The Best of C. L. Moore Part 6

It was an uncanny feeling which was to haunt him through all his hours here-the knowledge that what he looked upon was unreal, the wonder as to what was actually taking place behind the mask of hu-manity which only he could see. That kiss-how had it seemed to her? What nameless gesture had he seemed to perform before her eyes- her eye? For he had kissed a monstrosity that had no mouth. Remem- bering the glimpse he had caught of a one-eyed, featureless face crawling with alive colors, he shuddered and turned back to the kneeling girl as if for rea.s.surance.

Dixon was aware of a curious emptiness within him because of this beauty which was only an illusion-had never been, would never be. He was looking straight into her steel-blue eyes now, and she was smiling very tremulously and with that puzzled look still upon her face. He could see the little s.h.i.+mmering tumult her heart made under the dazzle of her robe. And she was not even female! He narrowed his eyes and strove to pierce the mirage for a moment; to convince him-self that here knelt a colored horror of sinuosity and s.e.xlessness. And everything within him cried out protestingly. She was human-she was lovely-she was everything desirable and sweet. And she did not even exist save as a crawling horror upon whom in her normal guise he could never dare to look.

Then, as if to refute that, she flashed up at him a small, uncertain smile which made her so unmistakably human and sweet that he dis-believed everything but her own reality, and she said, "What-what was the meaning of that, 0 divine envoy?"

He frowned. "You are to call me Dixon," he said. "And that was- well, just a form of greeting."

"The way they greet one another in great IL's domain-in Para-dise? Then . . ." She rose in one swift motion. Before he realized what was happening she had risen upon her sandaled toes and her warm mouth was brus.h.i.+ng his. "Then I return your greeting, 0 Dixon."

Involuntarily his arms closed around her. Her body was firm and soft and warm in his clasp-the body of a living human girl, a mirage more real than reality. And again he wondered what nameless rites she was actually performing behind the illusory veil which masked her real, writhing self. And because she felt so pleasant in his arms he released her abruptly and stepped back, knowing the first quickening of uneasiness. Good heaven, could it be possible for a man to fall in love with a hallucination?

She looked up at him serenely, evidently feeling that she had mas-tered a difficult point of divine etiquette.

"How pleasant a thing is this new way of greeting!" she murmured, half to herself. "And now, 0 Dixon, you have but to command me in all things. What would you in IL's world-city?"

Dixon debated swiftly with himself. After all, lovely though she seemed, she was-and he must bear this in mind constantly, lest some-thing dangerous befall-she was a sinuous, faceless thing, a creeping horror with the tints of an incredible spectrum. She was no more than this, and he must find his way, by her help, into the G.o.d IL's temple and let the light-being look through his eyes so that he might find IL's vulnerable spot. After that-well, he must do as he was commanded. IL would be overthrown, his own sponsor would usurp the G.o.ds.h.i.+p, and that would be all. As for these beings which peopled the world, no doubt the change of G.o.ds would be a startling thing, but there was no help for it. He had but to perform his own part and then go.

"0 Dixon!" the sweet, light voice of the girl broke in upon his thoughts. "0 Dixon, would you see how IL's temple is kept by his wors.h.i.+pers? Would you see how devoutly his world adores him?"

"Yes," said Dixon thankfully. "You may lead me to IL's temple."

She genuflected again, a poem of grace in that steel gown along which the light slid in long lines as she moved, and the dark hair swung forward about her face. Then she turned and crossed the ter-race toward a ramp which led down into the city. They went down the slope of it-what eye-tormenting angles of spanning actually led downward he could not even guess-and emerged upon a broad street lined with pillared buildings. There were throngs of steel-robed peo-ple here who parted in devout rowsas the priestess came down the ramp.

She paused at the head of the street and lifted her arms, and Dixon heard her voice ringing clearly over the crowd. "Great IL has an-swered our prayers at last," she cried. "He has sent us an envoy from his own divinity. Here is the messenger from our G.o.d!"

A murmur went over the crowd-a murmur of awe and rejoicing. And then they knelt in long, sinuous rows as if a wind had blown across a field of sword blades. And with incredible swiftness the whis-per ran back along the street, from mouth to mouth. He imagined it rippling out and out, down and down, from terrace to terrace, until it reached the ultimate limits of the whole tiered world.

They stepped down among the kneeling throngs, walking a lane of steel wors.h.i.+pers, and by the time they had reached the end of the street Dixon could see flecks of light far away below hurrying upward as the news spread. Up through the pillared streets and the green ter-races they came swarming, men and women in robes of linked metal, with intent, awe-struck faces upturned. Dixon moved on with a long stride, a divine messenger from a G.o.d marching in triumph through a city without ends or boundaries, for as far as he could see the steel flecks that were people flashed up through the buildings below. And their mult.i.tudes were breathtaking. The whole vast city swarmed with living steel as wave after wave of armored people rolled upward to-ward the heights. His brain reeled with the numbers of them.

Over the bowed heads of the throngs as they advanced, Dixon glanced curiously at the buildings which lined the streets, casting about for some clue to the sort of life those people led. He found nothing. The marble pillars and walls rose as blankly as stage sets along the streets. A mask had been set for him over the realities of the place, but it was not a living mask. There were no shops, no markets, no residences.

Rows of noncommittal pillars faced him blankly, be-traying no secrets. Apparently the light-being had been unable to do more than mask the strangeness of this world. It could not infuse into it the spirit of a daily life so utterly alien as man's.

They went on through the dead-faced streets, down another ramp, and always the people dropped to their knees, perfectly the illusion of humanity. What, he wondered, were they actually doing? In what weird, incredible way were they really expressing their devotion? It was, of course, better not to know.

Dixon watched the girl before him walking proudly and lightly through the homage-stricken throngs, her dark head high, the steel robe rippling over the loveliness of her body as she moved. Presently she paused for him, smiling over her shoulder in a way that made his heart quicken, and turned in under the great arch of a doorway.

It was not a particularly imposing structure; no more than a marble-columned building with a huge dark portal. But, once inside, Dixon stopped in stunned astonishment at the vastness spread out before him.

It must have occupied the whole interior of all the terraces above- a mighty dome about which the buildings and streets overhead were the merest sh.e.l.l. In the dimness he could not descry the limits of it, but he saw that the whole vast temple was built in the shape of a great dome. For temple it must be. He knew that instinctively. There was the shadow of divinity in it, somehow-a vast calm. And for an instant, as he stared about the great place, he forgot even the presence of the girl at his side.

In the very center of the wide, dark floor lay a pool of pale radiance which somehow gave the impression that it seethed and boiled, though its surface lay untroubled under the lofty dome of the roof. And above the pool the ceiling was shaped like a burning lens to gather and concentrate the radiance arising from it.

This centered at the apex of the roof in a dazzle of light at which he could not look di-rectly. He realized that the center of this burning brilliance must be just under the pillar which crowned the topmost terrace-the pillar upon which burned the flame of IL.

Beyond the column of light rising from the pool, Dixon saw dimly in the gloom of the great temple the glimmer of steel robes. There was an arch in the far wall, so distant he could scarcely make it out, and in this doorway a small steel figure stood. As he watched, the sonorous boom of a gong rang through the dimness. The air trembled with sound, and through the shaking twilight the figure stepped out resolutely, crossing the floor with even, unhurried strides. He could not tell at the distance if it was man or woman, but it approached the radiant pool with, somehow, a sort of restrained eagerness that he was at a loss to understand. It reached the brink and did not pause. The haze of light rising from the pool swallowed itwithout a flicker. And the great dome was empty again save for themselves.

Dixon turned, awe-struck, to the girl, questions hovering on his mouth. Just in time he remembered his role and rephrased the query: "And how do you interpret this, priestess?"

She smiled up at him bewilderingly. It irritated him that his heart made that odd little leap whenever she smiled so, and he missed the first of her answer in watching the way her lips moved to frame the words she spoke.

- continually, at every beat of the signal," she was saying, "so that there is never an interval through all time when one of us has not completed his cycles and is ready to return into the flame." The gong sounded above her light voice. "See? Here comes another. And for countless ages it has been so, for our numbers are great enough so that the stream of voluntary sacrifices need never falter. So we nourish IL's flame and keep it burning."

Dixon said nothing. His eyes were upon her, but the bright illusion was swimming curiously in a mist that was closing down over him, and he was becoming aware of a strange pulsing of his own blood, as if-yes, as if familiar waves of knowledge were beginning their beat through his receptive brain. For a timeless interval he stood rigid, receiving that intelligence, feeling all he had seen and heard draining out of him into the vast reservoir of knowledge which was the light-being, feeling the voiceless commands of it flowing in. Ripple after ripple of the incoming tide rose in his brain. And gradually, in measured beats, he learned that this pool was the source of the pale flame burning upon the pillar, but that it was not essentially a part of it. The G.o.d IL drew his power from the dissolving lives of those peo-ple who sacrificed themselves-and this was the only way to destroy them, for they could not die otherwise-but IL was not present in the pool. IL was the flame on the column, no more, feeding upon the reflection from below. And if the rising light could be cut off tempo-rarily IL's power would fail at its source. The invader could make an entrance and fight it out with him.

And now for an instant all the thought flow ceased; then in sharply clear ripples of intense emphasis came the syllables of a word. It was a word without meaning to Dixon, a word whose very sounds were unlike those of any language that man speaks. But he knew that he must speak it, and that the cadences of the sound would somehow open the way for the light-being to enter. With the impression of that word upon him the ripples ceased. A profound quiet reigned in his mind.

Out of that quiet the great domed temple slowly took form about him again. He heard the gong notes trembling through the air and saw another steel-robed figure pacing toward the pool. He turned his head and looked down into the high priestess' face at his shoulder. He had only to speak the word now and accomplish IL's overthrow-and then leave. Leave her-never see her again, except perhaps in dreams.

Her eyes met his with a little kindling under the blueness of them, and her mouth trembled into a smile as she met his gaze. She had the look of one eager and taut and waiting, and there was perfect faith in her eyes. And in that instant he knew he could not betray it.

"No," he murmured aloud. "No, my dear; I can't-I simply can't do it!"

Her brows drew together in exquisite bewilderment. "Do what?" she asked in a light whisper, to match his own lowered tone. "Do what?" But somehow the answer seemed not to interest her, for she did not pause for a reply. She had met his eyes and was staring up in a sort of dazed surprise, her blue gaze plunging into his with rigid inten-sity. And slowly she began to speak, in a tiny, breathless murmur. "I think . . . I think I see, 0 Dixon, the strangest things . . . in your eyes. Dreadful things and shapes without meaning - . . and some-thing like a veil between us. . . - Dixon. . . nothing is clear. . . and yet-and yet, Dixon, my own face is looking back at me out of your eyes."

He caught his breath suddenly in a painful gasp, and in one invol-untary motion he had her in his arms.

She clung to him blindly. He could feel the trembling that s.h.i.+vered through her steel-sheathed body, and her heart's pounding shook them both.

"I am afraid, Dixon-I am afraid!" she wailed softly. "What is it that frightens me so, Dixon?"

He did not answer. There was no answer. But he hugged her close and felt the sweet firmness of her body against his and knew helplessly that he loved the illusion that washerself and would always love it.

Dixon was frightened, too; frightened at the depth of the emotion that shook him, for he was remembering the clinging of her soft mouth to his, and how beautifully her body curved under the embrace of her metal robe, and that the loveliness which filled his arms and his heart was no more than an illusion to mask something so grotesque that he could never bear to look upon it unmasked. Lovely body, lovely face, sweet, warm mouth upon his-was this all? Could love rise from no more than a sc.r.a.p of beautifully shaped flesh? Could any man love more than that with such intensity as shook him now?

He loosed her from one arm and set his finger under her chin, lift-ing her face to his. Her eyes met his own, blue and puzzled and afraid, and s.h.i.+ning with something very splendid which all but blotted out her bewilderment and her terror.

"I love you," he murmured. "I don't care-I love you."

"Love?" she echoed in her light whisper. "Love?" And he saw in her eyes that the word had no meaning for her.

The room reeled about him for an instant. Somehow he had never thought of that. Knowing as he did of the immense gulf between them and the strangeness of the emotions which swayed these crea-tures of such alien race, yet it had not occurred to him that anywhere throughout the cosmos where living beings dwelt there could be a species to which love had no meaning. Was she, then, incapable of feeling it?

Good heaven, was he doomed to love an empty body, soulless, the mirage masking a s.e.xless being who could not return any emotion he knew?

He looked down and saw the diffused radiance behind her eyes, s.h.i.+ning and very tender, and the bewilderment upon her face, and he thought, somehow, that he was hovering on the very brink of some-thing vaster than anything he had ever known before-an idea too splendid to be grasped. Yet when he looked down into her eyes he thought he understood-almost- Suddenly all about him the world trembled. It was as if the whole vast place were the reflection in a pool, and a ripple had pa.s.sed blur-ringly over the surface. Then everything righted itself. But he under-stood. He had been here too long. The veil between him and this alien world was wearing thin.

"No-I can't go!" he groaned and gripped the girl closer in his arms.

He must have spoken aloud, for he felt her stir against him and heard her anxious voice. "Go? 0 Dixon, Dixon-take me with you! Don't leave me, Dixon!"

Some fantastic hope flowered suddenly within him. "Why not?" he demanded. "Why not? Tell me!" And he shook her a little in his ur-gency.

"I don't know," she faltered. "I only know that-that-O Dixon, that I shall be so lonely when you have gone. Take me-please take me!"

"Why?" he demanded inexorably. For he thought now that he was hovering very near the understanding of the vast and splendid thing which had almost dawned upon him before the world shook.

"Because I . . . because . . . I don't understand it, Dixon, I can't tell you why-I haven't the words. But since you came I-is it that I have been waiting for you always? For I never knew until you came how lonely I had been. And I cannot let you go without me. 0 Dixon, is this what you call love?"

There was pain in her voice and in her veiled eyes. And the thought came to him that love was like an infectious germ, spreading pain wherever it rooted itself. Had he brought it to her-infected her, too, with the hopeless pa.s.sion he knew? For it was wildly hopeless. In a moment or so he must leave this alien place forever, and no power existent could maintain very long the illusory veil through which they knew love.

Could his own new love for her endure the sight of her real self? And what would happen to this strange flowering of an emotion nameless and unknown to her-her love for him? Could it bear the look of his human shape, unmasked? And yet, he asked himself des-perately, could a love as deep and sincere as the love he bore her be so transient a thing that he could not endure the sight of her in another guise?

Could- Again that queer flickering flashed over the world. Dixon felt the ground underfoot tilt dangerously, and for a moment insane colors stabbed at his eyes and the whole room reeled and staggered. Then it was still again. He had scarcely noticed. He swung her around to facehim, gripping her shoulders and staring down compellingly into her eyes.

"Listen!" he said rapidly, for he knew his time was limited now, perhaps to seconds. "Listen! Have you any idea what you are asking?"

"Only to go with you," she said. "To be with you, wherever you are. And if you are indeed IL's messenger-perhaps a part of his G.o.dhead -then shall I enter the flame and give myself to IL? In that way can I join you and be one with you?"

He shook his head. "I am not from IL. I have been sent to destroy him. I'm a man from a world so different from yours that you could never bear to look upon me in my real form. You see me as an illusion, just as I see you. And I must go back to my own world now- alone."

Her eyes were dizzy with trying to understand.

"You are-not from IL? Not as you seem? Another world? Oh, but take me with you! I must go-I must!"

"But, my dearest, I can't. Don't you understand? You couldn't live an instant in my world-nor I much longer in yours."

"Then I will die," she said calmly. "I will enter the flame and wait for you in death. I will wait forever."

"My darling, not even that." He said it gently. "Not even in death can we be together. For when you die you go back to IL, and I go-I go-back to another G.o.d, perhaps. I don't know. But not to IL."

She stood, blank-eyed, in his grasp, trying to force her mind into the incredible belief. When she spoke, the words came slowly, as if her thoughts were speaking aloud.

"I don't understand," she said. "But I know . . . you speak the truth. If I die by the flame-in the only way there is for me to die-we are parted forever. I can't! I won't! I will not let you go! Listen to me-"

and her voice dropped to a soft whisper-"you say you came to destroy IL? Why?"

"As the envoy of another G.o.d, who would take his place."

"I have given my whole life to the wors.h.i.+p of IL," she murmured to herself, very gently. And then, in a stronger voice: "But destroy him, Dixon! There may be a chance that way-there is none now. Oh, I may be a traitor-worse than a traitor. There is no word to describe one who betrays his G.o.d into destruction, no word terrible enough. But I would do it-yes, gladly, now. Destroy him, and let me seek another death somewhere, somehow-let me die as you die. Perhaps your G.o.d can release me into your sort of death, and I can wait for you there until you come. Oh, Dixon, please!"

The idea was a staggering one, but for a wild moment Dixon knew hope again. Might it not be that-that- Quite suddenly he understood. He looked down on the loveliness of her with unseeing eyes.

In these past few moments of insanity, learn-ing that she loved him, too, enough that she begged death of him if in that way they might be united, in these few moments he came to real-ize that the flesh meant nothing. It was not her body he loved. And a great relief flooded him, to be sure that-sure that it was not merely infatuation, or desire for the loveliness which did not exist save as a mirage before his eyes. No, it was love, truly and completely, despite the shape she wore, despite the nameless s.e.x that was hers. Love for herself-the essential self, however deeply buried beneath whatever terrible guise. And though her very substance was alien to him, and though no creature in all her ancestry had ever known love before, she loved him. Nothing else mattered.

And then without warning the great dome before him wavered and contorted into impossible angles, like the reflections in a flawed mir-ror. And Dixon felt the firm curved body in his arms melting fluidly into a different form and texture. It squirmed.

He stood at the entrance to a mighty room that staggered with fran-tic color, reeling with eye-stunning angles and incredible planes. And in his arms- He looked down. He clasped a creature at which he could not bear to look directly, a thing whose wild-looped limbs and sinuous body rippled and crawled with the moving tints of madness. It was slippery and horrible to the touch, and from the midst of a s.h.i.+fting, featureless face a great lucid eye stared up at him with des-perate horror, as if it was looking upon something so frightful that the very sight was enough to unseat its reason.

Dixon closed his eyes after that one revolting glimpse, but he had seen in the eye upturned to him enough of dawning comprehension to be sure that it was she whom he held. And he thought that despite the utter strangeness of that one staring eye there was somewhere in the clarity of it, and the steadfastness, aglimmer of the innermost spark which was the being he loved-that spark which had looked from the blue gaze he had seen in its human shape. With that inner spark of life she was the same.

He tightened his grip upon her-or it-though his flesh crept at the contact and he knew that the feel was as revolting to it as to himself, and looked out over that shallow, color-stained head upon the vast room before him. His eyes throbbed savagely from those fierce colors never meant for human eyes to see. And though the creature in his arms hung acquiescent, he knew the effort it must cost to preserve that calm.

A lump rose in his throat as he realized the significance of that- such utter faith in him, though he wore a shape terrible enough to bring the fear of madness into that great lucid eye when it rested upon him. But he knew he could not stand there long and retain his own sanity. Already the colors were raving almost audibly through his brain, and the ground heaved underfoot, and he was sure that neither of them could endure much more of this. So he gripped the dreadful thing which housed the being he loved, and almost of itself he felt that incredibly alien word rip itself from his lips.

It was not a word to be set down in any written characters. Its sound to his ears was vague and indeterminate, like a whisper heard over too great distances to have any form. But the moment it left his lips he felt a vast, imponderable s.h.i.+fting in the substance of the tem-ple. And, like a shutter's closing, the room went black. Dixon gave one involuntary sob of relief as the maniacal colors ceased their as-sault upon his brain, and he felt the dreadful thing in his arms go rigid in the utter blackness. For a moment everything was still as death.

And then through the dark around them a tiny s.h.i.+ver ran, the least little stir of motion, the thinnest thread of sound. It pierced Dixon's very eardrums and shuddered thrillingly along his nerves. And with incredible swiftness that tiny stirring and that infinitesimal sound grew and swelled and ballooned into a maelstrom of rus.h.i.+ng tumult, louder and louder, shriller and shriller. Around them in the blackness swooped and stormed the sounds of a mightier conflict than any liv-ing man could ever have heard before-a battle of G.o.ds, invisible in the blackness of utter void.

That stunning uproar mounted and intensified until he thought his head would burst with the infinite sound of it, and forces beyond comprehension stormed through the air. The floor seemed to dissolve under him, and s.p.a.ce whirled in the dark so that he was conscious of neither up nor down. The air raved and shrieked. Blind and deafened and stunned by the magnitude of the conflict, Dixon hugged his dreadful burden and waited.

How long it went on he never knew. He was trying to think as the turmoil raged around his head, trying to guess what would come next; if the light-being in its victory could unite them in any way, in life or in death. He could think of that quite calmly now, death and union. For life without her, he knew unquestioningly, would be a sort of liv-ing death, alone and waiting. Living was where she was, and if she were dead, then life lay only in death for him. His head reeled with the wild wonderings and with the noise of battle raving about them both. For eternities, it seemed to him, the whole universe was a mael-strom, insanity shrieked in his ears, and all the powers of darkness swooped and screamed through the void about him. But, after an end-less while, very gradually he began to realize that the tumult was abat-ing. The roaring in his ears faded slowly; the wild forces storming through the dark diminished. By infinite degree the uproar died away.

Presently again the stillness of death descended through the blackness upon the two who waited.

There was a long interval of silence, nerve-racking, ear-tormenting. And then, at long last, out of that darkness and silence spoke a voice, vast and bodiless and serene. And it was not the voice of the light-be-ing. It spoke audibly in Dixon's brain, not in words, but in some nameless speech which used instead of syllables some series of thought forms that were intelligible to him.

"My chosen priestess," said the voice pa.s.sionlessly, "so you would have had me destroyed?"

Dixon felt the convulsive start of the creature in his arms and realized dimly that the same wordless speech, then, was intelligible to them both. He realized that only vaguely, with one corner of his mind, for he was stunned and overwhelmed with the realization that it must be the G.o.d IL speaking-that his own sponsor had been over-come.

"And you, Dixon," the voice went on evenly, "sent by my enemy to open the way. You are a very aliencreature, Dixon. Only by the power I wrested from that being which a.s.saulted me can I perceive you at all, and your mind is a chaos to me. What spell have you cast over my chosen priestess, so that she no longer obeys me?"

"Have you never heard of love?" demanded Dixon aloud.

The query faded into the thick darkness without an echo, and a profound stillness followed in its wake.

He stood in the blind dark and utter silence, clutching his love, waiting. Out of that quiet the G.o.d-voice came at last: "Love"-in a musing murmur. "Love-no! there is no such thing in all my universe. What is it?"

Dixon stood helpless, mutely trying to frame an answer. For who can define love? He groped for the thought forms, and very stumblingly he tried to explain, knowing as he did so that it was as much for the benefit of her he held in his arms as for the G.o.d, because, although she loved, she could not know the meaning of love, or what it meant to him. When he had ceased, the silence fell again heavily.

At last IL said, "So-the reigning principle of your own system and dimension. I understand that much.

But there is no such thing here. Why should it concern you? Love is a thing between the two s.e.xes of your own race. This priestess of mine is of another s.e.x than those you understand. There can be no such thing as this love between you."

"Yet I saw her first in the form of a woman," said Dixon. "And I love her."

"You love the image."

"At first it may be that I did. But now-no; there's much more of it than that. We may be alien to the very atoms. Our minds may be alien, and all our thoughts, and even our souls. But, after all, alien though we are, that alienage is of superficial things. Stripped down to the barest elemental beginning, we have one kins.h.i.+p-we share life. We are individually alive, animate, free-willed. Somewhere at the very core of our beings is the one vital spark of life, which in the last a.n.a.ly-sis is self, and with that one spark we love each other."

The deepest silence fell again when he had ended-a silence of the innermost brain.

Out of it at last IL said, "And you, my priestess? What do you say? Do you love him?"

Dixon felt the shape in his arms shudder uncontrollably. She-he could not think of her as "it"-stood in the very presence of her G.o.d, heard him address her in the black blindness of his presence, and the awe and terror of it was almost enough to shake her brain. But after a moment she answered in a small, faltering murmur, the very ghost of a reply, and in some curious mode of speech which was neither vocal nor entirely thought transfer. "I-I do not know that word, 0 mighty IL. I know only that there is no living for me outside his presence. I would have betrayed your G.o.dhead to free me, so that I might die in his way of death, and meet him again beyond-if there can be any beyond for us. I would do all this again without any hesitation if the choice was given me. If this is what you call love-yes; I love him."

"He is," said IL, "a creature of another race and world and dimen-sion. You have seen his real form, and you know."

"I do not understand that," said the priestess in a surer voice. "I know nothing except that I cannot-will not live without him. It is not his body I . . . love, nor do I know what it is which commands me so. I know only that I do love him."

"And I you," said Dixon. It was a very strange sensation to be ad-dressing her thus, from brain to brain.

"The sight of you was dreadful to me, and I know how I must have looked to you. But the shock of that sight has taught me something. I know now. The shape you wear and the shape you seemed to wear before I saw you in reality are both illusions, both no more than garments which clothe that. . . that liv-ing, vital ent.i.ty which is yourself-the real you. And your body does not matter to me now, for I know that it is no more than a mirage."

"Yes," she murmured. "Yes, I understand. You are right. The bodies do not matter now. It goes so much deeper than that."

"And what," broke in the voice of IL, "is your solution of this problem?"