“I am no pioneer,” he said gently. “There have been many here before me.”
“Keeping their identity secret?”
“Of course. It pleased me to reveal myself. More serious-minded individuals go about things surreptitiously. They do their work in silence and depart.”
“How many have there been?”
“I scarcely could guess.”
“Visiting all eras?”
“Why not?”
“Living among us under assumed identities?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Vornan said lightly. “Often holding public office, I believe. Poor Leo! Did you think that I was blazing a trail, a miserable fool like me?”
I swayed, more sickened by this than anything. Our world honeycombed by strangers out of time? Our nations perhaps guided by these wanderers? A hundred, a thousand, fifty thousand travelers popping in and out of history? No. No. No. My mind rebelled at that. Vornan was playing with me now. There could be no alternative. I told him I did not believe him. He laughed. He said, “I give you my permission not to believe me. Do you hear that sound?”
I heard a sound, yes. It was a sound like that of a waterfall, coming from the direction of Pershing Square. There are no waterfalls in Pershing Square. Vornan sprinted forward. I hurried after him, my heart pounding, my skull throbbing. I could not keep up. He halted after a block and a half to wait for me. He pointed ahead, “Quite a number of them,” he said. “I find this very exciting!”
The dispersed mob had regrouped, milling about Pershing Square and now beginning to overflow. A phalanx of capering humanity rolled toward us, filling the street from edge to edge. I could not tell for a moment which mob it was, the Apocalyptists or those who sought Vornan to worship him, but then I saw the crazily painted faces, the baleful banners, the zigging metal coils held high overhead as symbols of heavenly fire, and I knew that these were the prophets of doom bearing down on us.
I said, “We’ve got to get out of here. Back to the hotel!”
“I want to see this.”
“We’ll be trampled, Vornan!”
“Not if we’re careful. Stay with me, Leo. Let the tide sweep over us.”
I shook my head. The vanguard of the Apocalyptist mob was only a block from us. Wielding flares and sirens, the rioters were streaming in a wild rush toward us, screams and shrieks puncturing the air. Merely as bystanders, we might suffer at the hands of the mob; if we were recognized through our masks, we were dead. I caught Vornan’s wrist and tugged in anguish, trying to drag him down a side street that led to the hotel. For the first time I felt his electrical powers. A low-voltage jolt made my hand leap back. I clamped it to him again, and this time he transmitted a burst of stunning energy that sent me reeling away, muscles twitching in a dislocated dance. I dropped to my knees and crouched half dazed while Vornan gaily raced toward the Apocalyptists, his arms spread wide.
The bosom of the mob enfolded him. I saw him slip between two of the front runners and vanish into the core of the surging, shouting mass. He was gone. I struggled dizzily to my feet, knowing that I had to find him, and took three or four uncertain steps forward. An instant later the Apocalyptists were upon me.
I managed to stay on my feet long enough to throw off the effects of the shock Vornan had given me. About me moved the cultists, faces thick with red and green paint; the acrid tang of sweat was in the air, and mysteriously, I spied one Apocalyptist to whose chest was strapped the hissing little globe of an ion-dispersal deodorant; this was strange territory for the fastidious. I was whirled around. A girl with bare jiggling breasts, whose nipples glowed with luminescence, hugged me. “The end is coming!” she shrilled. “Live while you can!” She clawed at my hands and pressed them to her breasts. I clutched warm flesh for a moment, before the current of the mob whirled her away from me; when I looked down at my palms I saw the luminescent imprints gleaming in them, like watchful eyes. Musical instruments of indeterminate ancestry honked and blared. Three high-stepping boys, arms locked, paraded before me, kicking at anyone who came close. A towering man in a goat’s mask exposed his maleness jubilantly, and a heavy-thighed woman rushed toward him, offered herself, and clung tight. An arm snaked around my shoulders. I whirled and saw a gaunt, bony, grinning figure leaning toward me; a girl, I thought, from the costume and the long snarled silken hair, but then “her” blouse fell open and I saw the flat shining hairless chest with the two small dark circlets.
“Have a drink,” the boy said, and thrust a squeezeflask at me. I could not refuse. The snout of the flask went between my lips and I tasted something bitter and thin. Turning away, I spat it out, but the flavor remained like a stain on my tongue.
We were marching fifteen or twenty abreast in several directions at once, though the prevailing movement was back toward the hotel. I fought my way against the tide, hunting for Vornan. Hands clutched at me again and again. I stumbled over a couple locked in lust on the sidewalk; they were inviting destruction and did not seem to mind. It was like a carnival, but there were no floats, and the costumes were wildly individualistic.
“Vornan!” I bellowed. And the mob took it up, magnifying the cry. “Vornan… Vornan… Vornan… kill… Vornan… doom… flame… doom… Vornan…” It was the dance of death. A figure loomed before me, face marked with pustulent sores, dripping lesions, gaping cavities; a woman’s hand rose to caress it and the makeup smeared so that I could see the handsome unmarred face beneath the artificial horrors.
Here came a young man nearly seven feet high, waving a smoky torch and yelling of the Apocalypse; there was a flat-nosed girl drenched in sweat, rending her garments; two pomaded young men tweaked her breasts, laughed, kissed one another, and catapulted on. I called out again, “Vornan!”
Then I caught sight of him. He was standing quite still, like a boulder in a flowing stream, and curiously the rampaging mob was passing on either side of him as it roared forward. Several feet of open space remained inviolate around him, as though he had carved a private pocket in the throng. He stood with arms folded, surveying the madness about him. His mask had been ripped, so that his cheek showed through it, and he was daubed with paint and glowing substances. I struggled toward him, was carried away by a sudden inner surge within the main flow, and fought my way back to him with elbows and knees, hammering a route through tons of flesh. When I was within a few feet of him I understood why the rioters were bypassing him. Vornan had created a little dike all around himself out of stacked human bodies, piling them two or three high on each side. They seemed dead, but as I watched, a girl who had been lying to Vornan’s left stumbled to her feet and went reeling away. Vornan promptly reached toward the next Apocalyptist to come along, a cadaverous man whose bald skull was stained deep blue. A touch of Vornan’s hand and the man collapsed, falling neatly into place to restore the rampart. Vornan had built a living wall with his electricity. I jumped over it and thrust my face close to his.
“For God’s sake let’s get out of here!” I yelled.
“We are in no danger, Leo. Keep calm.”
“Your mask’s ripped. What if you’re recognized?”
“I have my defenses.” He laughed. “What delight this is!”
I knew better than to try to seize him again. In his careless rapture he would stun me a second time and add me to his rampart, and I might not survive the experience. So I stood beside him, helpless. I watched a heavy foot descend on the hand of an unconscious girl who lay near me; when the foot moved on, the shattered fingers quivered convulsively, bending at the joints in a way that human hands do not normally bend. Vornan turned in a full circle, taking everything in.