He Who Shapes (9 page)

gesture, he eliminated his patient's consciousness.

A Shaper does not press white buttons consciously. He wills

conditions. Then deeply-implanted muscular reflexes exert an

almost imperceptible pressure against the sensitive arm-sling,

which glides into the proper position and encourages an

extended finger to move forward. A button is pressed. The sling

moves on.

Render felt a tingling at the base of his skull; he smelled

fresh-cut grass.

Suddenly he was moving up the great gray alley between the

worlds.

After what seemed a long time, Render felt that he was

footed on a strange Earth. He could see nothing; it was only a

sense of presence that informed him he had arrived. It was the

darkest of all the dark nights he had ever known.

He willed that the darkness disperse. Nothing happened.

A part of his mind came awake again, a part he had not

realized was sleeping; he recalled whose world he had entered.

He listened for her presence. He heard fear and anticipation.

He willed color. First, red . . .

He felt a correspondence. Then there was an echo.

Everything became red; he inhabited the center of an infinite

ruby.

Orange. Yellow . . .

He was caught in a piece of amber.

Green now, and he added the exhalations of a sultry sea.

Blue, and the coolness of evening.

He stretched his mind then, producing all the colors at once.

They came in great swirling plumes.

Then he tore them apart and forced a form upon them.

An incandescent rainbow arched across the black sky.

He fought for browns and grays below him. Self-luminescent,

they appearedin shimmering, shifting patches.

Somewhere, a sense of awe. There was no trace of hysteria

though, so he continued with the Shaping.

He managed a horizon, and the blackness drained away

beyond it. The sky grew faintly blue, and he ventured a herd

of dark clouds. There was resistance to his efforts at creating

distance and depth, so he reinforced the tableau with a very

faint sound of surf. A transference from an auditory concept of

distance came on slowly then, as he pushed the clouds about.

Quickly, he threw up a high forest to offset a rising wave of

acrophobia.

The panic vanished.

Render focused his attention on tall treesoaks and pines,

poplars and sycamores. He buried them about like spears, in

ragged arrays of greens and browns and yellows, unrolled a

thick mat of morning-moist grass, dropped a series of gray

boulders and greenish logs at irregular intervals, and tangled

and twined the branches overhead, casting a uniform shade

throughout the glen.
                     
'

The effect was staggering. It seemed as if the entire world

was shaken with a sob, then silent.

Through the stillness he felt her presence. He had decided it

would be best to lay the groundwork quickly, to set up a tan-

gible headquarters, to prepare a field for operations. He could

backtrack later, he could repair and amend the results of the

trauma in the sessions yet to come; but this much, at least, was

necessary for a beginning.

With a start, he realized that the silence was not a

withdrawal. Eileen had made herself immanent in the trees and

the grass, the stones and the bushes; she was personalizing

their forms, relating them to tactile sensations, sounds, tem-

peratures, aromas.

With a soft breeze, he stirred the branches of the trees. Just

beyond the bounds of seeing he worked out the splashing

sounds of a brook.

There was a feeling of joy. He shared it.

She was bearing it extremely well, so he decided to extend

the scope of the exercise. He let his mind wander among the

trees, experiencing a momentary doubling of vision, during

which time he saw an enormous hand riding in an aluminum

carriage toward a circle of white.

He was beside the brook now and he was seeking her,

carefully.

He drifted with the water. He had not yet taken on a form.

The splashes became a gurgling as he pushed the brook through

shallow places and over rocks. At his insistence, the waters

became more articulate.

"Where are you?" asked the brook.

Here! Here!

Here!

. . . and here! replied the trees, the bushes, the stones, the

grass.

"Choose one," said the brook, as it widened, rounded a mass

of rock, then bent its way toward a slope, heading toward a

blue pool.

/ cannot, was the answer from the wind.

"You must." The brook widened and poured itself into the

pool, swirled about the surface, then stilled itself and reflected

branches and dark clouds. "Now!"

Very -well, echoed the wood, in a moment.

The mist rose above the lake and drifted to the bank of the

pool.

"Now," tinkled the mist.

Here, then...

She had chosen a small willow. It swayed in the wind; it

trailed its branches in the water.

"Eileen Shallot," he said, "regard the lake."

The breezes shifted; the willow bent.

It was not difficult for him to recall her face, her body. The

tree spun as though rootless. Eileen stood in the midst of a quiet

explosion of leaves; she stared, frightened, into the deep blue

mirror of Render's mmd, the lake.

She covered her face with her hands, but it could not stop the

seeing.

"Behold yourself," said Render.

She lowered her hands and peered downwards. Then she

turned in every direction, slowly; she studied herself. Finally:

"I feel I am quite lovely," she said. "Do I feel so because you

want me to, or is it true?"

She looked all about as she spoke, seeking the Shaper.

"It is true," said Render, from everywhere.

"Thank you."

There was a swirl of white and she was wearing a belted

garment of damask. The light in the distance brightened almost

imperceptibly. A faint touch of pink began at the base of the

lowest cloudbank.

"What is happening there?" she asked, facing that direction.

"I am going to show you a sunrise," said Render, "and I shall

probably botch it a bitbut then, it's my first professional

sunrise under these circumstances."

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Everywhere," he replied.

"Please take on a form so that I can see you."

"All right."

"Your natural form."

He willed that he be beside her on the bank, and he was.

Startled by a metallic flash, he looked downward. The world

receded for an instant, then grew stable once again. He

laughed, and the laugh froze as he thought of something.

He was wearing the suit of armor which had stood beside

their table in The Partridge and Scalpel on the night they met.

She reached out and touched it.

"The suit of armor by our table," she acknowledged, running

her fingertips over the plates and the junctures. "I associated it

with you that night."

".
 
.
 
. And you stuffed me into it just now," he commented.

"You're a strong-willed woman."

The armor vanished and he was wearing his graybrown suit

and looseknit bloodclot necktie and a professional expression.

"Behold the real me," he smiled faintly. "Now, to the sunset.

I'm going to use all the colors. Watch!"

They seated themselves on the green park bench which had

appeared behind them, and Render pointed in the direction he

had decided upon as east.

Slowly, the sun worked through its morning attitudes. For

the first time in this particular world it shone down like a god,

and reflected off the lake, and broke the clouds, and set the

landscape to smouldering beneath the mist that arose from the

moist wood.

Watching,
 
watching
 
intently,
 
staring directly into the

ascending bonfire, Eileen did not move for a long while, nor

speak. Render could sense her fascination.

She was staring at the source of all light; it reflected back

from the gleaming coin on her brow, like a single drop of blood.

Render said, "That is the sun, and those are clouds," and he

clapped his hands and the clouds covered the sun and there

was a soft rumble overhead, "and that is thunder," he finished.

The rain fell then, shattering the lake and tickling their

faces, making sharp striking sounds on the leaves, then soft

tapping sounds, dripping down from the branches overhead,

soaking their garments and plastering their hair, running down

their necks and falling into their eyes, turning patches of brown

earth to mud.

A splash of lightning covered the sky, and a second later

there was another peal of thunder.

". . . And this is a summer storm," he lectured. "You see how

the rain affects the foliage, and ourselves. What you just saw in

the sky before the thunderclap was lightning."

". . . Too much," she said. "Let up on it for a moment,

please."

The rain stopped instantly and the sun broke through the

clouds.

"I have the damnedest desire for a cigarette," she said, "but I