I went down into Anchorage in a drop capsule, rented a car, and drove up the familiar freeway to Cantwell. At the Port, I found a concession area where I could rent a magnetic sled. In the small shopping plaza underground, I bought a pair of heavy-duty wire clippers in a variety store. I loaded the sled and clippers in the car and drove out to the park. The gate was closed, of course, but I had never allowed that to stop me before. Parking the car along the fence near post number 878, I changed into my arctic clothes and boots, then unloaded the sled and struggled with it to the fence. I clipped at the thick wire for perhaps twenty minutes, finally made a hole wide enough, and shoved the sled through. I clambered after it, turned on its magnetic field, and boarded it, strapping myself in. In half an hour, forty minutes at the most, I would be at the cabin. I trembled, thought about turning back, then pressed down on the accelerator and shot forward toward the trees.
I handled the sled like a veteran now. That wild, careening trip with the wounded Justice Parnel had broken my fear into pieces, smashed those pieces to powder, and blew them away. I was reckless, but in a calculating way. Once, I almost missed a rise that came on me suddenly, almost tipped the sled over, but I pulled back on the wheel at the last possible second, and we glided up and over it without catastrophe.
I was a mile from Harry's cabin, passing some cabins on the first level, when it happened. As I was coming up a long slope, the unlighted cabin off to my right, a white-tailed deer pranced over the brow of the hill and stood looking around. He had not spotted me, but I was certain he would in seconds. Instead, he died in an instant while I watched. Out of the ground, on all sides of him, a shimmering pink-tan sheath of jelly-like substance rose into the air like tentacles of some sea beast, The deer jumped, squealed, and tried to run. The tentacles collapsed on him, dragging him down into the snow. He thumped about for a few moments, trying to shake this hoary sheath, and was still at last.
Not tentacles, I thought-pseudopods. Like the extensions of His new form that anchored Him to the walls in Harry's basement.
I stopped the sled twenty feet from the dead deer. I could see the amoeba-like flesh wriggling over the animal, breaking it down and devouring it. Could He have grown this large? Could He have extended Himself out of the cellar to the distance of a mile and more? And if He had extended Himself through the earth of this part of the park, wouldn't He be certain to know that I was on my way?
Again, I wanted to turn around. I had no weapons but a pin gun and a heavy projectile rifle, both purchased at that sporting-goods store. They were pitiful weapons indeed, when you thought of facing something like Him with them. Before I could give in to the part of me that wished to run, I slammed down on the accelerator and moved forward, around the deer that was all but dissolved by now. Five minutes later. I stopped in front of the cabin and looked at the dark windows and wondered what was behind them, watching me
I took the two guns out of the sled, prepared them both for firing, and went up the front porch steps. There was no use being quiet, I decided. I pushed open the door, which had never been relocked after our capture, and went into the dark livingroom.
"You can put the guns down, Jacob," He said from the cellar. "I badly need your help."
XIV
I stood still, wondering whether I should try charging into the cellar. But for what purpose? I dropped the guns and walked to the cellar steps. "What help?" I asked.
"There have been complications."
I looked down into the darkness, into the cold, ice-walled hole which was His home, and I tried to keep from thinking about the shapeless thing that rested down there. "What complications?" I asked.
"Come down. We have much to talk about, the two of us. Come down here where we can do it more easily."
"No," I said.
"What?" He sounded perplexed, as if He did not know what I was talking about, could not fathom why I would refuse Him.
"Why did you try to kill me?" I asked.
"It was not me."
"I saw you," I said. "You knew me by name. You even read my mind."
"That is what I want to talk to you about. Come down."
"You'll kill me."
"And I could just as easily kill you where you are standing," He said. "There would be no necessity to have you in the cellar to kill you. Now quit this nonsense and come down here. You know damn well I would not harm you."
It did not make sense. If it had not been Him, who had it been in the tubeways? I had seen the creature chasing me, had seen the face-and the feet that had changed into tough plates to trod down the sensory cilia. That had not been my imagination. I had the cuts and bruises to prove it had all really happened. Yet, somehow, and for some unknown reason, I believed Him now. He would not kill me. Surely, He was as good as He said. I opened the cellar door and went down the steps, turning the light on when I passed the switch.
He was in the same form as before, perhaps a bit larger. Although He had no eyes, but a prismatic ball set in a fold of flesh, I knew He was watching me intently. Although there were no apparent ears on His body, I knew He was listening. I stopped before Him, half expecting a death blow from a pseudopod, half hoping there really was some explanation for His recent behavior. "How did you know about my being chased? You say it wasn't you, and yet-"
"You're upset, Jacob. You're not thinking. I read your mind when you pulled up outside, of course."
"That doesn't matter," I said. "Let's get on with it. If that wasn't you back there in the tubeways, and if that wasn't you that shot at me and broke into my apartment, who was it?"
He hesitated.
"It was you, wasn't it," I said.
"Not exactly."
"Then tell me, damn it!"
"I'm trying to think how best to phrase it," He said.
I waited.
Later He said, "It was the Devil, Jacob."
"The Devil?" He was joking with me, I thought. He was leading me on, laughing quietly at me, getting me primed for the moment when He would strike me down.
"I am not going to strike you down!" He said, slightly exasperated.
"And I'm supposed to take you seriously when you tell me it is the Devil that has been chasing me, the Devil in your form?"
"Wait," He said. He was quiet for a time, then spoke again, His tone designed to be even more soothing and convincing than usual. "I have made a mistake. I have been couching all of my explanations in terms that you would more easily understand. I implied that I was your God, thus letting you fall back on your standard religious theories. You are what-Christian? Jewish?"
"My father was Jewish, my mother Christian. I was raised by a Christian. If I am anything-and sometimes I have my doubts-I am a Christian. But I still don't see what you are getting at."
"Forget what I said about being God. Forget what I said about your being chased by the Devil."
"Forgotten."
"I'll try to explain this in more realistic terms, with less emotional and romantic trappings than religious theories possess. First, it is true that I am the creature- or a facet of the creature-that created this universe, one of many universes. The why for this, I cannot convey to you. It is on an aesthetic level that you could not begin to conceive of. I wrought the matter of the universe, set into motion the patterns and laws and processes that formed the solar systems. I did not take a direct hand in the evolution of life, for the aesthetic values of creation are in the monumental forces of universe-making, not in the creation of life, which will happen anyway if you do a good job on the making of the universe itself."