The Collection (46 page)

He didn't trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. He
turned and went through the door of the cubicle to which the guard had pointed.
There were two bunks in there; the manic-depressive who
^'
d been on
the chair was lying flat on his back on the other, staring blindly up at the
ceiling through wide-open eyes. They'd pulled his slippers off, leaving him
otherwise dressed.

He turned to his own bunk, knowing there was nothing on
earth he could do for the other man, no way he could reach him through the
impenetrable shell of blank misery which is the manic-depressive's intermittent
companion.

He turned down a gray sheet-blanket on his own bunk and
found under it another gray sheet-blanket atop a hard but smooth pad. He
slipped off his shirt and trousers and hung them on a hook on the wall at the
foot of his bed. He looked around for a switch to turn off the light overhead
and couldn
^'
t find one. But, even as he looked, the light went out.

A single light still burned somewhere in the ward room
outside, and by it he could see to take his shoes and socks off and get into
the bunk.

He lay very quiet for a while, hearing only two sounds, both
faint and seeming far away. Somewhere in another cubicle off the ward someone
was singing quietly to himself, a wordless monody; somewhere else someone else
was sobbing. In his own cubicle, he couldn't hear even the sound of breathing
from his roommate.

Then there was a shuffle of bare feet and someone in the
open doorway said,
^"
George Vine.
^"

He said,
^"
Yes?
^"

^"
Shhh, not so loud. This is Bassington. Want
to tell you about that guard; I should have warned you before. Don't ever
tangle with him.
^"

"I didn't."

^"
I heard; you were smart. He'll slug you to
pieces if you give him half a chance. He's a sadist. A lot of guards are; that
^'
s
why they're bughousers; that
^'
s what they call themselves,
bughousers. If they get fired one place for being too brutal they get on at
another one. He'll be in again-in the morning; I thought I'd warn you."

The shadow in the doorway was gone.

He lay there in the dimness, the almost-darkness, feeling
rather than thinking. Wondering. Did mad people ever know that they were mad?
Could they tell? Was every one of them sure, as he was sure-?

That quiet, still thing lying in the bunk near his,
inarticulately suffering, withdrawn from human reach into a profound misery
beyond the understanding of the sane—

"Napoleon Bonaparte!"

A clear voice, but had it been within his mind, or from
without? He sat up on the bunk. His eyes pierced the dimness, could discern no
form, no shadow, in the doorway.

He said, "Yes?"

Only then, sitting up on the hunk and having answered
"Yes," did he realize the name by which the voice had called him.

"Get up. Dress."

He swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, stood up.
He reached for his shirt and was slipping his arms into it before he stopped
and asked, "Why?"

"To learn the truth."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Do not speak aloud. I can hear you. I am within you
and without. I have no name."

"Then
what
are you?" He said it aloud,
without thinking.

"An instrument of The Brightly Shining."

He dropped the trousers he'd been holding. He sat down
carefully on the edge of the bunk, leaned over and groped around for them.

His mind groped, too. Groped for he knew not what. Finally
he found a question-the question. He didn
^'
t ask it aloud this time;
he thought it, concentrated on it as he straightened out his trousers and
thrust his legs in them.

"Am I mad?"

The answer-No-came clear and sharp as a spoken word, but had
it been spoken? Or was it a sound that was only in his mind?

He found his shoes and pulled them on his feet. As he
fumbled the laces into some sort of knots, he thought,
^"
Who-what-is
The Brightly Shining?"

^"
The Brightly Shining is
that which is
Earth.
It is the intelligence of our planet. It is one of three
intelligences in the solar system, one of many in the universe. Earth is one;
it is called The Brightly Shining."

^"
I do not understand." he thought.

"You will. Are you ready?"

He finished the second knot. He stood up. The voice said,
"Come. Walk silently.
^"

It was as though he was being led through the
almost-darkness, although he felt no physical touch upon him; he saw no
physical presence beside him. But he walked confidently, although quietly on
tiptoe, knowing he would not walk into anything nor stumble. Through the big
room that was the ward, and then his outstretched hand touched the knob of a
door.

He turned it gently and the door opened inward. Light
blinded him. The voice said, "Wait," and he stood immobile. He could
hear sound-the rustle of paper, the turn of a page-outside the door, in the
lighted corridor.

Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream.
A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the
sound of the scream. A door opened and closed.

The voice said,
^"
Come," and he pulled
the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty
chair that had been just outside the door of the ward.

Another door, another corridor. The voice said,
"Wait," the voice said, "Come"; this time a guard slept. He
tip-toed past. Down steps.

He thought the question,
^"
Where am I going?
^"

"Mad," said the voice.

^"
But you said I wasn
^'
t-
^"
He'd spoken aloud and the sound startled him almost more than had the answer to
his last question. And in the silence that followed the words he'd spoken there
came-from the bottom of the stairs and around the corner-the sound of a buzzing
switchboard, and someone said,
^"
Yes? . . . Okay, Doctor, I
^'
ll
be right up.
^"
Footsteps and the closing of an elevator door.

He went down the remaining stairs and around the corner and
he was in the front main hall. There was an empty desk with a switchboard
beside it. He walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted and he threw
the heavy bolt.

He went outside, into the night.

He walked quietly across cement, across gravel; then his
shoes were on grass and he didn
^'
t have to tiptoe any more. It was as
dark now as the inside of an elephant; he felt the presence of trees nearby and
leaves brushed his face occasionally, but he walked rapidly, confidently and
his hand went forward just in time to touch a brick wall.

He reached up and he could touch the top of it; he pulled
himself up and over it. There was broken glass on the flat top of the wall; he
cut his clothes and his flesh badly, but he felt no pain, only the wetness of
blood and the stickiness of blood.

He walked along a lighted road, he walked along dark and
empty streets, he walked down a darker alley. He opened the back gate of a yard
and walked to the back door of a house. He opened the door and went in. There
was a lighted room at the front of the house; he could see the rectangle of
light at the end of a corridor. He went along the corridor and into the lighted
room.

Someone who had been seated at a desk stood up. Someone, a
man, whose face he knew but whom he could not—

^"
Yes,
^"
said the man,
smiling,
^"
you know me, but you do not know me. Your mind is
under partial control and your ability to recognize me is blocked out. Other
than that and your analgesia-you are covered with blood from the glass on the
wall, but you don't feel any pain-your mind is normal and you are sane."

^"
What's it all about?
^"
he
asked. "Why was I brought here?,"

^"
Because you are sane. I
^'
m sorry
about that, because you can
^'
t be. It is not so much that you
retained memory of your previous life, after you'd been moved. That happens. It
is that you somehow know something of what you shouldn't-something of The
Brightly Shining, and of the Game between the red and the black. For that
reason-"

^"
For that reason, what?
^"
he
asked.

The man he knew and did not know smiled gently.
^"
For
that reason you must know the rest, so that you will know nothing at all. For
everything will add to nothing. The truth will drive you mad.
^"

"That I do not believe."

"Of course you don't. If the truth were conceivable to
you, it would not drive you mad. But you cannot remotely conceive the
truth."

A powerful anger surged up within him. He stared at the
familiar face that he knew and did not know, and he stared down at himself; at
the torn and bloody gray uniform, at his torn and bloody hands. The hands
hooked like claws with the desire to kill-someone, the someone, whoever it was,
who stood before him.

He asked, "What are you?
^"

^"
I am an instrument of The Brightly
Shining."

^"
The same which led me here, or another?
^"

"One is all, all is one. Within the whole and its
parts, there is no difference. One instrument is another and the red is the black
and the black is the white and there is no difference. The Brightly Shining is
the soul of Earth. I use
soul
as the nearest word in your
vocabulary."

Hatred was almost a bright light. It was almost something
that he could lean into, lean his weight against.

He asked, "What is The Brightly Shining?" He made
the words a curse in his mouth.

^"
Knowing will make you mad. You want to
know?
^"

"Yes." He made a curse out of that simple,
sibilant syllable.

The lights were dimming. Or was it his eyes? The room was
becoming dimmer, and at the same time receding. It was becoming a tiny cube of
dim light, seen from afar and outside, from somewhere in the distant dark, ever
receding, turning into a pinpoint of light, and within that point of light ever
the hated. Thing, the man-or was it a man?-standing beside the desk.

Into darkness, into space, up and apart from the earth -a
dim sphere in the night, a receding sphere outlined against the spangled
blackness of eternal space, occulting the stars, a disk of black.

It stopped receding, and time stopped. It was as though the
clock of the universe stood still. Beside him, out of the void, spoke the voice
of the instrument of The Shining One.

"Behold,
^"
it said.
^"
The
Being of Earth.
^"

He beheld. Not as though an outward change was occurring,
but an inward one, as though his senses were being changed to enable him to
perceive something hitherto unseeable.

The ball that was Earth began to glow. Brightly to shine.

"You see the intelligence that rules Earth,
^"
said the voice.
^"
The sum of the black and the white and the
red, that are one, divided only as the lobes of a brain are divided, the
trinity that is one."

The glowing ball and the stars behind it faded, and the
darkness became deeper darkness and then there was dim light, growing brighter,
and he was back in the room with the man standing at the desk.

^"
You saw," said the man whom he hated.
"But you do not understand. You ask,
what
you have seen,
what
is
The Brightly Shining? It is a group intelligence, the true intelligence of
Earth, one intelligence among three in the Solar system, one among many in the
universe.

"What, then, is man? Men are pawns, in games of-to
you-unbelievable complexity, between the red and the black, the white and the
black, for amusement. Played by one part of an organism against another part,
to while away an instant of eternity. There are vaster games, played between
galaxies. Not with man.

"Man is a parasite peculiar to Earth, which tolerates
his presence for a little while. He exists nowhere else in the cosmos, and he
does not exist here for long. A little while, a few chessboard wars, which he
thinks he fights himself-You begin to understand."

The man at the desk smiled.

"You want to know of yourself. Nothing is less important.
A move was made, before Lodi. The opportunity was there for a move of the red;
a stronger, more ruthless personality was needed; it was a turning point in
history-which means in the game. Do you understand now? A pinch-hitter was put
in to become Emperor."

He managed two words. "And then?"

^"
The Brightly Shining does not kill. You had
to be put somewhere, some time. Long later a man named George Vine was killed
in an accident; his body was still usable. George Vine had not been insane, but
he had had a Napoleonic complex. The transference was amusing.
^"

^"
No doubt." Again it was impossible to
reach the man at the desk. The hatred itself was a wall between them.
"Then George Vine is dead?"

^"
Yes. And you, because you knew a little too
much, must go mad so that you will know nothing. Knowing the truth will drive
you mad.
^"

"No!"

The instrument smiled.