3. Block

Block's mind was still reeling from his second encounter with Lanette.

"Thirty-three seconds on the dot," she said brightly, holding up the stopwatch for him to verify. "You're improving. I'd say about ten percent, if my estimate of the last time at thirty seconds was correct. And my estimates are usually pretty good. I'm really good at putting a figure to time lapses. I must have a crystal for a mind. What do you think? We have to get down to the chopper. It hasn't waited long, you know, but we don't want to keep it waiting unnecessarily."

He couldn't understand how his perception of time could be so different from the actual time. Not that he was complaining, he thought, as he strapped himself in and closed his eyes. If a second in Lanette seemed like an eternity, he was after all the eternity he could get.

It wasn't like sleep. Sleep passed without awareness. Being in Lanette was like being awake, no like being super awake, super alert, aware of every moment, every movement, every tingle, every miniscule atom of wet warmth.

"Oh! Shit! No! My Lord. Bewoweebeexzubee!"

The increasing volume of the screaming woke Block form his slumber. He looked up to see Lanette emerging from the pilot's cabin, gently shutting the door behind her.

She put a finger up to her lips. "Shush. The pilot's praying."

"Where are we?" Block was still disoriented.

"Just coming into Miami Spaceport. The pilot should be back in control. See, out the window there, he's putting us down right next to that Stratostreamer."

"Back in control?"

"He had it on automatic. You know how lazy some of these pilots can get. It's not lazy, really. After all, it's such a boring job what with all those lights on the instrument panel telling him what to do. All he has to do is just sit there and take instructions. But some people take instructions better than others. I know I do, at least sometimes. I try. I do all right if I listen closely. Sometimes, though, I just can't concentrate. And if I don't listen, then, well, how can I follow something I haven't listened to?"

Block gazed out the window as the craft settled down on the tarmac. It landed with a thump, actually bouncing once.

He wondered what the pilot was on. "I can see why he was praying," he commented, unharnessing himself from his seat.

"Oh, they do that a lot. They really do. Now you go on over and get in the Stratostreamer while I take care of the clearances."

Block jumped down and turned, helping her out. She was on the deck almost before he had his hand up. He watched her lithe figure with admiration as she walked over to the trailer driven out to service the plane.

The Stratostreamer was designed to carry up to eight people comfortably anywhere they wanted on Earth. With a special fitting, a small disposable engine under its tail, it could even make orbit.

Block climbed up the steps and stuck his head into the cabin. It was configured with a bar in front, and two lounge chairs arranged to one side. A large bed, he noted with a twinge of anticipation, took up the back.

"All the amenities," he thought.

He went in, found a bottle of scotch, and poured some over ice cubes. He sat in one of the chairs and tried to arrange recent events in some sort of order.

First off, The Chairman summoned him to a meeting at an exotic hotel, the normal way he obtained his assignments. The Chairman operated out of a series of hotel penthouses, moving from one to another so his enemies, the leaders of the many nationalistic governments still opposing the formation of the emerging Representative World Government, had less chance of ambushing him.

Not that the death of The Chairman would make much difference. The emerging Representative World Government was just that, an emerging entity, a conglomeration of nationalistic interests becoming aware that for any nationalistic identity to survive in a world made small by communications and weapons of unsurpassable destruction, national identities had to be subordinated to the interests of the group of nations as a whole.

National identity didn't die easy, and in fact, it was one of the goals of the emerging Representative World Government to maintain nationalistic identities.

But fundamentalist movements existed in all countries, the desire of vested interests to maintain local control over what they viewed as outside interference in private affairs. The United States served as a model for the give and take involved when state's rights issues clash with overall national interests, which pooled the nation's resources for the common good.

The success of the United States provided a model for the unification of the nations of the world, if only as a successful example of what was generally thought impossible.

But elements within all nations, and even the ruling class of many nations, opposed the emerging Representative World Government with a fanactism that bordered on, and many times passed, the bounds of civility, raging often into the territory of terrorism, random acts of maniacs which, if allowed to spread, would not only render the world unsafe for any of its citizens, but would eventually destroy civilization.

Block knew The Chairman wasn't the only servant of the emerging Representative World Government, but he'd been the most effective in anticipating the forces leading to its creation.

The Chairman knew any World Government would not, could not be the product of any single individual or group of individuals.

If it were to be successful, the emerging Representative World Government would have to be the product of the many forces in the world merging in an overall need for the survival of the species on the planet.

Knowing any World Government would be a product of the higher instincts of mankind, a collective result of its existence, The Chairman also knew any opposition would come from the defects that mankind's existence generated.

The Representative World Government that was emerging may well be a product of the natural forces resulting from man's existence on the planet, but whether it could successfully emerge was an iffy proposition. It could go one way or the other, the planet unifying under a common principle or falling back into a continuous cycle of death from starvation, disease and slaughter. Its creation a delicate balance unification and destruction, The Chairman and others around the world fortunate enough to be able to analyze and plan were determined to shift the balance in favor of unification.

The course of destruction, for which history provided an ample record, was simply too horrible to allow. Mankind was faced with two different pictures of reality. The two conflicted with each other. The one was too horrible to allow happen.

Unification was the only solution.

And because those who couldn't see the whole, who allowed their own immediate interests and desires to supersede the interests of the whole blind them to the whole, had to strike out at something in order to justify their position, they struck out at anything and everything, trying to preserve the status quo by terrorizing the present into the past.

These reactionaries, not being able to strike out against the forces at work bringing about the unification they hated, attempted to strike out at the men and women who represented the miniscule effort tipping the balance in favor of unification.

They thus became the representatives of the forces opposed to unification, the forces that were the product of the basest of human instincts, the forces forged in the caves and dungeons of the past far from the sunlight, far from the close examination of a consensus that would normally burn them into mist and make them disappear into the cool breeze of a new dawn.

This was why so much effort went into protecting The Chairman. He was the central cog in the forces attempting to overturn the balance in favor of unity. The forces opposed to unity were worldwide, some occupying positions in the most powerful of nations, even the United States, and others being whole nations, each capable of the total destruction of all the emerging Representative World Government stood for.

Worse, the ability to produce, or work in conjunction with nations possessing nuclear weapons, had placed those weapons in the very hands of the people who promoted terrorism.

Block knew The Chairman was very concerned about this development. One of his most dangerous assignments almost resulted in the elimination of Washington, D.C. by a renegade known as The Pig. He'd only prevented it happening by a hair when, at the last minute, he seized control of The Pig's delivery vehicle, diverting it into outer space to explode harmlessly over Baltimore.

The Pig retaliated with an attempt on The Chairman. Fortunately, The Chairman wasn't in the penthouse suite in New York. Block kept it for his use so The Pig's revenge backfired. He'd confronted his quarry in the suitcase bomb affair and effectively eliminated him.

Even though the threat from nuclear proliferation was a major item on The Chairman's agenda, the threat foremost in his mind was far more subtle. The primary threat was the human race simply making the planet unlivable before it could unify to the extent it could control environmental misuse.

It was a delicate balance, regulating growth in a manner reflecting the reality of available resources. For instance, Block knew one of his major concerns was the uncontrolled increase in population growth. Population growth and poverty invariably went hand and hand. It was extremely difficult to break the cycle.

And population growth could create an insurmountable blockage to the emergence of The Representative World Government.

Controlling population was a constant battle. The nationalists didn't have to do much to encourage population growth. One of their favorite methods was to spread the word among the poor multitudes that birth control devices would make rats grow in their bellies or cause them to get HIV, devising any number of scare tactics to make it extremely difficult for resources to flow where they'd do the most good, putting blockages in the wombs of those who could least afford to bring hungry mouths into existence.

But encouraging population redundancy was just a sideline of the nationalistic mentality. It produced pain and misery in the highest degree, creating almost universal suffering from disease and starvation and the resulting violence that resulted from too many mouths and too little food.

The nationalists weren't satisfied with encouraging this little area of almost universal agony. It was perhaps too slow for them, although if left unchecked, it'd eventually be successful in throwing the world into the darkest of ages imaginable.

The nationalists felt they must do something now, immediately, to put the bricks to the emerging Representative World Government. They were constantly trying to ruin the world's currencies, disrupt its food supply, or, as in the present case, destroy the movement of its energy.

Because The Chairman was in the forefront of efforts to block these attempts by nationalistic interests to destroy the emerging Representative World Government before it could emerge, he was also the target for their attempts.

As a result, his protection was as absolute as it could be.

But attempts there would always be, and it was fortunate he, Block, once again was able to prevent one from being successful.

Block was between assignments and stopped for a drink at the hotel Rudolph Lang was giving a speech not only because he enjoyed Lof, but because he thought he could learn something from her speech.

He stopped in the bar for a quick drink and after several, the girl, not really attractive, more waspish than pretty, although through the drink she had her charms, the girl's air of invincibility intrigued him. He was used to focusing on a person's good points in order to make them more attractive, he called it idealization, but she almost forced him to focus on what she wanted him to focus on. It was like she'd hypnotized him and forced him into bed with her.

She had to have drugged him up front, slipped something into his drink at the bar, making him suggestible. He wasn't in the habit of going to bed with women right off the bat. Oh, there'd been several occasions when it happened, but only when he was horny. Never let it be said Ronald Block couldn't hold his liquor or his zipper.

But after withstanding all she could give, he'd been able to get away and keep his appointment with The Chairman.

The thing he didn't understand was the woman being in the chopper connected to the attempt on The Chairman's life.

Had he spilled the beans where The Chairman would be?

He doubted it. Even if he'd been inclined, he couldn't spill anything, at least verbally. Whatever she'd given him rendered him mute.

He'd barely been able to speak when he finally regained the use of his limbs, was able to escape and make his way to the doctor.

No, he hadn't spilled the beans. She must've found out some other way.

But how?

If he remembered correctly, she hadn't asked him any questions, at least anything meaningful.

If she already knew, why did she drug him? If she didn't know, why drug him and not ask any questions?

More interesting, why hadn't she killed him outright, having the one person who could prevent her from carrying out a successful attempt on The Chairman's life under her complete control?

And what was she doing carrying out such an attempt? He'd never seen her before the casual meeting in the hotel bar, if, in fact, it was casual, a meeting leading to his captivity and torture.

Who was she? Who did she represent? On whose behalf was she working to derail the emerging Representative World Government?

It made no sense.

Having two dead ends, he let each cancel the other out and moved on to other considerations.

What was going on with the oil situation? How could oil simply disappear from the surveyed holds of tankers in mid-ocean?

That was something he could at least get his teeth into. He'd pick up whatever leads he could from Lansdowne in Gaspé. If anyone knew how oil might be disappearing, it'd be Lansdowne.

But the thought of Lansdowne was perplexing.

Georges Lansdowne was the leading guru for the International Conservation Group.

Lof Lang was the President of the group. Lof was in Miami to set out the parameters of an oil policy dealing with poorer nations.

Lof Lang's son was kidnapped. Block was in the hotel where the kidnapping occurred. He was being tortured by the woman who made the attempt on The Chairman's life. The Chairman wasn't there for the attack because of the Lang kidnapping.

His head began to spin from the circles his mind was going in. He couldn't make sense out of any of it.

He finished his drink and, suddenly finding himself non-pulsed, grew impatient. He looked around for Lanette.

At least she made sense and, if at times, no sense, at least incredible sensations.

He stuck his head out the door of the plane.

She was nowhere in sight. The trailer servicing the Stratostreamer was sitting on the runway, its aerials silently giving and receiving information.

He climbed down from the plane.

He heard screams from the trailer.

"No. Damn it! No! No! No! Stop! Stop! Don't do that to me. Oh! Oh! Oh! Lord! Whoopee doopee yippee doodle day. Ump."

The door opened and Lanette emerged quickly. She tapped a small black box against her lips. "He's praying," she said. "Let's get going so we don't disturb him. I have the flight clearances all programmed into this little thingamajig so we won't be hitting any other airplanes. Don't you think it's amazing all of those airplanes fly around up there and never hit each other? Well, almost never, I mean, there's been some cases where two of them have run into each other, but not lately, not since they have these concom boxes that fix exactly where you're going to be at any one time so two planes can't meet unless, of course, one of them isn't on the concom system in which case, boom, it's all over. But of course, they'd have to be in the same airspace at the same time which would be almost impossible except that's why they invented the concom boxes in the first place. Did you find the bar?"

"Where's the pilot?"

Lanette tapped her forefinger at the crevice her perfect cleavage. "Me," she said brightly. "I'm the pilot. Isn't that great? We'll be all alone." She bounced up the stairs and waved him to follow. Once in, she pressed the door button, watching it fold up and slide shut. "Cross check!" She took his finger and pressed the deactivated button.

"Cross check?"

"Just a joke. They used to do that on commercial jets when the doors were mechanical. It guarded against somebody forgetting to bolt the door shut. Isn't that interesting? Come here. I'll show you how to fly this thing. You don't know how, do you? No, I didn't think so. See?"

She took the little black box and inserted it into a slot in the instrument panel. The panel lit up in response.

"It plugs directly into the Iridium Network. That light tells us it knows exactly where we are. Well, not it, but the computer we're communicating with through the network."

She pushed a button on the control panel and the engines, two slim cylinders on each side of the tail, sprung to life.

A series of lights came on the panel.

"That shows our engines are running properly. The computer knows who we are and what we are, and it knows exactly what temperature the engines should be at take off.

"See?"

She pointed to the control panel where a light just finished flashing.

She patted the seat next to her as she pushed the button just below the one that finished flashing.

"Sit down."

Block did so involuntarily as the Stratostreamer began to glide forward.

Lanette put her hand on a ball imbedded in her seat arm and the plane began to move out onto the runway.

"What happens is we connected to the central computer. The central computer has our location, our destination and has given us a course to get there that takes into consideration all other plotted courses. But of course I'm sure you know all that."

Block knew about it and had even used it from the other end in the suitcase caper, but he'd never had anybody explain it to him from the pilot's seat and, he thought as he watched her delicious mouth move, he wasn't about to stop her from talking about it or anything else.

"When the courses of other planes change, their effect on our course is automatically computed and our course altered.

"It can, of course, pick up any planes that aren't communicating with it by their heat emissions and plot them, automatically replotting everybody else's course.

"It's a whiz-bang system. Even nations that are the worst offenders when it comes to trying to get some cooperation in unifying the world on a political basis use it. They're probably the most avid users. They didn't have to develop it and they didn't have to pay for it, all they have to do is plug in and pay a fee. And then they have the gall to criticize which way we're going, and even try to do away with The Chairman. Did you know The Chairman was the architect of the system? He sketched it out on a napkin after lunch one day and that alone was used for financing. And as always in cases like this, it wasn't the financing that was important, it was the group commitment, the agreement this was good, it was the way to go, and the only way to get there was to cooperate, pitch in and get it done at all costs. There are a million things like that in the world, disparate linkages binding the world together into a symbiotic system of interests. I hate those bastards who think they can blow it apart by snipping here and snipping there. Whew. That must've been a reaction to the attempt on The Chairman. I wonder who that little bitch was. You said she was the one who tortured you?"

A row of lights that had been sequencing suddenly went all green and Lanette tapped a button next to the ball control. The Stratostreamer swiftly moved forward, gained momentum, and became airborne.

"There, see?" Lanette got up from her seat. "Nothing to it. We're on our way."

Block got up and followed her out of the pilot's cabin.

"Taking off is the easy part. How do you land it by computer."

"Oh, that's no trouble. I usually like to do it myself anyway. I like to fly, you know. Belong to a club. I've even flown old biplanes. With people on the wings. I've even been on the wing myself. We do flips and other stunts, not known to common pilots. I'm good you know."

As she moved past the bar, she pointed to the bed. "Do you want to do me again? I've a few seconds. Gosh. We've more than an hour if you want to do it that long. If you can. I had the bed installed especially because you like to be in me so much, but we can do it in the chair if you like. I mean I can do it to you in the chair. I'll do anything you want, you know. Or you can do anything you want to me. I'm good and lithe and can do a lot of things, very athletic, more athletic that Janette even if I'm not wired properly, as you say, which she probably is, although I never asked her whether she was or not, but I guess I could ask her now that I know I'm not. I certainly hope you can get me wired properly because I'd like to learn how to shout and scream and cry and pray to strange gods, too.

"There." She helped Block tuck his shirt back in and then smoothed the bed down. "We're backsliding." She held up her stopwatch. "Twenty-two seconds. That's a thirty-three and a third percent reduction. I guess you're just getting used to me."

"Not hardly," Block muttered.

"Well, you can rest up. You'll do better next time. Or maybe I'll do better and help you make it longer."

Block went over to the bar and mixed another drink. Thirty-three seconds, twenty-two, thirty, each time seemed endless to him although when it did end he wanted to shout and scream and curse for it to continue.

But, all good things . . .

"What do you know about the International Conservation Group?" he asked.

"You didn't answer my question."

"What question?"

"I asked if the woman in the helicopter was the one who tortured you."

Block sipped scotch. "Yes," he finally admitted. "She was at the hotel where Lof Lang was giving her speech in Miami."

"You know Rudolph Lang?"

"Yes."

"And you were at the hotel with her the night her son was kidnapped?"

"Well, I wasn't with her as such."

"You were at the same hotel!"

"Yes."

"That Rudolph Lang was giving her speech."

"Yes."

"Okay. Now this girl who was in the helicopter was at the same hotel Rudolph Lang was giving her speech?"

"Yes."

"How did she get ahold of you?"

"She picked me up at the bar."

"She picked you up at . . ."

"And we went up to her room."

"And that's when she did the job on you?"

"Yes."

"Exactly how did she do this job on you?"

"She gave me a drug that paralyzed me so I couldn't move my arms or legs . . ."

"Or talk. We know about that. We have it analyzed as a paralytic, comes from a suburban snail, but there was something else the lab couldn't identify. What exactly did it do to you?"

"It made me, well, hard."

"It made you hard? Come on."

"No, it made me stay hard. I was already hard when she gave it to me."

"We'll have to isolate this stuff and duplicate it for you. You can use it so you can rewire me yourself. How did she give it to you."

"It must've been with a miniature injector. I think she had it tongued and spit it into her hand, sticking me behind the neck."

"We got the spot on the back of your neck. What was she doing just before she stuck you?"

"Sort of, well, working on me to get it up."

"You weren't up to it?"

"She'd left me in the bedroom while she was doing something in the other room."

"This isn't getting me anywhere. She talked you into going up to her room, she got you to undress, she sexed you up, then she stuck you with a paralytic with something else in it that kept you up.

"What did she do next?"

"She had her way with me."

"She what?"

"She raped me."

"How in the heck did she do that? From the looks of her, she was half you size."

"I was on my back and she just climbed on top. It was horrible, really. Humiliating. I can't stand to think about it."

"What were her reactions while she was doing all this?"

"I don't know. I kept my eyes shut the whole time."

"Oh, come on. You know what I mean. Was she enjoying herself?"

"I should think so. She scratched the daylights out of me."

"We have those marks. Nipple abuse. Normal for men on women, but not so the reverse. So she really got off on you?"

"Several times. I was soaking wet. She came all over me."

"Hmmm. Soaking wet. I'll have to look into that. Sounds like your girlfriend has learned how to squirt. Then this torture. Was it really intended as a torture? After all, the paralytic she used paralyzed your vocal cords as well as your arms. She certainly wasn't trying to get any information out of you. She apparently just wanted to hear you grunt, not sing. Did she ask you for any information?"

"No."

"Then what was this other business, this torture stuff all about? Did she say anything about that?"

"She seemed quite pleased with herself, like Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb."

"We recovered the stuff. It looked like an electric bra, some sort of vibrator connected to what looked like minus "A" cups. Were her breasts small enough to fit into something that small?"

"I don't remember what she looked like without her clothes on. She seemed to disappear."

"Maybe that's why she paralyzed you."

"Oh?"

"To keep you from running out of the room. What else do you remember about her attitude when she was hooking you up to the vibrating bra?"

"She did make one comment I remember."

"What was that?"

Block got up and refreshed his drink. He'd been debriefed many times, but not by someone who eliminated his defenses.

He came back over and sat down, taking a long pull on his scotch.

"She said something about rewarding me, making up for her not getting me off."

"You didn't get off? You stick it in me for thirty seconds and your off all over the place and this gal with the tiny tits chemically ties you up, gets you up, keeps you up, and does God knows what with you for heaven knows how long, and you didn't get off? It couldn't have been the paralytic because it didn't keep you from getting off after she'd hooked you up to what was apparently her version of a two-pronged electric dildo.

"She certainly wasn't after you. In fact, I can say with a high degree of certainty she didn't even know who you were."

"How so?"

"If she'd known who you were, she wouldn't have been sitting around playing with your ass, she's have killed it!

"So that's one set of facts. You got picked up by a girl, that girl was in the same hotel Rudolph Lang was in, and the girl shows up in an attempt on The Chairman's life."

"And Rudolph Lang was involved in oil," Block continued, "and the people who have been missing and turning up mutilated were involved in oil, but Rudolph Lang wasn't kidnapped, her son was."

"Now you're getting into the swing of things. That drug is beginning to wear off, although I'd have sworn it already had. We've a second set of facts which includes the girl was in the hotel where Rudolph Lang was giving a speech, her son was snatched from that hotel and she turns up in an attempt to take out The Chairman.

"Taking the two sets together, I think we can draw some sort of conclusion. You knew The Chairman was going to be at the Crystal Room the next day, but she wasn't interested in getting that information from you, probably because she didn't know who you were or where you were going.

"But more probably because she wasn't interested in The Chairman. I checked with Janette from the trailer before we took off. The Chairman told her to clear the Crystal Room for the night of Rudolph's speech so he could be close by in case an appearance was warranted on his part.

"He did this the morning of the speech. Janette probably gave you your marching orders at the same time."

"Day before yesterday morning," Block noted.

"Right. So the information about his whereabouts would've been on the street by that afternoon."

"Then she either had the information before I ran into her or she got it afterward."

"Interesting way of putting it. No. She got the information afterward."

"How do you know that?" Block asked.

"By setting up a third set of facts. She attacked the place The Chairman was staying. The Chairman's security net was in place almost two full days before the attack. Nothing that would support three attack helicopters could've been brought that close to The Chairman with his security net up. We've have known about any breach of the security net.

"Therefore, the base had to be mobile and it had to be in place before the security net was put in place."

"It had to be on the water then."

"Or under it," Lanette replied. "Janette said they're doing a computer analysis of all the satellite photos in the area for as long a period as it takes, but an initial look-see showed there's no place where the choppers could disappear. Wherever they went, it was there when The Chairman made his decision to go to the Bahamas."

"Making him a target of opportunity," Block observed.

"And the primary target something or someone else. Right on Ronald, we're really moving along here. Now it gets harder.

"We can assume Rudolph Lang was the primary target."

"Because she and the girl are common to both fact sets."

"Right again. She was at the hotel to snatch Lang. She didn't snatch Lang, she snatched her son. Then she made an attempt on The Chairman's life."

"Why couldn't she have been there simply to snatch Lof's son?"

"The attack on The Chairman is an irrational act no matter which way you slice it.

"Since it had to be an opportunistic act, it also wasn't a well-thought out act. If she'd been successful in getting Lang, she would've just cut and run. The attempt on The Chairman was an act of frustration, pure and simple."

"Or she might have been at the hotel to snatch the kid, or maybe even just for a little fun."

"Hey. That's what theories are," Lanette replied, "a way to arrange facts into a grouping of concepts that fit together and make sense. If we knew the girl was at the hotel to snatch Lang, we wouldn't need theory to organize it. We'd have a fact to work with. Not having facts, we have to work with concepts. Not having any way to prove the concepts, the only thing we can do is make sure the concepts are consistent with one another, don't disagree with the facts, and aren't based on other concepts we've come to believe are facts.

"Just because we conclude she was there to snatch Lang doesn't make it so. We'll never know unless we ask her and then we might not get the right answer. You told me just this morning we sugarcoat our memories so they go down easier.

"Just because we can never know, or maybe for that reason, we have to come up with some sort of picture of reality in order to act within it."

"How about a glass of wine, or something?" Block asked.

"You trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me? You want to take advantage of me now? Already? You don't have to ply me with liquor. I'm ready. It's hard to take advantage of someone who wants to be taken advantage of."

"I was just getting up to get a refill." Block retreated from a subject he hadn't intended to start, but then he looked directly into those yellow eyes, no hint of green, the soft smile, the remembered sensations, the feeling of falling into those eyes, now into Lanette's eyes that were the source of his mind actually vibrating in rhythm with . . .

"Bravo. Forty-eight seconds. Over a hundred and eighteen percent increase from your last performance and thirty-seven above average. You must be starting to like me."

"Like you . . ."

"Pooh. Here, I got you a fresh drink. You're going to need it. We've got to take a real leap to get where we're going. You're supposed to look into this business of the disappearing oil, right."

Block sat down, rubbing his forehead. His brain was still tingling from the sensations of moving in her. He was having trouble focusing on the subject.

"Right," she answered for him. "And people related to the oil business have been disappearing, specifically men. Rudolph Lang, while not directly related to the oil business, is the point person in an effort to use oil as a means of lifting impoverished countries out of the mire of disease and starvation. The Energy for Population Reduction program is one of The Chairman's initiatives."

Block's brain suddenly came clear. "The thought had crossed my mind. She's after Lof, she doesn't know Lof's a she, she finds out, doesn't want her and takes her kid on the spur of the moment, then finding that she's in proximity to the author of the program, goes after him."

"Close. It's the fact she went after The Chairman that connects the disappearances to the missing oil."

"How so?" Block asked.

"The Chairman's Energy for Population Reduction initiative could be defeated through eliminating popular support by eliminating its proponents, Lang being among the most visible, or . . ."

"It could be defeated simply by eliminating the oil destined for impoverished countries. If The Chairman can't guarantee the oil will be there, there'll be no incentive for the countries to practice birth control and the population of the world will continue to increase until its inhabitants sink in their own muck."

"That's why The Chairman is so concerned about the oil disappearances. Whatever his concerns, his worst fears are being realized. I assume you haven't heard Lang's speech, yet.

"I've taped excerpts."

Lanette's fingers danced over the controls on the arm of her chair. A panel by the bar slid up and a picture of Lang, motionless, appeared on the revealed screen.

"Ready?"

The image of Lang began to speak before Block could answer.

"The world has to move from the stage of high births and high deaths that characterized the agricultural societies from the beginning of history to a low birth and low death rate characterizing a society capable of affecting its environment.

"The reason we must reach a low birth rate, low death rate situation is because our ability to affect the environment in which we exist, the planet our very lives depend on, is such that we're capable of destroying it as well as living on it.

"The planet can only support the number of people who can exist without tilting the ecological balance in the direction of extinction.

"It's a basic maxim that all people have the right to exist.

"But in the transition between an agriculturally stable population and an industrially stable population, public health measures and medicine work to reduce the death rate.

"In an industrial population, several factors work to reduce the birth rate. The benefits of literacy and improved schooling translate into a high cost of rearing and educating children to take their place in a production based society. To contribute requires both intelligence and formal training. Women increasingly find life satisfaction outside the home and become something other than just the bearer and raisers of children. And of course, the realization of the dangers of overpopulation combines with a more rational religious sense and work to create a greater awareness of, and more effective, contraceptives.

"But because the basic maxim of humanity is that all people have the right to exist, the very public health measures that go hand in hand with the production of an industrially stable population are provided free of charge to the populations that haven't made the industrial transition.

"We're all familiar with the apple tree that bears so much fruit it collapses under its own weight.

"Its fruit brings about its demise.

"The same situation exists in the modern non-production based societies that have become beneficiaries of public health measures.

"The fruit is on the tree and the tree is growing at such a rate, the fruit has no place to fall. The tree is dying in its own production.

"The population is outstripping even the efficacy of the public health measures that gave it birth.

"The gutters of the world are filling with living human waste because the birth rate, unaffected by the production that limits it in advanced countries, remains the same while the death rate declines drastically. The result is the production of a redundant population which, because it's sinking under its own weight, can never reach the point where it'll produce enough resources to sustain its consumption.

"These resource consuming nations are caught in a deadly cycle. Efforts at increasing production can never match the increase in population consuming production.

"To put it quite simply, the number of jobs such a society produces can never match the number of people it produces to fill those jobs.

"Public health measures in a production based society stabilize the population. In a non-production based society, they destabilize the population in an ever-increasing cycle of poverty and population increase.

"We cannot eliminate the people, although it's been authoritatively suggested the overpopulation of people and the programs for their elimination are intrinsic to modern societies.

"H.G. Wells forcefully stated the fortunate cannot continue to go on giving the unfortunate health, freedom, and enlargement and wealth if all that's provided is swamped by an indiscriminate torrent of progeny.

"Historically, most of the elimination of overpopulation has been carried out by displacing huge segments of the population.

"This may have seemed to be an alternative when there was space available for the displacement. Whole countries, including the United States and Australia, are a product of this process.

"However, the world no longer has either the resources or the space to export redundant populations.

"If we want to see what the future has in store, we have only to look at the last twenty years. Ten percent of the Earth's population increased a mere 2.4 million people. Ten percent of the earth's population amounts to seven hundred million people.

"The other ninety percent more than doubled.

"In another two years, there'll be ten people living at below marginal existence for every one living at or above.

"In ten years, and I repeat, in just ten short years, less than the time it takes to obtain a basic education, there'll be twenty such people consuming resources for every one creating an excess in production of those same resources.

"How long do you think this can continue?

"It's now a truism that population redundancy breeds triage.

"Triage on the battlefield, the provision, for instance, of antibiotics to syphilitic ambulatory troops at the expense, many times of life itself, of non-ambulatory hardened veterans, is bad enough, but triage resulting from population redundancy is unconscionable on both a moral and a practical basis.

"Population control is the only way to avoid what I can only term self-induced triage, the murder of one's own children simply by giving them birth.

"Population control by triage has only one alternative: Population control through the control of birth.

"As a civilization, we have laws against the taking of a life.

"As a civilization, we have an obligation to prevent disease and starvation.

"A person who spreads disease and starvation is a taker of life.

"Giving birth to children under circumstances that'll not only result in their death, but will do so through the slow torture of starvation and disease, is murder and murder in its foulest form, murder by torture, murder of your own flesh and blood.

"We not only have an obligation to punish murderers, we have an obligation to prevent murder.

"We therefore have an obligation to adopt policies that lead to the elimination of populations, not by deportation, not by mass murder, not by death, and not by starvation, but by the control of births.

"This is something that cannot be imposed on nations.

"If a nation wishes to allow the unlimited production of human beings without reference to resources, we can only leave it to its own devices.

"One of the goals of public health measures is to isolate disease to keep it from spreading to the healthier segments of the community.

"I therefore propose we aid countries willing to adopt an effective program of limiting new births to a realistic estimate of the number of jobs available for each population segment in the country.

"We're not just proposing to provide energy to those countries, energy that'll form the basis for a production based society that can support itself on its own resources. We're willing to provide those countries with the jobs that'll serve as a support for development.

"And, of course, we're willing to provide the technology to limit births within the parameters of a specific program.

"A Representative World Government requires the governments making it up represent the people the governments purport to represent.

"A government cannot represent its people if its people are lying in the country's gutters dying of starvation and disease.

"The only way to eliminate pain, suffering, and murder is to eliminate births."

The picture went blank.

Lanette and Block sat in silence. Finally, the tinkle of ice in Block's glass brought out the present.

"That's an extremely strong point about self-induced triage," Block finally said.

"To be guilty of the murder of one's own children simply by giving them birth?" Lanette replied. "Its strength is its accuracy. It's established principle the act of giving life doesn't accord the right to take that life.

"Committing murder by birth is no less a crime than committing it by a gun or a knife and as Lang points out, worse, because it's the intentional infliction of pain and suffering on your own, a modern version of Medea.

"And here are the responses to the speech."

The screen sprung to life, this time with a crowd of screaming people, seemingly formless. As the camera zoomed in on specific elements, Block saw the masses of people were dotted with children wearing rags bearing signs printed in red ink, the edges of the letters dripping down the face of the sign.

The picture clicked from crowd to crowd, the only difference, the dress of the people and the language the signs were printed in.

"To save you linguistic difficulty," Lanette said, "every sign says the same thing or a slight variation of the same thing: Don't drown us in oil. We're drowning in oil. We're being boiled in oil, burned, tortured, roasted, basted, you name it."

"Are we staging them for some reason, to publicize the speech, perhaps?" Block asked. "I can't imagine this is some sort of spontaneous outburst. It'd take longer than that to translate the speech into all those languages and get it disseminated."

"This isn't a project designed to produce beneficial results," Lanette replied.

"Who's behind it?"

"We've no idea. It's like it was born whole. As best we can tell, it's a group called The Save Our Children Foundation. They have orphanages all over the world. The only connection we can make is with a quasi-religious group calling itself The Art of the Lord."

"Art? Not Arc?"

"Art. Their slogan is, children are the art of the Lord. Their orphanages are run out of monasteries worldwide. They seem to be well-funded. In underdeveloped areas of the world, they dress themselves in the same costumes you saw in the clips of the protests and stand on street corners just looking up at passersby. They don't even beg. They just look imploringly. I guess eyes can really do something to you because they end up collecting a lot of money without even raising the question of religion.

"Now for some of the responses from the statesmen of the world. I've had them translated."

"That's President Anatol," Block said automatically. "He'd oppose birth control because he's got every member of his family down to the tots employed in some manner or other in his government."

President Anatol appeared on the screen speaking in front of a fifty-foot statute of himself, standing on a speaker's platform made up of his outstretched hands, palms up.

"It's an insult to humanity to suggest we murder our own children in return for oil.

"It's the absolute responsibility of all nations favored by God to support the poorer peoples of the world.

"To suggest the poorer peoples of the world have any responsibility is absurd.

"The only responsibility that exists is to the poor.

"By definition, no responsibility can lay with the poor.

"Further . . ."

Block reached over and pushed a button. The screen started to flip. Lanette corrected it.

"I couldn't take it," he said.

"There's more. Here's Denny Denjens."

A picture of President Denjens appeared, his field cap worn backwards, an idiosyncrasy copied by millions of young people around the world.

"I want to ask you," he was saying. "and when I mean you, I not only mean you who are out here in front of me listening to my voice, but those of you listening on the radio and watching me on television, I want to ask you, what, and when I say what, I want all of you, those of you who are tuned in by satellite and on delayed tape, I want to ask you what is, and I mean in the present, right now, what is birth control?"

His image faded off.

"That's it?" Block asked.

"That's it. He lost his thread. He came back later and asked everyone to write him and tell him what birth control meant to them."

"Incredible."

"Now we hear from Prime Minister Bourgesie."

A dapper man in a dark suit came on the screen.

"I believe it's important to consider the alternatives that have been provided by those more fortunate to those less fortunate.

"We've been accused of murder if we do what God intended us to do.

"We've been accused of murder most foul if we do what God intended for us to do.

"God has limited the number of babies that can be born to a single woman by limiting the size of her womb and dictating the length of time it takes to bring each pregnancy to fruition.

"God has also sought to limit the number of births by fertility. Not all women are capable of bearing children.

"But these are God's ways and God's provenance.

"The bible states it's an abomination to waste your seed upon the ground.

"The only purpose of disseminating the seed of God is to bring it into contact with a woman who is capable of turning that seed into a human being.

"There's no other purpose. You sin if you spill the seed except under circumstances that bring about the conception of a child.

"It's our obligation to procreate.

"What, I ask you, is the purpose of life if it isn't to procreate?

"I can only say to those who would replace our precious seed with oil, give us your oil, yes.

"We welcome, yea, we encourage such a generous offer.

"But don't ask us to turn away from the goal God has set for us.

"Go forth and multiply . . ."

Block again sent the picture into an uncontrollable roll.

"That's hard to take."

"It may be hard to take, but it represents the opinion of the representatives of a majority of the world's governments. Even if you eliminate those countries, such as China, which are conducting a vigorous campaign to limit births, you still end up with a little over one-third of the people producing two thirds of the births.

"The world went into the danger zone when it passed four billion.

"It went into the critical stage when it passed six billion.

"With seven billion people consuming the Earth's resources, we're now in the self-destruct zone. It's like a chain reaction. Poverty increases the population which, in turn, increases poverty.

"There's another aspect here that Lang doesn't mention, probably because it's too horrible to mention.

"Human beings not only need sustenance to survive, they need space. If you start crowding human beings into an area smaller than the area the human spirit needs to thrive and grow, the human spirit dissolves and instead of indirectly murdering your flesh and blood, as Lang implied, humanity will begin to murder itself just like rats forced to reproduce in a limited space. First, rats rape their mothers and sisters and if they're strong enough, their brothers, then they murder them and eat them.

"Limited resources result in overcrowding in the areas where few resources are available and the result is simply not discussible."

"If the kids were coordinated, what about the Nationalistic representatives?" Block asked, looking at his watch and, finding time, tipping a small amount of scotch into his glass.

"We don't know what allegiance they bear to The Art of the Lord or The Save Our Children Foundation, if any. It could be they've just come out against a proposed program because it's in their own peculiar interest to do so."

"Peculiar is right. The only time that Jimmie Bourgesie felt the inside of a womb was when his mother was carrying him. God knows what Denjens does for sex. The rumors I've heard aren't to be believed. And that asshole Anatol. They murder one bastard and what happens? We get another one just like him.

"The world must be a vacuum for different types of twits. As soon as one is eliminated, nature creates ten more, all worse than the last."

"Be that as it may," Lanette countered, "we have to deal with them on a day-to-day basis if we're going to keep the emerging Representative World Government tilted on the emerging rather than the submerging side."

Block looked at his watch again.

"Aren't we getting close? I want to see you land this thing. Isn't Gaspé a huge rock? How can you land on a rock?"

"Gaspé is the peninsula, Perce the rock, and Lansdowne has a little rock next to the big one. We could land on the rock if you want, or we could try. It's a quarter mile long. But I don't think its flat, and then how would we get off. Want to try? We've landing rights in the Chic Chocks, just west of Murdockhville. We're going to hop over, but we won't land on the rock, especially not Lansdowne's laboratory. We'll probably take a speedboat over."

Block looked at his watch again.

Lanette looked at him looking at his watch and laughed. "Don't worry. See?"

She went up to the cockpit, bent over the control chair and threw her dress up over her back.

Block took one look, her perfectly shaped derriere, her gorgeous face with those yellow eyes shining from dual reflections off either side of the cockpit, and time stopped for him, or rather slowed down so its passage was still deliciously unbearable.

"Fifty-seven seconds," Lanette said, straightening her dress as Block hung collapsed over the back of the co-pilots control chair. "Closing in on a minute. Either you're really starting to like me or that stuff you're drinking is delaying your reflexes. If your reflexes are being delayed, we've a problem because if you drink too much, you won't be able to do it at all and you wouldn't want that would you, I mean, after all, that wouldn't be any fun, not doing it at all."

She refreshed his drink and sat him down in the co-pilots chair, sitting down next to him in the pilot's chair.

"I did everything necessary to land while you were in me. It took me even less time than it took you. See?" She pointed at a knob on the sequencing indicator. "I just punched that button to tell the computer I wanted to land. The computer checked with the control tower, which is nothing more than an electronic activator, and the control tower cleared us for landing.

"Watch."

Block was once again clearing his mind of the incredible vibrations. He tried to think exactly what it was about the pleasure that made it different from all other pleasures he'd ever experienced. He realized pleasure, like pain, was non-recallable. He could reconstruct a picture of her shape, going impossibly, it seemed, in more directions than three-dimensional space would allow, perfectly symmetrical, painfully beautiful, but that would only start the desire going again. It wouldn't reconstruct the sensations of past pleasure.

Only possession would accomplish that and he'd just finished possessing her.

The reconstruction led to nowhere but frustration. He replaced the picture with a concept of Georges Lansdowne and their upcoming meeting, a meeting with a mad scientist on a forsaken hunk of rock sitting in the Atlantic Ocean.

He felt the Stratostreamer come to an effortless halt on the tarmac. Lanette activated the door. He saw a helicopter settle down next to the fuselage as the door slipped open.

Lanette was down the stairs in a bound, conferring with the pilot.

"This is Henry Larcrotte," she said as Block walked over.

Block nodded.

"He says there's some weather out by the rock. He's going to put us down on the hill opposite the rock, back out of the wind. He says there's a car waiting to take us down to the dock and we can take a speedboat out from there."

"What's with this guy Lansdowne that he's so difficult to get to?"

Lanette shrugged "These guys work at their own convenience. What hardware do you need if you deal in ideas? All you need is a mind. Doesn't make much difference where you are. You'll see. This might be very beautiful up here. Probably gives him inspiration."

She helped Block into the cabin of the chopper and the two strapped themselves in.

"I've met Larcrotte before. He prays to some strange god whose name starts out Jink, Jink, Jinkopatzaboodie, but I can't remember the rest of it. Anyway, he's proficient as a pilot, but I can't even get him to look me in the eyes.

"Oh, well, I'm used to it. Men who can't make it in me never seem to like me later. That means not many men like me. You're different, Ronald. You seem to like me. You seem to like me a lot."

The helicopter lifted off, its rear jets kicking in. It began to skim across the treetops like a whisper.

Block realized the whisper was more of a roar as the wind whipped past at a speed greater than their ground speed. The wind must be heavy.

"What do we know about this guy Lansdowne?"

"Just that he's considered an oddball, an outcast, a kook," Lanette replied. "He was one of the first established scientists to endorse the new paradigm."

"That the attractive force is a product of and proportional to the temperature of a cooling body in space," Block observed

"You couldn't even believe the number of scientific papers that would go out the window if the paradigm turned out to be correct. Even papers on something as seemingly unrelated as cellular microbiology rest on the hypothetical assumption every bit of matter contains some sort of invisible force that reaches out without diminishing to the ends of the universe. More papers were written with that magical belief in the last century than in the history of science. Reputation, and the funding and equipment it entails, would all go up in smoke."

"I've never been able to understand why," Block replied. "After all, as you pointed out earlier, concepts are nothing but working assumptions."

"When a concept like the mass/gravity hypothesis becomes accepted as fact and then is used as a fact everyone basis their speculations on, manufacturing experiments designed to prove their own speculations, they're constructing mental edifices that carefully guard against external attack.

"There can be no defense against the obvious being wrong. Remember Einstein said if the interpretation of Michelson Morley was wrong, relativity was out the window. And it turned out Michelson Morley resulted not because interference patterns were caused by some ill-conceived notion that light traveled in waves but because they were just taking light that was expanding over a uniform sphere, splitting it, and then overexpanding it. When it was intermingled, it recombined to the point it'd have expanded had it not been overexpanded, leaving the uniform blank areas of light, non-light that were thought to be interference patterns.

"When relativity fell with all the nonsense based on it, it caused a return to celestial mechanics. But by that time, computer measurements clearly showed celestial mechanics was bunk based on the erroneous observation an object will travel in a straight line unless it has a force acting upon it rather than the correct observation that an object remains at rest with respect to the current forces acting upon it.

"When hypotheses are invisible, but are used as the basis for other hypotheses, they fall and all the notions based on them fall.

"When science made mass gravity its basic hypothesis, it created a religion it'll mindlessly defend to the end."

"So by coming out in support of the new paradigm, which simply replaces the independently measurable temperature for the non-independently measurable concept of mass, Lansdowne has to barricade himself in the bowels of a rock?" Block asked.

"You got it," Lanette replied. "That way he can only be injured by pen and paper, and since the people wielding the pens are only making themselves look ridiculous in the eyes of history, he's eminently safe."

Block pointed over at a large excavation to the north of their flight pattern.

Lanette immediately spotted a sleek black chopper rising out of the pits.

"That's an abandoned copper mine. I've no idea what that chopper's doing there."

The chopper fell in behind them and to the north at a distance that prohibited visible identification.

Lanette thought of having Larcrotte open communications with it, then shrugged it off. "Probably thinking of re-opening the mine. Copper really took a jump in price with the recent fluctuations in the commodities market. Word is, The Chairman had something to do with that."

"Only in stabilizing it," Block said, pointing to the top of the upcoming hill.

"Watch." Lanette pointed as the chopper broke the surface of the hill. They caught a glimpse of the beautiful but forbidding rock jutting like a sharks fin scarcely half a mile off the tip of the peninsula before the pilot dropped the chopper beneath the windscreen.

Block pointed at a huge grey stone building sitting atop the hill, appearing to defend against the sea. "Looks like some sort of monastery."

"I've no idea what it is. Look." Lanette pointed at the helicopter that'd been their companion for the last fifty kilometers.

The craft stopped above the walls of the structure and dropped behind its stone walls.

"We'll have to ask Lansdowne what that place is." Their helicopter settled down, swaying in the breeze. "There's the car."

They jumped out and walked over to a waiting Land Rover. "This is Michelle Delacroix," she said, then to the driver, "Ronald Block."

Delacroix gave Block a half salute, averting his eyes, refusing to look at Lanette.

The two jumped in the back and Delacroix accelerated over the crest the hill.

"Whoa." The words caught in Block's throat.

Lanette laughed. As the Land Rover went over the edge of the hill, the effect was like being in an elevator, dropping straight down. The end of the peninsula facing the rock was taller than the rock itself and it didn't have a face that slopped gently enough to allow for normal grading. Someone decided to build a road anyway and it pretty much went straight down.

Delacroix braked as the wheels touched down on the road just in time to take the first curve, a curve that barely decreased the drop. He hit the gas out of the curve and the Land Rover shot forward once again, leaving the pavement for a short time, regaining it just in time to break for the next sharp curve.

Five identical curves later, the Land Rover pulled up at the base of the hill, stopping just in time to insure there was no cross traffic, then leaping across the road into a parking lot at the foot of a pier.

"There's the speedboat," Lanette said, jumping out of the Land Rover and walking over to the dock. "This is Pierre Brousard," she said brightly.

Brousard mumbled something and turned his back, occupying himself casting off the boat.

Block got in the boat after Lanette. "I know a lot of people, but after they attempt sex, they never look me directly in the eyes.

"Oh well."

The speedboat shot forward from the dock and ran smack into four-foot waves lashed by a strong ocean wind. The spray shot out from either side of the bow as it began to make speed, the boat planing out of the water.

Block held on to his seat for dear life as Lanette allowed the boat to bounce beneath her buttocks in rhythm with the sea waves.

Lanette saw the direction of his eyes. "I don't know, but hey, I'm willing to give it a try."

Block shook his head and concentrated on the huge rock looming dangerously close, a breaking point for the waves that were reaching proportions that would prevent the boat getting close to it. Brousard took the boat well past the back of the rock and turned it rapidly, minimizing the effect of the waves that otherwise would've broadsided them. Block saw that the waves diminished in a path leading to a narrow opening at the back of the rock.

"That must've cost a fortune to lay down," he shouted over the wind and the crash of the waves, realizing a concrete course had been laid out that reached down to the ocean floor."

"An enraged scientific community is nothing to trifle with," Lanette laughed, "especially when its most cherished quest, its primary pursuit of funding, is endangered. Never try to tell a truth-seeker the truth when the truth he seeks is money."

Brousard guided the speedboat into the narrow slip of quiet water and cut the engine, allowing it to coast into the rock crevice at the end of the guide. Thousands of birds fluttered off their roosts as it passed through, coming into a quite lagoon lit by light coming through uneven holes in the porous rock.

He moved the throttle forward slightly, drifting the boat over to a concrete pier. A small man with frizzled white hair was motioning vigorously, throwing a rope to Brousard as they bumped into the dock.

"Come on. Come on."

He took Lanette's hand, looking intensely, unblinking, into her eyes.

"Oh boy!" he said, kissing her hand, all the time looking up into her eyes.

"Ah well, if only, but work awaits." He escorted them to the end of the pier, through a door and into a large room. The room, which had the haphazardly spaced holes dotting the surface of the rock covered with clear plastic so light could enter, was also lit by fluorescent lights embedded in the walls.

The room affected Block, depending on where he concentrated. If he concentrated on the room itself, the floor, the tables and the materials on the tables, his mind was stable, clear, and reasonable. If he looked away from the lighted area and concentrated on the light from the unevenly spaced holes, he became slightly dizzy, his mind spinning, unable to focus on a particular thought.

"Eh?" Lansdowne said, seeing him comparing the contrasting effects. "You like? It's really a creative engine for my mind. Whenever I run into a problem I can't solve, I just allow the portal lights to take my mind over. They turn my mind upside down, making me look at whatever problem I'm trying to solve in an entirely different light, so to speak." He chuckled at his own joke. "Yes, they're natural," he answered Block's unasked question. "I just put the plastic covers on them to keep out the weather. I don't solve many problems at night."

He signaled them over to an area designed as a living room.

"Can I fix either of you a drink?"

Both declined, taking seats in easy chairs arranged to face each other.

"Had a bottle of malt whiskey brought in just for you, eh, Block. Sure?"

Block, watching the curve made by Lanette's back and thighs grow tight even through the billowing dress as she sat down, responded in the affirmative.

"Good. I'll try some myself. It's getting past my productive time, anyway. Ice, right? No water." He plunked two ice cubes each in two glasses, poured in the potent liquid and turned to Lanette. "Can't change your mind, eh?

"No, I'm fine," Lanette replied, watching with obvious pleasure as he brought the drinks over and moved his chair slightly so he could look directly into her eyes.

"You do your science in an isolated place," Block interrupted.

"My science involves ideas. I don't need a hundred billion dollar superdupercollider or a fifty billion dollar telescope to do science.

"What passes for science today consists of dreaming up a postulate, a speculation, the wilder the better, and setting about proving it by devising some sort experiment that wouldn't be suggested by actual reality but for the speculation. Instead of devising equipment to test the actual nature of reality, equipment is designed specifically to test the speculation. The equipment itself is so expensive, there can only be one of a kind and one test and thus the testability of the notion is in the hands of the nitwits who dreamed it up.

"And because the equipment is designed to prove the speculation, the speculation will be proved. There's no question a proposed hypothesis will be proved if those doing the proposing can obtain enough funding to design an experiment employing a coven of fellow scientists. And the best notion of all is one that's forever on the verge of proof because its funding can go on and on and on. Look at the perpetual Tokamak.

"The reality of the world is that ideas can never be proven. Concepts are the things our brains use to reconstruct and analyze physical reality. They can never be proven. And facts don't have to be proven, they just have to be demonstrated.

"But even a demonstration of fact won't convince a scientist if it opposes the scientist's beliefs. It's as easy for a person to believe a fact that's not a fact to be a fact as it is for a person to refuse to believe a fact's a fact.

"I spend more time trying to figure out how we think than I do trying to figure out how reality operates because if I don't understand how we perceive reality, I'll never know whether my perception of reality, the reality of the microcosm and microcosm we can't directly measure, approximates actual reality, the questions of motion and force in our existence, the question of the mind and how it sees, stores and recalls reality.

"I've a pretty good idea how we reconstruct reality, how the wet works of the brain operates so it can be aware of both external reality and itself. What I'm having trouble with is the way it receives and processes information.

"It's generally thought the brain has cells called neurons which snap together in patterns that are recognizable as things and events in the external world, in other words, that the brain generates the mind.

"I think that's as simplistic as the mass/gravity concept. It ignores the simple fact that science abuses, that we can make up ideas that don't exist in reality. It's how we create technology. There has to be a place where reality and recall, experience, are compared because we can hold a picture in our mind and alter it with other pictures stored in our recall.

"We couldn't do that if the neurons were nothing more than Christmas tree lights representing specific experiences.

"The neurons can only be storage mechanisms, logic gates if you will. The process of receiving information, recognizing it, and storing it operates on an electrical basis, so the information has to be electronic.

"I've a picture of a structure in the brain, a structure made up of the same particles that make up the basic units of an atom, only in some sort of stasis.

"It's a picture of an electrical field with the electrons held in a state of stable equilibrium until an electronic signal is fired into it.

"I see the electronic signal disbalancing the equilibrium of the structure making up the electrical field so a representation of reality is formed of the reality the electronic signal represents."

Lansdowne pointed up at the irregularly spaced lighting of the portals, but evening had descended. He just shrugged.

"If I could figure out how the eye recognizes the environment, how it could tell a curve from a square from a circle, I might be able to figure out just what that electronic signal is. But . . ."

Block sprang to his feet. "If you can show me how the electronic signal might work in the brain, I can show you how it gets into the brain. Do you have a blackboard?"

"Please," Lansdowne protested. "You're not going to fill up a blackboard with a bunch of little squiggly symbols. That's the refuge of fools, fools who don't want the deficits in their thinking found out by the general public who're paying for their trips to exotic locales, their steaks and lobsters and, of course, their paramours."

"No symbols, I promise. Do you have one?"

Lansdowne got up, reluctantly brought a dusty blackboard from a hidden recess and pushed it in front of the bar.

"This represents the sun, or any light source."

Block drew a circle on the upper right hand corner of the board.

"These are the emissions from the sun."

He drew several lines away from the circle with arrows on the tips.

"And what do those lines represent?" Lansdowne asked. "If they're going to end up in the brain, you have to explain what is going to end up in the brain. You can't just say light or emission, or even electromagnetic emissions. If the sun is emitting information the brain can decode, you have to tell me what light is."

"Light is a stream of particles emitted from a combusting body. It's composed of the same particles that make up the atoms of the sun. You can conceive of the matter simply unraveling in the combustion process and emitting the electrons that make it up in flows."

"Not in waves?" Lansdowne asked.

"The wave analogy has no basis in fact," Block replied. "You yourself know the jumbled pile of poor thinking that analogy led to.

"No. The light is emitted in streams of electrons.

"As you know, light expands inversely with the square of its distance from the source, the same inverse square law associated with gravity.

"As light expands inversely with the square of its distance, the strength of the flows at any particular point in an expanding sphere of light has a direct relationship to the strength of the flows at all other points and that relationship is distinctive."

"So," Lansdowne said, becoming distinctly interested. "At any point in the light from a combusting object, there'll be a specific presence of electrons. Where do they get their energy from? What is making them move?"

"We know both light and electricity travel at a specific speed in a vacuum. We know if they pass through a medium, they slow down. We know that once they emerge from the medium, they regain their speed.

"It's fairly obvious the process of combustion is the process of releasing the electrons that make up matter from the force holding the matter together"

"You're saying a force holds the matter together and combustion merely releases that force so the electrons can gain their normal speed, eh, what might be called an at rest speed because they're at rest, normal, when they're traveling at the speed of light."

"I hadn't thought of it that way, but, yes, they're 'at rest' at the speed of light," Block replied. "When they're restrained in a physical structure, their speed is potential. The process of combustion merely releases their potential and they regain their at rest motion. It's like the concept of the motion of the moon and planets under the new paradigm. They're all at rest with respect to the forces acting upon them even though they're moving with respect to each other."

"Then there would have to be an opposite property that holds them together when they form into matter," Lansdowne observed

"Right, but that's not part of the problem we're dealing with. You want to know how the brain recognizes reality."

He drew a curve at the middle left of the blackboard.

"When the light hits this curve, which represents a solid object, it's going to be reflected off its surface. At each point of reflection, the strength of the flow of light is going to be different and therefore distinctive because each point of the curve is a different distance from the source of the light."

Lansdowne jumped up and went over to the board. "So a flow of light bouncing off any hard edge of reality will, when it reaches the eyes, be different from the flows bouncing off all other hard edges of reality."

He drew an eye below the sun and then placed a line between the sun to the object and another between the object and the eye.

"The light hits each point on the object with a different and distinctive flow of," Lansdowne said excitedly, "I'll go with electrons, and the flow is reflected off the surface, re-expands so the flow that reaches the eyes differs from all other flows reaching the eyes after bouncing off all other objects."

"To the extent the eyes are capable of receiving and discerning the information they're getting," Block added. "The point is, the eyes are obtaining information about all, what was your term, the hard edges of reality, their exact locations, from the strength of the flows that are reflected from that external reality.

"This is precise electronic information," Lansdowne said with wonder.

"The charge coupled effect," Lanette, sitting quietly but listening attentively, noted.

"Oh yes," Lansdowne said, looking at her with a mixture of surprise and pleasure. "A charge coupled device converts light information into electrical information capable of being digitized and stored in a magnetic medium for future recall."

"If you look at the eye as a screen with say a hundred thousand collection points," Block continued, "at any one instant each of those collection points is receiving a flow of electrons with a unique strength.

"Those flows can be digitized and sent to the brain for storage. I've a concept of a structure that exists independent of the brain but depends on the brain to provide the decoding, storage and retrieval purposes. But it's little more than a concept of evenly spaced electrons held together by the same force that holds them together in an atom. The difference is, these particles are positioned so the force holding them together equals the force pulling them apart, the 'at rest' motion if you will, in a sort of stable web of force described by the Italian, ah . . ."

"Boscovich," Lansdowne interjected.

"Right, Boscovich. In any event, that concept seems quite similar to your concept of an electrical field. Both require equilibrium and both depend on the equilibrium being disturbed either directly by encoded information from external reality or encoded information stored in memory. Explain how this all works in the mind."

Lansdowne vigorously erased the black board and drew a huge inverted half circle.

"This represents the brain. And this," he drew a small inverted half circle within the larger one, "this is the core brain, the part that simply processes messages between the subsystems to keep the organism functioning." He drew a line between the top of the smaller half circle and the bottom of the larger one, dividing the rest of the brain into halves.

"This line divides the brain into its left and right side functions.

"Now for purposes of evolutionary development, we have to consider the core portion of the brain to be common to all life that has more than a single subsystem to operate it. If we're talking about lichen, which merely processes a flow of electrons and those electrons move at their at rest speed in response to changes in potential in the environment, there would be no necessity for a core brain.

"But, as the subsystems increase in an organism, the need for communication between them increases and the size of the core brain increases. The core brain can be considered a relay, a switcher that increases in complexity with the increase in complexity of the organism it controls.

"Now at some point, the overall organism becomes ambulatory. This simply means it moves in its environment."

"Originism, the theory of the origin of life," Block observed.

"Right, but follow along with me. As soon as an organism is capable of moving within its environment, it needs some method of reconstructing that environment so it can choose a position within it that'll promote its survival."

Lansdowne erased the dividing line. "Let's use this as a side view of the brain forming the left brain function. Now that I have your concept of how the information gets into the mind, we can simply draw an eye and label it screen. The information is encoded at this point and transmitted up the optical nerves into the brain.

"For purposes of moving within the environment, all the left brain function has to do is reconstruct a picture of the external environment long enough for it to transmit instructions through the core portion of the brain to the subsystems to move appropriately within that environment.

"The picture doesn't have to be stored anywhere. All it has to do is present a situation the organism can react to on a reflexive basis. See tree, avoid tree. Become thirsty, find water. See danger, camouflage.

"The amount of storage and recall at any stage may be arguable, but the basic fact is, the left brain function is a reflexive function not involving the processing of concepts. In other words, it doesn't involve the use of intelligence."

"That would mean mathematics is a left brain function," Lanette observed.

"What is math but the reflexive ordering of measurements? Two plus two, four. Four times four, sixteen. Sixteen divided by four, four. It's all reflexive no matter how complex it gets.

"That's why a mathematically based methodology produces absurd notions. There's no external check. You make up a hypothesis and follow it to its conclusion, prove the conclusion, and create another hypothesis based on the conclusion, which of course is now a fact.

"Totally reflexive. When someone comes along and complains about the conclusion, points out they're inconsistent or defy reason, the idiots respond, the elegance of mathematical constructs, being mentally pleasing, is always superior to mere human reason.

"Ask anyone who believes in the deductive methodology. They'll tell you reason has no basis in reality. They'll be quite frank about it. They believe they've come up with a methodology that protects them from the gigantic error the believers in the Ptolemaic system made, that the Earth was the center of the solar system rather than the sun.

"Looking at all the complex mechanical and electronic contraptions that surround us, a space station in orbit, routine flights to the moon, Mars just opening up, it's easy to believe we've reached the pinnacle of intellectual knowledge. It's easy to believe there's nothing more worth learning, that all of the discoveries about how the universe operates, from the now completely certain existence of the quark to the absolute unquestionable existence of black holes, need only a little tinkering before everything is completely understandable.

"And the entire edifice, from the age of the solar system to the content of the center of Jupiter is built on a single, tiny misconception, the untestable and logically untenable hypothesis that there's matter that's a mixture of atoms that generates motion called gravity. The nutcakes believe matter generates a force that doesn't exist between its source and the matter it acts on, but attracts other matter in a mathematically precise way, diminishing inversely with the square of its distance from its source. To make it more ridiculous, not only does it not exist between its source and the matter it acts on, it acts on matter without being used up so it extends to the ends of the universe, undiminished. If that's not enough stupidity to start you giggling uncontrollably, the force does all this nonsense in a universe composed of matter that rotates and orbits, forms galaxies and solar systems, and does so with all motion fixed by an event in the past which gave all matter its straight-line motion, an event that's scientifically named the Big Bang, eh Lanette?"

Lanette winked back.

"It's simple to agree with the proponents of such a system," Lansdowne continued, "that it contains absolutely no reason. To believe in such drivel requires no reason whatsoever, just an affinity for delusion. In fact, to claim reason has any place in such a belief system, or the methodology that created it, would be totally unreasonable."

"So our technology has outstripped our ability to provide a rational basis for it," Block commented.

"The scientific method of deductive reasoning, establishing hypothesis and attempting to see if the hypothesis will work, is more than suited for the advancement of technology.

"All technological advancement is a matter of trial and error testing. But once something works, it makes little difference the reason why it works as long as it doesn't crash.

"There's still no consistent theory for the transistor, let alone electricity and induction. There's still no attempt to explain why planets orbit and rotate. When you can't explain the obvious and you still want to put up the appearance of being a serious searcher for the truth, you make up things to look for, things that are ridiculous and no one can understand and then you go out and find them.

"If you use a language the general public can't understand, you're as safe as the high priests of ancient Egypt who could decree whatever they wished and back it up with mumbo jumbo to cower the populace into agreeing so they'd continue putting gold coins in their pockets.

"When you can't answer simple questions like what makes a rock fall, you conjure up absurd questions like what will happen to the Earth if its orbit intersects the orbit of a mini-black hole, and could mini-black holes be used as potential weapons?"

"What you're saying then," Block said, "is that the verification of technology, whether something works or doesn't work, is a left brain function. It's no different than a rat finding its way through a maze. It's simply a matter of trial and error, a reflexive response to success or failure."

"Exactly, only one step further. As the left brain develops and the organism becomes more mobile, the brain can start to store some of the pictures it constructs. The rat doesn't have to use trial and error once it learns how to get through the maze. It's encoded a series of pictures it's reconstructed as it successfully moved through the maze and it can recall those pictures to make simple yes/no determinations about which junctions to take."

Lansdowne drew a line in his picture up the optic nerve. He then turned the chalk sidewise and carefully laid out a chalk screen for the mind.

"The chalk in the brain represents the mind as an electrical field in equilibrium. The mind exists in the same space as the brain but because the mind is made of up of particles, electrons if you will, its total size, if it were collapsed into a solid, would take up less space than a single cell of the brain.

"Thus," Lansdowne drew a curve in front of the eye, "light hits the curved surface and is reflected to the eye where it's picked up as discrete flows of your electrons.

"What idiots call photons are converted into electrons and digitized for each image of reality captured. Here we've a simple curve. The information, digitized into a discrete entity of electrical energy, is transported to the brain where a mechanism fires it into the mind."

He drew a series of lines from the end of the optic nerve out into the edges of the chalked representation of the mind.

"As the information is reconverted into flows of electrons, they disbalance the equilibrium of the mind, probably by the same effect that causes a flow of electrons to produce induction."

He took his finger and traced a circle in the chalked representation of the mind.

"The disbalance reflects reality. The curved surface in reality has been transferred into a recognizable form in the mind. As the streams pass out of the mind, the disequilibrium begins to return to normal and the reconstruction begins to fade. However, as long as the eyes remain on the curve, the process will continuously send a digital representation of the curve into the mind and the mind will continuously be disbalanced to reflect that particular reconstruction of reality."

"That's the stage where there's no storage process," Block pointed out. "How is the storage process initiated?"

"As the organism becomes more complex, it'll develop the ability to store particular pictures for purposes of easy recognition. After all, it'd be a pretty ineffective organism if each new moment was an entirely original one. It has to develop a mechanism for storing the image it's reconstructed from reality. The most likely method is for the particles that have been displaced by the decoded reconstruction into a state of disequilibrium to re-encode the reconstruction of reality as they return to a state of equilibrium."

"So you've a digital unit of information entering the mind," Block observed, "and the mind becoming disbalanced in response to the exact digital message in that unit of information. How's it stored and recalled?"

"Both processes are identical," Lansdowne responded. "The function of the mind is to reconstruct reality through having its electrical stability disbalanced and then re-encoding reality for storage and future retrieval. Each digital unit has a specific electrical charge. The purpose of the physical brain is to provide an electrical receptacle for the storage of these electrically charged digital units.

"In response to the specific charge of the digital unit, the brain establishes a specific current level to transport that unit. As the brain's electrical level changes to accommodate the transportation of the new unit, it'll pick up any other units stored in the brain that have a similar charge to the unit it's just encoded and is now transporting.

"Those units come down into the firing mechanism and are fired into the mind, causing its equilibrium to be disbalanced in the same manner reality does.

"If all is going properly, the disequilibrium caused by the reconstruction of reality will match the disequilibrium caused by re-encoding it and recalling similar units of coded information.

"If you're looking at a tree, your mind will be reconstructing the tree from reality, from memory, or from both, and as long as there's an agreement, the level of electrical charge doing the storing and recalling operation will remain the same. There's no reason for the mind to store any new images.

"However, every tree is different and even the same tree moves. How much new information the mind stores depends on the level of reconstruction that's desired.

"And here we've the difference between the left and right brain function. Like deductive theory, or the rat crawling in a maze, the only information that has to be stored is the information necessary to get the organism to the next branch of the maze.

"It's entirely reflexive.

"The right brain function developed so the organism could do more than react to its environment. It evolved to reconstruct a picture of that environment, hold that picture independent of external input, then modify it so, once we think we've a modification that'll work in reality, we can fashion the tools to change reality in accordance with our reconstruction.

"To do that, the right brain function has to work with concepts."

"Right," Block agreed. "The mind has to reconstruct a picture of reality, alter that picture, and then, and only then, go over to the left brain function and attempt to modify reality on a trial and error basis.

"As the right brain receives the results of the trial and error methodology performed by the left brain function, as facts are either verified or proven to be wrong, or are proven to be information about which facts will never be known, the hidden cause of motion for instance, it reconstructs its internal reality to match the information it's gained."

"The left brain function needs constant input from external reality to operate," Lansdowne continued, "while the right brain function can reconstruct reality, or any thing that it wishes. That's why the mathematical reductionists distrust right brain conclusions. There's no limit to the way the right brain can reconstruct reality."

"True," Block replied, "but if you limit the reconstruction of reality in the right brain to facts verified by the left brain methodology and require consistency in the concepts you use to replace the facts you can't verify, that's about the best you can do."

"The left brain reductionists," Lansdowne countered, "by limiting themselves to a mathematical methodology purporting to limit the right brain function, have actually created a situation in which the right brain function is allowed to run wild.

"There's no way for the left brain to interpret facts. It's merely a reflexive operation. Newton's erroneous assumption that objects travel in straight lines but for the forces acting upon them was actually a right brain conclusion, the use of a right brain concept of reconstructing external reality, an assumption made without any safeguards at all.

"Without safeguards, the mathematical reductionists have run amok, claiming all their concepts have been mathematically proven when, in reality, a concept can never be proven because a proven concept is no longer a concept, it's a fact.

"You have to use concepts to reconstruct reality into a logically consistent picture.

"To claim that you can't, and then to claim that you aren't, is pure chicanery."

Lansdowne flipped the blackboard over and hastily drew the mind with the side of the chalk, the eye input for external information and a line out of the mind into the storage caverns of the brain, circling over the mind and re-entering at the point where the optic nerves entered to fire their coded digital unit into the brain.

"The right brain function can operate without any current external input. An electric current is continually circulating throughout the storage areas of the brain while the mind is operating. During sleep, a period the mind needs to regain its equilibrium, it sends random electrical currents recalling bits and pieces of experience perceived as dreams. When equilibrium is regained, the mind ceases to retrieve and we're in deep sleep.

"When we consciously set out to construct a picture of a chair from stored memory, the process is one of modifying the electric flows so they begin to come close to the charge of the digital units that, when fired into the mind, will produce a picture of a chair.

"It may take several tries before you get anything like the shape of a chair, but once you get your mind zeroed in on the proper current level, you can fine tune it to fit the type of chair you want to construct a picture of.

"You have to remember the electrons moving in our minds are traveling at least half the speed of light, so you aren't aware you're modifying the current at all. To you, you just think of the chair and the chair you want is there.

"However, if you're trying to recall something and you don't know what it is, the repeated attempts to establish the proper current level fail time after time. When we try to associate what we're trying to recall with something similar, we're just trying to get a current going that's similar to what we're trying to recall. We'll start to recall similar digital units so once we recall something connected to what we're tying to recall, our minds will logically change the current level to examine the entire picture and pull up the digital recall we want.

"Going through the alphabet to recall a person's name is a simple form of this. Once we have the current level for the first level, the current level will jump to the name, especially if we have something else associated with the name.

"And, of course, if we can't recall it, we'll just have to let it go. As we go about our daily business, the range of currents our minds generate to recall digital units will eventually pass through the specific current recalling the digital unit we've been having trouble with and it'll pop right up in our mind in the middle of everything else, much to our surprise and pleasure."

"What you're saying," Lanette filled Lansdowne's satisfied pause, "is the brain doesn't generate the mind, it services the mind. The mind, the function of the brain that allows for consciousness and self-awareness, is a physical structure somehow connected to the brain and uses the brain as a source of digital information to construct images of the external or internal world."

"Right. Right. Right. Oh, yes, right!" Lansdowne was clearly excited by Lanette's understanding.

"And it does so using an electron, Ronald's concept," Lanette continued, "a basic bit of matter that isn't some sort of probability wave creating a potentiality without existence but a pure potentiality, if you will, in the mumbo jumbo of the current crop of Chopologists.

"And this all occurs primarily in the right side brain, the creative portion of the brain, which developed last. The left side is the reflexive side that gets us through the day. My sister Janette, the psychologist, would have a field day with the concept. If people as smart as scientists are supposed to be can't get the two straight, if they're consistently mixing up their theories of the world with concepts dictated by reflexive thinking, just think what a trained psychologist could do understanding the difference between the functions. The only safeguard would be knowing the difference so we could avoid our own mistakes and also others, and for that matter, others seducing us into mistakes."

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, yes," Lansdowne kept repeating.

"For my own purposes," Lanette continued, "sociologically speaking, the consecutive development of the three levels of the brain is identical to the development of religion as we know it historically.

"Primitive religions were a reaction to the simple fear of the elements in the world, attempts to appease the gods of weather, volcanoes, locusts, plagues, whatever. This could be considered a religion of the core brain where the god is rooted in a reflex wired into the very core of the subsystems. Need water, worship the water god, want to appease thunder, worship the thunder god.

"The left brain function produced a religion like the Greeks or Romans had. People had a pantheon of gods they could go to depending on the problem they faced. If they were in debt, they could go to the god of fortune, if they were in love, the god of love, if they were going into battle, a god that would give them strength.

"The right brain function gave birth to the world's major religions. When it comes down to it, the organized religions of the world simply describe a world that doesn't exist, but which could if everybody behaved in a prescribed manner.

"Organized religion is definitely a right brain function. You two have almost got me convinced. You just have one problem."

"What's that?" Block asked.

"Both your theories have a mind in the brain operating off the brain generating self-awareness and consciousness, the pervasive "I" that is each of us. The unanswered question of the ages is, what happens to the mind after the brain, the animate matter the mind operates off, becomes inanimate, the organism containing it dies.

"It seems you've a basic disagreement. If the mind operates as a result of some sort of stable web of electrical energy, when the brain dies, caput, there goes the stable web.

"On the other hand, if the mind has developed as a result of evolution into a stable configuration of the particles Ronald believes make up matter and are emitted when matter combusts, it'd survive the death of the brain.

"So which is it, a mind that's immortal or a mind that goes caput when the brain dies?"

"Eh," Lansdowne grunted. "Interesting question. Too interesting."

"Lanette, you make a very interesting point," Block picked up, "with religion the answer to your own question.

"I hadn't thought of the right brain function as being a requirement for the creation of the great religions, but it mirrors the great religions and probably accounts for the fact that all religions are structurally similar.

"As the mind developed from the core stage through the reflexive stage to the reflective stage, if I can call it that, it'd develop a world system within which it could act.

"During the core stage, images formed in response to physical incentives drive the organism to act. Seeing a certain color on the female genitals causes the male to head directly to the target and fight to the death all other males trying to reach the same target."

"Interesting analogy," Lanette commented, parting her legs.

"But the organism needed color to get it started. We do not develop uniformly. Some of us are in the responsive stage, if I can start labeling these periods, others may be in the reflexive stage, and still others in the reflective stage.

"In the reflexive stage, there's enough memory storage of these images so the organism can sit at home and create the image of red lips. He recalls the woman's red lips over and over until his core system has been activated and he goes out into the streets to find the red lips, or something that will replace them, and does the owner violence.

"In the reflexive stage, we create pictures in our minds sufficient to provide a basis for action. There's not enough memory, or right brain function, which is what the storage function in the reflexive stage is, to come up with a world system with which to live, but there's enough to form images upon which to act.

"This leads to the excesses we see in history. The person is barely above the animal stage of the core brain function but lives in a world filled with technology created by the reflective stage.

"If one person learns how to smelt iron, that person may be one person in a thousand in a society dominated by people in the reflexive stage. People in the reflexive stage then seize the knowledge and create instruments allowing them to satisfy all the pictures they can create in the limited left brain function, start wars, capture victims, rape, torture and pillage in unreasoned fury."

"You paint a picture supporting my concept of a transitory mind that disappears in a cloud of electrons once it no longer has the brain to support it, eh?" Lansdowne asked.

"Not at all. Because Lanette's point about religion shows there's clearly an evolution of the mind. After a few millennia of rape, torture and pillage, enough reflective minds developed to construct a picture of the world that had no basis in reality simply because it was a reaction to the rape, torture and pillage the minds could reflectively observe.

"On reflection, these minds determined this wasn't the sort of world leading to a future for humankind. Another world had to be created toward which humankind could strive so it could move away form its core operation, action on an animalistic basis, to actions more suited to the developing reflective mind, the mind capable of reflecting on the world and changing it to ensure survival of all minds."

"But simple perpetuation doesn't seem to be a sufficient goal to strive for, eh?" Lansdowne continued to probe.

"That's where it dovetails with Lanette's question, whether the mind survives the brain.

"If the mind developed after matter was formed, we're dealing with two structures. The first is composed of particles that form into conglomerates of matter in response to a force of attraction that counteracts their 'at rest' motion, as you put it. This force must be something like the concept of gravity on a microcosmic scale, only it's used up holding the particles together. Because each particle has the same amount of attraction and because the attraction is used up, the resulting structure is a tight little ball of particles, all of identical size. These are the units that make up the nuclei of atoms. They're the basic structure of matter.

"These particles have to have the right balance of 'at rest' motion and attraction to provide the building blocks of physical reality.

"It might have taken endless attempts for a particle to come into existence with just the right properties, and endless failed universes, but then, time is only defined by events so there's been forever to experiment. Once the proper particle came into existence, the universe could proceed with its purpose."

"This might not be a successful universe," Lanette pointed out.

"We'll probably never know, but you're right on point by using the word, concept really, successful. What is a successful universe? Because we're made up of the same electrons that make up all other matter in the universe, with the difference that we're arranged so we can perceive the universe, we have to be the result of the interaction of the two properties."

"The properties not only have to allow the particles, let's use electrons, to form matter, once matter is formed, the properties have to form animate matter that can evolve a mind to coordinate its movement and then evolve the mind so it can perceive the universe the particle creates, eh?" Lansdowne said.

"Precisely. And the ability to understand the universe, to create a consistent picture of physical reality, isn't something that can be done by one look. It takes permanence."

"The first attribute of the reflective stage," Lanette pointed out, "the ability to construct a picture of the environment, physical reality, so the picture of physical reality can be altered so reality can be altered.

"The ability to alter the environment ensures the survival necessary to give the mind time to contemplate external physical reality and come up with a consistent picture, an understanding of physical reality, how it operates."

"Exactly," Block said. "The whole purpose of the mind, which would be the logical result of the electrons forming first into inanimate matter that couldn't perceive the universe and then evolving through stages into animate matter that could perceive the universe, is just that, to perceive the universe."

"The evolution of matter out of nothing, the creation of the first particle, the electron, and all subsequent electrons would be of little use if they couldn't evolve into something that could perceive its own existence, eh?" Lansdowne noted. "I'm beginning to like your mind more than my cloud of electrons.

"If I understand you correctly, you're saying the electron has two properties, one a property of motion which, if restrained, will create a potential for energy and a second property which does the restraining.

"When matter exists in units of these electrons, the force holding them together predominates, restraining the potential for movement at the speed of light, well, that's convenient, eh, and combustion overcomes the force holding them together, releasing them so they can, what word should I use, so they regain their at rest motion which is the speed of light."

"Sounds so simple," Lanette observed.

"And instead of my amorphous cloud of electrons existing in a stable web of force, we've electrons developing into a secondary structure where the force holding them together doesn't predominate as it does in matter and the force making them race apart, as in combustion and the light that results from combustion, doesn't either.

"As a result, the electrons form into a stable structure in which they're spaced so there's equilibrium."

"And it's the disturbance of this equilibrium from the firing of the digital units that creates the picture of external reality," Block continued. "Getting back to the question of durability, I don't think the mind is temporary at all. I think it can continue to exist without the brain. I don't think the evolution of the mind evidenced by the movement from inanimate matter to animate matter to ambulatory matter to sentient ambulatory matter would be based, successfully based I should add, on the simple ability to communicate through written records with other newly formed minds.

"I think unless the mind destroys itself, it'll continue to develop and can occupy consecutive brain structures in order to continue developing. Believe me when I say there're plenty of reflexive minds that need replacing with reflective minds. We have to remember, it's not important to whatever the force was that brought the first electron into existence what the animate objects do or are. Animate structures, like all physical structures, are limited in duration.

"It's only important some structure develop that can perceive the universe itself and perceive a consistent picture of it so the universe itself will have self-awareness."

"How could the mind, destroy itself?" Lanette asked.

"By performing acts inconsistent with reality. If the mind disbalances its equilibrium by producing acts that don't reflect reality and then the organism containing the mind carries out those acts, the acts will exist in reality and the mind will never be able to regain its equilibrium. If people allow themselves to engage in acts altering physical reality in a manner inconsistent with reality, the mind remains in disbalance and eventually unitizes."

"Unitizes?" Lansdowne said. "What is unitize, eh?"

"Unitize simply means the individual electrons reform into units which become subject to the physical operation of the universe, specifically the attractive force."

"It'd be pulled into a combusting object and dissipate, eh?"

"Never more to exist!" Block said emphatically.

"That means if we fail as a species, our universe made up of electrons with the mixture of the two forces that created the reality we exist in, that universe, our universe, will fail also," Lanette said quietly.

"That's the meaning of successful, eh?" Lansdowne added. "If the reflective cannot overcome the reflexive, and even the existing reactive, the peddlers of non answers to reality, even though the universe has been successful in creating a mind that can perceive itself, the mind itself is defective and will cause the universe to be a failure."

"I would suspect," Block continued, "it'd simply cease to be a viable universe. Somewhere in nothingness another universe would start with a different mixture of the two forces and another attempt undertaken. I'm sure past attempts have been failures. But then, time and space are, well, quite simply, not. Both are endless and neither exists without matter to give them definition, so the attempts have no limit.

"I, however, firmly believe the attempt resulting in our universe, and in us, is well on the way to success. Lanette pointed out succinctly the progression of religious thought shows a clear movement toward the reflective in humankind at the expense of the reflexive and the reactive.

"The use of the mind to create a permanent environment in which the brain can exist, an environment in which the mind can use the brain to increase its understanding of the physical reality in which it finds itself at the expense of the animalistic use of the reflexive side of the brain, the nascent ability of the left side function to perceive and create limited pictures of external reality, leads me to that belief. Or maybe it's just a hope.

"I think the right side function, the reflective operation of attempting to create a consistent picture of physical reality, is clearly emergent and I think there's no better example of that than the new paradigm and the emerging Representative World Government"

Block broke off, silence filling the room. A ringing phone broke the quiet.

"Excuse me, eh?" Lansdowne said.

Lanette took the break to punch information into her computer, pausing for an answer and making additional input.

Block got up to mix himself a drink. The image of Janette's brain in the dream the night before drifted through his mind. He could identify the reflective now as the main operation of the brain he'd observed, forming and reforming images, focusing on specific portions of images or moving back and capturing images in their entirety.

He now understood the digital units being carried by electrical currents specific to the unique charge of the electrical structure.

He could see the current picking up units with similar charges for retrieval.

He could see the current altering to allow other digital units to be recalled.

What he was seeing was the mind dictating to the brain what the mind wanted to recall.

The mind had the ability to recall objects related to what it was observing in external reality, or it had the ability to alter the electrical strength of the current so it could recall pictures that didn't exit in external reality.

He could see the reactive, the simple exchange of information between the subsystems, as the core brain communicating with itself and the reflective brain he'd been watching.

And he could see the left brain function reaching out and stopping the action of the right brain function as the body entered into activity for which there were no digital units to provide a picture on which to reflexively act without affecting the normal operation of the reflective function.

He could see how it was necessary for the mind to have free will, the ability to choose the pictures it wished to examine and modify. It dawned on him the pictures of reality that caused a direct outside effect on the reactive part of the brain, the triggers for the sex drive for instance, could be duplicated entirely in the right brain function and refined to the point where the reactive effect was out of proportion to what it'd normally be.

This, he realized, was the game he played when he heightened his sexual pleasure by idealization. He was simply using the reflective portion of his brain to modify the picture, removing any portion of it that didn't please him.

But it was a game that could be played only when the reward was readily available, when there was someone in external reality triggering the reactive effect and available as the reward. Creating images triggering reactive effects without having a way to satisfy the subsystems activated by the images was extremely dangerous. The subsystems themselves could cause images to be created that were in accord with the needs of the subsystems, the same images it created for the mindless left brain when it was hungry and which drove the organism to find food at all costs.

And once the subsystems started controlling the images being created, the reflective mind could be taken over by the reflexive, and even the reactive.

Abandon yourself to the reactive, he thought, but only on condition there are no ashes left in reality that'll remain in reality to cause the reflective mind trouble after it's regained its ability to reconstruct reality.

Idealization, which was impossible without the willing participation of a partner, allowed him to abandon himself to the reactive.

He was exercising free will under controlled circumstances.

Idealization where the object wasn't a willing participant required dominance over the object of idealization and under any circumstances wasn't healthy for the mind because it involved external acts requiring physical restraint so the object couldn't resist the unwanted acts resulting from the idealization.

Free will, the ability of the reflective mind to pick and choose the pictures it creates by changing the strength of the electrical flows recalling the memories that were the source of the pictures, had to be exercised carefully. If it weren't, the mind was in danger of triggering its reactive nature, which in turn could disbalance the mind. The disbalance could lead the mind to create images and act on those images in physical reality. The acts in physical reality, carried out by necessity on the restrained, or otherwise helpless, would be unacceptable to the mind in its normal reflective state. The fact the acts occurred, that they now existed in physical reality as traces on physical reality, could now cause an additional disbalance in the mind as it was forced to confront them.

If that disbalance wasn't addressed, atoned for in some way, the mind was in danger of setting off an uncontrollable sequence of events in which it was in continual disbalance with the reality around it. The conflict the actions the mind had allowed the organism to engage in with the actions that were acceptable to it to engage in would continually keep the mind in disbalance, allowing additional reflexive and reactive actions that disbalanced the mind further.

The reflective chain in Block's mind dissolved as he saw Lansdowne return from his phone call, Lanette on his arm.

Block hadn't seen Lanette leave and realized, looking down at the three drinks he'd poured, a white wine for Lanette, that his reflexive left brain function had been mindlessly operating while his reflective right brain operated building information into consistent patterns.

He had the instant impulse to toss Lanette's drink out as the reactive portion of his mind reacted to Lansdowne touching Lanette's arm.

The reflective portion suppressed the urge.

"Trying to find out what strange gods Lansdowne worships," he asked, an edge to his voice, unable to repress the direct physical instruction from the reactive portion of his brain.

"Call me George, eh?"

"George?" Lanette laughed. "I thought it was Georges."

"People call me George for short."

"Well, I don't think you're short. Ronald," Lanette said, taking the drink from him, "Georges just propositioned me."

Block felt his tenseness increase. "Should I thrash him?" he said lightly.

"Absolutely not." She moved over and was looking at his still open computer. "Why, he's the first person who's ever asked me first. I think it's just the sweetest thing that's ever happened to me. If you ever get me wired up, I might just try the new wiring out on him."

Block looked at the computer terminal and realized he'd punched in an order to have a certain piece of equipment delivered to the Stratostreamer at the Canadian airstrip.

"Looks interesting," Lanette said.

Block felt a little warm as the picture of himself quietly ordering the rather large piece of equipment conflicted with Lanette finding out he'd ordered it, paralyzing his mind just enough for his core brain to activate inappropriate signals that increased the blood flow for no purpose, causing Block to flush slightly pink.

"Time's passing," he said. "If we don't get on with the business of this disappearing oil, there won't be any oil left to disappear."

"Right you are, eh?" Lansdowne agreed. "You all know what oil is?"

"Not really," Lanette replied. "We were discussing that earlier. It seems to be one of those things no one understands but everyone assumes someone does. Oil is so pervasive in society, it's hard to believe we don't know where it came from."

"It comes out of the ground, eh?" Lansdowne joked.

"That's like the scorn filled answer of the average physicist when you ask if they know what gravity is. Step off the roof and you'll find out!" Block observed, moving past his momentary irritation.

"Think Originism, eh, the spontaneous creation of animate life in response to the changing electrical potentials in physical matter. Great pools of oil buried deep in the Earth, far deeper and in more unlikely places than any explanation of dying life forms could support."

Lansdowne went over to the blackboard and vigorously erased the images of the mind working in conjunction with the brain.

"I could flip it back over to the sun, but I want the whole Earth, not just a curve of the Earth."

He drew a picture of the sun in the center right side with a few rays coming out. "Your flows of electrons, eh, Block."

He drew a ball on the left side.

"We all know the basic principle of Originism. The planet is made up of different elements that resulted from the original ignition and combustion of the planet. Block's units had formed into the most complex of atoms, atoms with the highest number of units in their nuclei. When the planet ignited, the combustion process broke those complex atoms down into the elements as we know them, elements with different numbers of units in their nuclei.

"The breakdown was totally by the chance of the combustion process, with large deposits of atoms of one particular kind ending up next to large deposits of atoms of another kind.

"As the crust of the planet cooled and volcanic action began, the juxtaposition of the elements was mixed up even further.

"When the planet finally cooled enough for the crust to solidify, different types of elements and compounds of elements found themselves more or less permanently placed next to one another."

"And somewhere along the way," Block broke in, "the thing that no astronomer or physicist cares to explain, began to occur."

"Right! The planet began to rotate."

"You mean modern science doesn't even have an explanation for the obvious. Scientists can't even tell the difference between night and day?" Lanette asked in amazement.

"And what they can't explain, they ignore. When the planet began to rotate, the obvious occurred. When an area was facing the sun, it became hot, when it was facing away from the sun, it became cold.

"Scientists may not know the difference between night and day, Lanette, but they definitely know each element has an electrical potential that varies from all other elements and that electrical potential differs depending on the temperature of the element.

"So what we had when the Earth cooled and began to rotate is elements with different potentials sitting permanently next to each other under conditions the differences in potentials between and among them was continually changing."

"And electrical flows occur between elements with differences in potentials," Lanette observed.

"Right, Lanette. What are measured as flows of electrons, called telluric currents, began to move between elements with differences in potential at their at rest speed as modified by the medium through which they were moving."

"Wouldn't the movement damage the elements, occurring as they would with the Earth constantly turning day into night into day?"

"Astute point, my dear. The flows couldn't move back and forth between the different elements simply because there were no paths through which they could move.

"The result was, the potential difference between and among the elements built up and subsided, built up and subsided, over and over until cracks began to appear in the elements.

"The changing internal potentials reduced the cooling crust to dust because all matter has to eventually come to rest with respect to the forces it exists in.

"But a universe allowing this to occur would've long since failed. The electrons that formed our universe overcame the problem of the difference in potentials constantly fluctuating because of the rotation of the planet simply because we exist.

"I'm sure you're familiar, Lanette, with the experiments producing trace elements of carbon based life when electricity is shot through a hypothesized primordial soup?"

"A trace of life, but no life."

"The reason the experiment doesn't produce life is that there's no need for the life. The electricity is being momentarily created by a difference in potentials. It's not coming into existence as a result of a continuing difference in potentials.

"In the laboratory, the result of life is being created by creating an electrical current.

"On the Earth, the difference in potentials creates electrical flows that constantly require life to provide the channels between the elements with the different potentials."

"Life is simply the flow of electrons between differences in potentials?" Lanette asked.

"The animation we define as life is just that, the continual movement of electrons between differences in potentials. Those electrons produce inductances around which atoms and molecules of atoms form into life.

"In the human body, the system has become so complex, it defies analysis, but at the basis of every subsystem we find the movement of electrons to keep it operating.

"Human beings are a long way from the lichen growing on rocks providing the channels through which the rocks can equalize their differences in potentials.

"We measure life by the flows. If the flows stop, we have inanimate matter.

"If the planet stopped rotating, there would no longer be a continuing change in potential and the lichen would die by burning up on the side that faced the sun and by freezing on the side away from the sun."

"Life is the animation of matter measurable in systems that develop to equalize the differences in potentials between different elements existing in juxtaposition," Block interjected.

"Well put. I see you've given this some thought. But how much thought have you given as to how the area beneath the Earth's crust might cool?

"Or to put it another way, what happens inside a loaf of well-baked bread?"

"Air bubbles form," Lanette said. "I'm a great cook."

"Air, Lanette, or gas of some sort. Some bubbles form on the surface and become caves. But what happens when they form beneath the surface?

"And more to the point, what happens when these caverns exist with a difference of potential between the elements and compounds of elements that make them up? How do we find oil? With magnetometers. How do magnetometers work? By picking up inductances. Where do inductances come from? From flows of electrons."

"You're saying oil is the counterpart of lichen forming in pockets of the crust of the Earth where differences in potentials exist?" Block shook his head in wonder. "It's incredible. Oil's not dead life, then. It's itself life."

"A modification of life because it only has to transmit the flows that exist because of the differences in potential and minor changes in the differences resulting from the indirect heating and cooling from the surface of the planet. Different conditions produce different forms of animate matter, but animate matter nonetheless, and therein lies the similarity of oil with carbon based life and the mistake made with respect to its origin."

"So how can someone cause it to disappear?" Block asked.

"I can only speculate on that. I do, however, know how to keep it from continuing to disappear."

"Oh?" Lanette said. "How's that?"

"Simply by installing electrical plates in the holds of the tankers so whatever is destabilizing it will be countered and neutralized. That's all there is to it. As I was telling my students, when you've a problem, one of the best ways to negate it is, quite literally, to negate it."

"What students?" Lanette asked sharply.

"I teach a group of young minds from the school up on the hill?"

"The Art of the Lord Monastery?"

"Whatever they call themselves, I just got a call from them canceling . . ."

"Fuck." Lanette exclaimed. "Are you alone here?"

"Sure. Just you two . . ."

"Double fuck," she yelled, leaping out of her chair. "This place is all of a sudden crawling. Is there a way I can get a look outside without opening a door?"

"Sure," Lansdowne said, surprised, "I've monitors at the entrances."

He went over and pushed a button. The screen came to life.

"Oh!" Lansdowne gasped.

Block jumped to his feet.

Pierre Brousard, or what was left of him, was hanging by one leg upside down on the dock. His entrails were being pulled out from a hole between his legs as his mouth spread open in a silent scream.

Block saw he was being worked over by the same black-garbed figures he'd fought off at the hotel earlier in the day.

"I knew the scientific community was after me, but this is ridiculous, eh?"

"We didn't bring any firepower," Block said, turning to Lansdowne. "What have you got here?"

"Nothing. I . . ."

"What do you clean those windows with?" Lanette asked, pointing to the windows irregularly dotting the domed ceiling thirty feet above.

"People come in . . ."

"Where do they keep their supplies?"

Lansdowne pointed to a closet by the door.

Lanette raced over to the closet. "We've got to get their weapons. See if the cleaning stuff is flammable." She turned to Lansdowne. "Is there any other way out of here?"

"I've a high speed hydrofoil. I had it built just in case my colleague's wrath overflowed and they wanted to string me up like they have so many of their apostate colleagues in the past."

"Can you screen it?'

Lansdowne did, showing eight or ten of the black clad figures surrounding it. She could make out two of them planting explosives under the seat.

"Where is that in relation to the front door?" she asked.

"Opposite end of the dock. Boy, if they can't argue with you, they just try to blow you up."

"From the looks of those explosives, they're going to blow it, them and us up to boot," Lanette said. "Have you got anything in the lab that has to go, anything we'll need to stop the oil depletion?"

"My mind is my laboratory. They're going to blow up my laboratory, eh?"

"What have we got here?" Block asked Lanette.

Lanette looked at the supplies. "Flammable cleaning material under press