Cal felt as though a hand were squeezing him, but also inverting him from within, felt the wave of unbeingness washing over him, inviting him to release, to surrender, to die….
But just then, he felt the grip release just a bit, felt the tide flow back by inches, and he sensed, distantly, a force in opposition. Weaker, but throwing all of itself against the greater mind, holding it back, if only momentarily, from dealing the final stroke.
Cal reached out with his thought to seek it, to identify it-and found a name.
Wishart.
And, surprisingly, remarkably, one other…
Goldie.
Not dead, no, merely held, absorbed, enclosed.
Cal felt his heart rush. Where he sat crumpled there on his knees, he still held the sword.
He released it now.
“Cal…no…” Pleading, moaning, a whisper behind him. Colleen, her life a flickering candlelight held in a breath.
But Cal needed his hands free now, needed no sword. Fighting the agony, fighting to stay conscious a few seconds more, he withdrew from within his shirt the battered leather portfolio Goldie had brought him from the travels Cal had dispatched him on, when Goldie had returned with Enid Blindman and Howard Russo. That had not been Goldie’s only port of call, far from it.
The Sanrio mind bore down, tore at Cal like a freezing river, stealing away his life force piece by piece.
Hold on, Goldie, hang on, Wishart…. Just give me a moment more….
With fingers grown numb, Cal worked to untie the string, to throw open the portfolio, to lay claim to the irreplaceable treasures Goldie had brought from the four corners of the land. His hands trembled; its contents spilled out onto the floor.
“Light!” Cal screamed. “Give me light!” He sensed Tina behind him, battered and assailed. She willed it, and light flooded out, washed over him as he dove down and scooped up the varied flat paper shapes, held them out before him like talismans.
The fleshy abomination was watching him now, gaping eyes brown black green blue, curiosity in them, the same curiosity that had driven them to slice open the world, insatiable curiosity that withheld the death blow.
Cal held out one of the creased, shiny rectangles, colors and shapes parading across it.
“Agnes Wu! Your son, your daughter!” Cal cried. “They’re safe, in Ithaca! They’re waiting for you!”
Another photograph.
“Bernard Sakamoto! Your wife is in a shelter in Baltimore! She’s there with your granddaughter!”
Another.
“Stanley Monteiro! Candace, she’s in the hospital in Hannibal! Her back was broken in a fall, but she’s healing! She needs you there!”
And so on, through Brinkowicz and Corning, Feldstein, St. Ives, Pollard and the rest. All the names Cal had researched in Who’s Who in Applied and Molecular Physics, discovering their hometowns, their families.
All the ones who had been kept apart from them due to the security lockout at the Source Project, prior to the Change. All those who might have a claim on them, on their hearts and minds, their allegiances beyond Sanrio.
Who, alone of them, had no one he loved, or who loved him.
They had not chosen to become this monstrosity, to absorb a world out of fear and madness; that accident had been visited upon them, that drive imposed on them.
Perhaps only Sanrio, their merciless, killing leader, had ever wanted that, had hungered for it since his days of degradation in Havana, his powerlessness….
Cal had learned at last, after all the long days and hard miles, the tortured road from Manhattan to Boone’s Gap, Chicago to here, to differentiate between the action and the actor, to jettison notions of evil and perceive only the fear….
Pray to see what’s real, Mr. Griffin…and you will.
Cal felt the gestalt mind tremble and hesitate, felt the wills of the others pull back, tenuously rebel.
“You’re human!” Cal pleaded. “Be human again!”
But then, like a relentless tide flooding back, Cal sensed Sanrio gaining mastery once more, reeling them in again.
They’re not strong enough, Cal thought despairingly, they need a leader….
Take me! he thought at It, with the same fierce will that had driven him across this devastated, phenomenal land; that had gathered together Goldie and Doc and Colleen to follow him, and Enid Blindman and Lady Blade and the escaped slaves off the farm at Unionville; that had defeated Primal, and Fred Wishart, and Stern, in their time; the will that might also be called love.
Take me!
He opened himself to It.
He felt his body fall away and dissolve like dying, felt himself swept up and plunged into a heaving, boiling mass that was pure thought and memory and being, that held no time and all time at once, that was pure now with no past or future in it, a moment held frozen and eternal.
And that moment was terrifying….
Blurred streaks like blood smeared on a mirror. Men, women, booted, hooded, gloved in white, running, shouting. Machines spinning, pinwheeling sparks, a thrumming rising to a whine and then a wail. This is not right, this is not how it’s supposed to be. A rectangular door lined with lights. A gateway. And something emerging, slashing into existence, all colors and none, a whirlpool blaze of pure, savage power. The men, the men and the women all tumbling over each other, pitching headlong to get away, but the whirlpool surges up, seizes them and spins them back into itself. Faces shrieking as they melt together, a chaos of eyes and mouths, not dead, alive, not many but one, frozen in that horrified moment, screaming, screaming-
As Cal suspected, the gestalt mind was frozen, locked into that molten instant of horror and fear. No wonder it had taken the actions it had to safeguard itself, to wipe every contrary will like chalk off a blackboard. The lesser minds had given themselves over to Sanrio, to guide them, to keep them safe. Crazy and paranoid, and no wonder. Madness maddened, and turning the world mad, too.
But now there was a new sheriff in town….
Cal found himself floating in the blackness. But he could sense the other minds there, could hear them like voices in the night.
Come to me, Cal thought. Come to me and I’ll be your sanctuary.
He felt Goldie first, sensed him surge up and lock on. Then Fred Wishart, who had tried, he knew, to keep them safe when they had first invaded this realm, and who had turned Shango away when he had trespassed, too, before Sanrio could discover him.
And Agnes Wu, who had protected Inigo when his own mother could not, when he had been forsaken and transformed.
Cal felt Marcus Sanrio then, felt him attack with a consciousness like a knife, felt his own mind scream as Sanrio tried to cut him to pieces, to gather the others to shred him like wolves tearing apart a deer.
But Cal was on the inside now, and Sanrio couldn’t hold them.
Hesitant at first, but with growing determination and velocity, Bernard Sakamoto and Stan Monteiro, Agnes Wu and the others reached out to Cal, holding on, giving over their will to him. He felt their dread and their longing, felt them gain stability as he soothed and reassured them. He felt himself grow with power, felt it fill him like hot air in a balloon, felt himself expand and extend his dominion.
Sanrio fought it, then fell back and fled.
Cal reached out with his mind, pursuing….
And sensed, beyond him, the flares in all their multitudes, heard them like a plaintive, echoing chorus.
Then, as Sanrio diminished further still, Cal caught on the distant edge of perception, barely detectible, like a whisper in another room, a whisper wrapped in cotton…