A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

It was a beautiful day, Blessed thought. Locked up in the Lod Zu all day, every day, he did not often have time to appreciate or even notice beautiful days; but here on the shores of the Sea of Waters one could not help soaking in the loveliness of it all. The sun shone like a jewel in the golden sky, with only a couple of cloudstreaks to the North. The seabirds flew low over the deep green water, now and then diving into it to obtain a fish. The sand was white and fine beneath his sandals, and crunchy where it had worked its way in between his toes. Blessed could dimly remember swimming here, as a boy. His father, of course, could never leave the Lod Zu; and days at the beach had been spent watching the other boys play with their fathers. They had tossed balls back and forth, or thrown nets into the sea to catch fish which they cooked over campfires for lunch. How deliciously they had smelled! Sometimes the boys would paddle out beyond the breakers on brightly-colored, light plastic boards. They would wait on them until a large, perfectly-formed wave rolled in; then they would paddle! and build up speed, finally be captured by the wave and ride it in, sometimes standing upright on the board if they were skillful enough. One time he had finally gotten up enough nerve to ask another boy if he could borrow his board when his nurse had arrived and taken him back, crying, to the Lod Zu.

Blessed's aide interrupted his reverie by pointing out to sea and handing him the pair of electronic binoculars. "If you look out about three-quarters of the way out to the horizon, Holy One," he was saying, "you can see the tips of the bombs just sticking out over the water."

Blessed adjusted the binocular's lenses to his personal vision and the electronic zoom to bring the bombs within view. The binoculars included a logic circuit which kept the image steady no matter what power of magnification was used. "And those will do it?" he asked.

"Our calculations show that, with the proper timing of the explosions, those bombs will set up immense tidal waves that will race across the beach, pick up earth from the plain, and deposit it in every crack and rodent-hole below the fifth level in Shoorn, yet lose enough strength in the journey so as not to destroy the foundations of the towers themselves."

At this point they were interrupted by the approach of a man wearing a temple guard's uniform. "Bless you, Holy Ones," he greeted, saluting. "I bring tidings: the underground spies have been captured and imprisoned, and the alien destroyed."

Thank the gods, things were going right for a change! "How was the alien killed, guard?" Blessed asked the guard.

"Very cleverly, Holy One," was the reply. "The rebels had set up a clandestine mind-inductor for him; so we pumped the entire contents of the Lod Zu's main computer into his head. He died from the overload."

"Very good, guard. You may attend us back to the Lod Zu." Blessed turned to his aide. "These tidal waves—they'll wipe out this beach, won't they?"

"I am afraid so, Holy One."

Blessed looked about and again recalled the frustrating days of his childhood, watching the other children enjoy themselves when he could not. "Good," he said.

With the sensation of its all being a dream, Bradley became aware that he was standing in Jewel-like's laboratory. He felt strangely light-headed—no, light-bodied—and was surrounded by eerie sounds and half-noises unlike anything he had ever heard before.

He wanted to turn around, and was amazed to find himself doing so before he could send the message to his legs.

He turned to face the chaise lounge in which he had been lying and received the shock of his life.

He was still lying there.

He could see his body, still wearing the mind-inductor helmet. Dawn stood nearby and Jewel-like was still working the controls at his desk. They were motionless, as though frozen in time. It was like looking at a single frame of a movie film.

He didn't know what had gone wrong with the mind-inductor program, but obviously something had—something big. His thoughts turned to Dot and the computer, and suddenly he experienced the strange sensation of being two places at once. With part of his mind he could see Dot, Thick Neck and Fingers in a prison cell; the other part of his consciousness saw banks of equipment stretched out all around him. For some reason he felt very close, emotionally close, to the computer banks, although he couldn't understand why.

It came to his notice that Randy had not been present in the cell and in an instant he was hovering (!) near one of the elevated streets, observing three men in a vehicle, headed for the Lod Zu. Two of the men wore purple priest's robes and one was dressed as a temple guard. Bradley recognized Blessed from his pictures, but his interest was drawn to the guard: although he appeared to be a stranger, Bradley sensed that he was really Randy, disguised.

Bradley realized that he would have to guard his thoughts very carefully, since his "body" seemed to react to them instantly. He had heard of out-of-body experiences while in college enough to recognize this as being one.

It occurred to him that this was his chance to find Earth.

Deliberately Bradley closed his mind's eye and thought of Earth, blue and beautiful, as he had seen it in pictures taken from space. He became aware that he was rushing through the fabric of space—it felt like a fabric; that is, he could sense the material of space passing him by—and he realized that he could see in all directions, not just ahead, and he could understand, and directly sense, multi-dimensional hyper-shapes. He was thus able to understand just where the twist between Earth's universe and that of Kiri was placed, and the relationship between the two.

And then, there he was! He was floating above the Earth as the astronauts do; he felt himself drawn to Chad and allowed himself to drift towards it. He watched as clouds passed him by as he fell towards the matted green jungle below. Soon he was in a clearing which he recognized as the one in which he and Marquette and Stevens had pitched camp that evening that seemed like years ago but was actually only a few days (in one sense—and many, many centuries in another). Thinking of the lost city, Bradley found himself there, again amazed; for the knowledge of a fact and the realization of it are two different things. For, he was viewing the City of Khufu, not in the twentieth century, but at some time in the past: for, at last, he understood!

Kiri and Earth occupied similar relative spaces in their respective universes; that was why the constellations were the same. In a sense, Kiri was the Earth of her universe. (The trip, the twist that brought Bradley there included lateral inversion; that was why the stars appeared to be "backwards" to him.) Although he understood directly the hyper-dimensional aspects, Bradley realized that he would have to simplify to explain to Dawn and Jewel later...if there was a "later". Therefore he thought in the two-dimensional terms in which Jewel-like had first explained multi-dimensional spaces to him: Kiri's universe and Earth's could be compared to two table tops; but not one over the other. Rather, they were at extreme angles to each other, especially along the time-dimension; for, five minutes forward on Kiri equalled several years backwards on Earth!

Thus, without having traveled in time with respect to Kiri, he was present in Khufu's city at some time in the past. But this meant...Bradley felt a depression even through the euphoria of the astral journey...this meant that he could never go home again, could never return to his own century. He would have to live out his life on Kiri, with the knowledge that each Kirian year brought him closer to the time of his home planet's birth, not away from it. Even if there was a way for his physical body to get there.

Thinking of the device in the pyramid pit that had translated him to Kiri, Bradley found himself there. It existed, this far in the past? Who had invented it? And why had it been placed in such an out-of-the way spot?

Colored lights obscured his view and his train of thought and then he was awakening in Dawn's arms, his head feeling like it had been ground between two bricks. He suddenly felt that he knew—oh, many things he had never known before! But his head hurt worse if he tried to concentrate on any of them.

His arm was pricked; Jewel-like had given him a shot. He felt sleep coming over him like a blanket but there was one thing he must, must say while he could.

"Dot—the others—captured..." Then, message delivered, his eyes closed gratefully and he allowed himself to fall asleep.

Wind blowing her black hair around her neck and shoulders, Dawn held the reins of her fly-board and skillfully threaded her way past the towers and aerial streets of Shoorn. She had been skimming the clouds on fly-boards since her teen-aged years and was most proficient at it. Since it was not restricted to places where there were roads (in fact, it was illegal to fly it within fifty feet of a road) the woman was able to bypass all traffic and speed directly to the Lod Zu where she was certain her comrades-in-stealth were being held prisoner.

She had no plan in mind. Her mother had not forbidden her to go—she couldn't; Dawn was of age—and Bradley's statement could easily have been what it seemed to be, the ravings of an injured man succumbing to an anesthetic. But it was beyond question that something had gone wrong; and whatever it was would almost certainly include capture of her friends.

Dawn felt herself far more upset than she should have been. She had to admit to herself that she would be extremely disturbed if anything should happen to the Earthman.

When she had first seen Bradley, and seen through the dirt on his skin and hair, she had known that here was a potentially valuable tool in her crusade—even though she had not, at that time, been sure what form that crusade would have to take. Bradley so nicely filled the physical requirements of Tshunai, it seemed almost as if God (if He did exist) had truly arranged the whole thing. Therefore she felt that she could have been knocked over by a blade of hardgrass when she and Bradley had heard over the radio that the Son of God had already come. Of course, Dawn had never doubted that that was a hoax. She had thus been much encouraged when Bradley had brought up the possibility that his friend had come to Kiri with him. Still, it had not been until they discovered the spear and the healing machine in underground Shoorn that there was any proof that such had happened, that the Tshunai was actually Bradley's Earthman companion. Or enemy? Bradley had never made that point clear. All he had said was that his name was Market, or something like that, and that his normal hair-color was black. (Obviously the priests had bleached it.)

After some thought, Dawn decided to land her board near the surface entrance to Old Shoorn she and Bradley had last used. She would retrace the planned steps of Dot and Thick Neck and see if she could find any clues.

Leaving the fly-board and a few rooks with the shopkeeper whose store was built over the subterranean entrance, Dawn descended the stairway into the cellar and climbed through the hole that was hidden behind a pile of rubbish.

Light-globe in hand she raced through the haunted streets until she reached the foundations of the Lod Zu. She knew where Fingers and Randy were to have weakened the wall to create a door; she and Bradley had marked it with magnetic dye. She could even see where the acid had seeped through and discolored the rock wall; but no one had pushed through it! Why?

Dawn knew that Dot and Thick Neck were having personal problems; Dot had once confided in her. But Dawn had always thought the couple too professional in their jobs to let family matters interfere with their work.

Experimentally Dawn pressed her hand against the rock wall. As she expected, the special acid had permeated the cement and it crumbled at her touch. She hesitated a moment, then pushed her way through the wall into the computer complex beyond. The stone crumbled around her; she held her breath and closed her eyes. The special acid had no effect on anything but stone, but she had no great desire to breathe rock dust.

As soon as the sound of falling pebbles had died away, she opened her eyes and looked over her surroundings. All she could see through the haze of dust were equipment bays—no guards. Still, one was sure to investigate the noise she had made in her entrance so she stepped away; she didn't mind them finding her so much as she would mind their finding the door.

She walked calmly along the rows of equipment until she came upon and startled a maintenance or repair man.

"What are you doing here?" he cried.

"Oh, I am sorry for bothering you," said the woman in an exasperated tone. "I am trying to find the library. They said it was on the fifteenth floor, but I think I must have pressed the wrong button."

"That's impossible," the man said, frowning. He rose. "There's an interlock; you need a special key to—"

"Well, it happened," Dawn snapped crossly. "Now, are you going to help me find the elevator again or not?"

"Well, yes—yes I am." Keeping her in front of him, the man directed Dawn down one row and up another until they came to a blank wall. The man gestured to the right. "Keep going," he said. "The elevator door is down there, just around the corner."

Dawn had turned to face him; now she looked past him and waved. "Why, bless you, Holy One!" she called; and as the repairman stiffened and whirled about to salute his superior, Dawn's pointed finger found a nerve in his neck and he dropped to the floor, cold.

The elevator guard was dispatched in a similar manner and then Dawn was in the elevator cab itself. The door was just about to close when her sharp eyes noticed the marks and the raygun blast hole around the emergency hatch. She stopped the doors and keyed instructions into the control panel for the elevator to assume repair position. It rose halfway up the doorway, door still open, and she crawled out of the cab and slid down under it, resting herself on the huge weight that kept the cab steady in the shaft. After a moment, the light-globe removed from the control panel, the door closed and the elevator resumed its normal position.

"I must say," Dawn thought to herself, "I'm glad I didn't argue too strongly against our members receiving these special control units." She knew no one would ever think of looking for her under the elevator cab. Dawn had been the only person in her "cell" who had voted against their carrying the special control globes which functioned something like a master or skeleton key would on Earth. She hadn't wanted to take chances, carrying anything illegal in case of capture; but the control literally opened doors to her that were closed to the average citizen.

After a couple of minutes she heard the elevator guard stirring and then the alarm bell ring. She didn't have to be patient long. Almost immediately the cab began to rise, and Dawn with it; she breathed deeply and swallowed often to equalize the pressure in her ears.

Fortunately the cab did not rise very far; the moment it stopped the woman leaned over and touched her light-globe to the emergency door control; the door opened, and she popped out of the elevator shaft, to the amazement of passersby in the hall in which she found herself.

She gave them no time to wonder, but ran into a lavatory stall and pulled the curtain around her. At least that way she would have some time to think.

A sign in the hallway had said that she was on the seventy-third level, meaning that the elevator had stopped on the seventy-fourth. The captain of the guard, she knew, kept his offices on the third floor below the Church of the Highest Heavens. When the alarm was rung, control of the elevator would have gone only to him and the High Priest. Therefore, one of those men must have called the elevator to the seventy-fourth floor—and why would either of those very busy persons have been there, if not to interrogate their new prisoners?

Dawn rose, remembering to engage the sanitation circuits before she left the stall. Probably no one was listening, but why invite suspicion? On second thought—Dawn lifted a blue robe from the hook of the stall next to hers. Wouldn't the priestess who sat in there be surprised when she was ready to leave and couldn't find it! Then, acting on her hunch, Dawn donned the robe and left the lavatory to search for a local elevator.

She found one within minutes and was standing on the seventy-fourth level moments later. Once there she decided to strike out boldly, and walked purposely to the person nearest her, an elderly priestess. "Bless you, Holy One," she greeted. "The High Priest wishes me to interrogate the prisoners. Can you take me to them?"

The old woman's brow furrowed. She was carrying a tray of food and could hardly hold it up. "But which prisoners, daughter? There are hundreds!"

"Why—the newest ones, of course. Captured this morning—the High Priest himself was just with them. Um—a woman and three men."

The elderly woman thought for a moment. She was at this time bringing dinner to some prisoners caught that morning, and the High Priest had been with them not long ago. They were to be executed, and she was to hear their confessions before they ate their last meal. But—and she thought hard, her brows knotted more tightly than ever—she was sure that there were only three prisoners. She had prepared a Last Meal for three, at any rate. But perhaps she had been mistaken...or perhaps the young Holy One was. "Follow me, daughter," she said.

Dawn followed the old woman down the corridor. She wanted to offer to carry the heavy tray but knew that it was the woman's job, her dignity in life to perform. When the priestess could no longer function in even this last capacity she would be put to sleep.

Dawn hoped that her friends would not, in their surprise, give her away and she was not disappointed when the elderly priestess and she reached the cell. Not an expression on her old friends' faces changed. But—Randy was missing! Had he already been executed?

"You may put down the Last Meal, Holy One, and leave us in privacy. I shall call you when I am through with the interrogation. Oh—where is the other?"

"I do not know, daughter," was the reply. "I know of only the three."

"Oh, of course!" Dawn exclaimed, rapping her knuckles. "I had forgotten—the other is abovelevels with the High Priest."

Birdsong bowed low and shuffled away. How disrespectful these youngsters were! to call the High Holy One by his title and not by his proper address—and the young Holy One had done so three times. The old woman wondered what criteria were held these days for youngsters applying for the priesthood. Birdsong could remember the days when it had been such an honor that one remained humbled by it the rest of her life.

The old priestess decided to await the summons to return in the lower level chapel; but after the one-floor elevator ride she realized that she needed to visit the lavatory first. She walked in and was about to enter a stall when she heard a familiar voice behind the next curtain.

"Help me, please! Someone has stolen my robe!"

"Starlight, is that you?"

"Oh, Birdsong, thank the highest heavens! Some woman came in here and stole my robe. You are the first one to enter since; my cries weren't heard outside."

Birdsong may have been old, but she wasn't stupid. "I shall return immediately, Starlight," she said and moved as quickly as she could to the local elevator. There were no guards on the prison level but the entrances to the Lod Zu were so efficiently guarded and only authorized persons had the special control units that would even allow them to get off the elevator in this section of the building.

The door slid open and she almost ran to the cell where the three new prisoners were kept.

They were gone.

Birdsong's shoulders sagged and her eyes misted. She had failed in the performance of her duty, and it was time for her to retire. Slowly she walked to the extermination chambers, normally used only for prisoners. She preferred it this way, not wanting the goodbyes and the pity involved in a normal euthanasia. She did stop a passing Holy One and asked her to bring Starlight a robe from her room, then set the booth controls on time delay and entered. She could see the hall through the plastic windows; how she hated to leave! She had served so faithfully, for so many years...there was time for one sob before the extermination booth automatically activated and Birdsong painlessly faded away.

Bradley's eyes fluttered open and, experimentally, he shook his head. It didn't hurt. He was lying alone on Dawn's terrace, the sun casting long red shadows across it that contrasted strongly with Kiri's golden sky. The cloudstreaks were tinted red and seabirds flew overhead lazily, on their way home to the beach.

Bradley knew so much, he just couldn't believe it. Facts, theories, arts filled his head; he could name and picture every painting ever made, sing every song ever written. He knew all those details of Kiri's religion, just as he realized that his masquerading as the Tshunai would have been a foolish ploy.

His head was filled with so much knowledge that he just lay on the terrace, reveling in the awe of it. He knew the names of every citizen of Shoorn, the location and cubic capacity of the buildings. He knew the registry of every groundcar, the recipes to a thousand dishes, the names of the Kiran constellations. He could design a factory, plant a garden, deliver a child. By comparison to the knowledge he had possessed before, he had known absolutely nothing.

He lay still on the terrace until the sky darkened and the first chill of evening set in; then he rose and entered the apartment, looking for his Earth clothing. He had changed, he was different; he wanted to show that difference. He found his khaki safari outfit and went into the bathroom, washed off his makeup. The haircoloring removed easily also and soon it was his old self looking back at him in the mirror, even if it was not his old self on this side of it.

Jewel-like had left, perhaps to eat—Bradley knew that she disliked cooking—and Dawn was nowhere to be found. A quick look in the garage showed that her fly-board was not in its place, which made Bradley uncomfortable. He knew that Dawn used the board to go into the lower levels and he now knew the statistics of fatal fly-board crashes into the sides of buildings.

Unwilling to make any decisions until he heard from Dawn the events of the past few hours, he decided to watch some television.

He hadn't been able to operate the device before, but now he could have built one from scratch. The wooden wall-panels slid aside at his bidding and the screen lighted up. He knew the TV schedules by heart, and so was surprised to see an announcer's face on screen in an unscheduled special broadcast.

"Citizens of Shoorn," the bland voice was saying, "we interrupt Bellpipe's Dance of the Grasses to bring you this special, first public interview with Tshunai, the Son of God and Lord of the Day!

"As you know, Tshunai appeared four days ago to the High Priest and his aides while they were praying in the Church of the Highest Heavens..."

As the announcer continued, the camera panned to the right to reveal, against a glittering special-effects background, Tshunai, the Son of God. His golden blond hair notwithstanding, Bradley knew instantly and fully who the Son of God really was...just as he had suspected all along.

Not the Son of God but the son-of-a-bitch: Marquette.

"As a gift to the people of Kiri from My Father in Heaven," the disguised Earthman said, "I have brought with me a healing machine." The camera zoomed back to reveal the ancient healing device Bradley had discovered in Old Shoorn. An elderly, crippled man with one leg was carried onstage by two attendants, who placed him before the machine. Marquette left his place by the podium, still accompanied by the special effects aura, and began to operate the device. At one point he required coaching from a robed man Bradley now recognised as Blessed, the High Priest. Suddenly the green ray shot down and the live audience gasped in awe as a new leg grew out from under the old man's robes, his frail frame expanded and his wrinkled face smoothed out. Even his gray hair darkened and grew less sparse.

Bradley didn't even bother to turn off the TV set when he ran from the apartment.

Jewel-like's groundcar was not in its bay and Dawn's fly-board was gone; so in the emergency Bradley felt justified in performing the Kiri equivalent of a hot-wiring job on a neighbor's car. In moments he was heading through the early-evening traffic (not too skillfully; he had the knowledge but not the experience) on his way to the Lod Zu. The radio channels were also carrying the broadcast and Bradley listened as he drove. The interview had become a religious discussion; skeptics in the audience were posing difficult questions which Marquette was parrying with surprising skill. From his knowledge of previous, similar broadcasts and the typical Shoorn traffic conditions for this hour, Bradley figured he would arrive at the studio about fifteen minutes before the program ended...if he didn't have any accidents. He tightened his grip on the steering lever and shut his thoughts to everything but his driving.

Dawn's only thought was to get Dot, Thick Neck, and Fingers out of the Lod Zu as soon as possible. Their identities were now known; their only hope of survival was for them to go down to the lower levels and disappear among the unregistered masses living there.

To her amazement, no alarm was set out for the foursome. Dawn couldn't know that Birdsong had remembered her friend's robe but forgotten to alert the guards to the prisoners' escape. So they went through the immense building, taking one local elevator after another until only the last jump was remaining before the computer complex was reached. Dawn didn't dare use the main elevator again but it occurred to her that there might be a partially filled cable shaft or ventilation duct that they could squeeze through.

After several minutes' search Dot found a cable shaft that would suffice. The cables dropped for thirty feet, then curved out flat gradually enough to give them something on which to break their fall without breaking their necks.

Dawn slipped out of the stolen priestess' robe and tore it into four pieces. "Hold this in front of you," she said, "to keep from burning yourselves from friction with the cables as you slide past."

Dawn went first. She slid freely, then was brought to an abrupt and painful halt by an obstruction behind her. She struggled to rearrange the cables in front to give her more room, then suddenly ceased her efforts. She could hear voices! Building plans indicated solid rock foundation for this part of the structure, but apparently there was a secret floor, or, at least, a secret office. The cable rack's being unfilled was no coincidence; it was probably also used for ventilation.

She continued working at the cables, but quietly, both to avoid discovery and to hear what was being said.

"—be safe in this room," she heard. "Tomorrow at dawn you must press this button. That will activate the timing circuits and the bombs will go off at the calculated intervals..." Just then the pressure eased and the woman fell to the horizontal cable racks below.

Bombs...at dawn! Blessed intended to do the flooding that morning! There was not a moment to waste. Would the others hurry?

Dot was next. Dawn swung off the cable rack and dropped to the floor below. She expected the little woman to appear immediately now that she was out of the way, but she didn't. Instead she heard her voice echo down the shaft: "Oh, I'm stuck! But I think I can rearrange these cables; then we can all escape."

What an odd thing for Dot to say, Dawn thought. But, wait—Dot had found the cable shaft. She was smaller than Dawn; she should have dropped straight through...unless...

Dawn turned and ran before the priests in that secret room could set an alarm. She ran to the first wall she could find and followed it, heading for the hole she had pushed through to Old Shoorn.

"Oh!" She came upon a guard, but this was no time for subtleties. He turned, surprised by her shout, and she kicked her foot as deep into his midsection as it would go. He doubled over, spitting blood, and she continued her run.

The opening was unguarded—its guard was probably the one Dawn had disturbed, come to see who was running between the equipment bays. Dawn leaped through it and raced through the underground streets until finally she had reached the shop cellar and climbed to the main floor. The shopkeeper and his family were at supper.

"Porkstooth," she cried, panting. "Tomorrow! Blessed's going to drown you tomorrow!" She paused, trying to catch her breath. Porkstooth's wife half rose; her children ran from the table at her command.

"You must—you must start the evacuation of the lower city—as we discussed—" She was dizzy but she had to get this out. "Use all the routes to the upper city the underground has kept open—including the one we made through the Lod Zu today—"

Porkstooth's wife had already run out of the shop to spread the word when a noise came from the cellar. Dawn half expected to see Dot emerge leading an army of police, and she was almost right. Five or six policemen did appear at the cellar door.

But they were led by Jewel-like.