A montage of faces comes to me: Shirley flushed and dizzied in the grip of passion, eyes closed, mouth gaping. Shirley sickened and sullen afterward, slumping to the floor, crawling away from me like an injured insect. Jack coming up from the workshop, dazed and pale as if he had been the victim of a rape, walking carefully through a world made unreal. And Vornan looking complacent, cheerfully replete, quite satisfied with his work and even more pleased to discover what Shirley and I had done. I could not feel real anger toward him. He was still as much a beast of prey as ever, and had renounced nothing. He had rebuffed Shirley not out of some excess of conventionality but only because he was stalking a different quarry.
To Kralick I said nothing. He could tell that the Arizona interlude had been a disaster, but I gave him no details, and he pressed for none. We met in Phoenix; he had flown there from Washington when he got my message. The trip to South America, he said, had been hastily reinstated and we were due in Caracas the following Tuesday.
“Count me out,” I said. “I’ve had enough of Vornan. I’m resigning from the committee, Sandy.”
“Don’t.”
“I have to. It’s a personal matter. I’ve given you close to a year, but now I’ve got to pick up the pieces of my own life.”
“Give us one month more,” he pleaded. “It’s important. Have you been following the news, Leo?”
“Now and then.”
“The world is in the grip of a Vornan mania. It gets worse each day. Those two weeks or so he was off in the desert only inflamed it. Do you know, a false Vornan showed up in Buenos Aires on Sunday and proclaimed a Latin American empire? In just fifteen minutes he collected a mob of fifty thousand. The damage ran into the millions, and it could have been worse if a sniper hadn’t shot him.”
“Shothim? What for?”
Kralick shook his head. “Who knows? It was pure hysteria. The crowd tore the assassin to pieces. It took two days to convince everyone that it had been a fake Vornan. And then we’ve heard rumors of false Vornans in Karachi, Istanbul. Peking, Oslo. It’s that foul book Fields wrote. I could flay him.”
“What does this have to do with me, Sandy?”
“I need to have you beside Vornan. You’ve spent more time with him than anyone else. You know him well, and I think he knows you and trusts you. It may not be possible for anyone else to control him.”
“I have no way of controlling him,” I said, thinking of Jack and Shirley. “Isn’t that obvious by now?”
“But at least with you we have a chance. Leo, if Vornan ever harnesses the power that’s at his command, he’ll turn this world upside down. At a word from him, fifty million people would cut their own throats. You’ve been out of touch. You can’t comprehend how this is building. Maybe you can head him off if he starts to realize his own potential.”
“The way I headed him off when he wrecked Wesley Bruton’s villa, eh?”
“That was early in the game. We know better now, we don’t let Vornan near dangerous equipment. And what he did to Bruton’s place is just a sample of what he can do to the whole world.”
I laughed harshly. “In that case, why take risks? Have him killed.”
“For God’s sake, Leo—”
“I mean it. There are ways of arranging it. A big, clever Government bastard like you doesn’t need instructions in Machiavellianism. Get rid of Vornan while you still can, before he sets himself up as Emperor Vornan with a bodyguard of ten thousand. You take care of it and let me go back to my laboratory, Sandy.”
“Be serious. How—”
“I am serious. If you don’t want to assassinate him, try persuading him to go back where he belongs.”
“We can’t do that either.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“I told you,” said Kralick patiently. “Keep him on tour until he gets sick of it. Watch him all the time. Make sure he stays happy. Feed him all the women he can handle.”
“And men too,” I put in.
“Little boys, if we have to. We’re sitting on a megabomb, Leo, and we’re trying like hell to keep it from exploding. If you want to walk out on us at this point, go ahead. But when the explosion comes, you’re likely to feel it even in your ivory tower. What’s the answer now?”
“I’ll stick,” I said bitterly.
So I rejoined the traveling circus, and so it was that I was on hand for the final events of Vornan’s story. I had not expected Kralick to succeed in talking me into it. I had for at least a few hours believed I was quit of Vornan, whom I did not hate for what he had done to my friends, but whom I regarded as an ultimate peril. I had been quite serious in suggesting that Kralick have him destroyed. Now I found myself committed to accompany him once more; but now I chose to keep my distance from him even when I was with him, stifling the good fellowship that had begun to develop. Vornan knew why. I’m sure of that. He did not seem troubled by my new coolness toward him.
The crowds were immense. We had seen howling mobs before, but we had never seen mobs howling like these. At Caracas they estimated one hundred thousand turned out — all that could squeeze into the big downtown plaza — and we stared in amazement as they bellowed their delight in Spanish. Vornan appeared on a balcony to greet them; it was like a Pope delivering his blessing. They screamed for him to make a speech. We had no facilities for it, though, and Vornan merely smiled and waved. The sea of red-covered books churned madly. I did not know if they waved The New Revelation or The Newest Revelation, but it scarcely mattered.
He was interviewed that night on Venezuelan television. The network rigged a simultaneous-translation channel, for Vornan knew no Spanish. What message, he was asked, did he have for the people of Venezuela? “The world is pure and wonderful and beautiful.” Vornan replied solemnly. “Life is holy. You can shape a paradise while you yet live.” I was astonished. These pieties were out of character for our mischievous friend, unless this was the sign of some new malice in the making.
The crowds were even greater in Bogotб. Shrill cries echoed through the thin air of the plateau. Vornan spoke again, and again it was a sermon of platitudes. Kralick was worried. “He’s warming up for something,” he said to me. “He’s never talked like this before. He’s making a real effort to reach them directly, instead of letting them come to him.”
“Call off the tour, then,” I suggested.
“We can’t. We’re committed.”
“Forbid him to make speeches.”
“How?” he asked, and there was no answer.
Vornan himself seemed fascinated by the size of the throngs that came out to see him. These were no mere knots of curiosity seekers; these were giant hordes who knew that a strange god walked the earth, and longed for a glimpse. Clearly he felt his power over them now, and was beginning to exert it. I noticed, though, that he no longer exposed himself physically to the mobs. He seemed to fear harm, and drew back, keeping to balconies and within sealed cars.
“They’re crying for you to come down and walk among them,” I told him as we faced a roaring multitude in Lima. “Can’t you hear it, Vornan?”
“I wish I could do it,” he said.
“There’s nothing stopping you.”
“Yes. Yes. There are so many of them. There would be a stampede.”
“Put on a crowd shield,” Helen McIlwain suggested.
Vornan swung around. “What is that, please?”
“Politicians wear them. A crowd shield is an electronic sphere of force that surrounds the wearer. It’s designed specifically to protect public figures in mobs. If anyone gets too close, the shield delivers a mild shock. You’d be perfectly safe, Vornan.”