He forgot he was Gerald Howson. He forgot he was a cripple, a runt, a bleeder, an orphan. He remembered only that he was a telepathist, able to snatch facts from any mind he chose if the owner gave permission, and with desperate eagerness filled out his knowledge of what had led to his impasse.

Phranakis: this was how he felt to himself before he went into fugue; this was the face he saw daily in his mirror; this was the mother he remembered, the father, the brothers and sisters; there was the stony village street up which he toiled to school, this was the road that took him to Athens and the disappointments of early manhood, this was the room where he was first shocked into knowledge of his real identity…

Southern Africa: this was the ulcer festering below the slick modern surface; this was the hatred of dark against light skin and this was the greed that burst into violence… He visualized the huge Polynesian, Makerakera, walking a sunny street and absorbing hate like a camera; he was one of the rare receptive telepathists with no projective “voice’, like the therapy watchdogs and lay analysts Howson had met here at the hospital. He knew images of long corridors, rooms where solemn men met to plan this first attempt to give meaning to the ancient platitude about the best time to stop a war. He sensed the reaction of Phranakis when he realized his work had failed — he saw it as nemesis, the reward of hubris, the illimitable conceit which offended the gods of his ancestors.

And he looked also into the minds and lives of those whom Phranakis had taken with him. Taken: that was the really unique aspect of this case, and the one which frightened Ilse Kronstadt worst.

For such was Phranakis’s power that he had not had to wait on the willingness of the reflective personalities in his catapathic grouping. He had simply taken them over — four of his closest non-telepathic associates — and dragged them down with him into his unreal universe.

As awed and fascinated as a rabbit facing a snake, Howson traced the course of events around him. Far below, where the specialists and the high politicians and the families and friends were gathered, they were bringing Phranakis to the room where Ilse Kronstadt waited to do him battle. The hospital seemed to draw in on itself, to tauten till it sang apprehension like a fiddle-string. Howson tautened with it, lost to the world, and scarcely dared to breathe.

12

Down the streets of his brain a procession moved. As youths and maidens, garlanded with flowers, danced in his honour the grave elders gathered at the shrine of Pallas Athene. There they made ready the wreath of bay with which to crown the champion. For all their boasts and cunning, the barbarians had gone down to defeat. The city was safe; civilization and freedom survived, while far away a tyrant cursed and ordered the execution of his generals.

There was a city, certainly. There were, in a sense, elders gathered to the presence of their champion. But Aesculapius was closer to their minds than Athene, and the crown they had prepared for his head was a light metal frame trailing leads to a complex encephalograph. There was no tyrant, apart from the demon of hate, but there were definitely barbarians, although they had passed for civilized until they were broken and demoralized. They had conquered Pericles Phranakis, and were still defying the forces sent against them. He had refused to face that knowledge, and now he had forgotten.

His swarthy face contented, he lay in what was basically a bed, but could become an extension of his body if required. Apart from the instruments monitoring every physical response — heartbeat, respiration, brain rhythms, blood-pressure, and a dozen more — there were elaborate prosthetics attached to him. At present he was being fed artificially, while the other devices remained inert. Should the shock of recovery prove as violent as the shock of collapse, he might relinquish all attempts to live. Then the heart masseur, the oxygenator, the artificial kidney would fight against vagal inhibition and maintain life in his body until he had painfully accepted the frustration of his planned escape from the world.

Near by Ilse Kronstadt had composed herself amid a similar array of instruments. In a chair at her side was a young man with a pale anxious face — a recently qualified receptive telepathist serving as her therapy watchdog. Once she had entered Phranakis’s self-glorifying world, she would be unable to communicate verbally with the nervous doctors supervising the process. By turns around the clock this young man and three others would “listen” to her struggles, and report anything the doctors needed to know.

One by one the technicians, the specialists, the telepathist nodded to Singh, who stood at the foot of Ilse Kronstadt’s bed remembering her past triumphs and trying not to pay too much attention to the mass of cancerous tissue spreading beneath her brain. She looked very small and old lying among the machinery of the bed, and although she had not told him directly he knew she was afraid.

“We’re ready, Ilse,” he said in the levellest tone he could manage.

Without opening her eyes, she answered, “Me too. You can keep quiet now.”

Then, with no further warning, she let herself go. How it could be perceived, Singh had never been able to work out, but it was unmistakable — one second, she was conscious and aware of her body; the next, it was a shell, and she was in another universe.

He kept his aching eyes on the pale face of the watchdog, and was dismayed after only a couple of minutes to see a shock of surprise reflected there. In the same instant Ilse stirred.

“Strong…” she said in a far-away voice.

The alarmed audience oozed tension almost tangibly. She licked her lips and went on, “I have the picture of his fantasy now — he’s the great hero, defender of Athens, darling of the gods and idol of the people… I can’t break in, Pan! Not without making myself so obvious he’ll summon all his will to resist.”

“Take your time,” Singh said reassuringly. “There’s bound to be a chance to form a covering role in the fantasy. It may take time to develop, but it’ll come.”

“I know.” The voice was faint — almost ghostly. Singh wondered how much of it he was actually hearing, how much experiencing telepathically. The bloodless lips scarcely moved. “He has fabulous control, Pan. The schizoid secondary are unbelievably contrasted. And he’s got them from the reflective as well as from himself.”

Singh bit his lip. Only superb powers of self-deception could create the schizoid secondary personalities — individuals acting their part in the drama whose thoughts and reactions were only observable, not controllable, by the telepathist’s ego. Without seeming to pause, however, he uttered new comfort.

“That ought to make it easier, surely! He won’t be surprised at the appearance of an intruder.”

“He hasn’t left room for intruders!” The objection was a shrill cry. “It’s like a flower unfolding — it’s complete and all it has to do is spread out and be perfect!”

No matter how desperately he wanted it, Singh could find no reassuring counter to that. A fantasy so elaborate must have been Phranakis’s companion for years, nurtured in his subconscious, polished and perfected until he could unreel it like a cine-film, without any of the hesitations or doubts which would afford an entry for the therapist, disguised as a mere mental pawn.

Thickly he said, “Well, have patience, Ilse. When the situation looks hopeful, we’ll disturb his brain rhythms and let you in.”

No answer. Why should there be? Other, lesser therapists had resorted to such crude devices; Ilse Kronstadt had never needed to. Already, even before the job was under way, there was a sour smell of defeat in the room.