“Twelve is enough. I—can’t change him. I don’t have the ability. I’m not adroit enough.” Jack spread his massive hands miserably. “He’s a clever little chicken of a thing. Like Thelma—scrawny and full of talk. Again and again I get back there—and what can I do?”
Doris touched his arm wistfully. “How does it look? I never saw cities full of life, before the war. Remember, I was born in a military camp.”
“You’d like it. People laughing and hurrying. Cars, signs, life everywhere. It drives me crazy. I wish I couldn’t see it—to be able to step from here to there.” He indicated the twisted trees. “Ten steps back from those trees, and there it is. And yet it’s gone forever … even for me. There’ll be a time when I can’t step there either, like the rest of you.”
Doris failed to understand him. “Isn’t it strange?” she murmured. “I can move anything in the world, but I can’t move myself back, the way you do.” She made a slight flutter of her hands; in the darkness something slapped against the rail of the porch and she bent over to retrieve it. “See the pretty bird? Stunned, not dead.” She tossed the bird up and it managed to struggle off into the shrubs. “I’ve got so I only stun them.”
Jack wasn’t pleased. “That’s what we do with our talents. Tricks, games. Nothing more.”
“That isn’t so!” Doris objected. ‘Today when I got up, there was a bunch of doubters. Stephen caught their thoughts and sent me out.” Pride tingled in her voice. “I brought an underground spring up to the surface—it burst out everywhere and got them all soaked, before I sent it back. They were convinced.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Jack said, “that you could make it possible for them to rebuild their cities?”
“They don’t want to rebuild cities.”
“They don’t think they can. They’ve given up the idea of rebuilding. It’s a lost concept.” He brooded unhappily. “There’s too many millions of miles of ruined ash, and too few people. They don’t even try to unify the communes.”
“They have radios,” Doris pointed out. “They can talk to each other, if they want.”
“If they use them, the war will start up again. They know there’re pockets of fanatics left who’d be happy to start the war, given half the chance. They’d rather sink into barbarism than get that started.” He spat into the weedy bushes growing beneath the porch. “I don’t blame them.”
“If we controlled the communes,” Doris said thoughtfully, “we wouldn’t start up the war. We’d unify them on a peaceful basis.”
“You’re playing all sides at once,” Jack said angrily. “A minute ago you were performing miracles—where’d this thought come from?”
Doris hesitated. “Well, I was just passing it on. I guess Stephen really said it, or thought it. I just spoke it out loud.”
“You enjoy being a mouthpiece for Stephen?”
Doris fluttered fearfully. “My God, Jack—he can probe you. Don’t say things like that!”
Jack stepped away from her and down the porch steps. He rapidly crossed the dark, silent field, away from the shelter. The girl hurried after him.
“Don’t walk off,” she gasped breathlessly. “Stephen’s just a kid. He’s not like you, grown-up and big. Mature.”
Jack laughed upward at the black sky. “You damn fool. Do you know how old I am?”
“No,” Doris said, “and don’t say. I know you’re older than I am. You’ve always been around; I remember you when I was just a kid. You were always big and strong and blond.” She giggled nervously. “Of course, all those others … those different persons, old and young. I don’t really understand, but they’re all you, I guess. Different yous along your time-path.”
“That’s right,” Jack said tightly. “They’re all me.” “That one today, when you switched down in the basement, when I was sleeping.” Doris caught his arm and rucked her cold fingers around his wrist. “Just a kid, with books under his arm, in a green sweater and brown slacks.”
“Sixteen years old,” Jack muttered. “He was cute. Shy, flustered. Younger than I am. We went upstairs and he watched the crowd; that was when Stephen called me to do the miracle. He—I mean, you— stood around so interested. Porter kidded him. Porter doesn’t mean any harm—he likes to eat and sleep and that’s about all. He’s all right. Stephen kidded him, too. I don’t think Stephen liked him.”
“You mean he doesn’t like me.”
“I—guess you know how we feel. All of us, to some degree … we wonder why you keep going back again and again, trying to patch up the past. The past is over! Maybe not to you … but it really is over. You can’t change it; the war came, this is all ruined, only remnants are left. You said it yourself: why are we on the outside? We could so easily be on the inside.” Childish excitement thrilled through her; she pushed against him eagerly, carried away by her flow of words. “Forget the past—let’s work with the present! The material is here; the people, the objects. Let’s move it all around. Pick it up, set it down.” She lifted a grove of trees a mile away; the whole top of a line of hills burst loose, rose high in the air, and then disslved in booming fragments. “We can take things apart and put them back together!”
“I’m seventy-one years old,” Jack said. “There isn’t going to be any putting together for me. And I’m through picking over the past. I’m not going to try anymore. You can all rejoice … I’m finished.”
She tugged at him fiercely. “Then it’s up to the rest of us!”
If he had Porter’s talent he could see beyond his death. Porter would, at some future time, view his own corpse stretched out, view his burial, continue to live month after month, while his plump corpse rotted underground. Porter’s bovine contentedness was possible in a man who could preview the future… . Jack twisted wretchedly as anguished uncertainty ached through him. After the dying old man in the military hospital reached the inevitable end of his life-span—what then? What happened here, among the survivors of the Guild?
Beside him, the girl babbled on. The possibilities he had suggested: real material to work with, not tricks or miracles. For her, the possibilities of social action were swimming into existence. They were all restless, except perhaps Porter. Tired of standing idle. Impatient with the anachronistic officers who kept the communes alive, misguided remnants of a past order of incompetents who had proved their unfitness to rule by leading their block to almost total destruction.
Rule by the Guild couldn’t be worse.
Or could it? Something had survived rule by power-oriented politicians, professional spellbinders recruited from smoke-dingy city halls and cheap law offices. If Psionic rule failed, if analogues of the struggle of national states arose, there might be nothing spared. The collective power of the Guild reached into all dimensions of life; for the first time a genuine totalitarian society could arise. Dominated by telepaths, precogs, healers with the power to animate inorganic matter and to wither organic matter, what ordinary person could survive?
There would be no recourse against the Guild. Man controlled by Psionic organizers would be powerless. It was merely a question of time before the maintenance of non-Psis would be seriously scrutinized, with an eye toward greater efficiency, toward the elimination of useless material. Rule by supercompetents could be worse than rule by incompetents.
“Worse for whom?” Stephen’s clear, treble thoughts came into his mind. Cold, confident, utterly without doubt. “You can see they’re dying out. It’s not a question of our eliminating them; it’s a question of how long are we going to maintain their artificial preservation? We’re running a zoo, Jack. We’re keeping alive an extinct species. And the cage is too large … it takes up all the world. Give them some space, if you want. A subcontinent. But we deserve the balance for our own use.”
Porter sat scooping up baked rice pudding from his dish. He continued eating even after Stephen began screaming. It wasn’t until Thelma clawed his hand loose from his spoon that he gave up and turned his attention to what was happening.
Surprise was totally unknown to him; six months earlier he had examined the scene, reflected on it, and turned his attention to later events. Reluctantly, he pushed back his chair and dragged his heavy body upright.
“He’s going to kill me!” Stephen was wailing. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted at Porter. “You knew— he’s coming to kill me right now.”
“For God’s sake,” Thelma shrilled in Porter’s ear, “is it true? Can’t you do something? You’re a man—stop him!”
While Porter gathered a reply, Jack entered the kitchen. Stephen’s shrill wails grew frantic. Doris hurried wild-eyed after Jack, her talent forgotten in the abrupt explosion of excitement. Thelma hurried around the table, between Jack and the boy, scrawny arms out, dried-up face contorted with outrage.
“I can see it!” Stephen screamed. “In his mind—he’s going to kill me because he knows I want to—” He broke off. “He doesn’t want us to do anything. He wants us to stay here in this old ruin, doing tricks for people.” Fury broke through his terror. “I’m not going to do it. I’m through doing mind-reading tricks. Now he’s thinking about killing all of us! He wants us all dead!”
Porter settled down in his chair and pawed for his spoon. He pulled his plate under his chin; eyes intently on Jack and Stephen, he continued slowly eating.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “You shouldn’t have told me your thoughts, I couldn’t have read them. You could have kept them to yourself.” He moved forward.
Thelma grabbed him with her skinny claws and hung on tight. The wail and babble rose in hysteria; Porter winced and bobbed his thick neck-wattles. Impassively, he watched Jack and the old woman struggle together; beyond them, Stephen stood paralyzed with childish terror, face waxen, youthful body rigid.
Doris moved forward, and Porter stopped eating. A kind of tension settled over him; but it was a finality that made him forget eating, not doubt or uncertainty. Knowing what was going to happen didn’t diminish the awesomeness of it. He couldn’t be surprised … but he could be sobered.
“Leave him alone,” Doris gasped. “He’s just a boy. Go sit down and behave yourself.” She caught hold of Jack around the waist; the two women swayed back and forth, trying to hold the immense muscular figure. “Stop it! Leave him alone!”
Jack broke away. He tottered, tried to regain his balance. The two women fluttered and clawed after him like furious birds; he reached back to push them away….
“Don’t look,” Porter said sharply.
Doris turned in his direction. And didn’t see, as he anticipated. Thelma saw, and her voice suddenly died into silence. Stephen choked off, horrified, then screeched in stricken dismay.
They had seen the last entity along Jack’s time-path once before. Briefly one night the withered old man had appeared, as the more youthful entity inspected the military hospital to analyze its resources. The younger Jack had returned at once, satisfied that the dying old man would be given the best treatment available. In that moment they had seen his gaunt, fever-ridden face. This time the eyes weren’t bright. Lusterless, the eyes of a dead object gazed blankly at them, as the hunched figure remained briefly upright.
Thelma tried vainly to catch it as it pitched forward. Like a sack of meal it crashed into the table, scattering cups and silver. It wore a faded blue robe, knotted at the waist. Its pale-white feet were bare. From it oozed the pungent hygienic scent of the hospital, of age and illness and death.
“You did it,” Porter said. “Both of you together. Doris, especially. But it would have come in the next few days, anyhow.” He added, “Jack’s dead. We’ll have to bury him, unless you think any of you can bring him back.”
Thelma stood wiping at her eyes. Tears dribbled down her shrunken cheeks, into her mouth. “It was my fault. I wanted to destroy him. My hands.” She held up her claws. “He never trusted me; he never put himself in my care. And he was right.”
“We both did it,” Doris muttered, shaken. “Porter’s telling the truth. I wanted him to go away … I wanted him to leave. I never moved anything into time, before.”
“You never will again,” Porter said. “He left no descendants. He was the first and the last man to move through time. It was a unique talent.”
Stephen was recovering slowly, still white-faced and shaken, eyes fixed on the withered shape in its frayed blue pajamas, spread out under the table. “Anyhow,” he muttered finally, “there won’t be any more picking over the past.”
“I believe,” Thelma said tightly, “you can follow my thoughts. Are you aware of what I’m thinking?”
Stephen blinked. “Yes.”
“Now listen carefully. I’m going to put them into words so everybody will hear them.”
Stephen nodded without speaking. His eyes darted frantically around the room, but he didn’t stir.
“There are now four Guild members,” Thelma said. Her voice was flat and low, without expression. “Some of us want to leave this place and enter the communes. Some of us think this would be a good time to impose ourselves on the communes, whether they like it or not.”
Stephen nodded.
“I would say,” Thelma continued, examining her ancient, dried-up bands, “that if any of us tries to leave here, I will do what Jack tried to do.” She pondered. “But I don’t know if I can. Maybe I’ll fail, too.”
“Yes,” Stephen said. His voice trembled, then gained strength. “You’re not strong enough. There’s somebody here a lot stronger than you. She can pick you up and put you down anywhere she wants. On the other side of the world—on the moon—in the middle of the ocean.
” Doris made a faint strangled sound. “I—”
“That’s true,” Thelma agreed. “But I’m standing only three feet from her. If I touch her first she’ll be drained.” She studied the smooth, frightened face of the girl. “But you’re right. What happens depends not on you or me, but on what Doris wants to do.”
Doris breathed rapidly, huskily. “I don’t know,” she said, faintly. “I don’t want to stay here, just sitting around in this old ruin, day after day, doing—tricks. But Jack always said we shouldn’t force ourselves on the communes.” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. “All my life, as long as I can remember, when I was a little girl growing up, there was Jack saying over and over again we shouldn’t force them. If they didn’t want us …”