It seemed that light, wildly, swirled about her; for an instant she feared she might drown in light, but then she realized that there was no impediment to her breathing, indeed, that the very phenomenon of light itself depended on some reaction with oxygen in the cubicle.
“No!” she said.
Then she felt herself, as though being buffeted, reel in the cubicle. But she knew that no blows were struck upon her body. Yet it seemed she was struck, as though by sound that could not be heard, but felt.
She felt herself weakening, and fell to her knees at the plastic wall, almost lost in light. She piteously scratched at the plastic, trying to find a crevice, a flaw, that might admit of her access, secure her release.
Outside she saw Gunther and William.. Their faces wore no emotion.
She shook her head, and fell half backward from the wall and rolled to the center of the cubicle. Then she could see nothing, nothing but the light, which like a brilliant, luminous, sparkling golden fog almost blinded her. She shut her eyes. “No!” she said. “No!” She rose again to her knees. She clenched her fists, now tightly. “No!” she cried.
When she opened her eyes again, to her astonishment, her relief, the light was gone.
She was alone in the cubicle.
Outside she saw Herjellsen, no longer beneath the hood. He was standing outside, looking at her. Gunther and William stood to one side.
“You have failed!” she cried.
Her heart bounded with elation. They had been unable to transmit her. They had failed.
“I have resisted you!” she cried. “I have resisted you!” She laughed. “You have failed!” She looked at Gunther. “You will have to sell me, Gunther!” she cried. “You will have to sell me!”
Herjellsen, she saw, picked up a small microphone from the table, near the hood.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
She nodded. She heard his voice, quite clearly. The speaker was fixed in the ceiling of the cubicle.
“Turn their eyes,” he said, “to the stars.”
She looked at him, puzzled.
Then she said, “You have been unable to transmit me. My will was too strong for you. You have failed.”
“Turn their eyes,” said Herjellsen, “to the stars.”
“It will not be necessary to dispose of me in the bush, Professor Herjellsen,” she said. “There is an alternative. I realize you cannot simply release me. But there is an alternative, an excellent one, to consider. I have discussed this with Gunther, and he informs me it is practical.” She drew a deep breath. “I can be sold,” she said. “Please, Professor Herjellsen,” she said, “do not kill me.” She looked at him. “Instead let me be sold.”
“We have no intention of killing you, my dear,” said Herjellsen, “nor, indeed, of having you sold.”
“I-I do not understand,” she said.
“Retrieval of living material, once transmitted,” said Herjellen, “is apparently impossible. Retrieval was attempted with the leopard. We received only certain fragments of bone. These have been identified as those of a contemporary species of leopard, but the dating has fixed the acquisition at better than twenty-eight thousand years ago.”
“I do not understand what you are saying,” said Hamilton.
“I am saying,” said Herjellsen, “that it seems that retrieval is impossible.”
“Retrieval?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Herjellsen.
“What has this to do with me?” she whispered.
“Surely you must understand,” said Herjellsen, “that the chamber is now open.”
She looked about herself, in terror. Everything seemed the same.
“Don’t kill me,” she said. “Sell me!”
“It will be necessary neither to kill you nor sell you, my dear,” said Herjellsen.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“The chamber is now open,” he said.
“You are mad, mad!” she screamed.
“Turn their eyes,” said Herjellsen, “to the stars.”
Hamilton threw back her head, and threw her hands to the side of her head, and screamed.
11
Brenda Hamilton knelt, head thrown back, hands pressed to the sides of her head, screaming, in cold, wet grass, in the half darkness.
“No, no, no!” she wept.
She threw herself to her stomach in the cold grass, and clawed at it, and pressed the side of her cheek against it. She felt her fingers dig into the wet mud at the roots of the grass. “No,” she wept. “No!”
A light rain was falling. “Herjellsen,” she wept. “No!” She felt cold. “Please, no!” she wept.
She rose to her knees, shaking her bead. She felt the cold, wet grass, flat and cutting, on her legs and thighs. She was cold. “No,” she wept. The sky was dark, except for a rim of cold, gray light to her left. “No!” she cried.
She rose to her feet, unsteadily, cold, in the half darkness. She felt mud with her right foot.
The rain, slight, cold, drizzling, fell upon her. She cried out with misery.
“Herjellsen!” she cried. “William! Gunther! Take me back! Take me back! Do not send me away! Please!”
She screamed to the dark, gray, raining sky, standing in the wind, the cold rain.
“Take me back!” she cried. “Do not send me away! Please! Please!”
She knelt down and seized the grass with her hands. “I’m here!” she cried. “I’m here! Take me back! Please!” Then suddenly she screamed, and fled stumbling from the place. “It seems retrieval is not possible,” had said Herjellsen. All that had been recovered of the leopard had been crumbled bone, indexed by carbon dating to a remote era, more than twenty-eight thousand years ago.
She looked at the place, in the early, cold light, where she had lain and knelt.
It seemed no different than other places she could make out, except that the grass had bent beneath her weight, wet, crushed.
She crept back to it, and put her band timidly to the grass. Suddenly there was a stroke of lightning, broad and wild, cracking in the sky, and she screamed and fled away, falling and getting up.
In that stroke of lightning she had seen illuminated what seemed to be an open field, of uncomprehended breadth.
Thunder then swept about her, a pounding drum of sound, a stroke, rolling, of great depth and might, and suddenly the rain, wild with wind, following the turbulence in the sky, lashed about her.
She looked up, crying.
Again and again lightning split the darkness. She stood alone. Thunder smashed the world, pounding about her. Rain lashed her body.
“Herjellsen,” she cried, “I am here!”
Then she threw herself down on the grass, naked, terrified of the lightning, whipped by the rain, covered her head with her hands, and wept.
In a few moments the storm had abated, and there was again only a light drizzle of rain. It was lighter now, and there was, all about her, the gentle, cool, gray of dawn. She could see the field extending away from her, on all sides.
The light was substantially to her left, which direction she surmised was East.
She stood up, in the drizzling, cold dawn, and looked about.
She tried to find where she had first knelt, but could not do so.
She was hungry.
She took grass and sucked rain from it. The grass had a sweet taste. The drops of water were cold.
She looked up into the sky. The clouds were vast, the sky was vast. The rain had almost stopped falling now.
“I am here, Herjellsen,” she whispered.
Then she remembered that in the human reality, in time as it could only be understood by humans, Herjellsen, and Gunther and William could not hear her.
They had not yet been born.
She kept the sun on her left and began to walk, generally south.