Inside Outside Part 12

"The creature would go through a span of life in this sphere. And, there, through the lectures of the various X's, it would be given a guidance pat-tern for its next life. This ethical foundation, would, of course, be subconscious. The soul, sent forth again to attach itself to an Earthly body, would have no conscious memories of the pre-Terran life. But there would be an unconscious urging to act ethically.

"To put it in the words of your own Western ethics, mankind is doomed to fall from grace. But, thanks to the seeds implanted in the earlier life, he might rise again, be reborn the ethical man.

"Don't ask me what happens after a man has been born on Earth and then dies. The Immortals have planned another world for him, but it's one I won't know in this world. Nor the next."

Cull tried desperately to think straight. He said, "But what's to keep me from being attached to a non-Western body? To a Confucianist Chinese? To an idol-wors.h.i.+pping African? Or, even, why should I end up on Earth? If it's pure chance that determines what body I land in, why can't I be 'hooked' onto some thing that lives on a planet a million lightyears away from Earth?"

"Because, first, your soul will be -- would have been -- released in the vicinity of Earth, beamed toward it. Maybe you would have been a Hindu. So what? You'd still have the subconscious urgings to act ethically, to be good. In short, to follow the golden rule. The name of your par-ticular G.o.d and the taboos and prejudices you'd have would have been determined by the race and culture in which you were raised."

Cull looked back at Phyllis. She was staring at him as if she'd gone into shock. Her skin was bluish-white; her eyes, glazed. Beyond her, a small figure now, floated Fyodor.

Cull thought, if Fyodor had been conscious and had heard all this, he would have denied the reason for this world. He would have said that the Immortals were atheists and blasphemers, that they lacked faith in G.o.d. Therefore, they were trying to do His work by creating these souls. Besides being atheists, they were being redundant, for the Creator had already fas.h.i.+oned souls. And to create a mult.i.tude of saviors to make sure that at least one got to Earth was even more shocking.

Fyodor would have rejected everything the Im-mortals stood for and did. To him, they would have been the true demons, the Old Enemy, the Fathers of Lies.

"If," Cull said, "we're really in some sort of pre-Terrestrial existence, how do the Immortals know what memories to give us? How do they know what form life will take on Earth?"

"Oh, they keep several decades ahead of Earth's expanding population. They supply souls faster than man can breed. And they know, of course, all about the cultures and languages and. . . everything.

Now, you and the woman, for in-stance, were probably scheduled to spend about fifty Earth years inside this sphere. If you were killed here before the time was up, you'd have been resurrected as many times as was needed. Then, conditioning presumably having taken ef-fect, you'd have been recorded and released as quanta or whatever you want to call them.

"But, even the unforeseen can happen to the Immortals. Mankind on Earth came to a sudden end, just as my people did.

"So, I was left here as surplus, as a sort of G.o.d's gadfly, and the pre-birth Earthlings found me here and called me demon. Just as the new species to come here will rank you as demons.

"You see, the subconscious memory the soul-quantum takes to Earth brings with it more than an ethical urging. It also brings with it memories of demons, giants, weird anthropomorphic beasts. Hence, mythology and the various archetypes and devils of various religions."

Cull burst out, "If this is true, and I'm still not sure you're not tormenting me, why don't you kill yourself? Release yourself from this h.e.l.l?"

"Because my body is a physical body. Its cells want to survive. I can't bring myself to commit suicide. Not yet, anyway, not until the pressures get too great. Maybe you'll be able to kill yourself. But I doubt it. You've survived all this; you're too tough. You want to live.

"Even all I've told you and all you've seen won't quite convince you that there is another life. Just as I'm almost, but not quite, convinced. I want to live in the world I know. So, brother, we go merrily through h.e.l.l together. Defeating the purpose of the Immortals by getting meaner and more vicious and cynical and s.a.d.i.s.tic. By the time we're killed, we'll be so set in our ways, that a thousand cycles of births and rebirths wouldn't straighten us out."

"Then," said Cull, "maybe the Immortals haven't told you the truth either. Maybe you're lying, and. . ."

"Go to h.e.l.l, brother," said the thing, and it kicked violently against Cull's grip on its tail and broke free.

Away it winged while Cull and Phyllis hung in the dimly lit void.

They clung together while the wreckage of a world drifted by. She wept softly for a while. Cull held her tightly and patted her shoulder or stroked her head. But he was not thinking of her. He was thinking that they would be blown by the winds. But which way, in what general direction?

Between the interior of this sphere and s.p.a.ce was a thin wall. The cold of s.p.a.ce was seeping through, and the air layer next to the wall would be precipitating its moisture. Ice would form on the wall.

The air next to it would cool and con-dense, thus forming a high-pressure area. The hotter air near the center of the sphere would make a low-pressure area. So, winds would be generated by the cold high-pressure air moving toward the center into the warm low-pressure region.

This meant that he and Phyllis would not be blown against the ice-packed fog-surrounded walls.

On the contrary, they'd be blown inward, toward the sun. But what kind of turbulence would be created inside this perfect sphere with winds moving inward with equal force from every square centimeter of sphere surface? If what the Immortal said was true, then the sphere would be given a slight spin. Air would have weight; so, also, the objects now floating. He and Phyllis would have a tendency to drift toward the wall. However, the inward-blowing winds would be more than strong enough to drive them away.

So, a great whirlpool of air would be formed near the center. Would not he and Phyllis be caught in this and carried around and around and around?

He did not know. He could not remember enough of meteorology to predict accurately.

If they died from starvation or collision with debris, their souls, or quanta, would be released and then detected by the Immortals' receivers. The Immortals would do whatever they did with recap-tured souls and would later release them. They would go flying through the cosmos, ricocheting off the corners of the universe, go wherever chance took them. He and Phyllis would be separated, forever. He would be captured by a physical being whose form and neural structure at-tracted his soul. She, also, but perhaps at another area of the world, millions of lightyears away.

He would be born again, this time in a nonhuman body, though it would have to have some resemblances to a human shape to 'catch' his soul-quantum. And his original destiny would have been thwarted. Never for him the planet of Earth. The memories he carried, even if he could recall them in his future being, would be false. But, he would not remember. That was the beauty of it. He would not remember. Even if, through some chance, he and Phyllis were reborn on the same planet, perhaps, even in the same womb as twins, neither would know the other.

But would they dream strange dreams, glimpse terrifying yet half-familiar vistas thrust up by the unconscious during their sleep? Would they, if they did meet, feel an unexplainable affinity? And would anything they had learned about good and evil in this world influence them in the next?

He did not know.

There was more than one question he had not had time to ask. For instance, why had X worn dark gla.s.ses? Also, what was the origin and pur-pose of those stone idols Cull had found in the tunnel?

Perhaps, the rumor about the dark gla.s.ses had come closer to the truth than one might expect.

This said that X wore them to hide or s.h.i.+eld the too-powerful glare of divinity s.h.i.+ning from his eyes. This, of course, was false, but X could have used the gla.s.ses to create an even stronger nimbus of awe about him. Men looking at him would imagine the fearful burning-bright eyes behind the black spectacles.

As for the idols, a tale was told about them, too. It said that, long ago, when the "demons" had been the majority, they had imposed demon-wors.h.i.+p on the human beings. Idols were used by the demons in "churches." When man became numerous enough to overthrow the demons, he had demolished the idols.

Perhaps, the demons had managed to hide some of these and had been planning to bring them out when another cataclysm would so thin out and disorganize mankind that the demons could reinstate their rule and religion.

Unfortunately for the demons, they had been almost all killed, too.

He opened his mouth to speak about his thoughts to Phyllis, and then he found that he could not.

The words would not come. The silence imposed by the Immortals extended even to a fellow-"demon?"

She looked at him through tears and said, "What were you going to say, Jack?"

"I love you," he said, and he kissed her.

Later, while he gazed over her shoulder, he thought how easily those words had come. It was true that he had spoken partly to allay her fears and to make her feel protected and a little more secure.

Yet, did not this desire to do so mean that he loved her? Not a love based only on s.e.xual attraction, though that was part of it, but a love based on her being human.

"Here comes another lost soul," he said.

Phyllis twisted around in his embrace so that she could see also.

In so doing, she imparted even more spin to their already rotating state. As they turned head over heels and around and around, they saw the newcomer get larger and larger until, presently, they perceived every detail of its body.

It had a long tubular body, brown and yellow, with six slim tentacles at one end, six fins project-ing at various angles from various places, and a fringe of serrated skin at the other. On the end nearest the two people were two thick fleshy stalks, one on each side of the body. Each of these stalks bore two eyes in deep sockets, and Cull got the impression that they could focus as well as his own eyes.

There was an opening in the end pointed at them; it had two thick crimson-colored lips that parted and closed. These, Cull surmised, were the valves for the air-compression tube that the creature would use in its jet-propulsion through the atmosphere.

Presently, the thing was circling them cautiously. Then, apparently having decided they could do it no harm, it shot up to them and gently flicked Phyllis with one of the three slim tips of a tentacle.

Phyllis screamed.

The thing screamed also, and it sped away.

"It'll come back," said Cull. "Sooner or later, we'll be its slaves, just as the 'demons' were ours."

He tried to tell Phyllis what he was thinking but found again the obligation of silence was on him.

Now I know how the demons felt, he thought. I want to warn these creatures that their actions here will influence their lives in another world. But I won't be able to. And so I'll get exasperated because they can't see what I so plainly see. I'll become angry with them because they're so blind, so stupid. And so, wanting them to do the right thing, I'll hate them because they're being selfish, cruel, indifferent, arrogant, petty. I'll hate them. But, at the same time, I'll love them.

They'll ask me, What is truth?

And I will not be able to tell them because they already know.