Chapter IV: Part 4

Or did it go deeper than that? My reaction to Laurie was not normal either. The emotional pendulum was swinging far too wide at both ends of its arc. I was not a kid any more, not an unstable adolescent. Kissing a young and beautiful girl was not a unique, soul-shattering experience. The moment's passion with Laurie had meant too much. Granted she was no ordinary girl, and in my self-imposed isolation I had not been leading what could be called a full and satisfying sex life. Yet neither of these facts seemed to account fully for the highly charged, volatile reaction I had had to her on the two occasions we had been alone for a few minutes.

Could she be exercising some unnatural influence?

As I examined the thought a feeling of disgust welled up in me. It won't work, I thought dully, the revulsion itself a gray, listless emotion. Laurie is dangerous only if you're afraid of love, timid in the face of a strong relationship. She is not a monster. Nor is Jenkins. He had his opportunity right there on the beach in the darkness. It would have been easy for him to use the brutal force of a super-mind instead of awkward fists. He could have done it before Laurie heard the sounds of fighting and came out. It could have been done as it was in the dream. "Drown! Drown yourself!" And no one would have known how or why it happened.

No. Not Jenkins, not Laurie, not Helen Darrow or Mike Boyle. It had to be one of these and it was none of them. So I could no longer hide behind my bizarre delusion. There were no aliens. There was no enemy but the one who hid inside me. Myself.

And yet--there was one fact which was not imaginary. Lois Worthington had died. She had seen the man in the back booth, I had tried to reach her, and she had been brutally murdered. This fact was all too real. And the vision I had had so long ago of my father's death, that could not be dismissed or explained away now. That too had happened. At the time I was able to believe in coincidence. No longer.

Moreover, if the aliens existed only as part of an elaborate delusion of persecution, if whispered voices were hallucinations, there should have been accompanying symptoms before this, evidence of a greater deterioration of my thinking. But nothing else had changed. The world looked the same to me. I didn't even have to look far for a plausible explanation of my abrupt swings from apathy to extreme emotionalism. This instability could logically be accounted for by the unnatural pressures of fear and worry.

Dubiously I examined the evidence for and against the existence of the aliens. The structure of argument on which I could support belief in my sanity was weak, thin-walled, its foundations shallow. I closed my mind to shelter it against the winds of fact and logic.

* * * * *

I drove slowly away from the beach trailer community. There had been no sign of Laurie or Jenkins while I sat in the car. Some of the pain in my bruised body had subsided. Nothing after all had been broken except the tip of one tooth whose nerve throbbed like a hot wire in my jaw. My clothes were torn and bloody and the skin had been ripped off my knuckles, but otherwise I had come out of the fight in fair shape. The bruises would turn yellow and finally fade away, new skin would cover the knuckles, the puffiness around one eye would disappear, a plastic cap would disguise the broken tooth.

I glanced at the time dial on the instrument panel. It was not yet eleven o'clock. Still early. The forty-eight hours which had passed since the voices drew me across the campus toward the Dugout seemed more like endless weeks. Time had lost its meaning.

At this hour the shoreline road along which I moved was relatively deserted. Only an occasional car approached me along the outbound lanes. My pace was slow and one or two cars accelerated to pass me. The headlights of another slow-moving car bobbed in my rear view telescreen. Out on the causeway over the water traffic was much heavier, a glittering pattern of speeding lights.

A cat darted away from the side of the road. My foot jammed down in a sudden reflex action. I swerved sharply. For a second, the cat disappeared under the hood of the car and I felt a quick tension in expectation of the thump of contact. Then the cat reappeared, somehow having eluded the squealing tires, and I straightened the car. It had slowed almost to a crawl.

Accelerating, I glanced automatically into the rear view screen. The headlights of the car behind me were exactly the same distance away they had been before. For a moment I stared dully at the screen, not comprehending the significance of the other car's movement, yet aware that something was wrong. Understanding came slowly and, with it, the first bright streak of emotion to penetrate the gray cloud which enveloped me, a quick pulsation of fear.

I drove faster, climbing swiftly up from thirty to fifty miles an hour. The headlights remained steady on the screen, keeping pace. The car was following me.

There was a frozen moment when reality slipped away from me. I was aware of a creeping coldness, like the cutting chill of a damp wind, penetrating until my flesh crawled and my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. Somehow I kept the car on the road in its lane, maintaining the same speed. Then I saw the lights staring at me like eyes from the screen and I came out of my horrified trance with a jolt.

I had lost precious seconds. My foot jammed down and the little car leaped forward, the purr of its engine rising to a steady whine. The hills on my left side were a blur, and the clustered trailers on the ocean side of the road zipped past me with slapping wind sounds. I was approaching a speed of a hundred miles an hour and I had to fight to keep the light car on the road. It seemed to bounce and leap, hardly touching the ground.

And there were the headlights, dancing and winking on the small screen. The needle of the speedometer touched a hundred, edged past it--and at that instant I knew that I had played right into the pursuer's hands. This was what he wanted. This was to be the accident.

I slammed on the power brakes. They held, grinding loudly, while the car dipped and veered sharply, sliding into a skid.

"Release the brake!"

The thought cracked across my mind like the blow of a club. Momentarily stunned, I still kept my foot on the brake. The car was skidding dangerously now and the wheel seemed to have a life of its own, twisting and jumping in my hands. The scream of tires was like a cry of terror. But the car's speed had dropped swiftly.

"Release it!"

Sweat started on my forehead and under my arms. For a long moment my mind was locked in conflict with the force that tried to break it. Then, as if it were a wooden appendage attached to me but out of my control, my leg jerked. The car rolled free.

"Drive faster!"

I started to obey automatically as if the command had been my own, the message swiftly telegraphed from brain to foot. Anger brought resistance. I concentrated on steering the slowing car, trying to shut my mind, to create a blank wall of stubborn resistance. The muscles in my legs jerked with tension.

"Faster!" The word broke through like one of Jenkins' fists smashing through my feeble guard.

And, while my hands clenched the wheel until they ached, my foot inched inexorably toward the accelerator, nudged it, clamped down. The car lurched forward with gathering speed. A crushing weight of defeat made me slump on the seat. Tears of frustration blurred my vision of the road ahead. The speedometer climbed rapidly. A car's horn blasted and I swerved from the middle of the road back into my lane. I caught a glimpse of a red, angry face flashing past. The familiar headlights winked in the rear view screen like the eyes of the alien whose power had smashed through my flimsy barrier of resistance. Despair twisted like a fist in my stomach.

"Faster!" The voice that spoke in my mind was cold, unmoved, arrogant in its knowledge of power.

And I obeyed, letting myself relax, trying to ease the aching muscles of my arms and legs, not thinking about what I was going to do or what was about to happen to me. The speedometer's needle began to waver erratically above one hundred and ten miles an hour.

"Faster! Faster!"

The one word, repeated over and over, drumming in my brain until it obliterated thought. I was an automaton, steering the lurching, whining car along the blurred ribbon of road, a puppet controlled by tenuous strings of mental force, a wooden puppet without will or thought of its own, dumbly responding to the master's word.

And at last it came, the command, so dreaded in the deep recesses of my consciousness that protest shrieked in my mind, breaking me out of the stupor.

"Turn the wheel!"

And in that instant, when the immediate pull of obedience was almost overwhelming, a final frenzied cry of defiance was heard. I saw ahead the slanting curve of a ramp shooting out toward the ocean causeway. For long agonizing seconds I held out against the pressure--and when my hands moved on the wheel it was at that precise and last possible second which sent the car careening onto the ramp and into a long banked curve.

The maneuver caught my pursuer by surprise. There was a brief, bewildered respite before the clear cold voice spoke again, stamping out the elation that gripped me. The line of the causeway beckoned, so near now, less than a quarter of a mile away--

"Turn! Turn now!"

And I had spent the last remaining reserve of strength to resist. My hands obeyed. I spun the wheel.

The little car bounced off the low parapet at the edge of the ramp, kicked back out of control and shot across the narrow cement strip, its tail beginning a slow fishtailing motion, sliding into a spin. The low barrier on the other side of the ramp loomed up swiftly and I cringed against the impact--

And the car was caught by a sudden jerk that slammed me against the door with bone-jarring force. I felt the invisible electronic fingers of the automatic road controls grasping at the car, pulling it back, fighting against the momentum that carried it forward. Hope leaped in my chest. I had made it!

For a flashing second the car seemed to hang suspended, caught between the conflicting forces, and I was aware of the speeding lanes of traffic on the causeway now so near to me, of the whirling canopy of the star-stabbed sky, of the gray cold water surging far below. But the car's momentum had been too great. The plucking fingers of the electronic ribbon imbedded in the road slipped and lost their hold. The car's left front wheel and fender hit the parapet.

And the car was in mid-air, leaping the low wall and tumbling end over end in a long, soaring arc of flight, plummeting down, down, to smash at last into the wall of water. The wall broke and crashed around me and I plunged through it into a vast, unending pool of darkness.

15

Faces swam through the water, distorted and shimmering. There was a distant roaring in my ears like the clamor of the sea trapped in a seashell. The din faded away gradually and in the immensity of silence I waited shivering for the unseen force that would grip my mind.

"It's a miracle!" someone said clearly.

My eyelids pushed open like dusty blinds. I saw the faces again, blurred like a picture slightly out of focus but much sharper than before. I remembered an earlier awakening when five pairs of eyes had stared down at me in open curiosity and I had flinched in fear. Or had it all been a dream from which I was only now awakening?

"Don't move," a man said.

I had no intention of moving. My head ached and there was a deep throbbing in my arm, extending from a point near the shoulder down past the elbow, a throbbing not really painful but curiously electric and tingling.

I closed my eyes and re-opened them. There were two pairs of eyes, set in two faces which were quite clear. A man and a woman, middle-aged or older. Strangers. The man's hair was steel grey and very wet against his skull. The woman looked like a bird. She bent toward me and I had the momentary impression that she was going to peck at me with her long, sharply-pointed nose.

"Can you hear us?" she asked in a thin, piping voice. "Do you know what we're saying?"

"Yes."

I thought I spoke aloud but she continued to watch me expectantly. Behind her the sky was black and the fact surprised me. I had somehow expected hot sunlight and a hard blue sky.

"Henry pulled you out of the car," the woman said. "We saw it happen."

I heard a breaker topple over and the swish-swish of two cars passing on the highway. Then I remembered.

"The voice!" I cried. "Turn the wheel!"

The man crouched over me threateningly. "What's that you said?"

I tried to twist away. Pain sliced through my head in a clean stroke that seemed to take the top of my skull off.

"Please!" I groaned. "The voice--"

"What about the voice?"

"It told me--turn--turn the wheel."

"Henry! Did you hear what he said?"

"He's delirious, mother. It don't mean anything."

"But he heard voices. He must be one of them."

"He doesn't know what he's saying."

My eyes had shut against the pain in my head. Opening them I saw the two people in sharply dimensional focus. The man was soaking wet. He appeared worried. The woman's bird-like features were curiously pinched, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Did you hear a voice?" she asked quickly. "Is that what you're trying to say? Did a voice speak to you?"

"Told me to turn," I said weakly. "The alien voice--"

"In your mind?" she demanded. "Can you hear voices--even when there aren't any people talking?"

I nodded faintly. "Tried to make me--kill myself."

"He needs a doctor," the man said suddenly.

"No!" The woman whirled on him. "The Exalted One would wish that he be brought to him."

"We aren't sure--"

"But he must be one who can hear the voices. You heard what he said--and you said yourself he should have been killed in that accident. If he hadn't been a Chosen One--"

"He might be hurt worse than we can see."

"The Swami will know. We must take him there."

Bewildered, I listened to them argue, not understanding what they could mean. They spoke in casual tones as if others had heard the voices. But if that were true then I was not alone, it wasn't something I had imagined--

"You've heard the voices?" I asked eagerly. "You've heard them?"

The brightness faded from her eyes, clouded over with sadness. She shook her head. "We try, Henry and me, but we can't hear them. We are weak. We have not learned the fullness of believing. But the Swami says we are approaching the purity of full knowledge." Her voice rose earnestly. "Our day will come--if not in this life, then in the next."

The man grunted, interrupting her. "Can you move your legs?" he asked of me.

I hesitated, then tried. I could wriggle my toes and flex my knees. I felt as if this were a great accomplishment.

The man shook his head. "You should have been killed," he said as if it were a grudging admission. "I guess maybe mother is right." He stood, turning toward the woman. "I'll bring the car down here. Don't let him move." He glanced down at me. "We can't do anything about your car right now. We'll report it and maybe they'll be able to fish it out. But the water's pretty deep there."

The loss of the car meant nothing to me. At the moment it did not even occur to me that the car was not mine and I would be responsible for any damage to it. The man had trudged up the beach toward the road and I stared at the bird woman.

"This person you're taking me to--has he heard them?"

"Oh, yes!" she said, evidently surprised. "He is exalted!"

I didn't understand. Fatigue pressed down on me and I was conscious of the pain in my head, of the deep throbbing in my arm. I tried to concentrate on what the couple had said, feeling an impatient excitement, but I couldn't seem to think clearly. I clung to the one fact that emerged clearly. There was someone else who had heard the voices, someone who could help me. I wouldn't be alone any more.

A car chugged through the soft sand and stopped nearby. A door opened. I felt hands sliding under my arms, lifting me. There was a cry of pain. A dizzying spiral of brightness whirled me around and around, released me, and I went sailing off into dark, empty space once more.

16

It was morning when I woke. I felt stiff and sore, and for a minute I had the impression that I was encased from head to toe in thick white bandage. As I came more fully awake I realized that only my head and left arm were bandaged. I was dressed in a shapeless one-piece white gown that was tangled around my legs and torso.

I didn't know where I was. I lay in a hard, narrow bed between crisp, old-fashioned, white cotton sheets, the kind I had known as a child. The room was small and high-ceilinged. There was but one window, long and narrow and deeply inset with an elaborate metal grill. Though the window was curtainless, the wall was so thick that the rays of the sun were not direct but soft and filtered through the narrow aperture.

I pushed myself up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I had to brace myself as a dizzying wave of pain and nausea washed over me. I had the weak-limbed sensation of someone who has been in bed a long time. I wondered if I was in a hospital and how long I had been there.

There was a heavy carved wooden door at one end of the room with a small panel of opaque glass set into it at eye level. I had a fleeting impression that someone was watching me but I couldn't see through the glass.

Memory returned to me slowly in sharp-edged, broken fragments. I remembered being with Laurie, the fight with Jenkins outside her trailer, the headlong flight along the coast road, the lights staring at me from the rear view screen, the voice urging me to go faster and faster, and at last, the moment of terror when the car struck the parapet and tumbled through the air so fast that I was pinned against the seat.

And the couple who had loaded me into their car. They were taking me to see someone--

I heard a click. The door swung open and a small, sharp-featured woman trotted briskly into the room, clad in a loose white toga.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed.

The statement didn't seem to require an answer. I frowned at her.

"Don't you remember? We brought you here--Henry and I. The Swami was very pleased."

"Swami?"

"Yes! The Exalted One. He will see you this morning." She peered at me anxiously. "Are you feeling all right? The Swami said there was nothing broken. Your arm was badly cut and you had a concussion, that's all."

That was all. I felt as if I would never be able to move freely again. Yet I realized that I had once again been incredibly lucky. The alien had failed.

"Do you think you can eat?"

The thought of food brought back the acute sensation of nausea. I bent over, pressing one hand against my stomach, swallowing hard. I shook my head.

"You must have something," the woman said with a birdy peck of her head. "Don't try to walk yet."

She swept out, her toga trailing on the floor. The dust on the skirt marred the pristine white effect of the gown. I made no further attempt to move. The room swayed unsteadily around me whenever I stirred. I sat on the edge of the bed, unable to rouse myself to any real curiosity about where I was and why I had been brought here. Minutes ticked by and the woman did not return. The room was totally soundless. I could hear neither movement within it nor the sounds of a living world outside. Even the air conditioning was noiseless.

The place was like a crypt, I thought. The idea was peculiarly disturbing. I stared at the thick walls and the narrow slot of window and the heavy closed door, and they danced before my eyes as if they were edging forward, slowly closing in on me. A smothering claustrophobic fear clotted my throat and my breathing became labored and irregular.

Panic drove me off the bed. My clothes were laid neatly on a carved wooden chair against the wall. I staggered toward the chair. The floor of the room tilted and I had the sensation of falling, but somehow I reached the wall and leaned against it. After the room steadied, it took me several minutes to change from the white gown into my own coverall. I had to keep grabbing the chair for support. In spite of the cool temperature I was sweating.

Then I discovered that my shoes were missing. I looked very carefully around the room. There was no closet. The chair and the narrow bed were the only pieces of furniture. The floor itself was bare. My shoes weren't there.

I was still puzzling over this when the door opened and the bright-eyed bird woman tripped into the room carrying a tray. She stopped abruptly when she saw me.

"I told you not to get up," she said crossly.

I didn't answer her. She left the door open and I was staring at it. Air seemed to rush in through the opening. The smothering, closed-in feeling left me. How absurd, I thought. You're ill. You're imagining all kinds of dangers.

"You'd better sit on the bed," the woman said. "Can you make it? I guess you can, getting dressed and all."

I went obediently to the bed. It was easier this time. Even the dizziness was subsiding. I could smell the fragrance of hot tea. On the tray there were also some dry crackers and a bowl of some kind of dried meal that looked like rice but was hard and crunchy like a seed. To my own surprise the sight of the food made me hungry.

I ate. The meal was tasteless but not unpleasant. The crackers and the tea were excellent. I seemed to feel strength pouring into me as I ate. By the time I had finished I felt almost normal.

I glanced up at the woman, who sat perched on the edge of the chair with a bright-eyed air of interest. She even cocked her head and peered at me sideways like a bird. She wore a thin little smile.

"Where are my shoes?" I asked suddenly.

She was startled. "Oh, we never wear shoes here!"

And for the first time I saw that her feet were bare. No wonder she moved so silently. I thought of hundreds of people padding throughout the building on silent, naked feet. The idea was more comical than frightening.

"And where is here?" I asked.

Her tone was lower, almost reverent. "You are in the Temple of the Western Sun," she said. "You have been granted an audience with the Exalted One. He has already seen you and laid his hand upon you."

I frowned. Phrases came back to me from the previous night, and from somewhere came an image of a very brown man with luminous black eyes staring at me, bending close. And I remembered why I had been brought here. I looked sharply at the woman. Her husband had saved my life. And they had said something about the alien voices.

"I owe you my life," I said. "Your husband pulled me out of the car."

She smiled. "We saw it happen. Henry swam out and got you. Then when you said you had heard a voice, that an evil voice had forced you to turn off the road--"

"There's someone else here who has heard the voices?" I asked eagerly. "You said--"

"The Exalted One hears," she said calmly. "It's strange that you should have heard them when so many of us have tried so hard and failed. But the waters of God's purpose are deep and hard to fathom."

The last words dropped incongruously from the woman's lips, spoken with a kind of mechanical precision that was very familiar to me: the recitation by rote of an approved answer by a student who does not understand. The curiosity growing in me was checked by some misgivings. I was eager to meet the man she called the Exalted One. I had heard of mystical religious cults, of course--their numbers had grown rapidly in recent years--and it was probable that I had stumbled upon one of these. But I grasped at the straw of fact that was offered to me: the man had heard bodiless voices. However he might have interpreted them, wasn't it possible that he might have heard the aliens?

"When can I see him? I'd like to talk to him now."

"He is in contemplation," the woman said. "But it won't be long now." She nodded toward the window, through which one could perceive only a sliver of blue sky. "When the sun is overhead he will call you."

Her expression became grave. "You will want to prepare yourself. I will come for you then."

Before I could stop her, she bustled out, her naked feet making almost inaudible slaps on the bare tile floor.

* * * * *

She came for me at noon. I had dozed and woke refreshed. My arm was painful when I moved it, but my head was clearer and my vision sharp. The woman led me along a wide arched corridor with a great number of doors similar to the one to my room. We came out onto a balcony. Stairs led down into a high-ceilinged lobby. To my surprise, the huge room was almost empty. One white-robed figure hurried out of sight. The place as silent as my room had been. Here, however, sunlight streamed through a huge triangle of stained glass, splashing a pool of many colors across the tile floor and the bare white walls.

We walked across the lobby and through another door. Here I stopped abruptly. The room was crowded, all of the people wearing white togas like the woman wore. They were all sitting cross-legged on the floor in various attitudes of concentration. Many did not even look up as I entered. Those who did showed neither surprise nor particular interest. They went back to their contemplations. No one spoke.

The woman had crossed the room. Now she beckoned me forward impatiently. I walked slowly toward her. She opened the door at the end of the room and stepped aside to let me pass. I heard the door shut gently behind me.

At first I thought I was alone. The room was heavily curtained and very dark. There was a strong smell of incense. The room seemed bare except for a single cushion in the center. Then I realized that a thin, filmy curtain hung like a veil across the room. Behind it a light began to glow, starting at the bottom corners of the room and brightening gradually like a sunrise. Behind the veil, thrown into relief by the soft glow of blue light behind him, was an almost naked man. He wore a thick white turban wrapped around his head. In the center of the crown was set a fiery red stone. The man's features were touched only with highlights--a straight line defining a strongly-bridged nose, other strokes suggesting high cheek-bones, sensuously full lips, a firm jawline--creating the overall impression of a face that was startlingly handsome without being weak or pretty. The skin of his body looked almost black. A slash of white cloth covered his loins.

"You are Paul Cameron," the man said, an impressively rich and resonant voice lending importance to the statement.

"That's right." It was disconcerting to hear my own voice, thin and colorless in contrast.

"The cushion has been provided for you," he said. "You are not accustomed to our more austere habits."

The tone was faintly deprecating, suggested a softness and civilized weakness in me for which I couldn't be blamed. I sat on the cushion with a feeling of defiance. When I was seated on the floor I found that I had to look up toward the man and I realized that he sat on a raised platform. It occurred to me that the relative positions were carefully calculated.

"I must thank you for treating me," I said, feeling vaguely disappointed. I don't know what I had expected but it was not this elaborately staged piece of theater. I was rapidly concluding that I was simply in the temple of one of those popular and phony cults that dupe the credulous.

The man bowed his head. "I am Swami Fallaninda. You are disappointed?"

His perception of my thought surprised me. "No, not at all. You know how I came here."

"Your emanations are strong," he said, his voice booming at me resonantly. "I feel the vibrations...."

In spite of myself I felt a tug of hope. "When I spoke of hearing voices your--disciples became excited. Have you heard them?"

"Many hear. The astral body is visible to those who can tune in its vibrations, who can see and hear with astral eyes and ears."

I broke in impatiently. "These aren't astral voices or whatever you call them. These are aliens. They tried to kill me!"

The mystic showed neither surprise nor concern. "It is possible that occult powers can be used for evil purposes. Yet it is not usual for this to be so, nor is it usual for one to be consciously receptive to the vibrations of higher frequency given by even a powerful adept, learned in the control of the mind, unless the listener has been trained in the development of astral vision. You have had no such training."

"No--but I've heard voices!"

"Perhaps it would be better if you would explain what you have experienced."

For a moment I studied the dark figure half-hidden behind the veil. Inexplicably, my first doubts and suspicions had begun to slip away from me. The man inspired confidence. I had forgotten the theatrical trappings of the setting as the rich voice filled the room--gentle, soothing, inviting belief and faith and trust. I found the hope growing in me. He had not, after all, dismissed my claim to hear the voices in my mind. He acted as if the fact was not at all unusual.

I told him the story. I saw little reason to conceal anything. Beginning with my memory of the vision of my father's death, I went on to recount the more recent vivid dream of drowning and the many times I had heard the voices, particularly in recent weeks they had come to me with increasing clarity and frequency. And finally, I spoke of the two attempts on my life when an alien force had seemed to control my mind. When I had finished, I waited anxiously, peering through the thin fabric of the veil.

"I have known it," the swami said suddenly in his incredibly deep baritone. "The evil vibrations have reached me, but I resisted the truth which they would have led me to believe." He bowed his head. "Thus have I failed to keep contact with the Universal Mind."

"The Universal Mind?" I repeated.

"The Cosmic Consciousness toward which we grope. The human mind is frail and finite, but the Universal Mind is all."

"I don't understand."

I thought he sighed. "All human life is a groping upwards, an opening of the individual mind to the One Universal Mind. Our consciousness is limited. We catch only fragmentary glimpses of the truth, the great body of super-consciousness which lies on another plane, through which we must move closer to God, the One Universal Mind. But the history of man is a story of this struggle upward toward the light, the slow evolution of consciousness toward that state when at last the subconscious and the super-conscious will be merged in the One, and the One in all."

"What does that have to do with me?" I demanded.

"There have been men, advanced members of the human race, who have attained to Cosmic Consciousness, the state of true wisdom. Even in ancient times these have lived--the Yogi of India, the Magus of Persia, the Atlantean Kushog--"

"So I've heard," I snapped irritably. "But I'm not interested in ancient mystics--"

He held up his hand in a commanding gesture. His voice rose, vibrant and dominating. "Listen! Do not close your mind to the truth of the ancients! For they have lived, they live now, whom you do not comprehend, who have discovered the wisdom of the East, who know that there is no pain, no sickness, no evil beyond the power of the mind to control. All men may approach this realm if they but wish it. It is necessary to purify the self, to rise above the interfering vibrations of material need and base emotions and ego-dominated thoughts, to learn control of the body and the mind. Only then can we rise like the phoenix from the ashes of a dead ego, into a new life in the higher plane where the self does not exist."

The rich voice thundered through the room, swelling and resounding from the walls, and suddenly sank to a bare whisper. I found myself leaning forward, straining to hear.

"Telepathy is but a simple tool of the adept who has learned control of the mind of man. Such a one can easily communicate directly with the unconscious mind of another, can cause a weaker mind to do its bidding--can even cause the strange delusions which you have described. Such is the power of the Cosmic Consciousness! And such power, used for evil, can only be defeated by a true inner faith, an attainment of purity in which all base emotions are cleansed. Yours is a unique gift, a reflection of the Cosmic Power you have known in a previous incarnation. To use this power of the mind, you must learn that total concentration in which there is no sensation, no awareness of self. You must be an empty receptacle, ready to be filled with wine of truth and love."

Incredulous, I stared at the shadowy figure under his white turban. While he had spoken, the apparent majesty of his words and the magnetic power of his voice had held me. For a moment, I had felt a thrill of understanding and belief. Here was the answer to everything! Here was the end of fear and wonder! But now, in the sudden silence, I heard the echo of his vibrant phrases, glib and full of half-truths, promising much and saying little. All he offered were vague speculations about someone using occult powers against me, speculations mixed up with a hodge-podge of Hindu and Oriental teachings blended into a palatable opiate.

And all at once, I thought of the acoustics of this room and I understood why my own voice, swallowed up by the sponge-like walls surrounding my half of the room, had seemed so weak and helpless, while his, obviously reinforced by a clever acoustical arrangement and possibly even by microphones, boomed at me with stereophonic richness.

Angrily I jumped to my feet. "What are you suggesting? Do you want me to join your little camp of followers? How about my life savings? I won't need that, will I, if I'm going to purify myself of all earthly desires?"

His voice was heavy and sad. "You have closed your mind. It was to be expected. You are not ready to believe."

"I'm certainly not ready to swallow that stuff about someone using cosmic powers against me. Who is it? Why should he try to kill me? Maybe you could go into a trance and communicate with him for me. I'd like a few more answers."

My anger was out of proportion, but I couldn't control it. Disappointment was so keen that it severed any bonds of restraint. I had placed too much hope on the help I might find here. To encounter a dedicated fanatic--or what was worse, a clever charlatan--enraged me. I stepped forward and tore at the veil which hung between us. The fabric gave off a faint smell of dust disturbed and a weak spot ripped under my hand.

The swami did not move.

"Answer me, dammit! Who's trying to kill me? Or am I as crazy as you are?"

He remained absolutely still, head bent, legs folded under him, his attitude one of total concentration--or prayer. Furious, I grabbed his shoulders and jerked him up. His lack of weight astonished me. The man was thin and bony, fragile and light under my hands. The large, handsome head was an incongruity on the short, frail body. No wonder he sat on a platform! No wonder he spoke out of darkness! I stared into the black, liquid eyes. His lack of resistance finally penetrated through the angry haze of frustration which had filmed my reason. I released him.

I hadn't heard any sound behind me. I caught the blur of a white robe swooping over me and heard too late the padding of many feet. Then I was enveloped in a smothering white blanket that dropped over my head. Hands caught and pinned my arms and dragged me down, hauling me backwards--

"Wait!"

The swami's voice thundered its command and the room was stilled. I was on the floor, held there by the weight of a heavy body and the pressure of many grasping hands. There was an angry mutter of protest.

"Release him!"

Reluctantly, the hands drew away. Someone pulled the white cloth off me. I blinked up at a huddle of white-robed figures looking down at me, their eyes hostile. I recognized among the faces that of Henry, the man who had saved my life.

"Evil has touched him," the swami said. The men standing over me drew back as if in fear. "Let him go in peace."

Warily I pushed myself up. The others made no attempt to stop me now. They were all watching the Exalted One. He was standing now, and even on the raised platform he made a small, unimpressive figure when erect. But there was nothing pale or thin about the cultivated voice.

"The days of the spirit are at hand," he intoned. "The hours of evil are numbered. Go in peace. Cleanse your spirit! Prepare for the day of Truth, of the All-in-One. You, who have stumbled blindly upon the latent powers that lie within, know that when your mind is opened to truth the powers of darkness can hold no influence over you. Know your own strength, believe in it--fear not to die! For there is no death; there is only the life of the spirit."

To my astonishment, those who had a moment before been violently tearing at my body now sank slowly, one by one, to the floor, ignoring my presence. Only the swami himself still watched me. The red glow of the gem in his turban was like a fiery eye. Uneasily, I stumbled back through the motionless heaps of white-shrouded figures kneeling or sitting on the floor. The door was open. I turned and ran.

In the lobby I was abruptly confronted by the bird-faced woman. Her features were pinched tight, her eyes bright with venom.

"We should have left you to die!" she screeched. "You put your hands on the swami!"

"There is no death," I muttered.

I left her open-mouthed. A moment later, I burst out of the cool lobby into the bright, hot sunlight. I was striding swiftly away from the temple before I realized that I was still barefooted.

I turned to look back at the Temple of the Western Sun, an architectural anachronism that, like the swami's faith, dated back to a time lost in the reaches of history. The sunlight reflected glaringly from the arched roof and from the intricate pattern of color in the big stained glass window at the front.

I was intensely relieved to be out of the place into the open air. Here I could breathe freely, free of the dusty heritage of an ancient wisdom founded on love and the aspiration of man to be one with the source of all things, the Creator of the universe, a wisdom now half-absorbed and clouded by a ritual of words. And I felt ashamed of my relief. The small satisfaction derived from my final taunt to the bird woman crumbled before the knowledge that I had bolted from the temple in foolish panic. I would have come to no harm at the swami's hands. In the end he had acted far better than I. Perhaps he was not a charlatan. One couldn't blame him for using a few dramatic effects to heighten the impact of his message. What religion had not? And his last words had had a ring of sincerity. He believed. It was I who, driven by blind anger, had almost been guilty of violence, because the man had failed me. And yet--

Standing there, staring at the silent temple, I had the obscure feeling that he had said something that was very important to me, something I could not quite grasp, a truth buried under the avalanche of his words.

17

I arrived at my trailer in the middle of the afternoon. My feet were tired and blistered, although I had managed to pick up a pair of sandals along the way. The swami's temple had been a good mile from the nearest elevated station. I wasn't used to that much walking, particularly in my bare feet.

Just as I turned into the walk leading up to my trailer, the girl next door appeared. She ran down the steps toward me and halted abruptly. For a change her eyes were not cast down or averted but intent on my face, wide with concern. I had a startlingly clear sense of her anxiety, followed by an apprehension of acute relief.

"You're--you're all right?" she asked breathlessly.

She was staring at the bandage around my head. My coverall concealed the larger bandage extending from my left shoulder to the elbow.

"Banged up a little," I said with forced cheerfulness. "Nothing serious."

"I was afraid--" She caught herself. "When you didn't return home, I--"

I looked at her sharply and she blushed. Her head turned away quickly, but not before I saw the creeping stain of red under her skin. For a moment, I was too astonished to reply. The girl's next words made me forget all about her odd behavior.

"The police were here," she said, her glance brushing mine for only an instant. "They wished to see you."

I felt a quick stab of warning. My gaze narrowed, trying to read her expression. The police had not been satisfied with my story, then. And this girl had backed up my alibi.

"Were they questioning you again--about the other night?" I asked with an attempt at casualness.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head in a terse, firm negative. "They were very nice. They said they would stop back to see you later."

"You didn't--tell them anything else?"

A faint smile touched her lips and I seemed to see her face revealed for the first time without the mask of shyness. It was a face that mirrored warmth and a hidden humor, a sensitive, lovely face.

"There was no need," she said. "I do not think they are interested any more."

"But they didn't say why they wanted to see me?"

All at once she appeared to become aware of my close scrutiny and she took a step back. "Nothing," she said quickly. "They--they told me nothing."

She started to turn away and I stepped quickly toward her, catching her arm. "Wait!" I said urgently. I could feel a faint trembling under my fingers, a current of--what? Excitement? Fear? "I want to thank you--for being worried about me."

Her eyes met mine briefly and I was surprised to see that they reflected none of the timidity or apprehension that seemed to vibrate in her body.

"It is only natural that I would be concerned," she said, and even her voice held a different tone, a note of surprising tenderness.

And while I stared, she pulled away from me and ran lightly up the steps and into her trailer. The door closed firmly behind her.

I took a step after her. Her words came back to me, her news about the police. They would be back. And there could be only one reason for their wanting to talk to me again.

It took all the control I had to keep from turning and running.

I let myself into my trailer. It seemed stuffy inside, the clean, cool, filtered air slightly stale after a day without human smells to combat. An impulse of caution made me go through the trailer quietly. In the compact, carefully planned rooms, it would have been impossible for anyone to hide. I felt the absurdity of expecting to find police lurking in the closet or under the bed, but I was not acting very rationally. The desire to flee followed me through the empty rooms.

A woman had been killed and the police had reason to think that I might be involved. And I had lied. Why else should I lie unless I was guilty? From their point of view the conclusion was obvious. And then it occurred to me that they might have even more reason than I knew to find me a prime suspect. Evidence could have been planted to incriminate me. Why not? It would be one way to muffle the listener's ears. Modern forces of justice were quick and unsentimentally ruthless in dealing with a murderer. They had to be in an overcrowded world.

Restraint snapped. I ran into the bedroom and fumbled hastily in the closet for my one small suitcase. Tossing it onto the bed, I began to pull a few clothes out of the closet and the chest. I snatched a razor from the washstand and a windproof jacket from its hook. When I had jammed everything into it and slammed it shut, I stood over the suitcase, panting. It seemed to me that I could smell my own fear, sharp and acrid, soiling the conditioned air. I felt an unexpected revulsion.

I sat on the bed. For a long moment I didn't move. My mind seemed frozen. The trailer was very silent and I listened to my own strained breathing. And at last I held up my fear and examined it, and I knew that I could not run.

I was not guilty. Flight, in any event, would be more incriminating than anything I could possibly do, and if they were really after me I would be picked up within hours.

Besides, I thought without humor, I could always plead insanity.

* * * * *

I had less than an hour to wait. I heard the helicopter whirring overhead and was at the window when it dropped gently onto the landing strip across the street. The two policemen came directly toward my trailer, moving unhurriedly. I recognized the chunky sergeant who had questioned me before. The same lean partner was with him. I opened the door as they reached the steps.

Sgt. Bullock looked up mildly. "Glad we caught you in, Mr. Cameron."

"I heard you were looking for me."

"Yeah, we thought you might be a little worried about the case we talked to you about."

I stared at him, puzzled. His attitude was not that of the aggressive policeman. He seemed almost apologetic.

"We have our job to do, Mr. Cameron, and we have to run down every possibility just as a matter of routine."

"Sure. I understand."

He grinned. The square face which had appeared so mean and hard acquired the pudgy friendliness of a well-fed puppy.

"You have to admit it looked kind of funny, your asking about the girl and her being killed a couple of hours later. It's the kind of thing we can't ignore."

"Yes, of course. Have you--discovered anything new? I mean, do you know who did it?"

"Oh, yeah, we got him. The owner of the restaurant where she worked."

"Harry?"

"That's his name. Seems like he's been crazy about the girl and there's been a little trouble before. She was the friendly type. I guess she's been servicing half the college crowd."

I shook my head. "Harry," I repeated blankly.

"Yeah. Well, he's caused trouble before this when he caught her with some kid. He hangs around her place and he beat her up a couple of times. So it looks like he was jealous and they had a battle and he lost his head." The sergeant shrugged. "Happens every day."

Still stunned, I stared at the two officers. The full implications of what Sgt. Bullock had said were just beginning to penetrate. If Harry was the killer--

"Are you sure?" I asked.

The sergeant appeared surprised. "Oh, he hasn't confessed yet. We picked him up a few hours ago and he wouldn't say anything. Stubborn guy. But we'll have the results of the lie detector and serum tests within a few hours and that'll wrap it up. He did it, all right. He was seen near her place that night, and the neighbors heard them quarreling. We'll be digging up more stuff on him, now that we got it pinned down."

I felt a numbing cold settling at the base of my neck. "Thanks for taking the trouble to tell me this," I said thickly.

"No trouble, Mr. Cameron. This is our patrol area anyway. We're around here pretty regular. Just thought we'd drop by and take a load off your mind."

"Thanks."

The thin, silent partner spoke for the first time. "Never thought you did it anyway," he said laconically.

I tried a smile. My lips felt like stiff rubber. "You had me worried. I'm glad it's all cleared up."

"Yeah," the sergeant said heavily. "So are we."

They turned away. I managed to utter a reply to their casual goodbyes. They crossed the street and climbed into the helicopter. A moment later, it rose slowly into the air. I watched it until it had dwindled out of sight, lost in the afternoon haze.

All over, I thought. The mystery all cleared up. No mystery at all. There never had been one. Lois Worthington's murder had been the one tangible proof I had that the aliens were real and dangerous. But she had been killed by a jealous lover.

There were no more threads to cling to.

I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly. With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman, I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So there were no suspects. Better take another look at the crime, a close look. Question the witnesses, see if their testimony is reliable, make sure it stands up. This time there was only one witness who claimed that a crime had been committed, an attempt at murder. The victim himself, Paul Cameron. Queer duck, a bastard, mother's dead so he lives alone, keeps pretty much to himself, no close friends. Got a vivid imagination. Keeps hearing things. Is he the only witness to the fact that there was a crime? Yes. Well, how do we know he's not lying? How do we know it's not all in his mind?

And that was it. Investigation completed. There was no crime. There were no aliens.