The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (27 page)

When Pearson caught up with his friend, Connolly was sitting in front of the shrine which the devout islanders had built on Syrene’s highest point. In the daytime, there would be tourists here, photographing each other or gaping at the much-advertised beauty spread beneath them, but the place was deserted now.

Connolly was breathing heavily from his exertions, yet his features were relaxed and for the moment he seemed almost at peace. The shadow that lay across his mind had lifted, and he turned to Pearson with a smile that echoed his old, infectious grin.

‘He hates exercise, Jack. It always scares him away.’

‘And who is he?’ said Pearson. ‘Remember, you haven’t introduced us yet.’

Connolly smiled at his friend’s attempted humour; then his face suddenly became grave.

‘Tell me, Jack,’ he began. ‘Would you say I have an overdeveloped imagination?’

‘No: you’re about average. You’re certainly less imaginative than I am.’

Connolly nodded slowly.

‘That’s true enough, Jack, and it should help you to believe me. Because I’m certain I could never have invented the creature who’s haunting me. He really exists. I’m not suffering from paranoiac hallucinations, or whatever Dr Curtis would call them.

‘You remember Maude White? It all began with her. I met her at one of David Trescott’s parties, about six weeks ago. I’d just quarrelled with Ruth and was rather fed up. We were both pretty tight, and as I was staying in town she came back to the flat with me.’

Pearson smiled inwardly. Poor Roy! It was always the same pattern, though he never seemed to realise it. Each affair was different to him, but to no one else. The eternal Don Juan, always seeking—always disappointed, because what he sought could be found only in the cradle or the grave, but never between the two.

‘I guess you’ll laugh at what knocked me out—it seems so trivial, though it frightened me more than anything that’s ever happened in my life. I simply went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out the drinks, as I’ve done a hundred times before. It wasn’t until I’d handed one to Maude that I realised I’d filled
three
glasses. The act was so perfectly natural that at first I didn’t recognise what it meant. Then I looked wildly around the room to see where the other man was—even then I knew, somehow, that it wasn’t a man. But, of course, he wasn’t there. He was nowhere at all in the outside world: he was hiding deep down inside my own brain….’

The night was very still, the only sound a thin ribbon of music winding up to the stars from some café in the village below. The light of the rising moon sparkled on the sea; overhead, the arms of the crucifix were silhouetted against the darkness. A brilliant beacon on the frontiers of twilight, Venus was following the sun into the west.

Pearson waited, letting Connolly take his time. He seemed lucid and rational enough, however strange the story he was telling. His face was quite calm in the moonlight, though it might be the calmness that comes after acceptance of defeat.

‘The next thing I remember is lying in bed while Maude sponged my face. She was pretty frightened: I’d passed out and cut my forehead badly as I fell. There was a lot of blood around the place, but that didn’t matter. The thing that really scared me was the thought that I’d gone crazy. That seems funny, now that I’m much more scared of being sane.

‘
He
was still there when I woke up; he’s been there ever since. Somehow I got rid of Maude—it wasn’t easy—and tried to work out what had happened. Tell me, Jack, do you believe in telepathy?’

The abrupt challenge caught Pearson off his guard.

‘I’ve never given it much thought, but the evidence seems rather convincing. Do you suggest that someone else is reading your mind?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. What I’m telling you now I’ve discovered slowly—usually when I’ve been dreaming or slightly drunk. You may say that invalidates the evidence, but I don’t think so. At first it was the only way I could break through the barrier that separates me from Omega—I’ll tell you later why I’ve called him that. But now there aren’t any obstacles: I know he’s there all the time, waiting for me to let down my guard. Night and day, drunk or sober, I’m conscious of his presence. At times like this he’s quiescent, watching me out of the corner of his eye. My only hope is that he’ll grow tired of waiting, and go in search of some other victim.’

Connolly’s voice, calm until now, suddenly came near to breaking.

‘Try and imagine the horror of that discovery: the effect of learning that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind was being watched and shared by another being. It meant, of course, the end of all normal life for me. I had to leave Ruth and I couldn’t tell her why. Then, to make matters worse, Maude came chasing after me. She wouldn’t leave me alone, and bombarded me with letters and phone calls. It was hell. I couldn’t fight both of them, so I ran away. And I thought that on Syrene, of all places, he would find enough to interest him without bothering me.’

‘Now I understand,’ said Pearson softly. ‘So
that’s
what he’s after. A kind of telepathic Peeping Tom—no longer content with mere watching….’

‘I suppose you’re humouring me,’ said Connolly, without resentment. ‘But I don’t mind, and you’ve summed it up pretty accurately, as you usually do. It was quite a while before I realised what his game was. Once the first shock had worn off, I tried to analyse the position logically. I thought backward from that first moment of recognition, and in the end I knew that it wasn’t a sudden invasion of my mind. He’d been with me for years, so well hidden that I’d never guessed it. I expect you’ll laugh at this, knowing me as you do. But I’ve never been altogether at ease with a woman, even when I’ve been making love to her, and now I know the reason. Omega has always been there, sharing my emotions, gloating over the passions he can no longer experience in his body.

‘The only way I kept my control was by fighting back, trying to come to grips with him and to understand what he was. And in the end I succeeded. He’s a long way away and there must be some limit to his powers. Perhaps that first contact was an accident, though I’m not sure.

‘What I’ve told you already, Jack, must be hard enough for you to believe, but it’s nothing to what I’ve got to say now. Yet remember—you agreed that I’m not an imaginative man, and see if you can find a flaw anywhere in this story.

‘I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time. I
know
that it is. Omega doesn’t belong to our age: he’s somewhere in the future, immensely far ahead of us. For a while I thought he must be one of the last men—that’s why I gave him his name. But now I’m not sure; perhaps he belongs to an age when there are a myriad different races of man, scattered all over the universe—some still ascending, others sinking into decay. His people, wherever and whenever they may be, have reached the heights and fallen from them into the depths the beasts can never know. There’s a sense of evil about him, Jack—the real evil that most of us never meet in all our lives. Yet sometimes I feel almost sorry for him, because I know what has made him the thing he is.

‘Have you ever wondered, Jack, what the human race will do when science has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets? Omega is one of the answers. I hope he’s not the only one, for if so everything we’ve striven for is in vain. I hope that he and his race are an isolated cancer in a still healthy universe, but I can never be sure.

‘They have pampered their bodies until they are useless, and too late they have discovered their mistake. Perhaps they have thought, as some men have thought, that they could live by intellect alone. And perhaps they are immortal, and that must be their real damnation. Through the ages their minds have been corroding in their feeble bodies, seeking some release from their intolerable boredom. They have found it at last in the only way they can, by sending back their minds to an earlier, more virile age, and becoming parasites on the emotions of others.

‘I wonder how many of them there are? Perhaps they explain all cases of what used to be called possession. How they must have ransacked the past to assuage their hunger! Can’t you picture them, flocking like carrion crows around the decaying Roman Empire, jostling one another for the minds of Nero and Caligula and Tiberius? Perhaps Omega failed to get those richer prizes. Or perhaps he hasn’t much choice and must take whatever mind he can contact in any age, transferring from that to the next whenever he has the chance.

‘It was only slowly, of course, that I worked all this out. I think it adds to his enjoyment to know that I’m aware of his presence. I think he’s deliberately helping—breaking down his side of the barrier. For in the end, I was able to see him.’

Connolly broke off. Looking around, Pearson saw that they were no longer alone on the hilltop. A young couple, hand in hand, were coming up the road toward the crucifix. Each had the physical beauty so common and so cheap among the islanders. They were oblivious to the night around them and to any spectators, and went past without the least sign of recognition. There was a bitter smile on Connolly’s lips as he watched them go.

‘I suppose I should be ashamed of this, but I was wishing then that he’d leave me and go after that boy. But he won’t; though I’ve refused to play his game any more, he’s staying to see what happens.’

‘You were going to tell me what he’s like,’ said Pearson, annoyed at the interruption. Connolly lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply before replying.

‘Can you imagine a room without walls? He’s in a kind of hollow, egg-shaped space—surrounded by blue mist that always seems to be twisting and turning, but never changes its position. There’s no entrance or exit—and no gravity, unless he’s learned to defy it. Because he floats in the centre, and around him is a circle of short, fluted cylinders, turning slowly in the air. I think they must be machines of some kind, obeying his will. And once there was a large oval hanging beside him, with perfectly human, beautifully formed arms coming from it. It could only have been a robot, yet those hands and fingers seemed alive. They were feeding and massaging him, treating him like a baby. It was horrible….

‘Have you ever seen a lemur or a spectral tarsier? He’s rather like that—a nightmare travesty of mankind, with huge malevolent eyes. And this is strange—it’s not the way one had imagined evolution going—he’s covered with a fine layer of fur, as blue as the room in which he lives. Every time I’ve seen him he’s been in the same position, half curled up like a sleeping baby. I think his legs have completely atrophied; perhaps his arms as well. Only his brain is still active, hunting up and down the ages for its prey.

‘And now you know why there was nothing you or anyone else could do. Your psychiatrists might cure me if I was insane, but the science that can deal with Omega hasn’t been invented yet.’

Connolly paused, then smiled wryly.

‘Just because I’m sane, I realise that you can’t be expected to believe me. So there’s no common ground on which we can meet.’

Pearson rose from the boulder on which he had been sitting, and shivered slightly. The night was becoming cold, but that was nothing to the feeling of inner helplessness that had overwhelmed him as Connolly spoke.

‘I’ll be frank, Roy,’ he began slowly. ‘Of course I don’t believe you. But insofar as you believe in Omega yourself, he’s real to you, and I’ll accept him on that basis and fight him with you.’

‘It may be a dangerous game. How do we know what he can do when he’s cornered?’

‘I’ll take that chance,’ Pearson replied, beginning to walk down the hill. Connolly followed him without argument. ‘Meanwhile, just what do you propose to do yourself?’

‘Relax. Avoid emotion. Above all, keep away from women—Ruth, Maude, and the rest of them. That’s been the hardest job. It isn’t easy to break the habits of a lifetime.’

‘I can well believe that,’ replied Pearson, a little dryly. ‘How successful have you been so far?’

‘Completely. You see, his own eagerness defeats his purpose, by filling me with a kind of nausea and self-loathing whenever I think of sex. Lord, to think that I’ve laughed at the prudes all my life, yet now I’ve become one myself!’

There, thought Pearson in a sudden flash of insight, was the answer. He would never have believed it, but Connolly’s past had finally caught up with him. Omega was nothing more than a symbol of conscience, a personification of guilt. When Connolly realised this, he would cease to be haunted. As for the remarkably detailed nature of the hallucination, that was yet another example of the tricks the human mind can play in its efforts to deceive itself. There must be some reason why the obsession had taken this form, but that was of minor importance.

Pearson explained this to Connolly at some length as they approached the village. The other listened so patiently that Pearson had an uncomfortable feeling that he was the one who was being humoured, but he continued grimly to the end. When he had finished, Connolly gave a short, mirthless laugh.

‘Your story’s as logical as mine, but neither of us can convince the other. If you’re right, then in time I may return to “normal”. You can’t imagine how real Omega is to me. He’s more real than you are: if I close my eyes you’re gone, but he’s still there. I wish I knew what he was waiting for! I’ve left my old life behind;
he
knows I won’t go back to it while he’s there. So what’s he got to gain by hanging on?’ He turned to Pearson with a feverish eagerness. ‘That’s what really frightens me, Jack. He must know what my future is—all my life must be like a book he can dip into where he pleases. So there must still be some experience ahead of me that he’s waiting to savour. Sometimes—sometimes I wonder if it’s my death.’

They were now among the houses at the outskirts of the village, and ahead of them the nightlife of Syrene was getting into its stride. Now that they were no longer alone, there came a subtle change in Connolly’s attitude. On the hilltop he had been, if not his normal self, at least friendly and prepared to talk. But now the sight of the happy, carefree crowds ahead seemed to make him withdraw into himself. He lagged behind as Pearson advanced and presently refused to come any further.