XIII

Red Rover came back and sat down.

"All right, then," he said. "Now tell me how you're going to shove a choice like that on the insiders—and that better be good, too.Because if anyone else out here knew how to do it, it would have been done by now."

"That's one of the things I'm counting on," Chaz said. "Do you think you could round up enough Rover packs to give us a couple of hundred men who feel the same way you do about the people inside?"

"Depends what you want them for," Rover said. "Anyway, they wouldn't all be led by immunes. There aren't that many of us."

"They don't all have to have immune leaders," Chaz said. "Just so they're willing to do some fighting if they have to."

"You aren't going to be able to raid the sterile areas, and scare the people there into choosing between the Citadel and the outside, with two hundred men," Rover said."Even if two hundred men could handle about three thousand police—which is about what they've got, inside."

"I don't want most of the two hundred inside at all," said Chaz . `They're just to guard things outside while the action inside is going on."

"Just guard? What about weapons?"

"We'll get them," said Chaz . "Anythat are needed."

"You will, will you? You seem pretty sure of yourself," said Red Rover. "All right, if most of the Rover packs are just going to guard, what are you going to use to scare insiders into dumping the Citadel?"

"Explosives," said Chaz . He turned and went over to the table for a sheet of paper which he brought back and handed to Rover. "I'm no artist, but that's a rough sketch of the sealed areas ofChicago as I know them. It looks to me as if eight large holes blown in the walls and tunnels I've marked would open up better than half the city to the outside and the Rot spores."

"It might," said Rover, studying the sheet. "But you've got to be talking about big holes. Holes you could walk a whole marching band through. And that's going to take something like you've never seen in the way of explosives. The few sticks of old dynamite or blasting powder we can scrounge up here on the outside won't begin to open even one of your holes."

"Don't worry," Chaz said. "We'll get the explosives from inside. All we need, just like with the weapons."

"From where?"

Chaznodded at Eileen.

"The covens will help."

"Covens?"Rover echoed, looking at her.

"Witches get together in covens," Eileen said from the bed. She was beginning to get some normal color back in her face, after the drawn look that the fever had given her. "Something like Roversget together in packs. I'm a witch."

"Witch?" said Rover. He blinked at her. "You don't mean…witch?"

"Why not?" said Eileen, smiling a little wickedly at him. "You're a witch, too—or as good as. Remember what you did with those pieces of paper just now? Otherwise you'd never have been immune to the Rot. Why? You aren't prejudiced against witches, are you?"

"Well . . . of course not," said Rover."I was just thinking, that's all. It's the other Immunes. What I mean is, maybe we better not rush them. Suppose I just start talking about some people inside who're against putting out every poor wonker who might have breathed unsterile air for a minute." He became brisk.

"Now, how do you plan to do this?"

He turned his back to Chaz .

"Eileen knows where the Citadel people are—in a building actually called theEmbryTower ," said Chaz .

"Some of us attack that at the same time as one hole is blown in a single sterile area, as a warning. Meanwhile, another bunch—the witches, maybe—have gotten their hands on the city's emergency channel on the viz phones. They cut in on the general alert following the explosion, and broadcast a warning that the rest ofChicago gets opened up unless the Citadel people are handed over to the outsiders. Then they switch to phoning pictures of us taking over the Citadel building and also to filming the mobs that form to help us."

"And what," said Red Rover, "will the Chicago District Government and police be doing while all this is going on?"

"You ought to know better than that," Eileen put in from the bed. "The Citadel owns the Chicago District Government. The District Director, the General of Police, and nearly everyone else that counts, are Citadel members—just like with every other large city district in the world. In fact it's not justChicago . The whole world, more or less, is run from that Citadel building." Red Rover grunted, as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

"Want to back out?" Chaz asked, watching him closely.

Rover shook his head.

"I guess you want our Rover packs to guard the explosive positions outside the walls and tunnels then," he said.

"That's right," Chaz said. "And set them off only when ordered—if ordered—by you. We can't trust anyone else outside."

"That's true enough." Without actually moving, Rover gave the impression of shaking himself off, like someone coming up into the air after a deep dive underwater."Now what?"

"Next," Chaz said, "we get together with the covens. Eileen contacted one of the witches in her own coven, this afternoon. The whole coven will get us inside and meet with us, as soon as we can come in. What's the closest air lock to the Chicago District?"

"About five miles east," Rover said. `There is a trash disposal lock. We can walk it in a couple of hours. Night's the safe time to move around—if Eileen there's up to it. I've got a portable limpet light."

"I'm up to it," said Eileen.

It was actually closer to four hours before they all sat together in a witches' hole in the sterile areas with those members of Eileen's coven who could be gathered together on such short notice. Noticeably among the missing were the Gray Man and one or two others not trusted by thecoven. Chazintroduced Red Rover and once more explained his plan.

"You know," said a whitehaired man among the witches, "we're not fighters; and we've got a responsibility to protect the sisterhood and the brotherhood. But we could get your Rovers anything they need—it's our people, not the Citadel's, who control the supply tunnels. And we can probably dig up some of us who know something about the use of explosives for demolition and things like that."

"How about people to man the phones and get what we're doing on the viz -screens?" Chazasked. The white-haired man hesitated.

"Maybe some of the younger ones might want to take an active part in that end of it," he said. "We'll know after we check with the other Chicago covens. That'll take several days. Now, about payment for our part in this—"

"Payment!" said Red Rover. The word came out of him with the abrupt, brutal sound of an obscenity.

"I'm sorry," said the witch, looking from Rover to Chaz . "But as I say we've got to protect ourselves and the next generations of witches. That's been our rule down the centuries."

"Damn you," said Red Rover. "This isn't the Middle Ages anymore. You're some sort of psychological types it says in the textbooks, not bogeymen."

"I'm sorry," the white-haired man said again. "But we can't suddenly scrap the rules that we've lived by this long." He kept his gaze on Chaz . "When the Citadel's influence is cleaned out of the Pritcher Mass, we want the witches to take over control of it. I don't mean control out on the Mass itself; I mean the Earth end of it, the policy and decision-making authority back here. We can't risk having the Mass used against us."

"You sure you can speak for all your friends?" demanded Rover, before Chaz could answer.

"Sure enough so that I know there's no use going to them for help unless you can promise what I'm asking," the witch answered without taking his eyes off Chaz . "Well?"

"Well . . ." said Chaz , slowly. "I'll agree—provided one thing. No one with paranormal talents is to be excluded from the witch group that gets control of the Earth end of theMass. "

"That's reasonable enough," said the witch."All right. We'll get busy." Arrangements were made for delivery of explosives and other supplies to the Rovers by the witches; and the meeting broke up. Chaz

, Eileen and Red Rover were let back outside by the same way they had entered, through the service air lock by a waste-disposal outlet. With dawn only a few hours away, they headed back to the house.

"What makes you think you can deliver control of the Mass to anyone, once this is over?" Red Rover asked Chaz bluntly. Chaz looked at him in the illumination from the limpet light the other man was carrying.

"Do you trust me?" Chaz asked. "Or don't you?"

"Oh, I trust you," Rover said. "I'll also look you up afterwards and kill you, if it turns out trusting youwas the wrong thing to do."

It took better than a week—both inside and outside the sterile areas ofChicago —to set things up. In the meantime, Red Rover left a note just outside the air lock that was his contact point with the Citadel, saying that Eileen had died of the Rot. Two days later, checking the point from under cover, he saw the red piece of cloth lying on the ground that was the signal that he was wanted. He waited until after dark, went in without a light and found an answering note. He took it a safe distance away over a hill to use a light on it, and read that he was to produce Eileen's body and bring word of the location of a man answering Chaz ' description. Dousing his light, he carefully took the note back and left it where he had found it, by the red cloth. From then on he stayed clear of the contact point. Meanwhile, however, the covens had picked up word that the top people in the Citadel organization were returning from around the world, and even from the Mass, to meet at the Citadel building in Chicago . An unhappy and fearful male witch slipped outside the sterile areas to bring the news to Chaz , personally.

"I expected it," Chaz told the man. "They've got the Mass and, as Eileen herself reminded me once, people with paranormal talents and computers. They can follow logic-chains well enough to see that I'm going to try something against them. Naturally they're getting together to plan strategy."

"If they know that much," said the witch, "they may know just what we're planning to do. They can be waiting for us."

"They don't know," Chaz said. "They can't predict correctly without having all relevant facts. And they don't."

"What don't they know?"

"Certain things," said Chaz . "For one, that there are immunes among the exiles; and that these immunes owe their lives to paranormal powersthey didn’t even suspect they had." The witch stared at him.

"What else don't they know?" he asked at last.

"Some things," Chaz said. "I'll tell you what your people can do, though. You can pull out of this if you want to. Only, if we lose, the Citadel is going to trace those supplies back to help from your covens; and if we win, you won't get the authority over the Pritcher Mass you wanted." The witch left. But there was no talk from the covens of withdrawing their assistance in the few days that remained.

The attack on the Citadel had been planned for a Sunday afternoon. At three that afternoon, Chaz , Eileen, Red Rover and a dozen of the Rovers, about half of them immunes, were waiting in the supply tunnel that connected with the Citadel building. Chaz was carrying a portable phone to the cable in the tunnel wall; and he had it keyed to show the southern face of the building and the sky over the western section of the Lower Loop sterile area ofChicago . The view was from the pickup of a public phone booth of a square before the south side of the building, which was listed in the District Directory simply as theEmbryTower . It was one of the eighty-story towers raised in that part ofChicago in the 1990's, shortly before the Rot had appeared. It poked its top thirty stories through the upper protective dome over the sterile area like a stick through a bubble; and its outer glass facing reflected the gray clouds overhead with a matching grayness of its own. There were only a few casual pedestrians crossing through the square at the moment. Half a dozen non-uniformed guards could also be seen playing the part of casual idlers, within the transparent walls of the street-level lobby of the tower.

"There!" said Chaz ; and the rest of those with him crowded closer to the small phone screen for a look. A black plume of smoke was rising toward the clouds off to the west beyond the tops of the area's buildings, in that direction. A second later, the tunnel about them shuddered slightly with a shock wave. The scene on the phone screen was suddenly replaced by the picture of a middle-aged, heavy-featured woman wearing a green police uniform. The sharp warning whistle of the emergency signal sounded. If Chaz ' phone had not already been in use, that signal would have activated it.

"Citizens of theLower Loop area," said the woman on the screen."Emergency. I repeat,this is an emergency broadcast under the pollution warning system. All citizens of theLower Looparea, please pay special attention. All citizens of the nineteen sterile areas of the main ChicagoDistrict, pay close attention. An as yet unexplained explosion has breached the seal in the western extremity of theLower Loop area. All available pollution-fighting equipment has been called in from all nineteen areas; and a chemical barrier is being thrown up while a temporary seal is under construction behind the exposed area.

"All citizens are warned to stay where they are, if possible, and preserve local sterile conditions. Please, those of you who may have relatives or friends in the area of the explosion, stay away. Repeat, stay away! Crowding the access routes to the area will only increase the danger of polluting the wholeLower Loop . All care will be taken to insure that those not exposed will not be left beyond the temporary seal when it is locked in place. I repeat, do not crowd the area. All care will be taken—" The image of the woman in the uniform was suddenly wiped off the screen, to be replaced by a figure of an ordinary gray jumpsuit wearing a flexmask —and it was impossible to tell from the screen whether it was a man or woman. The accompanying voice was similarly disguised by a filter, so that the anonymity of its sex was complete. It was one of the witches, Chaz guessed; but which one, probably even Eileen would never know.

"Attention, citizens of allChicago sterile areas," said the figure. "Attention, allChicago citizens. The explosion just announced by pollution control authorities was not an accident. I repeat, not an accident. The security of the Lower Loop areas has been deliberately breached as a warning toChicago citizens. All other areas in the main Chicago district will be similarly breached, and the citizens now in them exposed to the Rot spores, if the members of the criminal organization known as the Citadel, who are now occupying the Embry Tower in the Lower Loop, are not immediately removed from that building and put outside the sterile areas.

"I repeat. The members of the Citadel now in theEmbryTower must be removed and placed outside the sterile areas. They must be put out at the spot where the Lower Loop was just breached, before sunset, or the other areas of the mainChicago district will be breached in a similar manner. We, the Committee for the Purification of Chicago, call on all citizens to assist in securing these criminals and seeing that they are put outside.

"I will repeat again what I have said. The breach of theLower Loop area was not an accident. Other areas will be breached unless the criminals of the Citadel are removed from theEmbryTower and placed outside by sunset. We, the Committee for the Purification of Chicago, call on all citizens to assist in securing these criminals . . ."

"Let’s go," said Chaz , turning from the phone to the door nearby, leading into the basement of the Embry Tower. He fitted a vibration key to the lock plate and the heavy door swung open. Inside, in a small room at the foot of the concrete staircase, were three uniformed guards—all sound asleep in chairs. Chazgrinned at Eileen. The tension of the moment already had the body adrenaline singing in his blood.

"Beautiful, honey," he said. "I had to see it to believe in it—a spell cast through a cased steel door."

"You ought to know physical barriers don't—" Eileen broke off, glancing up the empty stairs." Chaz!"

"What's wrong?" He swung about to stare at the harmless looking stairs.

"Power," Eileen said, unhappily."Someone with a terrible lot of power, up there somewhere. Can't you feel it?"

Chaztried, felt nothing, reached for help from the Mass, tried again and still felt nothing. He shook his head.

"You mean somebody knows we're coming?"

"I . . . don't think so," said Eileen. "But whoever it is, he's the most powerful person I've ever felt."

"He?"

"I don't know. It just feels male, somehow . . ."

Chazshook his head.

"Forget it. We can't fiddle around now." He spoke over his shoulder to the rest of them. "Come on." He led the way up the staircase. At the fire door of the street-level landing, Red Rover snapped to the men just behind him: "Seal that!"

Several Rovers stopped and began to melt the edges of the door into its heavy metal frame with their hand lasers. Chaz continued up the stairs.

At each landing, Red Rover left men at work sealing the fire doors. But four landings up, the staircase itself ended, abruptly and in violation of all fire ordinances. A solid concrete wall barred their way.

"The elevators," Chaz said.

He went through the nearby fire door into what seemed to be a fourth-floor landing. There were some doors opening on the landing, all ajar, all showing small, empty offices. The elevator tubes were there also, but they were halted, their floating disks hanging frozen in the transparent tubes.

"Think they expected us, after all?" Red Rover asked.

"Maybe," said Chaz . "Maybe just an automatic protective reaction switched them off when the emergency phone broadcast came on, or the guards down in the lobby found out we were here." Below them, from the stairwell, they could hear a crackling noise as the lobby guards, alerted by the heat radiating from the half-melted edges of the sealed fire door at that level, were now trying to cut through the door from their own side. Luckily it was easier to seal a door with a laser than to open it with such a weapon after it was sealed.

"What then?" Rover said.

"I thought of something like this," Chaz said. "Eileen's been held in this building before. She's got a memory of the room she was kept in. If she and I can transfer to that room, maybe we can get the elevators going for the rest of you. Give me the recorder and the suit bag." He reached out; and the Rover with the portable phone recorder, slung like a satchel from one shoulder, lifted it off and passed it to him. Chaz slung the strap over his own right shoulder and turned to Eileen. He took the suit bag another Rover passed him and produced a pair of airsuits , handing one to Eileen.

"What's that for?" Red Rover asked. Chaz did not take time to answer until he and Eileen were both suited up. He watched Eileen close her faceplate,then turned to Rover before sealing his own.

"I'll try taking her out to the Mass and back in again," he said. "It worked in rehearsal, but then we both knew where we wanted to come back to. If it doesn't work this time, take your Rovers back out and mingle with whatever crowd shows up in the square. Give us five minutes, then leave. But keep your portable phone open for any word from me.All right?"

"Right enough," said Red Rover.

Chazreached with his gloved hand for Eileen's. He winked at her through his faceplate, in signal. These particular airsuits had no phones.

The landing around them blinked out. There was a glimpse of starlight and the Mass platform apparently standing up vertically alongside them to their right,then they were in what looked like an ordinary, condominium one-room apartment.

Chazlooked at Eileen. She was nodding and smiling through her faceplate as she unsealed it so that he could hear her speak. He reached up and unsealed his own.

As he pulled it open to the room air, a sudden dizziness took him. He opened his mouth to shout a warning at Eileen; but saw her with her own suit unsealed and already falling. A moment of disorientation took him and . . .

He opened his eyes to find himself out of the airsuit entirely and seated in a chair. Eileen was seated in a chair alongside him. They were under the dome of a roof garden—almost certainly on the top floor of theEmbryTower . Facing them were several tables pushed together to make one long surface; and behind this sat a small handful of people, among whom Chaz recognized Waka , Ethrya , and Jai.

Beside Chaz , Eileen made a small, choking noise. He looked quickly at her, and saw her staring at Jai in either fascination or terror.

"You?" she said, in a strangled voice. "You're the one I felt downstairs?"

"Yes," said Jai. "And thank you, sister. I take the recognition as a compliment. You seem to have more than an ordinary share of the talent, yourself."

XIV

Chazthrottled back the dismay and fury that rose inside him. It was strangely easy to do.

"You're one of the Citadel crew too, then," he said calmly to Jai, "or maybe you're their head man?"

"No one in the Citadel is head man," answered Jai. "We're like any other business, an organization. You might compare me to a chairman of the board, if you want to make a comparison. Ethrya , here, would be president of the company, perhaps." The tall man's voice was as gentle as ever. Chaz shook his head a little.

"What could an outfit like this offer someone like you?" he said. "Particularly if you've got the paranormal abilities Eileen says you have."

"Freedom," said Jai, gently. "Some people find freedom by getting well away from others. I find it by being well in control of others." He looked at Chaz almost sadly. "That's always been your one flaw, Chaz . You don't have the drive to control others; but at the same time you refuse to let others have any control over you. That's why I've finally voted against you; even if I was for your coming out to the Mass, originally."

He glanced to his right at Waka .

"Not everybody agreed with me about that," he said. "Poor old Alex, here, was caught in the middle."

"Why take chances?" Ethrya said. "It was a real chance you took when you had Wakaqualify him for theMass. If we'd killed him in the first place the way I said, he wouldn't have been around to cause us even the trouble he's causing us now."

"Investment theory," said Jai. "The whole theory of investment assumes some risk-taking in order to get the chance of making a greater profit. Chaz might have paid off for us very well. Besides, the present situation is under control."

He looked away from Ethrya , over to one side where a couple of men were setting up two antennae, each about three meters tall, and two meters apart. For a moment they stood there unenergized , like silvery wands; and then a two-dimensional image sprang into being between them. It was a view of the square before the south side of the Tower, apparently picked up by a camera high on the building's side, but telescopically enlarged to give close-ups from what seemed to be a few feet above the heads of those in the square.

Meanwhile, people behind the long table section were changing seats. Ethrya was giving up her chair beside Jai to a heavy-set man in his fifties with a bulldog face; a man who looked vaguely familiar. Chaz stared at him for a moment before it registered on him that he was looking at the City Director for the Chicago District. Eileen had been right about the Citadel's involvement with government officials. Chazlooked back at the scene in the square below. Think , he commanded himself. The square was beginning to fill up with a crowd that was clearly disturbed and unfriendly in its attitude toward theEmbryTower . Chaz glimpsed several of the Rovers he recognized, wearing ordinary jumpsuits, circulating among the crowd and clearly talking its emotions up. He did not, however, recognize Red Rover anywhere; and the absence of the immune leader brought him a small, unimportant feeling of relief. He remembered Eileen, and looked over at her.

She was sitting in a chair just like his, not more than three meters from him. She smiled a little palely, as their eyes met. Like him, she was not tied in the chair or restrained in any way; although, looking beyond her, out by the far end of the long table surface he saw a thin young man covering them both with a hand laser.

Chazturned his head back to the table.

"Jai?" he said.

The tall man broke off a low-voiced conversation with the Chicago City Director and a short, white-haired man standing behind them. The white-haired man turned and went off to take a chair several seats down the table to Jai's right. Jai looked at Chaz . Chaz had to think for a second. Then he remembered why he had called the tall man.

"Eileen," said Chaz . "You don't need her here."

Jai shook his head.

"To tell the truth, I'd like to do without her myself," he said. "After all, I'm a witch, too—or was. And hurting any kind of people is a bad practice. It builds up calluses on the sensitivity areas. But in this case we have to make a case against you, Chaz ; and we need her for that. A shame—" he glanced at Eileen for a moment. "You really do have an unusual talent, sister."

"Don't call me sister," said Eileen emotionlessly. "You don't deserve the name of witch, if you ever did. Dark see you, dark blind you, grave take you, curse bind you."

"I'm sorry," said Jai, very gently indeed. "I understand how you feel. But you ought to know better than to think you can hurt me in any way with the Craft. In all my life I never found anyone who could approach me at its use; much less one able to attack me with it."

He turned back to talking with the mayor. In the screen, the square was now showing itself packed with people; and to the west the dark stain of smoke from fires following the explosion still hung like a dirty finger-smudge on the sky above the city's buildings and transparent domes. It was getting on toward four o'clock, Chaz guessed; and the gray-clouded winter day, as it always did at this hour, had become dulllighted and heavy with a chilling dreariness. Something inside him was telling him that the battle was already lost. Lost and forgotten...

A bit from a poem floated out of the back of Chaz ' attic memory into the front of his mind. What was it from? Oh, yes . . . "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," by John Keats:

"Ah, what can ail thee, knight atarms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing! . . ."

And then, the last line:

". . . La Belle DameSans Merci hath thee in thrall."

Only it was not La Belle Dame , but Le Beau Jai , that had Eileen and himself in thrall... Faintly, from a sound receiver somewhere, he heard a chanting. He looked at the image of the square below, and saw the crowd swaying back and forth as one person. Obviously, it was the source of the chanting, which was directed against the Embry Tower; but the receiver was set at such low volume he could not make out what words were being chanted. The sound and swaying stopped then, almost abruptly; and the camera view swung around to look awkwardly down at a narrow angle on the lower front of the building itself. On the lower building-side there was now showing an image of the long table and those seated behind it; with the central focus on the face of the Chicago District Director. He began to speak. Someone turned the volume up on the receiver and it echoed his words as they also reached Chaz ' ears from directly across the little distance between Chaz and the long table.

. . . Realize that it is unusual formyself , as District Director, to address you all over an emergency phone broadcast this way. However, we are presently faced with a situation in which the utmost in self restraint and control will be needed from all our citizens. As most of you already know, saboteurs from outside the sterile areas have succeeded in blowing a hole in the protection of theLower Loop . As anyone might expect, we neither judge nor condemn these sick-minded exiles from among those who have had to be removed from the sterile community for the greater good of all. But for that same greater good, we must now take defensive measures to protect our healthy populace. In order that all Chicago citizens should understand the need for such defensive measures, I have felt it needful to acquaint you not only with a plot that has already resulted in one explosion, plus the threat of others that would indeed pose a danger to us all, but also to acquaint you with the chief saboteurs and events leading up to this criminal act."

He paused, glancing at the image of the square below. Chaz also looked. Judging from the reaction of the crowd, most of them were paying attention. It was a good bet, thought Chaz absently, that all through theChicago areas, most of the others there were listening as well.

"These saboteurs," the Director went on, "have attempted to black-mail you all into exiling some perfectly innocent and valuable members of the sterile community. Their aim in this was to cripple a scientific project which is dear to the spiritual and ethical hopes of all our people; in that it offers hope—not to us, but to some chosen few of our children—who with its help may one day find a new Earth on a clean, untouched world; and by avoiding the mistakes of our profligate ancestors, set the human race once more on its upward road.

"But before I say any more, let me take a moment to reassure everyone that our police, acting on information supplied by citizens who were approached by the saboteurs but who took their information immediately to the authorities, have located all four of the other explosion sites prepared by the saboteurs—"

"That can't be right," said Chaz out loud, without thinking. "No one inside the sterile areas knew the number or location of the other sites; and only one man outside, besidesmyself , knew until three hours ago."

"I will now give you Police Headquarters on remote for a report by the Police General himself," said the Director hastily, and sat back in his chair, turning to Jai. "Did they hear him?" Jai looked past Chaz . Chaz , turning, saw a redhaired, bulky man at a small table bearing commercial-sized broadcast recorders. The bulky man shook his head, and walked up, past Chaz , to the table.

"No chance," he told Jai and the Director. "I've got his chair in a dead zone. I can feed him into the screen with a directional pickup any time you want; but outside of that, he's simply not here to the rest of the equipment."

"How long are you giving the Police General?" asked the Director, looking at hiswatch.

"Four minutes," said the bulky man. "Then we return to you and you do the introduction to the Assistant Director from the Mass, here." He nodded at Jai. "While we've got a moment, though, Mr. Director, if you'd move your chair a little closer to the Assistant Director's, it'd help in the reaction shots. We want to close in on your face, looking concerned, when he makes his more important points. He'll hold up one forefinger to signal us; then I'll signal you, Mr. Director, and you listen for the line you want to react to . .

."

Chazlet his attention drift from the conversation at the table. He looked at Eileen and smiled; and once more she managed a smile in return. The thin young man covering them with the laser continued alert. Chaz' mind had been working slowly with the situation, trying to lay out logic-chains on the possibilities. But he found himself unable to hold the chains in his mind. It was hard to concentrate in the face of the realization that everything was all over. For himself, he thought, it hardly mattered. Nobody would mourn him after he was dead; and as for the dying itself, that hardly mattered more to him than his death would to anyone else. He had been something like a cornered rat in his reactions all his life; and in a way he had always been prepared for the time when the rest of the world would turn on him and destroy him. He knew that whenever his own time came he would go out in a red rage, which was not the worst way to die, no matter what was being done to you at the time. But of course, there was Eileen. Jai was clearly planning that she should share whatever conclusion was in store for Chaz ; and she would not find dying such an indifferent matter as he did—especially if it was some kind of prolonged death. He looked at the man with the laser and put his hand on the edge of the chairseat , under him. Maybe by throwing the chair at the thin young man he could distract the gunman long enough to reach him and get the weapon away. Then he might be able to live long enough to shoot Eileen. She would not be expecting it and from him; it would be mercifully swift. She would never know what hit her.

". . . Now that you have all heard what the General of Police has had to say," the City Director was talking again, "I want to introduce you to a man some of you may already have recognized in the group shots of this table—Jai Losser , Assistant Director on the Pritcher Mass. To those of you who are surprised to find the Assistant Director of the Mass back here on Earth, I should explain something that has been a closely guarded official secret, and which is revealed now only because of the seriousness of the situation. This building, the Embry Tower, which the saboteurs would have had you believe contained the chief members of the reputed criminal organization popularly named the Citadel, is actually the confidential headquarters on Earth for work with the Pritcher Mass. Assistant Director Losser is now going to speak to you because the chief saboteur, whom we have under arrest here, together with the woman who was his first assistant, was himself a worker on the Mass. Mr. Losser ." Jai leaned forward, smiling softly, as the City Director sat back in his chair.

"I'm honored to speak to the citizens of Chicago District," he said pleasantly, "although I wish the occasion was a happier one. The chief saboteur the City Director mentioned is a man named Charles Roumi Sant , formerly employed in this District. A man whom I regret to say I once liked, and of whom I had a very high opinion."

He gestured with one hand toward Chaz . Chaz , watching the image between the two upright antennae, saw his own face appear many times life-size on the south face of theEmbryTower . It showed there only aminute, then was replaced by a brief close-up of the District Director, showing concern on his features, followed by a return to a head-and-shoulder shot of Jai.

"Even now," Jai said. "I hate to condemn this man. Although tests show him to be completely sane and responsible, it is hard to believe that any sane man could plan on exposing hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents to the Rot, simply to gain a position on the Pritcher Mass that would insure his being one of those that would emigrate to a new world—once such a world had been found." He waved again at Chaz . Once more, Chaz saw his own face flashed on the building. The sound of the crowd voices mounted. Jai's features replaced those of Chaz .

"The details are somewhat technical," Jai said. "Briefly, however, Sant tried to gain a position of authority on the Mass by creating an illusion that he had contacted not only a habitable world, but one with intelligent aliens on it. This hoax was exposed when I went out with him during a shift of work on the Mass, and made mental contact with the illusion myself. While it first seemed to have some validity, a closer examination showed nothing really new or alien about the world or its socalled alien inhabitants. Working with an artist, I have managed to produce actual-size representations of those aliens as Sant imagined them. I have those representations here; and you will be shown them. Notice how they are nothing but a common Earth insect, and an equally common Earth mollusk, enlarged." He waved his hand to the left side of the table, where Chaz saw two large two-dimensional cut-out sort of figures. One was very much like the Mantis and the other was very much like the large Snail from the cartoon world. He looked back at Jai.

"I didn't know you were with me," he said to Jai. "You actually are good, aren't you? But why drag that part in—wait, I understand. You've got to find some way of justifying what happens to me to the non-Citadel people back on theMass. You've got to have some reason for shutting off contact with the cartoon world I added to theMass. "

Jai did not answer. He had paused to let his viewers look at the representations. Now, he went on to his audience.

"When I told Sant I knew this was a hoax," Jai said, "he admitted it; but he begged to be kept on theMass. I was forced to refuse. He came back to Earth. Back here, he went outside the Chicago District and gathered a crew of saboteurs with the idea of blackmailing the citizens ofChicago into creating a threat to this building and its workers. It was his hope that he could use that threat in turn to blackmail us here into putting him back on the Mass in a position of authority." Jai paused and smiled across the table at Chaz . For a second Chaz sawhis own face, looking oddly unconcerned, imaged on the building in the screen between the antennae. Then Jai was back on the screen.

"But we," said Jai, "trusting in the good common sense of ourChicago citizens, decided to call his bluff; with the result that, as the Police General has explained, we have now nullified all his attempts at sabotage; and he, with the woman who abetted him, is now in custody." Another flash of Chaz ' face on the side of the building below.The volume of sound from outside was turned up; and the voice of the crowd was an ugly voice, becoming uglier at the sight of Chaz ' image.

" Santand the woman will now be sent under police escort from this building through the streets to Police Headquarters," Jai said. "You may all return to your homes, satisfied that everything is secure and justice will be done. Please, I beg you, any of you who have strong feelings about what Sant might have succeeded in doing, take my word for it that in our courts justice will indeed be done. Do not be tempted to take it into your own hands . .. "

The crowd roared like a senseless beast.

"I trust you," said Jai, with a sad smile, "your General of Police and your District Director trust you, to allow these criminals and the two police officers who will be escorting them, to proceed in an orderly manner from here to Police Headquarters—"

Chazrose with a great effort, and threw his chair at the young man with the laser, knocking him down. Following the chair as fast as he could—but it was almost as if he moved in slow motion— Chazwas on top of the gunman before he could recover and had his hands literally on the weapon. But before he could get to his feet a number of people were holding him. He was pushed to his knees and the laser wrested easily out of his grasp. He was hauled to his feet again by two men in police uniforms. They marched him back to his chair, shoved him down into it and let him go. He sagged there, feeling too heavy to move.

"Not Eileen . . ." he said to Jai, in dull protest. The sound of his voice roared back at him from the screen; and he realized that he had probably been imaged there ever since he had picked up his chair to throw it at the man with the laser.

Jai came around the table. The handsome face bent down to him; and Jai's voice also echoed from the screen, speaking not merely to Chaz , but to the crowd below as well.

"I'm afraid so, Sant ," said Jai, sadly. "Your accomplice, like you, will have to face justice for theway both of you have threatened innocent lives."

Jai smiled gently, regretfully. One of the lines from Keats' poem came floating back into Chaz ' mind, with changes: "Le Beau Jai Sans Merci hath thee in . . ." With that, at last, understanding broke through the thick pressure clouding Chaz ' mind. Abruptly he realized what was happening; and on the heels of that realizationcame immediate reaction. So it was that the red fury he had expected at the end finally exploded within Chaz . It was then, in the ultimate moment, that he went berserk.

XV

But not by the simple, physical route alone. His causes had been larger than that. They were all he had suffered under, erupting within him at once. The sad hypocrisy of his aunt and cousins, the stifling closeness of domed streets and sealed buildings, the oppression of a race that seemed to sit with folded hands, waiting for its end. All this, plus his own loneliness, his own rebellion, his one gain of someone who actually loved him, in Eileen—whom Jai had been planning to include in Chaz '

destruction at the hands of a deluded mob, while Chaz sat by, bewitched out of courage and sense. Chazreached for the Masson-Earth, as he had found it when he had hung above the platform beyond Pluto, wanting to return to Eileen, on Earth. Once more he touched it and drew strength from it. With that strength, he threw off the dead weight of hopelessness that Jai's Craft had laid on him; as easily as a passing touch of drowsiness could be thrown off when there was work needing to be done. Almost, he had been ready to go to the mob like a lamb to the butchers.

His head woke. It went light and clear; and suddenly things seemed very obvious and very easy to do. Ignoring the thin individual who was again holding the laser on him, he got up once more from his chair—but this time it was everybody else who seemed to be in slow motion as they reacted to his moving—turned, and went back to the table with the camera and recording equipment. He brushed the bulky man there easily aside and spoke directly into the equipment.

"Red Rover!" he said. "Blow the other explosive charges. Blow them all, now.Every one." He heard his voice thunder from the image between the antennae; and caught sight of the man with the laser coming at him, shoving the weapon almost in his face.

"Don't be foolish," he said. "I know you've got orders not to shoot. They want the crowd to get me." He shoved the thin man away and turned back to the equipment.

"Sorry, people," he said to the people of Chicago District. "But you'd have to face up to the Rot, sooner or later. There are more exiles outside all the time. How long do you think it would have been before they began sabotaging the sterile areas on their own?"

He turned away from the equipment and went back to the long table. It was full of people ignoring him; all talking on the phone, ordering buildings to be sealed, rooms to be sealed, hovercraft to pick them up and carry them away from Chicago. Only Jai was not talking. He was watching the others instead, with a sad, dry smile. But he dropped the smile and turned to face Chaz as Chaz came up to him.

"Why?" he said to Chaz . "What good did it do you? Once those other holes are blown inChicago 's sterile defenses nobody will be able to save you from the people, even if anyone wants to."

"Never mind me," said Chaz . "Don't you understand it's all over? It'll never be business as usual for your group again. Didn't you realize how it was? I could lose; but there was no way your Citadel could win?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Jai.

"The Pritcher Mass," Chaz answered. "It can't do you any good, no matter what happens to me. If you were there with me mentally when I went from the Mass to the cartoon world, you have to remember they told us that."

"They?"

Chazthrew his arm out to point at the cut-out figures of the Snail and the Mantis.

"Those?" Jai made a dismissing gesture. "We'll find some other world."

"You'll find—" Chaz stared at him; and understanding, even of Jai, woke suddenly in him. "I'll be damned! You're self-brainwashed, too. In spite of all that paranormal talent and intelligence, you've been burying your head in the sand like the rest!"

Jai looked back down at him with a closed face.

"Let me show you something," said Chaz . He reached for the Mass beyond Pluto—and found the way blocked by Jai's mind and paranormal strength."All right. We can do it right from here." Chazturned his mind once more to the Mass-on-Earth, found it, and reached out through it to the cartoon world, to the Mantis itself and the Snail. He found them, feeling Jai's mind with him, watching.

"They don't want to believe it," Chaz said, at once out loud to Jai and through his mind to the Mantis on the cartoon world. "Can I call on you once more to tell them yourselves that the road to any other world is closed? That there's no place we can escape to?"

"This once more," said the Mantis.

The Mass-on-Earth stirred and shifted under the transparent bubble roofing over the top floor of the Embry Tower; and all overChicago , reality changed. Not for Chaz and Jai alone, but for everyone there. It was a little change, and at the same time, a big change—as if an extra physical dimension had been added, so that there was no longer merely length, width, height and duration; but also away, binding Earth and the cartoon world together.

The Mantis and a Snail appeared over the city along the "away" dimension. In one sense they were the cardboard cutout figures of themselves, now become solid and alive. In another sense they were enormous, standing in midair between building tops and heavy cloud layer, visible to all ofChicago 's sterile areas. But in a final sense they were even more than this, because they also stretched from Earth clear back across the unbelievable distance of lightyears to their own world, where in actuality they still were. And yet, these three things they seemed tobe, were really only one. Topologically, in the "away" dimension, all three manifestations were only aspects of single unity—like three views of a torus , the angle of viewing made them look to be one thing, rather than another.

"It's quite true," said the Mantis to everyone in the Chicago District, while the Snail beside him, without moving, slid endlessly over a thin surface of eternally flowing liquid. "There are other worlds; but not for your race, until you can show your right to them."

"You can't stop us," said Jai—and it was a brave statement. With the "away" dimension now visible around them, Jai's talent glowed visibly, like a small sun among the feeble lamps of the other human beings around him. But that glowing was a tiny thing compared to the burning greatness of the Mantis and the Snail.

"We do not stop you," said the Mantis. "We neither aid you nor hinder you. You do it all to yourselves. Think of yourselves for a moment, not as individuals, but as one creature called 'Human' made up of billions of little individual parts. This creature told itself it would build a bridge to the stars; but it lied to itself. What its hands were building, all the time it talked of a new world, was something else it wanted much more."

"What's that?" demanded Jai.

"How do we know?" answered the Mantis. "We are notHuman ; you are. But we can tell you what you have built is not a way to another world. When the time comes that another planet is what you really want—what you want more than anything else—you will undoubtedly find it. And as we neither helped nor hindered now, we will not help or hinder then. We would not even be talking to you now, if one of those tiny parts who knows what Human wants, had not reached us through what you all built, and put upon us the ethical duty to answer him."

The Mantis looked at Chaz and disappeared. It and the Snail were gone. Away was no longer perceptible; and the cut-out figures were only cut-out figures again.

Jai looked at Chaz . In that moment, a dull sound was heard, far off across the city, and a faint shock jarred the floor under their feet.

"There goes one of the explosion points," Chaz said. "Tell me, how many did you really find?"

"None," said Jai. "But you've just killed several million people in this district. I won't die; and the other witches won't—and at a guess there'll be some others who'll live. We've suspected there were some exiles that had turned out to be immune.

But what about the four million inChicago district who aren't? At least the Citadel would have gone on keeping them alive."

"You call this living?" Chaz said. "Anyway, you're wrong. No one ought to die unless almost everybody goes on refusing to face up to what's happened. The Mantis was right—the Pritcher Mass never was something to take us to a new world."

"Then what was it?" Jai said.

Chazshook his head, slowly.

"You're blind, Jai," he said softly."Self-blinded. How could you live completely inside glass, plastic, and concrete, and never know at all what was outside those things? 'The Earth is the Lord's,' Paul the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians . 'Late on the third day,' Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1949, 'at the verymoment when we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon mymind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase "Reverence for Life" .. . Now I had found my way tothe idea in which affirmation of the world and ethics are contained side by side; now I knew thatthe ethical acceptance of the world and of life, together with the ideals of civilization contained inthis concept, has a foundation in thought . . ."

Another faint thud reached their ears and another shudder of the building to a shock wave through the earth below. Jai frowned at him.

"I don't follow you," Jai said. "Are you preaching a set of universal ethics?Because if you are, you really are insane. There's no such thing."

"Yes, there is; and there always has been," answered Chaz . "A set of universal ethics have been with us from the beginning, whether we believed in them or not. Certain responses in living creatures, and particularly in intelligent ones, are as hard and firm as physical laws. Why do you think the Mantis and the Snail answered me when I called? They see more laws than we see, and obey more. But we have to obey the ones we can see if we want to survive. If we try to ignore them, we'll become extinct. The responsibility not to foul your own nest is a primitive law. We ignored it; and the Rot came." There was a third sound of explosion.

"We could have beaten the Rot by getting away from Earth," said Jai.

"No. If we'd managed that, we'd have simply blundered again and created another way to destroy ourselves," Chaz said. "Earth's more than just a place to walk on. Back before houses and fire, and even speech, we found food and shelter and survival in the Earth; and the older part of us remembers it. That part has been fighting all this time for just one thing: to get outside again. Because that—nothing else—is the road to survival."

"I can't believe it," Jai muttered, almost to himself. "We built the Pritcher Mass. We aimed it for new worlds."

"You built it?" said Chaz . "You and people like you only oversaw its building. Everyone on Earth built the Mass—creating it out of the basic, instinctive urge to make something that would destroy the Rot, and save Earth, and themselves. You were with me when we met the Mantis and the Snail before; and you heard what the Mantis said. Also, you saw how I reached them just 'now. The Pritcher Mass isn't out on the platform, beyond Pluto. It's here, on Earth."

Jai stared at him.

"It can't be," the tall man said.

"Why not?You ought to remember the Mantis telling me it was here. What's distance and position to the Mass?" said Chaz . "It's here on Earth, where it always belonged, with the people who made it."

"What sort of nonsense is this about the people back here building the Mass? Not one in three hundred thousand has talent."

"Of course they have," said Chaz . "Every human being's got it.Every animal and plant. Fifty years ago they were proving that plants reacted before they were burned or cut. Why do you think the plants and animals aren't touched by the Rot?"

"Next," said Jai, contemptuously, "you'll be telling me the Rot was created by the mass unconscious of the plants and animals striking back at the one species that was threatening their common world."

"Perhaps," said Chaz . "But that part doesn't matter, yet. The point is that paranormal talent isn't something 'sophisticated. It's something primitive and universal. Only humans had forgotten they had it. They made a point of not believing in it. Only those who could believe, like the witches and the ones outside who found themselves immune, used it—because belief can kill as well as save a life."

"Even if you're right," said Jai. "These back here who didn't believe had no part in building theMass. "

"Yes, they did," said Chaz . "The primitive part of their minds worked in spite of them, to survive. They just couldn't use what they built, until they believed they could."

"So you say," Jai answered. "But if you're wrong, you're going to be killing them by slow suffocation when the Rot comes in through those holes you've made, and strangles them."

"Only I'm not wrong," said Chaz . "All they have to do is face the Rot and believe, to conquer it." He turned and walked back to the table with the camera and recording equipment. The bulky man came forward to bar his path.

"Let him talk," Jai said behind him. The bulky man moved aside. Chaz reached the equipment.

"Only, you don't really know for sure, do you?" continued the voice of Jai.

"I believe," said Chaz . "That's all I ask anyone else to do." He faced the equipment.

"All right, people of Chicago District," he said into it. "Here we go. Whether we win or lose, here we go; because there's no other direction left for us. Reach out with your minds, join me, and end the Rot." He reached for the Mass-on-Earth once more. But this time, as he did so, he carried in his mind an image of himself as a seed crystal lowered into a nutrient solution that was the as-yet-unaware minds of the four million people of the Chicago District.

"Come on, damn you!" he said, suddenly furious at them. "Join me, or sit where you are and die when the Rot gets to you. It's up to you. You built the Mass—use it!"

He stood, waiting. For a long moment it seemed nothing was going to happen; and then, slowly at first, he felt himself being joined. He felt himself growing in otherness and strength . . . knowledge of the Mass waking to consciousness in the innumerable minds about him. The mental seed crystal that was himself was joined by the crystal of other minds, solidifying out of the nutrient subconscious, and their unity was growing . . . faster . . . and faster ...

"Watch," he said to all of them over the equipment, pointing up through the transparent dome overhead at the sullen cloud layer, darkening now toward night and already streaked and stained with red in the west. "This is how we begin to kill off the Rot."

He reached for the power of theMass. But now he was many times multiplied by the minds waking up around him; and the Mass-force responded as something much greater than it had ever been. It came at his summons.

It came as it had come before; and there was nothing that could stand before it. It came like the first man striding upright across the face of his, world. It came like the will of a people who would not die, breaking out of the trap into which they had fallen. Chaz had imagined it once as a great, dark mountain of wind—and as a great wind it came.

It blew across the buildings and domes of a sealed city; and the spores of the Rot that were touched by it died instantly, as they had died within the lungs of witches and the immune exiles. It gathered strength and roared like a storm. It spun into a vortex, stretching up toward the lowering clouds overhead as the horn of a tornado stretches down toward the Earth. It touched the cloud layer and tore it to tatters, spinning the gray vapor into stuff like thin smoke, then into nothingness. It ripped apart the sky, moving toward the west, destroying clouds and the Rot as it went. A long split opened in the thick cover above the city, stretching westward, like the thunder of ice going out when spring comes to a longfrozen land; and in that split the sun suddenly blazed clear in a cloudless space above a free horizon.

Below the top floor of theEmbryTower , the mind of Chaz was now wrapped in the crystalline unity that was the consciousness of some millions of other minds, just wakened and waking to their ancient abilities. About him,Chicago breathed newly breeze-stirred air with four million breaths. Not merely Eileen, not merely the witches, or the immunes from outside like Red Rover, or even Jai and the Citadel Mass workers—but all those who lived and were human were now beginning to join the unity, striking back with the nonphysical tool they had created when all purely physical tools failed them, at the enemy that had threatened to choke them to death or seal them in air-conditioned tombs. The last clouds went. The sunset spread across the sky like a cloth of gold. And in the east like sequins along its fringe, where the gold deepened in color towards the night, glittered and burned the first few beacon lights of the stars, unobscured once more—and now, in real terms, waiting.