Megalomania Read online

  Could Dino will himself to die? Now, that would be a thing which Croyd had never brought off. Dino set himself to try it—and thrust the attempt away, fearing the try, denying the fear, seeking rationale for the denial. His attempt had, however, accelerated his heartbeat, and this in itself was accelerating his death by asphyxiation. New panic! but he required himself to grow calm, he forced himself to allow himself to grow calm. Tranquilly now he luxuriated in the depressive serenity of impending spacetime death…

  Something in his hindmind was raising a vague question. He tried to descry it. The nature of the question was like, now wait just a minute, this is not like me, none of this rebellion against Croyd has been like me, this—suicide?—good God, none of this emotional extravagance is like me…

  DINO? The remote mind-cry shocked him into alertness. It denoted Croyd coming in at the wrong moment, and that was distinctively unlike Croyd. But there was no way for Croyd to know that in his rescue attempt, he was shortcircuiting Dino’s beginnings of self-realization.

  Dino waited, listening, comprehending that Croyd’s call had to be a mind-call because sounds carry only in atmosphere.

  Into his mind came continuation of the Croyd-cast: I feel your mind now, my dear friend, so strongly that I know I must be close to you. So you may as well respond.

  An inward hot swelling of angry hostility vaporized Dino’s realization-start. Deliberately Dino made his mind-reply mind-feeble. How you may have found me, Croyd, is a matter of less interest than the trouble you took to look for me. So now you have found me; that is your little triumph. Forget me, Croyd. I sought to dislodge and replace you, I blew it, I am dying by my own decision: forgive me, Croyd; go do what you do.

  Dino, you are throwing away three most precious commodities: your life, your superb mind, your honor. In the most literal sense, I suggest that something has got into you; and I do beg you to face this realistic possibility and let me know what you think—

  Desperate Dino-outcry: Croyd, for the sake of any god, LET GO!

  Pause; then Croyd: I respect your wish, my friend; I will let go. But if ever you should choose to initiate new contact—just whistle. Do you know how to whistle, Dino?”

  Mind-silence.

  The unexpected telepathic exchange with Croyd had partially disengaged Dino from his death-purpose. He was being enlarged by an ineffable sense of what is human yet more than human: of two universals reaching out to each other, one calling and accepting, the other yearning yet bitterly rejecting; of a father letting his son go (as ultimately every father must do) in order to keep his son from spiritually dying.

  Repugnantly, Dino thrust himself back into his death-subjectivity. Good, he was free, he would die. Already he was feeling a faint discomfort which meant that his muscle-oxygen was running low. So now he would die, and they would all be sorry no, nothing so ludicrous; he would die in noble hara-kiri, nobody would be sorry, the hell with that, and he would have cut himself free of Croyd, he would be dying against Croyd’s will, it would be ultimate victory. And of course it would be an easy death, by narcosis without any sense of suffocation except that in the late minutes of it, with his brain narcotized, his internal self-gravity might relax, he would explode o god no that would be undignified-messy, it would not be victory, it would be a defeat sealing In painful gut-enfeeblement, Dino recognized hideously and too late that he was not winning, indeed that he was yielding to defeat and it was no longer possible for him to do anything about it, uptiming as a near-perfect method of hiding had put him beyond rescue, down-timing through present into future would be worse because there-then uncertainty would scatter him, oxygen o God o my God Mind-voice, friendly, lyric tenor: Did I hear you calling me, Dino? I recognize your plight, I have shared it before and I share it now. Let me take you to a when where-when you can breathe and we can talk with mutual profit.

  Croyd, too, was in parlous need of oxygen. He teleported himself back to Nereid’s launch platform, went hastily through the airlock into the inward atmosphere, sat on a decompression bench, breathed profoundly.

  Beside him stood Tannen who, unsurprisingly, had been waiting there. He did not venture to interrupt Croyd’s thinking-breathing.

  Presently Croyd was able to say: “I located him suicidally space-floating. 1 talked with him, but he repulsed me. I withdrew, but 1—committed the privacy violation called unbidden mind-listening. He was a shambles of self-pity—”

  Tannen, deeply disturbed, courteously waited.

  Croyd pushed it out. “In his mind, for as long as I have known him, there has existed an alter ego, a sort of doppelganger with whom he sometimes mind-talks. With highly superior people, this is not unusual. He discusses problems with his mental double, he even debates with it, and sometimes he satirically uses it as a cheering section for his efforts to accomplish something. So far, so normal, hitherto. But—”

  Croyd frowned with pain, Tannen with anxiety.

  Croyd bit: “Such mental doubles are serviceable as long as the central mind recognizes them as mere connate extensions of itself. But when the central mind begins to suspect that the double is partially independent of itself, there is a grave danger.”

  Tannen suggested: “Divine psychosis?”

  Croyd nodded: “Right: the disturbance that is sometimes called pipeline psychosis. And I think, Tannen, that you comprehend the other perilous possibility, having seen me through it once.”

  Soberly murmured the President: “Real occupation by an alien mind?”

  “Tannen, just before I returned here, the double mind-spoke independently to Dino. Whereupon, Dino vanished, and I gave up—temporarily.”

  “He is then in grave danger, Croyd.”

  “He is that, but it is worse than that. I have a gray suspicion which is hinting that because of his compromised integrity, all of us are in physical peril. I know my Dino: straight-minded, he can be the strongest possible kind of friend; but bent-minded, he would be the most powerful possible enemy.”

  There followed a silence of hard, unhappy thinking.

  Once, Tannen gripped Croyd’s shoulder and said, “I think of a possible parallel. Quote: ‘Would God I had died for you, O Absalom my son, my son!’”

  Having mused, Croyd responded: “1 am tempted to cap that by saying, ‘Who would not weep for Lycidas?’ And indeed, Dino Trigg was a beloved-energetic Lycidas, and a beloved-energetic Absalom too. But now it seems, as C. S. Lewis expressed it, that he is bent, and badly so, and so suddenly that I am suspicious about the reasons. And consequently, Mister President, I fear I must begin to spend some time confirming his concerns about my absences from duty.”

  Tannen queried: “How soon, and for how long?”

  Dino, foggily conscious, was now suspended, not in star-spangled black space, but in featureless nonfog which was somehow lung-and-blood nourishing as he breathed it. His own body was invisible to himself.

  He gave himself over to orgasmic breathing—and gradually apprehended that there was a Presence just behind him—and suspected that had he turned to see the Presence, still it would have been behind him because its presence was a delusion. (He wasn’t quite right about that.) So he yielded to the lambency of the nonfog and the breathing and the perverse excitation of the ever-behind-him Presence.

  It was mindspeaking to him—lyric tenor, of course. You need to explain to me, dear Dino, the nature of your suicidal problem. Not in any great detail, of course, but I’m great on elevational sketching.

  Aroused by the Presence, Dino was not entirely easy in the undulant ambience of the Presence. He replied aloud; he didn’t think that his voice would make any hearable sounds, but he wanted to formulate this communication precisely. If the Presence was real, it would apprehend directly the thoughts he was formulating; if not, not.

  Dino essayed: “If it were you who was mindspeaking to me in the board room while I was challenging Croyd, you surely understand my problem perfectly. Wouldn’t it therefore be fine of you to explain to me what I am thi
nking-feeling?”

  I’d rather hear it from you.

  Dino was deep-breathing rapidly; and, oddly enough, his inhalations were bringing air into his lungs, here in deep outer space. Having thought sketchily (which in itself was unlike him), he burst out: “Damn it, 1 cannot converse intelligibly with someone who is behind me!”

  Nobody is stopping you from turning around.

  “But if I do turn, will you stay put so I can see you?”

  Try it and see, mind-sang the delusion.

  Dino, a practiced space-walker, twisted and chilled when he recognized, floating and grinning before him himself! his golden self who mind-said ebulliently: Bravo, dear friend Dino! I wasn’t at all sure that you would have the guts to confront me. So good; so now, let’s get on with it: will you vocalize what you are thinking-feeling—or would you prefer that I express it subject to your affirmation or negation?

  Shaken by confrontation with his doppelganger, Dino nevertheless rallied, that being his self-trained habit. “You know my name; will you favor me by announcing yours?”

  Do you then believe thatIam objective to your mind, not subjective within your mind?

  “I did not volunteer a judgment. I asked for a name.”

  Well then, Dino: you could call me Luke.

  “Short for Lucifer, I presume?”

  Don’t presume. If you don’t like Luke, try Darkside. And I am still waiting for your expression of preference.

  “As to whether you or I should express what I am thinking-feeling?”

  Just so.

  “Even though you are, in my belief, a mere hysterical projection of an infrapersonality in my own mind—so that I would be onanistically confessing my sins to myself and not to any real demon?”

  Annoyed by Dino’s perceptiveness, Darkside resorted to teasing. You are playing for time; you must be scared. Come on, fess up; I dare you to. Grammar never troubled Darkside; it was one of his most admirable qualities.

  Dino’s reply, when it came, was puzzled. “It is not my way to confess to a stranger; but then, since you are only me, I suppose it may help me to bounce my really bizarre feelings off of you. So let me get it out. First, I have rebelled unfairly against Croyd; and this I find troublesome, since he is my revered mentor and benefactor. But, worse: he has defeated me by shortcircuiting my technique which, apart from being self-distressingly unethical, was ill-conceived and manifestly inadequate and flatly stupid. Well: I am ashamed of myself for this bout of egomania, and angry at myself for using dumb methods; and, having chastised myself for those faults, at least I can give myself a reluctant nod for recognizing and regretting them. BUT—what did you say I should call you?”

  Luke, or Darkside, either. I answer to many names.

  “Bravo. Well: the deeply bad thing—”

  Out with it, my son: catharsis, you know.

  It came in a desperate rush: “It is that I hate Croyd when 1 thought always that I loved him. I hate him for being my father-figure, and for catching on to my stupidity and blocking it, and then for pouring coals on my fire by forgiving me and trying to rescue me. It is that I hate Croyd now with the classic sort of hatred which wishes not to kill its hate-object but rather to clutch and possess its hate-object, devotedly nurturing its continuing life while inflicting upon it the most permanent conceivable sort of ongoing evil. Darkside, that is my true confession of what I am thinking-feeling; and the confession only enhances my hatred of Croyd by being out in the open so that I am committed to it!”

  Mind-silence, troubled only by the tandem soulbreathing of increasingly delighted Darkside and growingly enkindled Dino Trigg. There had never been any motive like vengeance to power a glorious wild ride by profoundly tapping the depths of a mind so that all its resources would boil and spurt. And the resources of the Trigg-mind were colossal.

  Dino was physically comfortable, now, in his breathing; and while most of his multifield mind had been intent on two problems, the nature of his doppelganger and the shape of his coming Croyd-vendetta, a minor mindfield had been subconsciously grappling with the question why he could now breathe in outer space, and it had won.

  He was floating, not in physical space at all, but in a realm of being which might best be called nonspacetime but which Croyd called nontime. While Croyd had told Dino about nontime and its remarkable psychophysical properties, Croyd had never seen fit to explain to Dino how one might enter into nontime. But in Dino’s ultimate distress, this quasi-god Darkside had rescued him into nontime, wherein anyone’s willed imaginings would be realized if one’s brain understood the composition of what the mindsoul was desiring. Well: Dino was suffocating, and so Dino yearned for oxygen, and the Trigg-brain understood the chemical composition of oxygen; wherefore, here in nontime, a thin film of continually self-replenished oxygen was clinging breathably to the body of Dino.

  So much for that minor sub-problem. As for the overwhelming prime field of constructive thought: the demolition of Croyd…

  Ideas began to spurt, to fountain in groin-thrilling jet-flow. Ideas fueled by Croyd’s teaching, by Dino’s theoretical studies, by Dino’s experimental successes, by Croyd’s examples, by Dino’s intergalactic and intertemporal explorations. Ideas given significance by the concept of true hatred as an amorous clinging to the hated object in order to punish it endlessly, and by the old myth of Lucifer cast out of Heaven and fighting his way back by debauching and ruining the human children of God.

  Abruptly the flow was blocked, and Dino began fisting his forehead: “I know what to do, and part of how to do it, and the spectacular splendor of this vengeance would leave Croyd gasping with admiration while he suffered—but I don’t know all of how to do it; and yet, you know, it seems to me that some aspects of my very recent experience could somehow be pertinent. Darkside, my intimate friend—can you help me here, perhaps?”

  Darkside prompted: You might try referring to your intense interest in the arts and relating it to your expert interest in the sciences. In your judgment, Dino, what is die most important upcoming artistic event in the galaxy?

  The resulting memory enraptured Dino. “Oho, that magnificent Zauberger! He’s retiring, you know. They are going to present him with the IAHIVEM—”

  Pardon?

  “The Intergalactic Award for High-Velocity Music. Apart from all the other intricacies of his musical expertise, his sound comes at you like a stream of neutrons bombarding protons at nearlight velocity—”

  Dino paused. Sensing in his host’s mind the start of a vast and complex integration, Luke lay silently back, enjoying it, mind-watching the mind-swirl of memories and meanings

  neutrons bombarding protons the meticulous Trigg work on Nodes of Rejected Alternate Possibilities, acronym NORAP, nickname If-Nodes IAHIVEM bombarding NORAP the ionic plasma called galactic jet-spumes vengeance upon father by punishing his children what may come to pass when a large galaxy devours a smaller galaxy the probable primeval condition of the Greater Magellanic Cloud and the two Lesser Clouds Floating in what was ineffable, ecstatically Darkside-haunted Dino Trigg contemplated the powerful-colorful dynamics of his devil-dream.

  3. The Shape of Dino’s Vendetta

  Returned into Neptune-space, but a few years uptime of the germinal present, Dino free-floated in an airlock of the spaceyacht Sterbenräuber while Captain Kolly Kedrin caused the inner door to be opened for him.

  Observed from a distance away in space, Galactic starship Sterbenräuber looked like a gigantic grin with big shining teeth clamped together while mouth-corners were straining derisively upward. Contrarywise to the hull-orientation of most spaceships, the Sterbenräuber flew laterally forward; her up-horned crescent beam was many times wider than her depth; she could be described as a fastflying far-darting watermelon wedge. Her teeth were pleasure-windows—except for the central double row of extra-broad teeth which windowed (or, more properly, view-ported) upper Operational Bridge and lower President’s Bridge.

  Cocky again, Dino soft-saluted Koll
y and her command robot Myco who were formally saluting him. “At ease,” he said then; and he took Kolly’s arm and whispered, “We need to talk privately.”

  Taut, she counter-whispered: “Wait. I picked up your mayday call, I departed Nereid formation without seeking approval, we’re cruising near Neptune in an uptime holding pattern; what do we do now?”

  “Tell your people,” he said, “to stay uptime but to make for the Lesser Magellanic Cloud at top acceleration, you’ll give them details later.”

  With a febrile kind of decisiveness, Kolly relayed the orders to Command Robot Myco which saluted and departed. She turned to her lover: “Your place, or mine?”

  “Mine,” he told her, swinging her into that direction. “And take heart, Kolly: I never let a cliche interfere with pleasure.”

  “That was very nice, Kolly.”

  “Understatement, I hope, Dino?”

  “Most reprehensibly under. It was a wowser.”

  “Thank you. The compliment consoles me.”