Jack Mann Her Ways Are Death

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fashioned, how to render glass tensile and malleable the secret had gone with
that of Roman cement, of interweaving living trees, of taming African
elephants to servitude. When she put the glasses down on the ebony table he
took up one to look at it, and the bowl of it quivered on the impossibly
slender stem.
Supposing I broke it? he asked.
She took up the other glass, and tied a knot in the stem, to put it down again
with the bowl awry.
Well? she asked.
He took up the glass, and found that he could untie the knot as if it had been
made in a length of cord.
He said, I don t think I like you, Ira. Is the moon made of green cheese?
There isn t any moon. It s just as much an illusion as time and space as you
and I are here. We are thoughts in a greater mind all is a thought in a mind
past our knowing we are not, nor have ever been.
And yet we are She poured the crimson fluid into the glasses. And that is.
Instead of tea you
wanted this.
He asked, How did you know I wanted it? and laughed a little.
Because you remembered, and asked about it. Drink with me.
Lifting the glass he felt it quiver on its stem, and drank hastily. As before,
he felt the warmth of the drink, a tingling sweetness that yet was acid, a
sensation rather than a taste. When he put the empty glass down, she put hers
down empty beside it, and refilled them both from the bottle. Then she seated
herself beside him on the divan, and the two filled glasses stood before them.
Let me tell you, she said. Once on a time you were in a green and silver
room not green and crimson, like this. You had an illusion with you, and with
her you drank as you drink this wine of mine.
But that was a magic drink, and you lost yourself the illusion willed you to
lose yourself. Is that not so?
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How do you know? Yes, it was so, but how do you know?
When you and I held each other, I took you beyond space, for a moment. I saw
all your mind, all your thoughts and memories, like a picture. Things you
yourself have forgotten do you know that nothing you have ever done or said or
thought is lost? That it is all there, painted on the fabric of your brain?
He nodded assent. Yes, I know that. Memory may be faulty, but it is all
there, as you say. And you could see it?
Your secretary I don t know her name. The girl who died, the man you brought
to justice they hanged him for murder an old man I think is your father a
woman who saved your life one night, and a falling airplane that was lost in
the sea. And money you took
You are most decidedly a witch, he interrupted. Stop it!
It was there for me to read. I have passed fear. On the farther side of fear
is power, sight, hearing you felt them all as possible. I know them as
realities. And you you with your greater knowledge of all that lies this side
of fear I want to persuade you to share that other side with me. To be one
with me in it.
He shook his head. That is forbidden, he said. I m going to end my human
life in three dimensions, not risk destruction trying to fathom the fourth, as
you do. I tell you it is forbidden.
I say it is not!
So Har-Ees said, and wrecked a continent.
What became of her?
How should I know? He sounded almost querulous. I d say the fishes scraped
the meat off her bones, if any fishes were left alive after the convulsion
that destroyed Atlantis. She died with the rest of them. Very few escaped your
ancestors must have been among them.
I think you know all there is to be known on this side of fear. And if you
with your knowledge passed it if I could make you come past it and find your
way as I am finding mine Oh, don t you see?
We two might fold up the world, rule it be gods in it!
The eternal thirst, he said slowly. Power whether fit to use it or no.
Damnation! I have known women, and it is always the same. Power over a man the
sense that they can control and hold him down or else power such as you want.
You re so great, and yet so small. You are all the same, you
women! To give as pleases you, and to take when it pleases you to take and
apart from your pleasure a man may wait and question and hunger you want
power!
You d have me share in this dominion Ira, you re wonderful, were wonderful
today, but you re a woman, and you want me to follow along your path!
Well? She put a mocking note into the question.
To please you. Not that I and you may rule the world, but that you and may
rule I ve trouble
I
enough to rule myself.
She took up one of the two glasses and handed it to him. You are irrational,
she said. Drink again, or I ll offer you tea.
He laughed. It s getting late, he said. Ephraim s boy must have gone
milking by this time, and you d have to make the tea yourself. Still here s to
Har-Ees, and Dark Lagny and you!
HE DRANK, as she drank with him, the second glass. For a moment he resisted
the spell, knew why the glasses had been left filled when he had last gone out
from this room. There had been no need of them, then, for he had not refused
Ira s experiment. Now, while the moment lasted, he knew that she had taken
this drugging means of making him repeat it, and then questioned inwardly why
should he resist? For the effect of that second drink was such as to nullify
cold reason, and leave in its place contentment, almost indifference. So much
so that, when as before she put her arms round him for that strange,
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passionless embrace and willed him to hold her, he felt little more than that
she was good to hold, even in such a fashion as this.
Still! She whispered the word. Let me take you past Fear.
So for the second time she tried to take him with her beyond time and space,
but this experience was not as that other had been. He knew himself one with
her, yet separated from her by all infinity. He knew light beyond light, sound
beyond all sound, and the scent of all the flowers of Eden blended in with
reek from the fires of hell yet hell itself was a part of the great scheme of
things, and so part of the great heaven that was, and yet was not. All
incredibilities were real, and all realities incredible.
He saw a point of radiance far off and, gazing at it, knew it was near knew
that he looked into the light of her unknowable eyes. He shaped the thought I
lose and find you, and she was not near, but removed from him an infinity she
receded so far that he could not see her, yet she was warm in his hold. If
only he could get past Fear, he would comprehend this mystery.
Fear! A shape that had no shape, a Thing that stood inexorably between him and
knowledge. He knew that in this second experiment she had failed even more
than in the first of them. In that, she had so far taken him with her that he
was very near on moving as she moved, near on comprehending the relation
between that fourth direction of movement with the three that he knew.
Now, there was a world that he saw and felt and smelt and heard, a greatness
that comprehended so many dimensions as to have none and it was not for him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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