The Lost Perception

Six billion years old, 18,000 parsecs in length, the great lens scintillates in cosmic grandeur as it wheels through the ebon reaches of infinity.

Generically, for those life forms on the semantic level, it is a “Galaxy.” One species, inclined to quaint, romantic expression, designates it the “Milky Way.” To another, it is “One of the Billion Eyes of God.”

Such purely subjective interpretations of the galactic concept are understandable. For the so-called “Milky Way” can never be fully grasped by any evolved intellect.

Ten billion suns of infinite variety and endless groupings. Shimmering clusters displaying their dazzling celestial luminosities like myriads of jewels in magnificent crowns. Nebulae by the thousands. Great clouds of opaque material and nonluminous bodies that emit at frequencies undetectable by organs of “sight” sensitive in the 3,800–8,000 angstrom range. Billions upon countless billions of planets and satellites, comets, meteors and interstellar fragments.

All caught up in an awe-inspiring swirl of frozen motion. Trailing tenuous arms that wrap about themselves in a gauze-like array of spiraling grace. Coruscating with the flaring radiance of exploding suns—much like the sporadic brilliance of atomic disintegration in a microgram of radium.

Once around its axis every 200,000,000 years, as measured in the standard time unit designated by the species which so blithely regards the majestic system as
its
“Milky Way.” That such a superstellar conglomerate should be regarded as incomprehensible is commensurate with the nature of creatures whose spans of existence are roughly equivalent to the half-life of samarium 151.

Spinning. Changing form imperceptibly. Aglow with the soft, yet fierce light of stellar combustion. Ever evolving as it condenses droplets of fledgling suns out of inchoate hydrogen. Spawning fiery young stars that hurtle proudly through their life cycles then, in cataclysmic fury, collapse upon themselves and hurl forth the flotsam from which their second-generation descendants will be born.

Then there’s the shimmering, inaccessible nucleus of the system. Ever forbidden, by virtue of its crushing density, to the questing species whose curiosity compels them to sail the unfathomable depths of space in frail contrivances. Here is found the swarming congestion of RR Lyrae stars—as they are so designated by the This-Is-Our-Milky-Way beings.

And finally there’s—
Chandeen
, as it’s known by one sapient species.

Perhaps Chandeen is the aggregate radiation of the variable RR Lyrae stars. Or the over-all pattern of their oscillations. Or, again, it may be merely a precipitation of metaphysical force at the very center of the Galaxy, where all physical forces come to focus.

How to describe this hypermaterial concept to the Our-Milky-Way beings?

You would have to tell them that Chandeen is
like
a sun. That its metaphysical emission (referred to as “rault” by one “rault-sensitive” culture) is
like
light. But there the analogies would have to cease. For, just as you can never explain the Our-Milky-Way species’ “seeing” to a creature that is not “light-sensitive,” so could you never describe “zylphing” to one that is not “rault-sensitive.”

Suffice it to say that rault emitted by Chandeen pervades all physical objects, just as it bathes, at the same time, the mind of the rault-sensitive perceiver. And It unites beholder and everything beheld in an all-encompassing oneness.

Zylphing, to any species which zylphs, is indeed a form of perception undreamed of by the Our-Milky-Wayites. For the latter creatures—whose contact with environment includes only tactile perception, epithelial excitation, olfactory response, reception of molecular vibrations in a gaseous medium, and sensitivity to various ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum—for these creatures, zylphing would represent the function of a sixth sense.

Darting out of the littoral cumulus buildup, the Security Bureau craft checked its position over a gutted and charred Nice, then climbed southeastward over the Mediterranean.

At the controls, Arthur Gregson engaged the autopilot, then eased back against cushioned upholstery. But only momentarily. For soon the horizontal servo unit went yaw-crazy and the ship began responding more like a beagle sniffing out a hare’s trail.

Annoyed, he resumed manual control and thought he heard a chuckle from the seat beside him. But, to all appearances, the lanky Englishman was still dozing, as he had been since their departure from London.

But for his bleached complexion, Gregson could well have been mistaken for an American plankton farmer. There was a seafaring suggestion to the tousled indifference of thick, dark hair; to a pair of rugged hands that might have developed their strength by hauling on the winch lines of steel nets asag with the weight of micromarine accumulations. Even his eyes, brown and intense, seemed to be defying the lash of wind-driven spray.

His toneless complexion was, of course, the result of thirty orbital months as project engineer in charge of systems aboard Vega Jumpoff Station. Since VJO’s decommissioning, there had been little opportunity for soaking up a tan.

He tensed abruptly and peered into the morning sunlight.

There
it was again—a faint silvery mote riding high above the wispy cirrus cloud layer and lurking in the solar glare.

The steady throb of combustion faltered in one of the powerplants, bringing Kenneth Wellford fully awake. He stared at the starboard engine and muttered, “Damn fuel! I shouldn’t be surprised to learn they’re distilling it in gin vats.”

“We may have more than inferior fuel to worry about.”

“There’s
always
more to concern ourselves with,” the Englishman observed phlegmatically. “The fuel situation, I should hope, will straighten itself out, though, when SecBu gets more of your country’s processing plants back in production.”

Oregson stared at him. Wellford, who had served as a shuttle craft pilot aboard Vega Jumpoff until the
Nina
had blasted away on its interstellar expedition, had a simple, pleasant face. Blue eyes that seemed to analyze, rather than merely regard, yet eyes that always cast about for the humor in any situation.

“We’ve got company out there,” Gregson disclosed finally.

Frowning, Wellford searched the sky. “Where?” Then he smiled. “Quite sure you aren’t panic buttoning? You’re somewhat inclined to do that, you know.”

“Two Security Bureau hoppers were lost just last week over the U.S.,” Gregson reminded.

“Oh, come now. You can’t be suggesting an organized attack against the bureau.”

“And another was
fired on
over the Alps. There must be more we haven’t heard about.”

Wellford shook his head dubiously. “I admit there may be some intense nationalist groups that resent SecBu’s provisional authority during a world crisis. But to try to generalize from a few isolated instances…”

“There!” Gregson pointed.

“Apologies. There
is
an angel at eleven o’clock,” the Englishman confirmed. “But I shouldn’t be too concerned. After all, it isn’t sneaking up behind us.”

“But it’s on our identical course.”

“I shouldn’t think we’re the only craft in the sky.”

“And why wouldn’t we be? Except for bureau traffic, aviation’s been practically dead since that Screamer pulled the nuclear plug in ’95.”

“But there must be plenty of
us
out this morning, what with Radcliff summoning all special agents to Rome for individual briefings.”

The other’s reassurances, however, failed to blunt Gregson’s concern.

“We might give him a buzz and see how the Screamie situation is in his neck of the woods,” Wellford proposed.

“I don’t suppose that’s necessary.”

“Or we could ask SecBu, Corsica, for an armed escort”

“No. Forget it”

Gregson’s hands relaxed on the controls and his palms suddenly cooled as circulating air began evaporating their films of moisture. Wellford, of course, was right. Who
would,
in this hectic day of post-Nuclear Exchange recovery, want to challenge the Security Bureau’s choiceless burden of governmental function on the international level?

The job of rebuilding, of shoveling away the atomic debris, decontaminating and patching up decimated populations, was requiring the full energy of all governments involved in ’95’s thermonuclear abortion. And whatever national resources remained had to be marshaled against the devastating Screamie epidemic.

In Gregson’s mind there was no doubt that, without the Security Bureau, civilization would have long since plunged into savagery.

As it was, the bureau’s International Guard was bolstering internal security in most nations. It was supervising re-establishment of supply sources. Its fiat money had replaced currencies almost universally. Its blue-uniformed Screamer Pickup Squads patrolled the streets of all cities, gathering victims of the plague and trundling them off to Security Bureau isolation institutes.

“There’s our angel again,” Wellford announced. “At three o’clock.”

The unidentified plane, Gregson saw, had reduced speed and dropped more nearly to their own altitude. But it was still just a glinting mote in the azure sky.

“Let’s buzz him on bureau frequency,” he proposed.

Wellford spoke briskly into his microphone.—“Security Bureau Flight LR303. Forty-two fifty north. Nine thirty-six east. Calling craft at forty thousand feet in this vicinity. Come in and identify yourself.”

But there was no answer.

Again, Gregson’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Let’s don’t take chances, Ken. Switch over to emergency frequency and ask Corsica for an armed escort”

“Very well.”

But after the Englishman had transmitted the request he restored his self-assurance with a facetious observation: “I still think you have a propensity for using Pandora’s box as a grab bag. If you aren’t wringing your hands over an organized conspiracy against the bureau, you’re all tears-in-your-beer about the Screamie epidemic.”

“A lot of people have been wringing their hands over the plague—for fourteen years now.”

“I suppose they have been at that. It’s certainly in vogue. Seems almost everybody’s taking the Screamie route.”

Gregson stared down at the seascape, letting the sparkling reflection of sunlight burn into his eyes as though it might wash his thoughts free of the plague. But it was a subject that could never be buried deep beneath the surface of anyone’s mind. Particularly not his.

Particularly not—now.

Two Screamers in 1983. A handful in ’84. A few hundred the next year—obscure in the world’s teeming population. A few thousand in ’86. By ’90, several hundred thousand. Then the numbing impact of medical statistics acknowledging science’s inability to diagnose cause. Eventually, the reluctant admission that only one out of a thousand ever fully recovered.

Two million in ’93. Then the social reaction syndrome: isolation institutes; Screamer Pickup Squads stalking the streets; emergency sedation kits whose plunging hypodermic syringes set off pitifully wailing sirens that could be heard for blocks.

It was the year the United Nations decided, nevertheless, to rush preparations for the first interstellar expedition—in order to divert attention from the plague. It was also an occasion for pride. For humanity, with its feet in the muck of the Screamies, still seemed to have its head in the stars.

Sputtering powerplants snatched Gregson from his thoughts and he busied himself with engine control adjustments. “Ken, who’d want to attack the bureau?”

“Who, indeed!” Wellford agreed. “And that’s precisely my point. SecBu is all that’s left of the United Nations. It’s the only factor holding civilization together.”

“You know, there
could
be a force out to destroy the bureau—to end all hopes for unity and order, for permanent world government.”

The Englishman raised an eyebrow, then laughed. “There you go again—off on your there-are-aliens-among-us tangent. Now, really…”

“There
were
those reports from my brother aboard the
Nina
—one month out of the system.”

“But don’t you understand? Those messages have to be taken with a grain of salt! Somehow, the Screamie bug got aboard with the crew. And no Screamer is mentally competent.”

“I heard the tapes on those reports. Manuel was sane.”

“Very well,” the Englishman conceded grudgingly. “Let’s say he hadn’t gone Screamie yet with the rest of the crew. Don’t you suppose he must have been quite overwrought? His impressions couldn’t have been accurate.”

“
‘There’s something out there!’
he said,” Gregson recalled pensively. “
‘A ship perhaps, I sense it! A great, glowing sphere—thousands of miles away—filled with horrible presences—waiting… coming!
’”

Wellford nodded. “I remember it quite clearly. As a matter of fact, it was the
Nina
’s reports that touched off the aliens-among-us mania. But, when you have a thing like the Screamies on your hand, I suppose it’s only human nature to leap at the explanation that something-out-there brought the plague here to destroy us.”

“Then you don’t believe there’s anything out there?”

“Of course there is. There’s bound to be. Ten billion stars. A hundred billion planets. We’d be stupid to think we’re the only ones. But we’d be just as foolish to imagine that, in all these billions of years, they found us at the precise moment we acquired the capacity to find them.”

“It may be that we can hide in our system as long as we want, but the minute we go interstellar we attract whatever’s out there.”

Wellford studied Gregson’s drawn features. “You aren’t really proposing that the
Nina
’s voyage, the plague and the aliens-among-us obsession are all parts of the same manifestation? Don’t forget—we’ve had the Screamies for fourteen years now. The
Nina
was lost only two years ago.”

Always, the subject returned to the Screamies. Two months earlier, that inevitable course of all conversations would not have troubled Gregson. But now…

He turned so that the other wouldn’t notice his apprehension—wouldn’t guess that beside him was an incipient case of the Screamies.

Some went Screamie outright and with irrevocable finality; an abrupt explosion of body and mind into a paroxysm of threshing limbs while their terrified shrieks raised hackles of fear among those about them. Others backed in, fighting desperately, managing somehow to resist a first, second and perhaps even sixth or seventh seizure before plunging over the precipice.

For as long as the choice was his, Gregson had decided after his first encounter with the “roaring lights,” he too would fight it every step along the way. There would be no isolation institute for him—not if he could help it.

Perspiration had filmed his face and his hands were trembling on the wheel. It was going to happen—
now!

Vaguely, he was aware of Wellford’s anxious voice on his right: “Our angel appears to be closing the gap. Perhaps I’d better check and see whether that armed escort is on the way.”

Gregson struggled up out of the seat. “Take over, Ken,” he managed through an already dry throat. “I’m going to see if the storage compartment’s secure.”

“Now?”
the other demanded incredulously as he stared at the steadily approaching plane.

Gregson somehow made it safely into the after compartment, then leaned back against the hatch, hands drawn into fists. As a final preparation for the inevitable, he unsnapped the hypodermic syringe kit from his belt and hurled it away. Security Bureau regulations could require that he wear the siren-equipped injector. But they couldn’t
make
him use it on himself.

Then the seizure was upon him with a fury. His brain exploded in the agonizing blast of a great, roaring nuclear furnace. And the fires of hell’s most profound depths ravaged his faculties, until he was able to hang on to sanity only by swimming on the fringe of consciousness.

There were times during the interminable attack when he
was
unconscious. For briefly, while the onslaught was in one of its less severe phases, he was aware of the metal floor’s corrugated hardness pressing against his writhing back.

The nuclear tempest raged throughout his body, radiating fierce light that wasn’t luminous at all, but rather shouted at him with all the savagery and perversity of a world gone mad with furious hatred.

As suddenly as it had begun, however, it ended. It was as though he had finally drawn a curtain over all the excruciating effects and unmitigated anguish of the attack.

He rose, still shuddering, and dabbed with a handkerchief at the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. Already his tongue was swelling where he had caught it in the viselike grip of his teeth in order to suppress his shouts.

Such was the character of a Screamie attack. Such was the seizure that had felled millions throughout the world, together with a score aboard the starship
Nina.
That almost all of those millions had died, killed themselves or been slain by frightened pre-Screamers, was more in the nature of benevolent resolution than compounded tragedy.

Against instances of Screamer euthanasia, the Security Bureau and the national governments cooperating with it were almost powerless. But perhaps this inability to discourage mercy killings was an expedient solution, for the bureau’s isolation institutes couldn’t begin to care for all who went down the Screamie road.

Gregson was suddenly aware of the craft’s erratic motion as he lurched against the bulkhead. He wrested the hatch open and stumbled back into the cockpit. There he was confronted with the vertiginous sight of the Mediterranean’s haze-shrouded horizon slashing vertically across the nose of their craft.

Wellford had the ship in a fully-banked, diving turn that was generating sufficient G’s to thrust Gregson forcefully against the cushion as he returned to his seat.