Ballroom of the Skies (16 page)

“Lorin, I see. Consider yourself a straggler. No one
seems to organize things properly anymore. Where is the Gypsy girl?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Meet your fellow sufferers.”

She gave the names quickly as Dake faced the group. His glance moved across one lean tough masculine face, moved quickly back to it “Tommy! Good Lord, I …” He took two steps toward the familiar man and then stopped suddenly, wary. He glanced toward the stone-faced woman who had called herself Marina.

“No, I’m not an illusion,” Tommy said in his slow familiar drawl. He approached Dake, gripped his hand strongly. “Satisfy you?”

Marina said, “You may take a break, Watkins. Go off and gabble with your long-lost Dake Lorin.”

They walked apart from the others. Dake covered his confusion by saying, “How long? Not since the war, is it? Last I heard you left the city desk and went to Florida to run some jerkwater newspaper, Tommy. I envied you. It seemed to be a good answer.”

Are you thinking I have any answers to … all this?

Dake stared at him.
I was hoping as much.

And I’m hoping you have some answers. I don’t know where we are, how we got here, or whether you happen to be a figment of my diseased imagination.

Tommy dropped to the springy odd-colored grass and spoke aloud. “Nobody else in the … ah … class has the vaguest idea. See, we’ve got a couple of Chinese, and a Malay, and a pair of Austrians. But no language problems, chum, in para-voice. Sentence construction comes through a little strange sometimes. We do a lot of chatting. So I can tell you just what happened to you, Dake. You got mixed up in something-or-other, and so many weird things were beginning to happen you thought you were going off your rocker. So finally you found yourself in New York or Madrid where they slapped you in a gray box and you tumbled out here, and these characters began to teach you stuff that’s patently impossible. Oh, we have long discussions. Many of them about reality. Big question. Are we really here?”

Dake sat near him. “How did you get here?”

“Started to do a series on a guy doing some fantastic work in agriculture. I began to get the weird idea somebody was guiding him. Steering his mind for him. Clues led to a racketeer named Miguel Lamer in New York. Went to see Larner. He nearly drove me crazy. Almost, but not quite. So here I am.”

“Mine is about the same. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, Tommy, what do we know? Somehow we got onto a different planet. We’ve run into a culture and a technology far superior to ours. They’re training us to raise hell on earth.”

“I go along with that, Dake. On the surface, an evil pitch. Underneath, I … don’t know. There is something … terribly important that we don’t know yet. When we know it, it will somehow explain everything. Ever dream you have discovered the ultimate answer to everything and wake up with it just on the edge of your mind?”

“What goes on here, at this place?”

“You get your hut and they organize your day like it was a YMCA summer camp. Do this, do that. A few physical skills. And mostly mental skills. They stretch hell out of your brain. Memory, analysis, and so on. Things come back in a funny way. I can replay from memory every chess game I ever played and every bridge hand I ever held. A year ago that would have been a crazy thought. Right now we’re struggling with something called a Pack B.”

“What’s that?”

“Something you’ll have to experience for yourself, baby. Another thing. Have you ever had such an almost overpowering feeling of physical well-being?”

“I hadn’t thought of it. I … guess not.”

“Has air ever smelled as good, or food tasted as good? Every day seems like Saturday.”

“You sound happy here. What have you done, Tommy? Found a home?”

Tommy gave him a bland look. “Maybe. I’m waiting for the great revelation. We all are.” He stood up, looked soberly down at Dake for a moment. “Here is one clue to
think over. We see quite a few people around who never came off earth. They’re all manlike. Just funny variations here and there. All in the same general form, however. And, Dake, listen. Every single one of them treats us as though we were all little tin Jesuses. Come on. Join the group. Marina’s ready to howl.”

They rejoined the group. Marina formed them into a hollow circle. Practice in cooperative illusion, she said. Marina created the illusion—an exceptionally lovely girl who strolled around and around inside the formal circle. At any moment, just as the girl walked in front of you, Marina might cancel the illusion. It was up to the nearest student to re-create her so quickly and perfectly that there was barely any hiatus of nothingness. Dake was clumsy the first time. He saw that it had to be done in such a way that the stride was unbroken. The second time it happened directly in front of him he did better. A second girl joined the first and they walked hand in hand. And then a third. Marina made their costumes more intricate. She made them walk faster. It became an exhausting exercise in hair-trigger reflexes, in memorization and visualization of all details. After over an hour of it, Dake felt as though his head would burst.

There was food, and rest, and another session. Mass illusion this time. Create as many people as you can, to the outermost limitations of your resources, bearing in mind constantly that each individual thus created had to be remembered and concentrated on
in toto
or the illusion would become evanescent. At first Dake could handle no more than six. By the end of the session he had more than doubled it, and was rewarded with Marina’s sour smile.

There were variations on those games day after day. At night the alien stars would pinpoint the sky with brightness. He spent the rare leisure hours with his friend, Watkins. They guessed and pondered and found no rational answer.

Apprehensive beings were brought to the game fields. They were not quite human when examined closely. They did not seem so much frightened as awed. And, using
them as subjects, Marina taught the class the fundamentals of control. It required a more massive concentration of energy than para-voice, or illusioning, and it was most difficult to give proper neural directions. Even Marina could cause only an approximation of a normal walk, and balance was difficult to maintain. The controlled beings often fell onto the soft turf. Range was slowly increased, and when the class was adept, they were permitted to practice control on each other, being careful always to take both screens out of the way before accepting control. Dake found that he did not like the feeling of psychic nakedness that came when neither of his two mental screens protected him. After he had run Tommy awkwardly into the side of a hut when trying to control him through the door, Tommy had rubbed his bruised nose and said, “As a superman, kid, you’re a waste of time.”

It gave them a new description of their abilities. The supermen. The endowed ones. The little gods who would, they hoped, walk the earth. The best daydreams were about what could be done with the new abilities.

Tommy said, “Nobody has ever been able to get my brother-in-law off the bottle. I’m going to give that boy such a roomful of snakes and little pink elephants that he’ll gag whenever he sees a liquor advertisement.”

Dake said, “I’m going to control every Pak-Indian I meet. Make them drop to their knees before the Great Lorin.”

“Seriously, Dake, what are we going to do with all these … talents?”

“We don’t have to earn a living. Just control the cashier and have him hand you the money. Or give him an illusion of a few thousand rupees for deposit. He’ll mark the book and when you walk out of the bank it will disappear out of the drawer.”

“You have larceny in your heart.”

“Tommy, I keep remembering a brown-haired girl named Karen Voss. I know now that she was trained here. Most of the things she bewildered me with, I think I could do. But she helped me get out of a bad spot, and somebody stronger than she has ripped her screens.”

“Gives me a headache to think about it.”

“Think a minute. Was the person who damaged her trained somewhere else? Are there two groups raising hell with each other? Is earth a battlefield? If so, we’re just a couple of likely recruits.”

“I’m not fighting anyone else’s war,” Tommy said firmly. “I had a dandy of my own once.”

The next day, control was dropped and instruction in the Pack B’s began again. Dake quickly learned the sequence of the control wheels and how to use them. Visualization was something else again. A hundred times he tried. A hundred times he tried to cover a distance of ten feet, and each time felt the sickening sensation of negative mass, and each time achieved plus mass in the exact place where he had started. Marina explained that the visualization of the intended destination had to be far stronger than the visualization required for illusioning. He would memorize each blade of grass, each irregularity of the earth, step back and try again. Tommy suddenly learned how. He was ecstatic with this new sense of freedom. He was obnoxiously ecstatic. He flicked about, endlessly, pausing only to wave derisively toward where Dake stood and struggled.

Dake tried again and again and again. And another failure. He was about to try again when he suddenly realized that he had covered the distance. He backed up and tried again. Slowly he discovered that the strength of the visualization was actually more important than the exactness of it. He set off after Tommy, slowly improving his skill.

For days the class played a mad game of tag around the huge game fields. Then they were taken into open country and permitted to use the full range of the Pack B. There were races across empty miles of landscape where the high trees formed the only reference points. They learned that you could visualize the face of a friend as though it were a yard in front of you, and then make the shift. If the friend was within range of your Pack B, you would suddenly appear in front of him. The sequence of
days was confused. New skills, new abilities, and something else, too. A group pride.

In one of her rare informative moods Marina said, “Selection has to be a trial by fire. If you can be broken, you will break. None of you did. And thus we can be assured that you will not break in quite another way—that you will not begin to think that these new powers set you apart from mankind, that you will not misuse them for personal gain. We are called Earthling. It is a good title.”

There was a day of pageant, of intense competition. The illusions were watched by vast crowds, who made sighing sounds of approval.

After the crowds had gone, Marina said, “There is nothing more I can teach you. There is only one last thing for you to learn. Those who are already on tour must instruct you in that. We will see you here twice again before you are … ready.”

They went back to the long low black buildings of first instruction. They did not plod across the fields in the gray dusk. They flicked across the flat plains, appearing, disappearing, appearing further on. They projected to each other, writing the questioning words bright in each other’s minds.

They were given rooms. In the middle of the night Dake was awakened. The clothes he had arrived in were waiting. He dressed on command, and was taken to the place of the cubes/Hard pain struck him. He clambered through the orifice into the rock cavern. He walked up the slanting glow of the tunnel and into Miguel Larner’s dioramic garden. It was late afternoon. Karen sat alone, and she smiled at him.

He went to her quickly. He tried to project to her, to ask her if she was well. He felt the projected thought strike screens rigidly drawn, rebound as though from metal. The rebuff angered him.

“I suppose I report to Miguel,” he said.

“He’s gone, Dake. It was a very impressive funeral.”

“Dead!”

“An illusion was buried. Miguel has … gone. He finished what he had to do. Martin Merman is in charge.”

“Do I report to him?”

“He’s not here. What gives you the idea you have to report to anybody?”

“I thought …”

“Go to the same room you were in before. Stay there until called.”

Dake went to the room. He found clothes that would fit
him. He set the diorama on automatic control to give him an approximation of day and night. Food was brought at regular intervals. There was a projector, micro-books, music. He exercised to keep himself fit.

Stay there until called.

He had detected a warmth, a friendliness in her before. It had disappeared. He felt put-upon, neglected. And he was indignant.

At times he would drop both screens and listen, almost trembling with the effort to be receptive. He would get merely the vague awareness of others somewhere near him. No thoughts ever came through.

One evening she tapped lightly at the door, came in, unasked, and sat down.

“Are you getting impatient?”

“I’m bored.”

“The other night you made a detailed illusion of me, and had me sit and talk nicely to you for a time. I’m flattered, Dake.”

“I didn’t know I’d be spied on here.”

“We’re all very interested in you. We’re interested in all fresh new dewy-eyed Stage Ones.”

“You’ve changed, Karen.”

“Karen Voss? That was a hypno-fix. A nice cover story. You can call me Karen if it will make you feel more at ease.”

“Thank you,” he said with grave dignity.

She laughed at him and he flushed. He said, “I learned
enough to know that you made a considerable sacrifice for me.”

Her eyes changed for a moment. She made a vague gesture. “It is everyone’s duty to recruit. Material is scarce, you know. It always has been. You were my little gesture, so Merman has made me your house mother. Rather unfair, I think. Stage Ones are dull.”

“I had an old friend. I met him at Training T. He kept talking about an ultimate answer. Does giving any ultimate answer come under the heading of responsibilities of the house mother?”

“It helped you, Dake. You’re not quite as stuffy.”

“I’m getting damn sick of mystery.”

“We’ll take a walk. Come on. See the great world outside. Now see if you can remember the lobby well enough to shift to it. Wait a moment. I’ll check with Johnny to see if we have any strangers around.” She paused a moment. “It’s all right.”