weariness that was not physical at all. "It's just that there was nothing to say."
The instructor stared at him.
"Now you're the one who's baffling me," the instructor said. "I don't understand you."
"I mean," said Paul patiently, "that it's no use saying anything."
The instructor shook his head again.
"I still don't understand you," he said. "But that's all right." He smiled. "In the Guild it's: To thine own self be true, thou needst not then explain to any man."
He patted Paul on the shoulder.
"Go, man!" he said, and on that note they parted.
Returning to his room, as Jase had warned him to do when not otherwise occupied, Paul passed along the catwalk above the relay room in the orthodox part of the Station. He had only a vague notion of what went on in the three-step accelerator that stretched through nearly a quarter mile of the vast cavern five levels high, with thirty- and forty-foot banks of equipment surrounding its tube shape. From news and magazine accounts he had acquired the general knowledge that its function was a matter of shuttling a point of higher-level energy back and forth along a line of constantly lower energy until the point's speed was just under the speed of light. At which time it "broke" (i.e., disappeared) and became instead a point of no-time, following the same path. This point of no-time, if perfectly synchronized with a point of no-time back in the laboratory building of World Engineer's Headquarters Complex, created a path for instantaneous, timeless transmission between the two points.