Her laugh was a soft tinkle of breaking gla.s.s. She did not speak aloud, but word-symbols of thought poured from her mind. Newlin was aware of them, springing suddenly into his own brain, but he knew they came from her.
"Many women, yes. But none like me. If you loved me, it would not be for this body. It is not what you think. I hold this substance, this form, only by power of will. It is mine only for a short while more. My flesh is not like yours, subject to different laws of form and movement."
Newlin answered her, but now in words. His voice sounded like a note of strained sanity in such a place of nightmare.
"I never learned love in the sense you mean," he said. "Nor had I thought of you again, in that way--after Monta Park. You were too alien for me. I understood that. Too alien for any kind of love I knew. You were--repulsive."
In silence, then, thoughts blocked out, Songeen guided Newlin. She seemed aloof, withdrawn. They filed slowly amid towering ma.s.ses of smoky crystal. She led, drifting like a smoke wraith, before him. Newlin picked a cautious pathway over treacherous, unstable footing. He followed, bemused, and reluctance grew into agony of mind.
What was wrong with him? He grappled with himself, and strains grew into open rebellion. What did he want?
Near the portal, sensing it or another like it, he balked.
"Songeen!"
At his call, she glided back, phantomlike. "Yes?"
"You"re in trouble here, aren"t you? Because of bringing me?"
Shoulders as translucent as thin ivory shrugged. "No matter."
"But you are?" Newlin insisted, as if it mattered suddenly to him.
"Yes," she granted softly. "But do not alarm yourself. Only misunderstanding. I will explain my motives. They will point out my error. There is no punishment here."
"You"re not telling everything. What is wrong?"
Her moonfire eyes were troubled. "Nothing you can help."
Newlin probed mercilessly. "Tell me. Why did you bring me here? It was not only to save me from the hunters. Even I guessed that. Why?"
Poised, slender, defiant as a sword, Songeen met and parried his attack.
"I cannot tell you that."
Newlin took her rebuff gracelessly. He was a son of Chaos, a man of the brawling, violent Solar breeds. His temper was short, his words and actions direct. He saw challenge and answered in kind.
"Then take me to the Masters."
Fear and fury blazed in her eyes. "They have not sent for you. I cannot take you to them like this. You are mad. You will live to regret this.
Why, why?"
"I"ll tell you. You said I could be decontaminated. You said I could be cured, that I could stay here--afterwards. I want to stay now. Is there a way. Can I be cured?"
"Of the madness, yes. But it is a fearful way. Do you know how all lunatics are treated? How they are cured, if at all? In your own asylums, do you know how madness is treated?"
"Yes, I know," Newlin answered roughly. "By shock treatment. I suspected something of the sort, all the time. Am I right? Is your treatment similar?"
Songeen nodded, her movement a shimmering echo of the forest"s mirrored quivering.
"Similar--but not the same. The shock used is different. More intense and terrible than insulin or electrical shock. Could you survive such treatment?"
Newlin snorted. "I don"t know. I"m just crazy enough to try. I won"t say I like this place--your world or the nuthouse entrance to it. But with you, I like it better than any other place without you. I think I"m in love with you."
Worms of pale light flared and writhed in her eyes. Something shifted, the oddments of woman-flesh shredded from her. Like a transparent mannequin of gla.s.s, she stood. Inside her, luminous organs squirmed visibly. Like a dream-woman, she stood just outside the boundaries of sanity. But like a dream-woman, she was beautiful, immortal, desirable.
"You"ve said it," she murmured. "Now that you see me as I am, do you still want me? Say it again, now, Spud Newlin, say it in your new knowledge of the things as they really are."
Newlin hesitated, made his choice. Wandering, ill and alone, terrified, in the forests of nightmare--he chose. Madman"s choice.
"I love you, Songeen. Take me to the Masters."
Nightmare wavered. A hand, oddly shaped, sought his as the witchfires burned low and faded from the sky.
"I can take you now. It is not far, and the Masters are waiting. I have warned you. If, after that warning, you still ask to stay, they will grant your wish. It needed only your free choice. I am glad you have chosen, but shock treatment is a dangerous chance. Are you sure you love me--enough?"
"Songeen!" his mind pleaded. "Wait!"
She heard his wordless cry, and waited, opening the glowing, pure citadel of her thoughts to him. She gave no answer in words or glowing thought symbols. She waited.
"No, I haven"t changed my mind. I want to stay. Maybe I can learn to like your world. I want the decontamination--the shock treatment. I"m scared, but I want it, no matter how it hurts. I want to stay here--but not if you"re not here. I want to be with you--h.e.l.l, Venus, or even Callisto--I want to go with you. I love you. If my love is part of my madness, don"t cure me. I haven"t asked you, but I"d like to know. Do you love me?"
Songeen was silent. In the glittering forest of crystalline tree forms, jeweled birds sang wild riots of bubbling, bursting notes. Darkness gathered swiftly in the dense air.
"Didn"t you know?" Songeen chimed, matching the bird-notes. "Our names are already enrolled in the Great Book. It was custom here, our mating rite. It was the only way I could bring you. I did not tell you, because--"
She stopped, then continued. "Because I had to be sure of you. Because I wanted you to have free choice. Now you must share all my tasks, my responsibilities. Before, the task was mine alone. Now we must share it.
You and I are selected--"
"Selected for what?" Newlin broke in.
He could not see her for thick darkness. But he sensed eery tension of movement, and emotion flowed to him from her mind.
"For the great task, the last and greatest of all. We must go back together. To h.e.l.l. To the system you sprang from. It is for us to release to them the ultimate weapon. The deadline is close, as I told you. Other races grow desperate, now that your system"s isolation is breaking down. Pressure for interstellar expansion is extreme on all of Sol"s planets. The technicians work full time at the problems, and they will solve it, soon. We have until then, to kill or cure the patient.
"Other powers and weapons have been released to them in the hope that mounting responsibility would bring sanity. Atomic power was turned into dangerous toys, implements of murder. We gave them knowledge of atomic fission and fusion, and they use the knowledge to butcher and destroy each other. We tried all the minor shock treatments. They have failed.
The time has come for the final treatment. The major shock. We--you and I--must give them the ultimate weapon."
Newlin knew his humanity. He protested. "But why? If they have misused everything else. Why give them something still more hideous? Why give them means for further destruction?"
Her answer pulsed through darkness which glittered like black crystal.
"Because it is the final experiment. The last hope for your people, your system. We cannot help them beyond that. They must choose for themselves, as you did. We must go back to Earth, this time. And it is our task to give them the final treatment and test. The ultimate weapon.
Gravity displacement. Once used, it is the end. Planets will be wrenched from the Sun, electrons from their parent nuclei within the very atoms.