Man of the World by Robert Gibson

33: assassination

No one came to show him out; he must tread the carpeted corridor, watched – presumably – by unseen eyes yet the centre of a moving zone of silence, which had to be the President’s way of saying, This is just between you and me: I am playing fair with you, Midax, giving you the chance to go so very quietly, that if you co-operate your change of direction can seem to the rest of the world to be your own idea.
  Two mutually contradictory thought-streams poured through Midax's head. In one of them the President was a great man presiding over a great world; in the other, an absurd man posturing in a little box-world.
  Either way, it seemed clear that the fellow was unable to disguise or repress his weakness for adventure, his temptation to relinquish his post… to tear himself away and go Discovering… a thing he almost did.
  Yet, give the President credit, in the end he had used his own weakness to point the moral, that the weakened world (or box) needed protection from the antics of a Discoverer.
  The way he puts it, it's convincing. I can make fun of him, but he has stuffing in him that I don’t have. Midax had a cloudy conviction that you couldn’t win against Waretik Thanth.
  The front doors stood wide. From here, all he had to do was to walk out and along the driveway. Somewhere out there, the glass bubble of privacy would shatter.
  He noticed that a car stood waiting, a chauffeur hunched behind the wheel, while standing beside the car a loose-jacketed man, almost oval with muscle, held the car door open.
  “We’re here to drive you to the airport, Mr Discoverer,” said the man with cold assurance as Midax approached.
  Unused to being driven around – unused to the need for it – the Discoverer sensed an oddness.
  A voice of instinct shrieked to be heard: these waiting men, the open car door – does a bad thing want to happen today? I ought to have a week yet, thought Midax, peeved. Waretik mentioned a week. Thus he promised to give me time, surely a bit more time than this, in which to prove that I’m a good boy.
  Aloud he said: “I’m not sure that I need this, Defender Nartal.” For like millions of television viewers he knew this man’s face and name: Nartal, the President’s bodyguard; the martial arts expert who had stared with sentry-like stiffness past the cameras during the pageantry of the inauguration of the World State. As a fixture in the pageant Nartal had been splendid in his wooden dignity. How jarring to see him blocking one’s path and giving voice:
  “My orders, Discoverer, are sure enough.”
  The other man, hunched in the driver’s seat, snickered.
  Midax thought: I can still disappear into Glight any moment I choose, so why feel threatened? However, it could be significant, the insolence and hostility which these men showed in their manner towards him. Better take proper note of it. For might this little encounter foreshadow the end of his “honeymoon” with the peoples of the world? In which case it was time he got unused to popularity.
  Besides – a more immediate point – once inside a car, especially a speeding car, he could not carry out the motion which would take him into Glight. He would be trapped.
  “I don’t much like the way your orders are conveyed,” he said.
  Nartal condescendingly smoothed his voice. “It’s for your own protection.”
  It could be true. This area around Derom was perhaps the only district in the world where his status, as a focus for the hopes and loyalty of the people, was already eclipsed by someone else’s. President Waretik Thanth was the hero here. And to be wedged in a hostile crowd – might that not be as fatal a trap as being enclosed in a car?
  Midax therefore smiled back, “I suppose I can’t count on street-support in Cenland.”
  “Nor, soon, in Larmonn either, if you ask me. But that’s not my business.” Nartal continued to hold the door open, in a posture of bored patience. “My job is to see you safely to the airport. But if you’re under the impression that you’re invulnerable…”
  “No, no.” Midax reconsidered. “I appreciate that history is reaching a tipping point and that it is part of the State’s business, Defender Nartal, to foresee the downslope beyond, so I attach some value to what you say...”
  Nartal waited, looking more bored with every passing minute, while Midax, in a way encouraged by this, continued to think aloud:
  “… but if I were to go my own way, I’d need no protection.”
  “Your way. The way none can follow. Very well. We naturally assumed,” bit out Nartal, “that you intended to return as publicly as you came; in which case, while you’re in this country you may run into some hotheads who are more Presidential than the President. But if you’re going back through Glight –” he shrugged – “go on then and disappear.”
  He bowed frostily and drew back.
  “Wait,” said Midax, thinking fast. “I accept the lift.” After all, why not? Taking the offer at face value, one might learn more. And the staff of Merod Lodge could surely be trusted one more day.
  Getting in beside Nartal and sitting back while the car drew off, he luxuriated in this temporary feeling of trust, the trust that the time had not yet come for the authorities to eliminate him quietly. He had a week; Waretik had told him so. Though precisely how he was supposed to demonstrate his co-operation by the end of that week, was far from clear. Shrewdly, the President had not tried to thrash out any specific agreement, merely the general one that Midax must stop the pressure, and by refusing in this way to be drawn into details Waretik had ensured that his instructions were comprehensive. They voiced the pure command: give in, really give in, and stop disturbing the world.
  Again, why not? As he sat brooding behind the silent chauffeur Midax felt the strong temptation to obey instructions, to surrender, to let Waretik Thanth call the tune. Probably they’d let me keep my transport business if I surrendered the Light-Cut Campaign. They wouldn’t mind me using Glight as a short-cut dimension for business only, so long as I did not threaten to understand it. For that would be the unforgivable thing: to let understanding loose upon the world. The crime without definition and without excuse. For whatever its outcome, the revelation was bound to be shattering, and the world did not wish to be shattered. Who could blame it? Midax knew perfectly well that he was on the verge of some waking nightmare in which the very ground of one’s trust in one’s world begins to tremble. If worst came to worst, the part he played would stain him with such guilt as might accrue to a warmongering emperor; yet he could steer clear of this horror quite easily. He could do so and still retain all his wealth and influence (apart from L2C which would have to be disbanded). And in thus steering clear, he would really become free, quite normal and free of both of the dreams which had disquieted his life. Already he had broken free of romantic love. The lure of beyondness could be next to face the axe. Think of it – no more addiction to old sunsets, to unattainable glories. Purged of that yen for a shine in the clouds, he could simply enjoy the good life, the earthy life, with all transcendent fevers sweated away…
  For what’s the use, after all, of allowing one’s soul to flail about, uselessly snatching at visions which always coyly pull back out of reach? Dreams (he warmed to the subject) are like weeds. They sprout in the loam of false hope. They settle whole provinces of illusion. Let dreams die; they are a quirk of brain.
  Anyhow, he had a week in which to decide…
  Unless, of course – he reminded himself rather late – this car, now sliding onto the main road, was taking him on his last journey. The supposed week’s grace might be merely a blind. If the President had learned all that he felt he needed to know, then now was the time for Midax to start feeling nervous.
Somehow, though, he was not nervous. Perhaps he was too stretched, too tired by greater things, to worry about human intrigues: too weary of fumbling around in an unknown dimension where the penalties of blundering were unimaginable – too weary of all that, to fret about the comparatively corny mundane penalties dealt out by mundane foes.
  He could almost wish that this supposed drive to the airport really were a trap. Human skulduggery was more bearable than the supernatural unease of Glight. Or was it? Perhaps he was overconfident about his ability to outwit his fellow men. Perhaps he was due for a lesson.
  The car drew to a stop and he realized that he had been returned, as promised, to Derom Airport. He was being let go. No catch. His thoughts deflated.
  With a crooked smile at himself, he reached for the door handle – and felt a hand upon his shoulder. “Wait,” he heard Nartal say.
  Midax looked around, brow creased in puzzlement. A catch after all? Nartal said, “Watch,” and nodded in the direction of the airport passenger entrance.
  A small group of men and women were clustered around a figure holding a placard. “Back WT – Stop MR” it said.
  A business-like woman appeared to be issuing instructions to new arrivals as, minute by minute, the group swelled. Nartal nodded again in her direction and said, “There, Discoverer, you see the embryo stage of mob formation. Better drive on, Knad,” he instructed the chauffeur, “and park two blocks further.” And then to Midax, as they pulled away: “You needn’t stay and watch this…”
  “Then let me out and I’ll go my own way.”
  “You do that, Glight-man. I don’t think you’ll be taking the plane after all.” To Knad: “Take us a couple of blocks further on.”
  “Thanks for the lift,” said Midax as the car stopped again. He reached for the door handle…
  Nartal added, “And I hope you realize, the President is not responsible for this – you are.”
  “He hasn’t had time,” retorted Midax as he opened the car door. Hearing no reply, he hesitated. For some reason he wanted to prolong the conversation, but it was over. They were now parked far enough away from the incipient mob, that he could be safely ejected once more into freedom’s lonely realm.

Surrender turned out not to be an option.
  At first he ascribed this to his own defiant, restless spirit. For as soon as he had opted to give up, and viewed that decision closely, he recoiled from its ugly pores; with a flare of his old zeal for adventure he refused to settle for a life without beyondness. Therefore, he decided, he must, after all, defy the President for so long as he was allowed. Which would probably be for one week, before they dealt with him...
  It would be a vivid week; he could be sure of that. A seven days' brew of public and private ignorance, anxiety, confusion and guesswork, flavoured with the heated emotions of all mankind, Glight the syllable skating on every tongue, would serve up one last week for Midax Rale to deliver the goods.
He pictured how it would go: no other conversational topic can compete, now that the Discoverer is widely known to have led a public expedition of over two hundred souls into that other dimension and back. Every mind slips into thoughts of the box-realm in which your sight bumps against the walls of your world. Everyone is forced to wonder what prowls beyond; no refuge exists from the idea.
  Gone were the days when he had been capable of keeping such seductive terror under control. It was no longer possible to use Glight prosaically as a mere means to a business end; he himself had brought those comparatively easy days to a close. The sight of the demonstrators at the airport entrance was the harbinger of a tempest in which his fate must be ripped from his hands; people weren’t going to wait for the President or the Discoverer to give them a lead.
So what now of Midax Rale the Discoverer: must he not live up to his name - was he not obliged yet one more time to discover the truth, come what may, despite the risk of unbearable horror? Not to do so would be even worse: it would mean waiting and watching helplessly while the disturbances for which he was ultimately responsible grew in violence and in reach till they surrounded and overwhelmed his guilty self. This, then, was the real reason why he could not surrender to the President’s command. He owed it to the world to finish what he had started.
  A flash caught his eye: the pop of a camera’s bulb. It reminded him that he was still standing at Derom Airport.
  The idea had been for him to return in the public mode in which he came, but, as Nartal had seen, it would not be a good idea to try to squeeze through the crowds which might be waiting for him. Indeed, even if he could get to the plane, he could not risk using it. Inside any closed thing, he could be trapped -
  Another flash, accompanied by shouting voices, a photographer calling to others and being answered; it all signified to him that it was time to make the dive into Glight. The thing he now hated to do, he had to do. He summoned his talent, made the nameless effort, and accordingly the world went sparkly-dim. The city shrank to a hamlet, the airport to a chalky rectangle. As if he had never done this before, Midax felt crushed by the shrinkage of reality. But he took the usual measures, hastily drawing folds of disbelief around his appalled mind. Hunched as if under a hailstorm, he began to run.
  He darted for a few yards, then stopped indecisively in front of Zard Pond, a sight which made him wince with special aversion. The Zard, the cursed Zard – the big and the small – one of you must be lying to me. But forget the Zard, he told himself. The next step was to return overland to Tarestu, to his Light-Cut Campaign headquarters. There he must find out whether he was still in a position to resume the interrupted exploration programme.
  I must not waste any of these seven days, he thought. They are all I have in which to obtain a result.
Yet having thus decided, he immediately found the ugly pores of this course of action coming into sharp focus: namely the threat inherent in further discovery, the huge fear of whatever lurked in Glight.  He definitely could not endure any more solitary exposures to the unknown. So hurry up and get to Tarestu for help. But the aversion to getting there this way was so sudden and so strong that he heard it as an actual spirit voice, counselling him urgently to back out of Glight and not return until he had his fellow-explorers with him. I’ve reached my limit, and that’s a fact. A surfeit of recent events meant that he could not tolerate one single further dimension-defying deed. Quite the contrary – he craved an immediate, massive dose of normality. Oh for the luxury of being bored. He took a few more steps through the dimness… and came to a few houses grouped in a pattern most likely to count as a provincial town in the realm of Everyday. Here was the kind of place he sought. He must return to Everyday. Not a second to lose. Escape the claws of nightmare. Click out, now!
  Click, he was back.
  In sight of a post office. In a half-empty square. On a lazy afternoon in an old Cenland town. Folcom it was called, from the inscription on the market pillar. Midax breathed in the glory of quiet sunshine.  (But surrender was still not an option.)
  Not only pleasant, this place, but a sensible choice: here he could escape recognition long enough to get him off the streets and booked into a country hotel. Here he could obtain that afternoon to himself which his lurching career demanded. Of course the hotel people would recognize him as soon as he checked in… but hotel people were discreet.
  Sure enough, though the receptionist’s eyes popped as Midax wandered into the lobby, the girl greeted him in a business-like manner, asked him to be so good as to wait a moment, then rushed away to call the manager. He appeared within the minute: a short olive-skinned man, full of burly competence and less wide-eyed than the receptionist had been; a working lifetime as hotel proprietor had accustomed him to celebrities. He said quietly, “Welcome, Discoverer. You desire a room?”
  “For one night,” said Midax gratefully. “I’ll pay in advance in case there are any problems…”
  “There won’t be,” said the manager. “Not at the Folcom Rest. We know how to look after people here.”
  “I didn’t mean to question that. By the way – telephone in the room?”
  “Er – of course.”
  “You’re surprised, aren’t you, that I should want a telephone? You think that I, being the Discoverer, just dart anywhere I want, instantaneously delivering my own messages?” A quirky smile had appeared on Midax’s face.
  The manager stood his ground.
  “Hmm, not my field, this.”
  Leaning forward, causing the non-plussed Folcomian to blink, Midax said: “I’ll tell you a secret.”
  The other drew back a touch. “Um – about what?”
  “Dis-il-usionment,” pronounced Midax as if slightly drunk, “dis-il-usionment with cheating. Here,” and he handed over some money, “any room will do, provided, as I say, that it has a phone. I’m really looking forward to speaking by phone, ordinary style.”
  The manager, with a look askance, hurriedly checked the accommodation chart to see which rooms were free – half hoping, as he did so, that there weren’t any, that he’d have an excuse to refuse a room to this possibly dangerous man, a nutter of rock-star proportions. Yet one must be willing to bear in mind that this particular nutter had done great things. It was often the way: the more exalted the fame, the greater the oddness, reflected the manager of the Folcom Rest.
  The guest was shown to his room; the manager withdrew, relieved, as soon as the great man had expressed himself satisfied.
  …And as soon as he was alone, the Discoverer swayed, trying to recall what he had meant to do next, but the short-term memory was slipping off down some mental burrow, and he gave up. He flopped on the bed.
  The sound of knocking woke him. Staring at the ceiling, he heard the manager’s voice:
  “Breakfast hour almost over, Rmr. Rale. Do you wish for room service?”
  A new day had dawned.
  “What? No! I’ll be right down,” Midax shouted back as he jumped up.
  “In that case,” said the voice beyond the door, “before you come downstairs, I need a word with you.”
  Midax opened his room door, and poked his head – to face the front page of a newspaper which the manager was holding it up to his gaze.
  DISCOVERER DISAPPEARS AFTER PRESIDENTIAL
AUDIENCE
  “Oh,” Midax said while the manager stood tapping the headline with his finger.
  “Yes, Mr Rale. See, it says your whereabouts is unknown. So, authority needs to be notified that you are here. You can’t just ‘disappear’, Discoverer. I might get into trouble for this. And I don’t see why I should – so sort it out, will you?”
  “You won’t get into any trouble,” Midax soothed. He suddenly, belatedly, remembered his short-term plan. “That’s it – I was going to phone! Yesterday evening! I was going to phone! I’ll have my breakfast up here after all, if you don’t mind. Must phone…” He looked around for the instrument. “How could I have forgotten?”
  “It’s just over there by the table. Make your call,” said the manager, “and then ring me for your breakfast.” He beat a watchful retreat.
  Midax, shaking his head, picked up the receiver and dialled as carefully as though each finger-movement were a luxury he might never enjoy again.
  He loved the sound of ringing at the other end. O luxury indeed – O distance that is real – O everyday world.
  A crackly voice said, “L2C headquarters.”
  The line was not good, but, in a way, that was so much the better for the savour of distance, the achievement of the wires spanning the great globe of the world, the huge reassuring difficulty of it all.
  “May I speak to Administrator Banyall?”
  “Is that you, Discoverer? Thank goodness! We’ve been trying to reach you –”
  “Put me through to Banyall, please.”
  “This is Banyall; can’t you hear me? I’m manning the switchboard – there are only a few of us left.”
  “Sorry, I hear you now,” Midax hurriedly said. “Why are you at the switchboard? What’s happened?”
  “Most of the staff and students got out in good time. Those of us who remain are under siege.”
  “What? By whom?” But even as he spoke, he could imagine it.
  “By demonstrators. Crowds of them.”
  “Are they… threatening?”
  “It’s like this, Midax: you told me to use my judgement, and I did. I ordered a perimeter fence and guard-posts. Even so, things have got out of hand.”
  “The authorities –”
  “The Tarestu police aren’t doing anything. We’re prisoners in our own HQ. Or we were, until you called. You can get us out, can’t you?”
  “You think I have enough influence…”
  “Influence? Not talking about influence. I mean you yourself can come here and get us out, physically. Out via Glight.”
  Midax caught his breath. “Yes,” he murmured. “At a pinch, there is that way.”
  “The pinch has come.”
  So, after all, it was going to be necessary to go for one more walk through the box realm.
  Well, at least, that will mollify the manager of the Folcom Rest. He’ll be glad to see me go.
  “Very well, Ni. I suppose it had to come to this. I’ll be right over.”
  And he hung up the receiver. A good phone call, that had been, paying the dues to honest distance, sharing the physical limits of his fellow men. But now, sadly, it was time to cheat again. Because he could not abandon his friends, he must now hurry to Tarestu via Glight.
  I hope to goodness, thought Midax, that I can get away with it one last time.
  Focus the will. Do the thing that you cannot define. Undertake the dreamlike manoeuvre.
  The view from the window darkens. The wide world slips from sight. Is replaced. Comes the dim sparkle of the box-realm. I am in a hut now, not a hotel.
  I open the door and emerge into the box-scape, gingerly, like one who is trying not to wake somebody in a neighbouring room. Or is it rather my own instinct for disastrous adventure which I must not wake.
  How strange that I should fear, when pioneering is what I used to yearn for. The touch of significance, the contact with greatness, now that I have them, make me want to huddle back into my old futile but comfortable life. I guess I’m not cut out for this. But anyhow, was my old life futile? Perhaps my mistake was to fail to see that if you wait long enough for answers, they will reach you; you are doing your bit quite enough with the wanting, the waiting, rather than recklessly charging forth. After all, twenty-four hours a day, every day, it’s coming, the ultimate mystery of death is approaching us all. Yes, I have been a fool, but perhaps I shall get away with this one last trip, if I can avoid doing anything to make the thing go nasty during the next few minutes. I have a feeling that it will be all right if only I can get to Tarestu and rejoin the like-minded colleagues who’ve stuck their necks out with me....
  Advice to myself: don’t shiver, and don’t look too closely, O traveller in Glight, even when in the gloom you sense, out of the corner of your eye, silver dots moving with you; just peek to maintain your bearings as you continue over the grassy knolls that form the range between Cenland and Serorn till you reach the bit of meadow that amounts to the farm belt of northern Serorn – here it is. Now skirt the hamlet that must be P’Arlcena. Arrive at the hut-cluster which, when I perform the manoeuvre once more –
  - unfolds, with relief for the eye, joyous in the expansion of detail that becomes the town of Tarestu.
  Back in Everyday, Midax breathed deep. He stood on the town’s outskirts. Mercifully close to where he needed to go.
  Ten minutes’ jogging along a quiet lane between rows of suburban back gardens brought him to the grounds of L2C – and there he stopped, dismayed at what he heard and saw.
  Discordant chanting smote his ears while the motions of a restless crowd swam before his eyes. The new fence around L2C’s HQ was entirely surrounded by protestors, some marching in formation, others milling chaotically; many carried placards while chanting in chorus or individually, some yelled their slogans through the fence, and others aimed their taunts at each other, confusedly swarming in an atmosphere that crackled with fear. Midax discerned rival placard-bearers who surged towards each other and scuffled and shouted their contending slogans, “Stop Glight!” against with “Glight for All!”. “Rip the Sky!” and “Find Heaven!” collided with “Transport Workers Against MR” and “Back WT – Stop MR”, “Curiosity Killed a Million Jobs” and “Skyrippers Endanger Us All”.
  The cause of all this perturbation felt heart-sick as he wandered around the periphery of his HQ. Keeping out of sight behind hedges and trees, he vainly sought a way in.
  It would be no use trying to obtain entrance through a guard-post. His foes outnumbered his supporters. He would never get close enough – unless he made himself invisible…
  Thus finally he had to admit that he wasn’t going to reach his besieged followers unless he used Glight yet again.
  Swearing to himself that this really would be the very last time, he made the move, though afraid it might not do the trick on this crowded occasion.
  His mind made the requisite push. The landscape reeled and coiled and shrank. As a result he now saw the HQ as a cottage-sized building and the crowd as a mere dozen figures wandering around in the sparkling half-light.
  Midax rushed through a gap in that thin patrol. He forgot, in his panic, that the “crowd” could not see him – that there was no danger from those people whose consciousness was still in the Everyday.
  It was only when he reached the guard-post, and emerged from Glight in order to be visible to request admittance, that they saw him. The crowd, expanded to thousands once more, intensified their roar – the enraged roar of a multitude that feels cheated.
  Meanwhile, the guard (was he blind? Why was he hesitating?) failed to move.
  “Let me through!” yelled Midax. “Don’t you see who I am?”
  “Sorry, Discoverer,” nodded the man, belatedly roused from his paralysis. He pressed a buzzer. The gate clicked open. Midax slumped forward against it, swung inwards on it, and then ran. Shouts and pounding footsteps at his back, the clang of the gate, and shots from a gun, could not increase the already sharp terror that spurred him, nor the determination to clear up the unfinished business of his life. Nobody must say that they had suffered injustice from the Discoverer – nobody at all! Therefore he turned and cried back at the guard, “I know, I know –” Just a little debt to courtesy, meaning, “I know you couldn’t see me at first.” Gasping, the Discoverer went on into the HQ building.

III

He found Ni Banyall still at the switchboard.
  “Discoverer – thank goodness you have kept faith with us.”
  “Sounds like you were doubting me – but then, I make myself nervous too. Now, where can I find the others?”
  “Upstairs in Number One conference room. It's our lookout post now.”
  Midax bounded up the stairs, and loped to the room where he expected to see his remaining comrades –
  Standing in the doorway, facing those seated at the conference table, he saw three faces turn to him with wan expressions. Just three. He sighed.
Polange Nsef got his word in first: “You’re late, Midax.”
  “Yes, I can see numbers have fallen off somewhat.”
  “Before the siege, our lot were drifting away hour by hour.”
  “Why the fear?”
Xapler Twick said, “Now don’t jump to conclusions, Midax; you know very well that, rather than from cowardice, your trainees may have abandoned you for the opposite reason. No decent person likes to be an object of fear.”
  “But you stayed.”
  “With us, other considerations are stronger.”
  “Thank you anyway,” said Midax, and looked at the silent third man at the table.
  Stid Orpen, despite, or perhaps because of, having been at school with Midax long ago, was the least friendly of his remaining batch of comrades. Yet the main point was, now that the crunch had come, the taciturn Stid had elected to remain. Loyalty, thought Midax, is more important than sociability.
  “Thank you all for sticking by me,” he reiterated. “It means we have one last chance.”
  “So you intend to go ahead?” asked Xapler Twick.
  “I do, for it looks as though we’ll only get one more try at an expedition into Glight before L2C is forcibly disbanded. Unless, that is, we discover something which can justify us in the eyes of the authorities and of the world.”
  “What are we waiting for then?” asked Polange Nsef, and stood up. “All we have to do is find some treasure of power or wisdom so irresistibly big, that it has to be accepted. I don’t know about you fellows, but I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
  The others rose too. They looked steadily at Midax, who was hesitating. Twick asked, “What’s the trouble now, Discoverer?”
  “I’m just waiting for some indication from you three, that you realize what you are letting yourselves in for. The seriousness of it…”
  “Of course we don’t, Midax, but neither do you.”
  “I admit that; but the point is, it can’t be the same for you as it is for me. I know that I can get out of it instantly. But if you are with me and if you have to get out too, how do we know if there’ll be enough time for me to line you up in a chain with hands on shoulders and walking in step?”
  Stid Orpen looked Midax coldly in the eye. “You mean, our escape procedure might be far too slow. Then it’s time you taught us how you do it.”
  “But look here, do you, even now, still not realize that it cannot be taught? If it could be taught, I’d understand how I did it – and I possess no such knowledge! Haven’t I made that clear enough times?” In great frustration he went on, “And even if I did know, I’d have to communicate that understanding to you, and the right words probably don’t exist, but in truth I have absolutely no idea what I do or how I do it when I go in and out of Glight; all I can do is remember it as a kind of dream-pressure in a direction that seems to be straighter than straight; and what’s the use of me saying that, eh?”
  Professor Xapler Twick intervened. “We’re taking knock-out pills with us. That should ensure that we can, as it were, ‘go to ground’ in the normal world any time we have to, by the simple device of dropping unconscious.”
  “Neat,” remarked Polange.
  Xapler shrugged, “Neat enough. The principle seems sound: insofar as Glight is dependent upon heightened consciousness, an interruption in consciousness ought to cause a reversion to Everyday.”
Midax considered, “Yes. I see. We knock ourselves out and thus relax down, like an atom to the easy vibrations of its ground state… Sounds neat, as Polange says, and I of course ought to have thought of it long ago. So, looks like we’re ready to risk the trip.”
  They were. Xapler calmly handed out the knock-out pills, ready-wrapped for distribution; the Discoverer, after having called Banyall up from the switchboard to join them, watched his companions pocket the little plastic sleeves, and breathed a little easier, his conscience clearer. He pushed the front door open and then, in the cumbersome manner which was still the most efficient method that had yet been worked out, he and his comrades linked arm to shoulder as they went out through the door, the three followers drawn by the Discoverer into the Longlight realm.
  As before, the yelling crowd beyond the fence abruptly dwindled to maybe a score of flickering, intermittent shadows. The world shrank and the horizons disappeared. Vaguely they were replaced by a wall of misty change only a few miles away, hinting at that “beyond” which must lie outside the box-realm.
  The explorers spoke in occasional broken murmurs as they trudged around the shore of Zard Pond.
  Xapler: “Are we finishing the job this time? Going the distance to the edge?”
  Midax: “We’ll have a shot at it.”
  Polange: “So: to the Gate of the World?”
  Midax: “Yes. To see if that name is good.”
  The dim, frosty sparkle, which lay over the ground and everything that stood thereon, threatened to give them a headache, for the sight somehow pressured the mind as if the immensity of the truth were building up like fizz in a bottle, only this “bottle” might at any moment be triggered from all directions to explode. Truth threatened to bleed from every haunted cubic inch. The squashing Bigness of All (whatever All might turn out to be) was a tough prospect.
At least it should soon be over: if they kept at it, the walk couldn’t last long. On the other hand – hard to please, we are – if only it would take longer! Longer in a normal sense; if only a more normal time were required in order to get places, instead of this remorseless rapid progress along the route toward the western Gate of the World –
  Whatever name one used to dub it, what could such a “gate” mean? How could one adjust to the concept during this ridiculously short journey? And how was it possible even to put one foot in front of another while assailed with so much spiritual vertigo?
  How am I standing it now? wondered Midax.  The answer was that he had his companions with him. Otherwise, he would by now have reached the end of his capacity to dare the haunted dimension. Only inside the bubble of comradeship did he feel bearably secure, though the association brought with it the distraction of responsibility.  And in this connection, he felt obliged to note the silence of Stid Orpen.  Stid’s sullen attitude bade Midax be wary.
Might not the President, or his security system, have decided that the most effective way to control L2C would be to infiltrate an old schoolfellow into the Discoverer’s organization? A former classmate, perhaps with a grudge? A tool with which to eliminate the world’s number one disturber of the peace.
  What an unworthy suspicion. It might in theory be true; yet he felt inclined to rule it out. Could one of this band of explorers really stoop to assassination, here, bonded by their common status as pioneers of the vast unknown? What could motivate the murderer? What reward could tempt or induce him, offering greater satisfaction than that of getting into touch with the Beyond? If they achieved their aims and got back safely out of Glight, they’d be the greatest-ever makers of history – they’d all be set up for life.
  The five trudged on through the oppressively tiny world. A woodland, then a moorland, each in miniature, quickly passed by. An old proverb surfaced impudently in the Discoverer’s mind. “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.” How he despised that proverb.
  Seconds later – as he and his fellows rounded a crag – he would have begged for a stay of that execution called “arrival”; would have prayed to any power to grant a further stretch of distance, in lieu of the moment that kills a journey. But now it was too late. They had come into sight, again, of the shimmer of the giant Portal. It loomed a half-mile off, towering above some nondescript, bushy hillocks.
To look at the thing was to invite the word “Supernatural” to dance in and out of their minds. What could it mean, to be in sight of the Gate of the World? It meant, he realized, that to approach it required courage of a special kind. A degree of resolve which no other type of situation ever demanded.
  Midax: “Well, folks, this is what we’re here for.”
  Xapler: “Let’s try to do better than last time.”
  Polange: “What are we waiting for, then?”
  Stid: “Being the fools we are, we might as well get on with it.”
  The expedition began to creep forward.
  The Portal neared, minute by queasy minute.
  The explorers noticed a chalky path which seemed to lead in its direction. The path had come into view a few hundred yards ahead and swept past them fairly close on their left -
  Then, like on the last expedition, the inexplicable and the unacceptable walked into sight. Vertigo intensified unendurably as two silver-coated figures approached along that path, from the direction of the Gate of the World.
  Beings, who must know –
The banal corners of the explorers' minds could no longer provide room for evasion. Their capacity to shake off terror was all at once exhausted; once again they were at their limit, and the slightest excess beyond what they now endured would send them into panic flight. Knowing this, they froze.
Midax whispered, “What do you think?”
Stid said hoarsely, “Get out of here.”
  Polange added: “Meet them sometime, but not now, not here. Do it on terms of our own choosing.”
  Xapler muttered something.
  “What’s that you said?” asked the Discoverer.
  “I said, what choice do we have?” replied the Professor testily.
  “Choice about what? Be clear!” ordered Midax.
  “The higher comprehends the lower. They can find us whenever they want.”
  Silence.
  Xapler went on, “We’ll never have that ‘ground of our own choosing’ which Polange talks about. So although we might go home right now, it won’t make us safer.”
  Midax said, “I dare say, but we’ll feel safer. So will everyone else in the world. Maybe we owe it to them, to…”
  Xapler insisted, “If you think we can hide ourselves in our lower dimension, if you want to behave like a child during a game of hide-and-seek who thinks that by shutting his eyes he’s rendered himself invisible, well then…”
  Polange interrupted, “It’s all guesswork. We don’t know what those silver beings can do; but to do aught to us, they have to see us first. And can they?”
  Xapler said, “Good point. After all, when we’re here, we can’t see people who aren’t…”
  “Except as flickerings –” said Midax.
  “And if we scatter –” began Banyall.
  “On the previous occasion,” said Twick, “I advised retreat. This time I’m not so sure there’s any point in it. But we haven’t got long to decide, I suppose, before our nerves snap.”
  Midax urged, “I don’t know about you but I’m sick of turning back, sick of being a Discoverer who fails to Discover.” And he pressed forward.
  His action caused panic in Stid and Polange. They pulled him back by force. He did not resist them as strongly as he might have done. Just then they experienced the last straw which broke the back of their courage:
  It was the sight of the silver figures changing course. They were leaving the path. Heading across country, they were approaching the explorers more directly, as if they had spotted them. This was one spooky significance too much. In the face of nightmare there are no heroes. Midax, despite his brave words, “went to ground” himself, leaving his fleeing, scattered comrades to take their knock-out pills or not as they pleased. Sky and land wheeled around him and spun out and stretched away to a horizon once more. He staggered, coughed and breathed raspily. He had come out of Glight into a dusty plain somewhere in western Larmonn. The experiment was over. Fiasco Number Two, and that’s our lot.
  Blinking in the sunlight of normality, Midax waited while his pulse stopped thudding in his ears. He turned full circle, scanning the empty landscape.
  Well, he thought repeatedly, that’s that.
  Not one of his companions were in sight. This wasn’t surprising, for if they had “gone to ground” too, it must have been individually, each scattered man taking his knock-out pill alone, and since even a slight separation in Glight meant the width of a county or more in Everyday, their unconscious bodies might be lying anywhere within hundreds of miles.
  Midax thought he could make out a road running perhaps half a mile away on a straight line through the semi-desert scrub, and he began to trudge towards it. He might as well try to find a town.
  And what of the silver figures they had seen, the terror that had panicked them out of Glight? Was the world – whatever the world truly was, whether small, relatively unpopulated and abbreviated as it appeared in Glight-vision, or large, full and detailed as it appeared in normal light – was the world tramped at this very moment by the boots of supernatural overseers who were searching for him and his trespassing band?
  Midax put the question aside. Tiredly recognizing his own failure, in his heart he relinquished, at long last, the status of explorer.

Days passed. He became moderately happy in the small town of Burtlestane, Klari State, Western Larmonn. In this obscure settlement he found that he could remain unrecognized quite easily simply by wearing glasses and allowing his hair to grow longer so as to look like some ageing perpetual student type. He landed a job in a hardware store, doing a mixture of clerical work and minding the shop near the centre of town, in Ohsl Square where Main Street North met Main Street East. He lodged at the inn at first, and then in a spare room at the back of the store, a room which had been used by previous employees who had drifted in and out of town.
  Periods of nervous agitation, when he suspected that he was recognized by anyone who walked past him with seeming nonchalance, were terminated on each occasion by a quite simple method: he merely said to himself, “Jumpy, aren’t you? What are you afraid of?” Put that way, it made his nerves seem ridiculous.
  The President must surely know by now that the authority of the World State was not under challenge from L2C, which had folded up. Admittedly there had not been any public recantation from Midax himself, who (for all the President knew) might reappear anywhere with some upsetting new discovery to inflict upon the world. On the other hand the President must also admit that, in reality, Midax had offered no trouble; that he had in fact disbanded L2C by neglect; that he had, in short, failed.
  Failure – that was the thing. The greatest gift he could bestow on the President.
  Perhaps it would be better if Waretik Thanth were to know all the cowardly details of the expedition: how for the second time they had balked at the sight of the silver beings and had utterly panicked at the prospect of meeting them. If he were to learn that whole story, he might be reassured that the would-be meddlers of L2C in fact posed no threat to his government: superstitious fear would always prove too strong for the “Discoverer” and his followers. Thus he might conclude that they could safely be left in peace.
  So maybe, thought Midax, I should go and tell him the whole shameful story. But surely, even if I don’t do that, no news is good news, for him. For not only he but all the world must have concluded by now that I have failed.
  Why not therefore let it all go from my mind, sit tight and silent here, and just live? There were worse fates than to remain in Burtlestane, in simple, comfortable obscurity.
  One day he was musing alone in the store, after the previous customer had departed and the next might not come for some time, it being the hour when business was slackest – the hour in which housewives would be fetching their children from school, grandmothers and aunts preparing afternoon tea… Unexpectedly, a breeze fanned his face and he heard the tinkle from the opened door: someone had come in, after all. At first the tall stack concealed the newcomer from view, though his ears registered the clack-clack of feminine high heels. A wave-front of smartness must be advancing to meet him; no doubt it would turn out to be that type which was the easiest kind of customer to serve – some petite matron who knew just what she wanted; you either had it in stock, or you didn’t; and in contemplation of the trivial easiness of life, an extraordinary contentment pulsed through Midax.
  “What’s the matter, Dreamy? Don’t you recognize me?”
  He saw, standing before him in a sober suit of dark mauve, the trim figure of the colleague whom he had forgotten; a person whom he had never known well, but on whom he had relied for a brief, vital hour. Comically, his jaw fell. He gaped at the only known human being apart from himself who had learned to use Glight. For she had used it, by herself, albeit in comparatively small degree. “Mezyf Tand!”
  “Not so loud,” she winced; but for Midax it was like listening to a song in which the words did not matter, only the tune. He fell to staring. He began, as one begins to appreciate a fascinating picture, to note her increasing agitation. The flash of anxiety from her dark eyes and the nervous toss of her deep-violet hair were like a movie from the great days that were gone.  “What’s the matter, don’t be shocked, yes it’s me, don’t stare like that,” she murmured on, reaching lightly to punch his arm.
  “Sorry,” he said as the common sense of her words percolated into his skull. “Sorry to cry out; don’t worry, no one heard me, we’re alone in the store…”
  “Mmm, still…” She looked around as if she expected to spot someone’s head dodging behind a shelf-rack.
  “You don’t get many people coming in at this time,” he explained to reassure her. “Mezyf, it sure is great to see you.” To be illuminated by a sudden gleam from the good old discovery-days! That epic time of the Crossing and after, when life seemed to open out into something radiant - ! Of course he hadn’t managed wholeheartedly to enjoy those days while he had been living them, but to look back upon them was to sight along a ray of glory.  Certainly a far cry from the subsequent sludge of failure.
Mezyf meanwhile slumped her shoulders and leaned against the counter. “I’m pleased to see you too, Midax. It took me long enough to find you. I don’t want anything to go wrong now.”
  Go wrong now? What was that supposed to mean?
  “How did you find me, anyway?” he asked. He didn’t bother to ask for the “why” of it; it would emerge with the “how”.
  She turned him a sombre face.  “I spent all I had. I felt I owed you that much.”
  “Spent how? Detective agencies?” he hazarded.
  “I was my own agency,” she smiled grimly, “for much of the time. I learned, but it wasn’t cheap. I stayed one step ahead of the government... but time is getting short. Look, Midax, it doesn’t matter how I found you. Just be glad I did. I have come to warn you: your days are numbered if you don’t move, fast. More likely, in fact, your hours are numbered.” Noting how glum he looked, she continued: “You’ve had your fill of disruption, I dare say, and you hate the idea of uprooting yourself again, but listen - don’t think that a Burtlestane address and the alias of ‘Manter Rlarr’ is going to keep you hidden from the President! It didn’t, after all, keep you hidden from me.”
  Midax smiled, “I see.”
  “He wants you killed,” she said, raising her eyes again to his.
  “And how do you know that, if I may ask?”
  Now she raised her eyes further, raised them to the ceiling in desperation. “Because, you sceptical idiot, he told me! Personally! And if he finds out that I let him down, I’ll soon be on the run too… Is that plain and clear enough for you? Things have become desperate, Midax! And the only reason why they aren’t even worse is that he thinks I am the sort to co-operate. In fact, up till now, in Waretik Thanth’s mind I am the Good Glighter and you are the Bad Glighter. My modest talents, you see, appear controllable for State purposes, whereas yours are not. Probably he’s right, as far as that’s concerned, but –” she shrugged – “somehow, I couldn’t go along with him. So here I am. The more fool I. Here to give you this warning: Run, and keep running. It’s your only chance.”
  He listened respectfully to this speech, but he could not manage to believe it. Admittedly he did not bother to read the papers nowadays. They were too boringly dismal, with their tales of political and economic and environmental riots and crises… yes, all sorts of things could be happening in the world without his knowledge. But the placidity of Main Street, the calm he could sense in Burtlestane, set an effective limit to them all, or so it seemed to him.
  “Well?” she asked. “What’s your response?” She contemplated him wryly. “No, don’t bother to answer; I can read it on your face. This is your comfort-burrow, isn’t it? But since I want to have one more try at convincing you, would you meet me outside when you finish? I don’t want to admit that I have undertaken this whole search and come all this way just for nothing.”
  Midax struggled in his mind. “No, don’t wait, leave me, forget about me. I am very much aware of your kindness. But now that you have spoken to me, your responsibility is ended.”
  “And what about yours?”
  “My responsibility? It’s to act as I see fit…”
  “Bunk!” she scoffed. “You’ll ‘see fit’ to do nothing.”
  “How do you know that?”
  “Because it’s obvious you don’t believe a word I say.”
  “Not so. I believe some of it.”
  “Really?”
  “I believe the part about your taking a risk. That’s the part I don’t want, so please go now. And please believe, I am truly grateful. But don’t hang around Burtlestane any longer. I don’t want you on my conscience.”
  She sighed, “All right, Midax, you win, if you can call it winning. Anyhow, I’ve played all my cards.” Straight-backed, she walked away a few yards. Then she stopped and half-turned. “It was funny, coming across you in a dump like this. Makes it seem a small world… I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.” She exited the shop.
  Midax stood rigid, pulse racing as his brain was unexpectedly clamped in a cold new vice by the most frightening words in the language. Small world. What did it mean? Why did his spine prickle? Perhaps, he thought lazily, she’s right. I should indeed get out of town this evening.
  He went to the window. From there, he watched Mezyf’s figure diminishing down the drab street. He thought blessings at her.
  She disappeared from sight and he was alone again and it was all up to him to make a move. Had he just made another of his sad mistakes? Or did it perhaps not matter – since he might not need to suffer his own stupidity much longer?
The ordinariness of Burtlestane re-invaded all his senses as he remained gazing down that street. The shop bell rang again and there were some customers in the store. He sold one of them a padlock, another a curtain rod, another a sink-unblocker, by which time the sense of being hunted and haunted was lost. Nothing, it seemed, could beat “everyday”.
For a brain tired of logic, it all came down to feelings. Why not sit quiet, trusting to the ordinariness of life? Surely, in this town, it had to be as real as it seemed –
  Closing time arrived. The light was failing. It was time to return home to his lodgings, which he preferred to approach from the street round the back of the store. Various other workers were emerging from their workshops and stores; he, likewise, stepped out into Ohsl Square.
  He hesitated, on that bit of pavement just outside the entrance to the store. He still had a choice.
  He was aware that if he chose to walk home now, he would never take any action along the lines which Mezyf had recommended. I would merely brew myself a cup of tea and settle down with a book or a magazine. I would never get started on the business of packing.
  But if Mezyf was right, there might be no time to pack, anyway. So if he was going to believe her, it would have to be this moment.
  In which case he ought to flee with the clothes he stood up in and the credit cards in his jacket pocket.
  Round and round in his head, these thoughts chased each other. He dawdled in the street until a new notion seeped into his mind. It blotted out the others – for it formed the verdict, that he was probably too late. For the President was no fool. Neither was his staff.
  Of course, a bright optimistic girl like Mezyf Tand might believe that she had concealed her intentions from them, but was it likely that she had deceived Waretik and his agents? No. The likelihood was that she had been followed to Burtlestane.
  He glanced across the town hub in the direction of the junction of Main Street East and South. The hour being suppertime, everyone had an understandable motive for being elsewhere, yet it looked as though somewhat more folk than usual remained loitering in the business district, as though a rumour had disturbed and gathered them. At that moment, about fifty yards away, an open-topped grey car screeched into view around a corner, causing pedestrians to scatter.
  Midax’s physical and mental reflexes accelerated his time-sense. Moments splintered into grainier instants. Outwardly he froze while inwardly an answer came. He had one recourse: the dodge that no other fugitive could perform. And he must not delay, no matter how much he disliked the idea of fleeing once more into Glight. For his enemies knew what he could do. They must have come prepared to move fast –
  The grey car had stopped, thirty yards away. Two men in dusty clothes were getting out. Next they were walking towards him. And yet, Midax still hesitated. Was there even now any real proof that he was not imagining the crisis? So what if a fast car had arrived; so what if a couple of strangers were walking resolutely towards Ohsl Square?
  If he, Midax Rale, were to do his disappearing act now in the centre of town, would that not throw away all the gains he had made, the new quiet life he had built so carefully here? Should he not wait a little bit longer in order to ascertain whether he really did have to make his evasive move?
  Get on! Are you more afraid of Glight than of being shot? Those men have guns in their hands. He toyed with the wordless dream-command. He sighed. Yes, he would have to use it. He began the inner mental push towards escape.
Because of his indecision, he made the change more slowly than usual, catching the dim sparkle of Glight before the everyday world had fully disappeared, so, for a few confusing moments, he seemed to see the two worlds at once, one an incongruous overlay to its rival claim to reality. Yowww boggled his mind with extreme distaste and a reluctance which actually began to undo the process and draw him back towards Everyday.
  No, no point in turning back now, for the flicker-moment had shown him, in the Glight-edit which reduced the town to a group of huts, purposeful figures ambling towards him between two of the huts, which told him that if he went back to Everyday he'd encounter them in Main Street West.
  Like an exhausted swimmer who tries for the shore even though the enemy he has sought to avoid may be waiting there too, Midax made ready once again to get fully into Glight despite the silver figures in it, the sight of whom injected him with that same bursting terror he had experienced on the last expedition of L2C. He made ready for the full plunge - yet he couldn't go through with it. The arrived supernatural was overlord of all emotions, exempt from reason, the condensed-to-physical panic, present, actual, overmastering. Blindly, therefore, he sought to turn back to Everyday. Back to the normal hitmen, to the death that threatened him mundanely. Of course it was stupid of him, he knew. Couldn't he do better than this? Answer: no, he had run out of time, yet still he toyed in his last moments with manipulations of ideas, asking himself if he might try to use each of the dimensions to diminish the importance of the other, since each seemed so trite in the perspective of the other; he tried the game as though this were just another morale-trap which he could play his way out of. It was his last clever thought before the bullets thudded into him.