He stopped speaking.
"No," said Hal, after a moment. He felt detached, like someone under heavy sedation. "That's not a way I can go."
"Then you'll die," said Bleys, dispassionately. "In the end, like those who were like us in past centuries, you'll let them kill you, merely by ceasing to make the continual effort necessary to protect yourself among them. And it'll be wasted, all wasted - what you were and what you could've been."
"Then it'll have to be wasted," said Hal. "I can't be what you say."
"Perhaps," said Bleys. He rose to his feet, the float drifting back in mid-air and aside from his legs. "But wait a bit yet and see. The urge to live is stronger than you think."
He stood looking down at Hal.
"I told you," he said. "I'm part-Exotic. Do you think I didn't fight against the knowledge of what I was, when I first began to be aware of it? Do you think I didn't reject what I saw myself committed to being, only because of what I am? Do you suppose I didn't at first tell myself that I'd choose a hermit's existence, an anchorite's life, rather than make what then I thought of as an immoral use of my abilities? Like you, I was ready to pay any price to save myself from the contamination of playing God to those around me. The idea was as repellent to me then as it is to you now. But what I came to learn was that it wasn't harm, it was good that I could do the race as one of its leaders and masters; and so will you learn - in the end."
He turned and stepped to the door of the cell.
"Open up here!" he called into the corridor.
"It makes no difference," he said, turning back once more as footsteps sounded, approaching them from beyond sight of the barred door, "what you think you choose now. Inevitably, a day'll come when you'll see the foolishness of what you did now by insisting on staying here, in a cell like this, under the guard of those who, compared to you, are little more than civilized animals. None of what you're inflicting on yourself at this moment is really necessary."
He paused.
"But it's your choice," he went on. "Do what you feel like doing until you can see more clearly. But when that time comes, all you'll have to do is say one word. Tell your guards that you'll consider what I've said; and they'll bring you to me, out of here to a place of comfort and freedom and daylight, where you can have time to set your mind straight in decency. Your need to undergo this private self-torture is all in your own mind. Still, as I say, I'll leave you with it until you see more clearly."
Barbage and the enlisted Militiaman were already at the door of the cell. They unlocked and swung it open. Bleys stepped through and the door closed behind him. Without looking back he walked off, out of sight up the corridor, and the other two followed, leaving Hal to utter silence when the sound of footfalls had at last died away.
Chapter Thirty-three
Exhausted, Hal dropped into sodden, dreamless slumber; and the length of his sleep was something he had no way of measuring. But he came struggling back into consciousness to find himself spasming with convulsive shivers that shook him with the power of an autumn gale upon a last dead leaf clinging to a tree.
The cell about him was unchanged. The light still burned with the same muted intensity in the ceiling. Complete silence continued beyond the barred door of his cell. Pushing himself upright again into a semi-sitting position, he saw the thin blanket folded at the foot of his bed, and, reaching out an unsteady hand, caught and pulled it up to his neck.
For a moment the relief of having something covering him almost let him escape again into oblivion. But the blanket was hardly thicker than his shirt; and the chill still savaged him like a dog shaking a rat. Holding the blanket tightly to his chin with both hands, he made an effort to exert some control over his shuddering body, fastening his attention on a point immeasurably remote within his own mind and striving to transfer all his attention to that remote, austere and incorporeal location.
For some minutes it seemed that he would not be able to do it. The effort at mental control was too great in his worn-out condition, and the wild plungings of his body's reflexes were too strong. Then, gradually, he began to succeed. The shuddering ceased, the tensions leaked slowly from his muscles and his whole body quietened.
He could still feel the urge of his flesh to respond to the frightening chill that had seized him. But now that urge was held at arm's length, and he could think. He opened his mouth to speak but only croaked. Then he managed to clear his throat, take a deep breath and call out.
"It's freezing, here! Turn the heat up!"
There was no answer.
He shouted again. But still there was no response; and the temperature of the cell stayed as it was.
He stayed listening to the silence, and his memory gave him back Bleys' earlier order about all surveillance of the cell being discontinued until the Other should call to be let out. Surveillance must have been resumed when Bleys left and that would mean that there was no need to shout now. Someone must be listening and possibly observing him as well, at this moment.
He lay back under the blanket, still holding down hard on the urge of his body to shiver, and looked up at the ceiling.
"I know you hear me." With an effort he held his voice level. "I think Bleys Ahrens told you not to do anything to me - that includes letting me chill to death. Turn the heat up. Otherwise I'll tell him about this, the next time I see him."
He waited.
Still, no one answered or came. He was about to speak again when it occurred to him that if those watching him had been unmoved by his words, repeating them would do no good; while if he had worried them at all, repetition would only weaken his threat.
After perhaps ten minutes, he heard steps in the corridor. A thin, upright, black-uniformed figure appeared beyond the bars of his cell door, unlocked it and came in. He looked up into the flint-blade features of Amyth Barbage.
"It is well that thou be told," said Barbage. His voice was oddly remote, almost as if he talked aloud while dreaming.
Hal stared up at him.
"Yes," said Barbage, "I will tell thee."
His eyes glittered like polished chips of hard coal in the dimness of the cell.
"I know thee," he said slowly, looking down at Hal; and each word was like a drop of icy water chilling the feverish surface of Hal's mind. "Thou art of that demon blood that cometh before Armageddon - which now is close upon us. Yes, I see thee, if some else do not, in thy true shape with thy jaws of steel and thy head like to the head of a great and loathsome hound. Wily art thou, a serpent. Thou didst pretend to save my life, long since, from that apostate of the Lord, the Child of Wrath who would have slain me in the pass - so that I might feel a debt to thee; and so be seduced by thee when thou were at last, as thou now art, in the power of God's Chosen."
His voice became slightly harsher, but still it remained distant, detached.
"But I am of the Elect, and beyond thy cunning. It hath been ordered by the Great Teacher that I let no thing be done to thee - nor will I. But there is no need that anything be done for thee. Immortal in wickedness and blasphemy as thou art, there is no need to cosset such as thee. Therefore call out as thou wilt - none shall come or answer. This cell is of the temperature it had when thou wert brought in. No one hath altered it, nor will. The lights thou mayest have up or down; but no other thing will be changed or brought about at thy word. Rest thee as thou art, foul dog of Satan."