5 Block

Block turned and took Shandra in his arms.

She responded, holding on as tightly as she had ever held on to anything in her life.

"We can't do anything here. Let's get our bearings." He felt him-self start to black out. "I'm going out and get some air. Find out where St. Remain is. I doubt he's here. D'Lazo's clearly gone." He pushed her to arms length. "I don't feel so well. I'm going to get some air." He pushed past her and left the room. Heading the way he had come, he found the corridor leading through a large living room. The pool was beyond. The party was still in process.

He approached the glass window overlooking the pool and peered through. The darkness was pool lit, the bluish-green light looking friendlier than from underneath. The stars were still visible.

He tried to make sense out of the movement. Nothing looked threatening. He didn't care if it did. He felt like a fight. He felt restless. He felt like passing out if he didn't keep moving.

He moved along the glass feeling for a door. His hands found a latch. He slid the door open and stumbled out into the cooling night air.

He saw a yellow and green pile on a table to his left. He touched it. It was material. He picked up a piece, looked at it, and then looked at what he was wearing. It was the same. Either he was a guard or the guards had joined the party.

He shut his eyes tight against the pool turning over in front of him, its contents emptying out in the darkened Pacific beyond.

He shut them so tight that the blood sent electrical signals into his brain mimicking light, expanding balls of multicolored light.

Then he was straining, panting, working hard at something. He didn't know quite what. It was like a coming sneeze that was for-ever beyond his reach, the light tickling his anticipation, bringing him almost to the brink and then his body correcting for it and re-treating from the relief the sneeze would bring, the light insistent, starting to build up again, and then he felt the movement in his eyes and the light blinded him with its intensity and he shuddered as his body accepted the pleasure.

Reality swam back into view. He focused on a light blue, crys-talline square maybe a quarter of an inch on a side, on a finger, on a hand next to a brownish green eye brushing brunette hair shaping a beautiful face.

"You're back," the beautiful face moved.

"You're . . ."

"Jeannine."

"The girl . . ."

"I didn't have much choice."

"How long have I been here?"

"You've been having at me for the better part of an hour," she replied, kissing him gently on his forehead. "It took me a while to find something that would get you off."

"How did I get here?"

"You grabbed me out of the deep end of the pool. It was a relief. Lano told me before he left to stay there until I drowned if neces-sary. He didn't tell me necessary for what."

"Jeez." Block started to roll off. Jeannine let him. "I didn't hurt you . . .?"

"That wasn't made to hurt. It was the least I could do. I would have sucked snot for you if the ear thing hadn't worked. What the hell did they do to you?"

"Made me watch you swim in the diving well."

"That's not so bad, is it?"

"No." He rolled over on his back and was out cold.

He woke up alone with a clear picture of Lano D'Lazo.

His normal recall process did not involve reconstructing pic-tures of the D'Lazos of the world. They just weren't there to recall. They were there from the bits and pieces he knew about the world, some of the after scenes he had been forced to view. He knew that the D'Lazos of the world existed.

They just weren't something he would normally occupy his mind reconstructing.

Now he was stuck, not with a picture he could reconstruct at will but a picture he couldn't comprehend simply because he didn't have the experience in recall that would make it understandable.

He was faced with the task of having to look at the picture in detail. It would not go away until it was somehow broken down into understandable bits and pieces.

The image of D'Lazo's face flashing into his perception produced the picture of D'Lazo in all of his devolutionary activities.

The picture conflicted violently with the way he normally re-constructed reality, the sequential construction and successful closing of action triangles that provided him with the underlying optimism that kept him moving forward in the world.

The vision of D'Lazo that was never very far from being vio-lently reconstructed in his mind was so far from his normal picture of a world made up of reasonable human beings working together to improve the total human condition that it created a profound reality based conflict.

He was faced with the concept of how things should be as com-pared to how things actually were.

This conflict had its expected result. When his mind became con-scious and the image of D'Lazo swam into view, the opposing con-cepts of reality were so great the conflict effect was immediate and the impact physically jolting.

The stream of electrons his mind sent pulsating into his sub-systems made his stomach tighten, his hands become clammy, his arm and leg muscles tense, his bladder want to relieve itself. His breathing increased and his pulse rate became more rapid.

He forced the image of D'Lazo to recede, focusing on the picture of meaningless colored blotches on the wall.

He forced his body to relax. The fact that Jeannine was no longer in bed with him became apparent. He fleetingly felt like hav-ing another go at her. The sexual tingle from the thought led inex-plicably to D'Lazo's image and the beginnings of another physical impact.

He forced the thought to recede and again concentrated on set-tling his physical reactions down.

He stood up, immensely restless. He had to do something about the blasts slamming into his body. The picture of D'Lazo started to swim into focus once again.

He took his ability to create reality out of experience and pro-duced a picture of himself smashing the image in the face.

It didn't quell the physical impact the image of D'Lazo created. It redirected it. The imaginary punch produced a feeling of release from the pressure the image caused in his chest. Instead of the hor-rible feeling it gave to the pit of his stomach, it gave him a feeling of openness in his groin. His imaginary clenched fist was no longer clammy. His pulse was still quickened, but it was the quickness of victory.

He dwelled on the reconstruction, his fist pounding the image of D'Lazo to a pulp. Each time D'Lazo's face was a hopeless mess, he reconstructed it anew and began again to beat it to a bloody pulp.

It felt good, the physical impacts no longer unexpected now that they were orchestrated to the reconstructed pictures.

It felt so good, he started to pursue it in closer detail. He kept the face intact and instead of punching it into a bloody mass, he pulled first one ear off and then the other, making the mouth on the face grimace in pain.

The physical impacts were now more intense. He was really turning into an orchestra conductor. What he did to the recon-structed image had a distinct musical effect on him. He could hear the ear tear under his hands.

He saw the clean white teeth behind the grimace of pain and cre-ated a pair of pliers in his hand. He forced open the mouth on the image and started to move the pliers toward the teeth.

He was hit by another impact as a crescendo of uncontrolled electrons streamed into his subsystems.

What he was doing in his reconstructed picture was so at vari-ance with what he was that the resulting impacts were greater than the impacts caused by D'Lazo's image and cancelled out the pleasur-able effects he was getting by systemically destroying the image.

Shit, he thought. He was turning into D'Lazo. Worse, he couldn't get rid of his pain by fantasizing what he'd like to do to the useless piece of scum.

He shook his head vigorously and looked around for a bottle of something, anything, to drink.

The room had a wet bar but he didn't feel like scotch. He took a beer out, cracked it and took a long pull, feeling the effect of the alcohol as it modulated both his perception of reality and his per-ception of reconstructed reality. He finished it and opened another. It took yet another before the edges of his perception of reality were round enough to fit into the rounding edges of the reality he was forced to continually reconstruct.

The booze lessened the reality conflict so that he didn't have to constantly face the physical impacts from D'Lazo's ever-present image or the greater impacts from dwelling on what he would like to do with that image.

One thing was clear. D'Lazo, and all he stood for, had to go and as soon as possible.

Settled by the beer, he got his bearings. He was on D'Lazo's side of the compound close to the center of the U made by the two wings. He walked out into the pool area, impossibly bright to his eyes as they attempted to adjust to the morning light. The water, which had emitted the ubiquitous bluish-green haze the night before was a spi-der web of dancing diamond edges.

Suited men and women wearing sunglasses against the glare and in various states of dishevelment in retreat against the heat of the mid-morning sun lounged with automatic rifles and alert eyes. He knew instantly that Shandra had called in the Reps, agents who rep-resented The Representative World Government's interests against possible incursion by terrorist, or even nationalistic interests and that she therefore carried LFP status, a little bit of guile on the part of The Chairman that cried out for repayment.

Interference with LFP status, by universal agreement, consti-tuted absolute forfeiture by the person responsible, not only of the person's property, but of his life. As such, D'Lazo's villa and the land on which it stood ceased to exist as a privately titled piece of property and came under World Jurisdiction.

Block spotted the big picture window that fronted the living room area and ducked in the door. Shandra sat tapping a pencil on her front teeth, staring into the screen of a pocket computer.

She looked up as he came in and, signing off the computer, got up and handed it to him.

"The first thing I ordered in. Take it. I've initialized it to you. Just enter your password. Have any idea where your other com-puter is?"

"Not the least."

"Want to find out?"

"How?"

"Activate the self-destruct."

"Doesn't that just wipe the disk?"

"No. It's worth about a quarter stick of dynamite. It destroys the computer itself."

"Really." Block punched in a code series. "Let's hope that D'Lazo has it on his lap, three, two, one."

An explosion blew the cushion off the sofa where Shandra had been sitting.

Block smiled sheepishly. Shandra looked back with a level stare. He glanced away from her clear gaze, green in the light filtering in from the veranda. The aversion took his eyes to her mouth.

He noticed her smile for the first time. It was soft but firm, barely a smile. He couldn't tell whether she was mocking him or laughing with him.

The ambiguity, the inability to discern her approval or opproba-tion, set up a conflict within him. His perception accepted the re-sulting physical impact as excitement. It was a pleasant sensation that started in his stomach and fingered down between his legs.

The feeling in turn altered his perception. He idealized her smile and her face glowed with beauty. It was important that it was ap-proval, but opprobation would do. Any attention would do.

Shit, he thought. I've got to cut this out and get back on track.

He looked around the big room for the bar, found it, and began to rummage around for some scotch. There was plenty, but he still wasn't in the mood. He settled on Russian Vodka, deftly cut and squeezed half an orange into a glass and doubled the amount with the clear one hundred-ninety proof liquid.

"What happened to D'Lazo?"

"I surmise that he was enjoying the holographic fruit of his la-bor when his message center brought him back to reality. He had apparently deactivated it so he wouldn't be interrupted. He left the loop running, I guess planning to come back to it."

"What was on the message center?"

Block noticed that ambiguous smile again and covered its impact with his glass.

"He got the word Angular was dead."

"Jim Angular? We've sure had some good times together. Jim Angular! Amazing. I would imagine D'Lazo would be ecstatic at that news. How did he die?"

"With a Colt 45 slug through his mouth."

"Suicide, eh. Doesn't figure. So why would Angular's death make D'Lazo do what he did? What did he do, by the way?"

Block had started to pace between the bar, where he left his screwdriver, and the window overlooking the veranda and the pool beyond. He took a sip on each round trip.

"Angular made two contacts with D'Lazo here yesterday. That's how I traced you here."

"You did? I've been meaning to ask you about that."

"D'Lazo left immediately after finding out about Angular's death. I don't have any idea where he went. He has his own transportation. Once he gets cleared through to the first airport, he's impossible to trace." She diverted her attention to a woman who wandered in with her own attention on a thick printout. "He took off just before ten. What have you got, Del?"

"This stuff is absolutely incredible. There are images going back over five thousand years. If you thought the library at Alexandria was destroyed, forget it. I don't know where the hard copy is now, but its all imaged downstairs on compact disks. It boggles the mind."

"Then you think there is a strong possibility of continuity of control?"

"Definitely. We already see indications that there has been an ongoing project to keep humanity ignorant of reality. Ignorance is definitely a tool for nationalistic control. This will set historiogra-phy on its ear. Did you say that's your registered hobby?"

"What's all of this?" Block asked on one of his passes toward the window.

"When I was coming in, I ran across a room containing an in-credible number of disks. I had the entire library uploaded on the Iridium Network to Headquarters. They're sorting through it. This is their . . ." she raised her eyebrows to Dell, "first analysis?"

"Right. Preliminary indications are that, while there has always been a continual squabbling for resources, the control of those re-sources, at least up to the industrial age, showed a continuity of interests. The first period after the flood involved the re-establishment of world commerce through the control of copper."

"That would be the Bronze Age?"

"Right. And then the Iron Age, the period the ancients thought was characterized by greed and selfishness, splintered world com-merce and gave birth to nationalism. In both ages, the elite estab-lished and maintained control through limiting information, through ignorance, the conscious shrouding of the nature of actual reality."

"A period that has lasted to this day."

"I would have to agree. The Bronze Age lasted almost three thousand years. Why not the Iron Age?"

"Well, it is pretty obvious that we are going through major changes," Block pointed out.

"Yes," Shandra replied, "but it has always been open to discus-sion the extent of those changes. People living through the fall of the Roman Empire probably failed to discern the sweep of what was occurring. When observers are immersed in the stream of history, it is almost impossible to survey the magnitude of the flow from a vantage point in the flow.

"The fall of the Roman Empire is insignificant when compared to the movement from one condition to another, from one age to an-other.

"The Representative World Government has often been accused of being just another control mechanism. Being immersed in the movement, it's hard to tell just what it is and just what the changes it will bring will be.

"All indications are it will be a change of condition significant enough to classify it as the beginning of a new age, an age in which humanity will recognize that regardless of specific differences, the commonality among all is we are all consumers and all have an in-terest in the orderly production and marketing of goods and serv-ices."

"You get that from a disk library?" Block paused in his pacing to take a sip. The concentrated alcohol was beginning to slow down the incessant need of his system to dissipate the excess electrical flows continually disrupting his body.

"Did you see the slogan over the door of the library?" Del asked Shandra, ignoring Block.

"No. I only entered through the back door."

"TOWARD THE STATUS QUO!" Isn't that a gas?"

"How soon do you think you'll be finished? I can't stay here for-ever."

"It'll be a day or two."

"Well, I don't know." She dismissed Del and turned to Block who was in the process of juicing another half an orange. "You ready to examine St. Remain?"

Block felt his breath catch. "You mean he's available? "

"Dead as can be. Come on." Shandra led him to a room on the ocean side of the house.

Sidney St. Remain was laying face up on the bed.

"Some smile, eh?" Shandra remarked.

"More like a grimace. It could have been a smile at one time." He fingered the soup pot. "Bouillabaisse. D'Lazo is our man."

"The smile doesn't fit."

Block picked up one of the napkins. "Look at this. It's folded so that it looks like it has a napkin ring on it." He pulled the two cor-ners apart. "But it doesn't. This type of folded napkin was found at every crime scene. D'Lazo is our man. Have you had any medical tests done?"

"None yet."

"You'll find that he has choked on his own vomit. You'll find he's got an unshot load in his cock."

"He looks like he died from a coronary event to me."

"Did you find a Diskcard around anywhere?"

"A disposable card? No I haven't. But then I didn't find your computer in the couch where it must have slipped."

Block returned to the poolside room and went back to pacing, sipping the drink as he went. Shandra followed him.

"St. Remain needed the code and the Diskcard to effect the wa-tering down of the money supply. He needed the Diskcard because it contained the information in the format that would do the job. He needed the code to get the information accepted. D'Lazo has the Diskcard. He must have tortured the code out of St. Remain."

"St. Remain doesn't look like he's been tortured. He looks like he died happy."

"No. That's the point. They all died happy. You saw what he did to that girl."

"She definitely didn't die happy."

"Right. But this D'Lazo is diabolical. He figured out some way to force these guys into divulging the computer codes."

"How?"

"I don't know, but it obviously worked. I have to catch up with D'Lazo and get him before he has a chance to destroy the money supply. He's in New York."

"How do you know that?"

"Some people like to whistle while they work. He likes to talk." He laid his new computer on the counter and punched in his pass-word. "How did you find Sidney?"

"The security sweep. He apparently got overlooked with the party and what not. He died early yesterday morning."

"That long ago? Interesting. Angular must have turned. He must have been working for B.O. Angular must have been the timing unit. He must have been the one to relay the signal to D'Lazo to enter the money into the system.

"When D'Lazo found out that Angular had been killed, he knew he had lost his timing mechanism. He didn't want to wait for instruc-tions. He wanted to get on the scene so he could track down his re-placement contact. They must have had a back-up plan in case of someone's death. On the other hand, this was played so close to the chest it might be a one-shot deal. If it doesn't fly, it's forgotten. In which case, D'Lazo must be frantic for timing and he's just liable to panic and enter it himself. I've got to get to Manhattan. Check your computer for status."

Shandra had typed in Lano D'Lazo, location. "D'Lazo has a meet-ing later on today at the UN complex. Please have Block contact me by voice. Mary Renon," she read aloud.

Mary Renon. The name sounded familiar. Renon. He let his mind free search. The blockbuster. She was the assistant to The Chair-man who had cleaned his pipes in such a dramatic fashion he had thought to comment on it.

When he considered The Chairman's range of experience, he knew it must have been some blowjob. He tried to visualize what it might be like. He could carry it up to and through the climax. That was the whole purpose. What was the sense of prolonging it once you were where you wanted to be in the first place?

He drew a blank.

So it must be something. The Chairman had called it a real block-buster. Or did he say ball buster. No, blockbuster.

Shandra had just spoken the name Renon in the living room. The pieces fell into place. Renon must be handling the project for The Chairman.

"I know Mary Renon, or at least I've heard The Chairman speak of her." Block responded. "She must be good. She knows where D'Lazo is. He has an appointment at the United Nations. You can learn something from her."

Block had stopped pacing. He felt the energy in his body flow in accordance with the reality he was constructing. He would go to Manhattan. He would go to the United Nations. He would find D'Lazo. He would kill D'Lazo.

He could think of D'Lazo now without having a radical physical reaction from the thought. He had a plan and now the energy that the opposing concepts of reality created in his mind would be put to good use.

In fact, he could use thoughts and images of D'Lazo to good ef-fect. They would carry him to the successful conclusion of his mis-sion. Everything was going to work out for the best.

He picked up one of the napkins he had brought from Sidney's tomb and examined the fold. It looked exactly like it was held to-gether by a napkin ring with no napkin ring.

"Look at this. It must take some doing to learn how to fold a nap-kin like that."

He tossed it aside, wiped St. Remain from his mind and once again attacked the bar. This time he found a bottle of French wine chilled in the refrigerator and corkscrewed it open.

"Wine? No? I need something to level me off." He poured himself a glass. "Where's the communication center? I have to make some secured calls."

Shandra pointed to the hallway. "The Chairman is at a monetary conference in Australia. That's why you're getting Mary Renon on the other end." She wondered if Block had some way of getting in touch with The Chairman even though he was out of touch.

She shrugged. Block took the bottle with the glass and headed back toward the room where the holograph had been. The girl was gone. The room was cleaned up. The curtains were open. The day-light presented quite a different scene from the nightmare it pre-sented only hours before.

He sat in front of the communications bank, found a perch for his glass and the wine bottle and got his bearings.

By interlinking his computer with D'Lazo's Datalink, he could transmit verbally over the Iridium Network with his voice scram-bled.

Computer interchanges were always recorded and saved while the recording of voice communications occurred only if key words were spoken within a certain spacing or a really loaded term such as blow up was uttered.

For that reason, verbal conversations tended to the personal. Renon didn't just want to give him information. She wanted to talk about something.

The Chairman's blockbuster flashed through his mind and he felt the thought as it passed into his body. The unknown always created a conflict, usually, he realized, with pleasant results. The unknown was not in the room, it was not real, it could not hurt you. Contem-plating it caused the mind to send all sorts of messages into the body. It could be quite delicious, especially if it were connected with sex or the anticipation of sex. All women were unknown, even after, or rather, especially after he had been intimate with them.

The blockbuster combined both anticipation and the unknown. What was it The Chairman had said about Renon? She was bouncy. You could pick her out of a crowd a block away.

"Yes." He connected almost immediately. The thought of her waiting for his call, containing the bounciness until she was sum-moned, bolstered his feeling. Her voice was light, cheerful, opti-mistic, full of promise.

"Block here."

"Hi, Ron. I just missed you day before yesterday. I've been working with The Chairman for awhile and he speaks so highly of you I have been looking forward to getting to know you, getting to-gether with you."

He listened closely for any hint in her voice that she might sus-pect The Chairman had told him about her blockbuster. He wondered if she even knew it was named, well, not after him, Block, but a convenient coincidence.

"David did mention you." He couldn't resist one-upping her. Very few people could address The Chairman by name.

"I hope it was good."

"He said you were good," he double-entendred.

"I am good. I guarantee it."

"I can't top you."

"I think you just did. But in case you didn't, plan on it. Listen. I just wanted to talk to you about this monster D'Lazo. He has an ap-pointment with a Conrad Chincester who serves on the British Dele-gation to the United Nations. We think they are going to make a deci-sion whether to use the Diskcard. Chincester's boss is part of the delegation meeting with The Chairman in Australia. I don't know what the situation was before Shandra put an untimely bullet in An-gular's mouth, but The Chairman thinks word will go from Australia to Chincester to D'Lazo. The Chairman says he has taken extraordi-nary steps in case you fail. I don't know what they are, but he says they won't be near enough to avert an absolute catastrophe if D'Lazo gets a chance to use the Diskcard."

"I have more than one reason to terminate D'Lazo's services to the world."

"So I understand. In any event, I've got you booked on the next StratoJet to Manhattan. I'm afraid Shandra will have to stay in Acapulco as Agent-In-Place to secure the library. We don't know if there is a duplicate somewhere but we're not going to take a chance there isn't. I'm sure the terrorists will do anything to get it back."

"That's no problem. D'Lazo is mine."

"This is very important. I, uh, The Chairman absolutely wants this man terminated before he can do any damage. And Ron?"

Block felt the excitement build in his stomach.

"This is all I've got on the burner. If you get rid of D'Lazo, we'll both be off for a while. I've got a downslope on Skyline in the mountains behind Oakland overlooking all three Bays here. Maybe we can both get off there?"

Blocks desire to eliminate D'Lazo took on a new dimension. This was the first time he'd gotten hard talking on the telephone. He hung up and savored the feeling in his body. He couldn't wait.

But he'd have to.

One more reason to finish D'Lazo off as soon as possible.

He had Shandra ferry him over to the StratoJet terminal on one of the helicopters she had at her disposal to secure the perimeter of the Villa.

He wondered whether she would stay at the Villa as suggested by Mary Renon. No one could order her to do anything so she could follow him again if she wished, but his task was pretty straight-forward and he didn't need her tagging along when he met up with Mary. On the other hand, she might be in direct contact with The Chairman, although he doubted it.

She did seem more interested in the safe disposition of D'Lazo's library of perpetual nationalism, as she had begun to refer to it, so he left it to the future to disclose as he settled into his StratoJet seat. He'd brought a bottle of the French wine along and the steward had him set up before he could buckle in.

He was able to file D'Lazo away for future action. He knew when the time came, he would act, and act effectively.

He was having more trouble with Mary Renon. The name set up the act blockbuster, which made fireworks go off in his lower bow-els that in turn fed his perception and set his mind spinning off whatever thoughts he was trying to order.

The anticipation was persistently physical.

He couldn't quite figure out how the anticipation of something could create an opposing concept of reality.

Probably because that was what set up the electrical flows pro-viding the physical sensations that literally controlled how he acted. The medium, the thing that transmitted the sensations might very well be labeled adrenalin, or hormones, or other specific sub-stances, but they were still activated by the electrical flows sent from his mind to regulate his bodily functions.

Sensory stimuli produced recognizable messages that told his mind, consciously or unconsciously, how to respond.

If the response required was immediate, such as a burnt finger, his response would be instinctive. His muscles would contract to remove his finger from the fire.

However, as animate matter became more complex, the mes-sages became more complex. The erection he got during the phone conversation was definitely the result of putting his body next to a female body for purposes of procreation.

The series of messages, instinctive and learned, that went into producing the unexpected reaction were complex indeed. A lot of those messages were produced, not in the real external physical world, but in the internal world reconstructed by his perceptor.

His perceptor had to reconstruct reality in order to survive in the environment that was the reality.

However, sentience allowed his perceptor to reconstruct a re-ality that did not exist in actual reality.

In reconstructing that reality, a reality that did not exist, he realized his perceptor could cause the creation of electrical flows that activated his subsystems in no less a fashion than if they had resulted from actual stimuli from external physical reality.

That function of the mind, its ability to reconstruct a reality that did not exist in reality, was what led to the earthquake proof shelters and the rockets and space station that provided a path to the ultimate survival of the mind.

It also, he knew, created a way to provide the mind pleasure, the idealization of reality, the removal of the jagged edges that made actual reality less than ideal.

However, the ability to recreate a reality that didn't match physical reality also led to situations in which the created reality did not agree with external physical reality.

This could result from something as simple as the inability to close an action triangle. Second nature had taught Block action tri-angles were a concept of reality that did not exist, moving a chair from one place to another. External physical reality has the chair placed too close to the TV. A picture of reality is constructed that has the chair where it doesn't exist, five feet further away from the TV.

If the action triangle is closed, if external physical reality is made to conform to the picture of reality constructed in the mind, there would be no physical problem other than being a little tired from the direct physical activity.

However, if the chair was too heavy to move, there would be a problem.

The failure to be able to match physical reality with the picture of reality constructed in the mind would result in a conflict.

Because the mind, the perceptor, could hold only one picture of reality at a time, the conflict produced a physical problem in the perceptor.

Block understood that the ability to reconstruct reality at all resulted from the mind harnessing its electrical activity. Elec-trodes could be attached to the head to measure this activity, both awake and at rest, asleep.

As long as the mind was functioning in a normal manner, the ac-tivity, represented by electrical flows, would proceed unhindered like a large multi-circuit computer with all of the electrical flows carrying out all of their assigned duties.

The reconstructions of reality in the operating mind flowed smoothly from picture to picture without a hitch. It didn't matter whether his mind was reconstructing external reality to be able to move within it, or he was merely sitting reconstructing a reality that did not exist, fantasizing in the comfort of the StratoJet, so long as the pictures were flowing unhindered, there would be no physical problem

If the reconstructed reality for some reason came into conflict with external physical reality, the recall flowing to produce one picture of reality had to reconstruct a different picture.

If his mind was unable to resolve the conflict, the electricity moving recall into his perceptor, having nothing to reconstruct, would have to flow somewhere else.

Not being utilized for their intended purpose, the streams of electrical flows go where they can, traveling through the nerve channels that developed to send messages in response to external stimuli.

Block's mind would end up sending messages that his body never requested and doesn't know what to do with when it gets them.

His bodily functions, which were designed to receive certain messages and act in response in a certain well-defined manner, would all of a sudden begin to receive messages they were not de-signed to receive.

Not knowing whether to respond or not to respond, his body's subsystems would find themselves in the same difficulty as his perceptor, which can't form a coherent picture because reality has been forced to conflict with his existing picture of reality.

The subsystems would then begin to turn on and off in manners having no firm relationship with their evolved function.

Because the triggering of these systems is what made his body react to external stimuli, the disruption would be physical, no less physical than being hit by a rock.

The physical reactions that resulted would in turn send mes-sages to his mind, in effect asking, what the hell do we do about all these messages we are getting?.

These return messages would affect his mind's attempt to re-construct reality so that they would reinforce his perceptor's problem.

This, Block knew, was the impact that resulted from a reality conflict.

Opposing concepts of reality were created whenever external reality did not agree with the construction of reality created in the perceptor.

The conflict resulted in a conflict that produced an electrical im-pact that was no different from being slapped in the face except face-slappers could be located in reality and the source of the mental impact was not generally obvious.

The impact had to be interpreted, but it was normally not pleas-ant and generally ranged from unpleasant to extremely painful.

If another person stepped in front of him and unexpectedly hin-dered his progress, the resulting conflict would depend on the real-ity of the picture he had constructed to carry him on his way.

If he were racing to catch a plane, the conflict might be intense. The impact might be so great that he physically responded by slug-ging the hindrance.

On the other hand, if the plane had been delayed, an unlikely event in Block's case, he might be ambling over to get a magazine and the obstacle might be nothing more than the chance to meet an attractive partner.

The obstacle might even be externally inflicted. If he was using the main terminal and found out the ticket agent wouldn't change his ticket, the conflict might be minor. If the ticket agent says he could but he won't, it might be greater. If he says he won't and then looked over Block's shoulder and asked the person behind him whether he could change his ticket, it might become unbearable.

The possibility of an impact from the conflict between external reality and constructed reality is always present. Because it is un-pleasant, it needs to be avoided just like the sensation from a burning match needed to be avoided.

Being continually subjected to impacts created physical stress that could eventually destroy the organism.

Because conflict impacts were to be avoided, the question be-came, in Block's mind, how to avoid them?

If the conflict causing the unwanted impact was between con-structed reality and physical reality, the impact could be avoided simply by avoiding the conflict.

He could give up trying to move the chair. He could simply ac-cept external physical reality and conform all his internal con-structions of reality to that external reality.

This was an unacceptable solution, however, where external re-ality was freezing his subsystems into immobility.

Of course, if he was two miles up on an ice shelf in the Himala-yas, hours away from any help, this might well be the best solu-tion. If his subsystems were going to cease to function because of an unacceptable temperature, there is little reason to torture them with impacts like repeating the mantra if only I had, if only I hadn't.

He knew he could accept external reality if he had to, although he had refused to accept it while encased in the plastic motorcycle. The alternative would have been more painful, which, he guessed, was D'Lazo's intention.

On the other hand, if ignoring external reality would have no im-pact on his subsystems, he might find it easier to conform his con-cept of internal reality to external reality and be done with it.

Block knew that this situation had been highlighted by the recent paradigm shift. Everyone knew that the human race had assumed that the Earth was at the center of the universe for the better part of the first two thousand years of its accepted history.

It didn't make much difference to the sun whether the sentient animate matter on one of the hunks of rock it was dragging behind it in its travel through space thought it was traveling around the rock.

The mistaken belief certainly didn't harm the sentient animate matter. Even if the sentient animate matter could recognize that the rock might cease to travel around the sun and therefore result in its own cessation, it couldn't do anything about it and would be forced to accept being on a hypothetical ice ledge.

The concept that gravity was produced by the existence of mass, however, was quite another thing, although for centuries, believing it appeared to be just as harmless as believing the sun traveled around the Earth.

Block, dealing with the organization and operation of intelligence services, was well aware of the birthing of the original concept.

It was one thing to claim that the Earth revolved around the sun. People could say the words but if they tried to visualize it, they might end up with vertigo wondering why, if the Earth moved, they didn't fall off.

With Galileo, people could see the planets moving around the Sun by looking at the moons of Jupiter orbit the planet. The visual rep-resentation of the moons orbiting the planet suddenly gave mental reality to the Earth moving around the Sun.

When the Earth was the center of the Universe, it was natural that everything should fall toward it.

With the Earth no longer the center of the Universe, in fact something that was moving freely in space, it became extremely important for everyone's peace of mind to come up with some sort of explanation why people didn't fall off it.

The measurements were well known. If something were dropped, it fell toward the surface of the Earth in a manner that would make the force's strength inverse with the square of its distance from the surface of the Earth.

The emerging future British Empire's intelligence service had been established under the rule of the indomitable if not quite so Virgin Queen a century prior to Newton's birth, but intelligence services transcend mere lifetimes.

At the time that Newton was contemplating the trajectories of moving objects, the movements described by matter moving within the field of attraction at the Earth's surface, the British intelli-gence services were contemplating the trajectories of the shells which, when shot from ships, would make the British navy majesty to the seas of the world.

British intelligence clearly recognized the importance of scien-tific information in creating and maintaining a nation that could dominate the world. Because science was loosely understood as knowledge, it was felt if Britain could attract scientific thinkers, it could obtain a monopoly on knowledge and thus the dominance of the world.

The idea that knowledge was necessary to domination traced a clear path back to Sir Francis Bacon, who, under Elizabeth, had set out to organize it, believing that if one had all the facts, one would have all the answers.

While many thinkers might consider pure thought the purpose of science, the practical use of the inventions of science is what em-pire is after. Knowing that the atom can be split will not win any wars. Having a bomb to blow the enemy to bits will.

If the emerging British Empire wanted to obtain possession of the inventions that would replace gunpowder on the battlefield, it would have to set up England as the source of all knowledge and in-vention so anyone in the world would gravitate to its shores to carry out experiments that would lead to advancement.

In the alternative, under the guise of a British society for the advancement of science, England could send its agents out to keep track of scientific developments in other lands so it could utilize those results and claim the credit.

Anyone who thinks Henry and Faraday, an ocean apart, got up one morning and discovered induction at the same time is demon-strating the effectiveness of the intelligence supposition that any one will believe anything they don't know anything about.

Anyone who doubts how the credit ended up in Faraday's court, on the shores of the British Empire, doesn't know how the English converted the proposition that matter produced gravity into the ultimate intelligence coup. By claiming to have discovered the ulti-mate secret of the universe, the Empire put itself in a position of dictating what was and was not science. It could then take credit and control of a limitless list of inventions duplicated only by the now obsolete soviet encyclopedia of modern times.

Newton was simply asked if he thought he could show mathe-matically that the moon was falling to the surface of the Earth at the same rate that a rock fell when dropped.

Newton said he not only could, he had.

From small acorns, big oaks grow.

The fact that the moon didn't fall toward the Earth made little difference after Newton cooked up a complicated mathematical for-mula showing that it would but for the fact that it wasn't.

British Intelligence, knowing Newton was an alchemist who spent most of his time trying to turn lead into gold, figured that something as simple as this explanation, which being no explanation at all was not that hard to understand, could, if wrapped in the proper package, work to attract inventive minds to England's ex-panding shores.

If peace of mind had been lost by finding out the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, it had been regained by discovering the Earth produced something called gravity that extended unendingly into space attracting everything that it touched.

People could forget worrying about falling off the face of the Earth and they could thank the British Empire for producing the genius who discovered the scientific facts that proved humanity's permanence.

Future geniuses apply on these shores.

Block smiled internally. The paradigm shift, from something in-herent about matter that produced gravity, to the combustion of matter producing an attractive mechanism, was producing more mental conflicts than unrequited love.

The perceptor reacted the same way to the assertion of a proposition that did not agree with an accustomed proposition as it did to a reality conflict.

The perceptor tended to accept pictures of reality where those pictures did not come into conflict with actual physical reality.

Thus, science was expert at collecting propositions that, over long periods of time, resisted disproof simply because it took actual reality to disprove a mentally created picture.

Science had become so proud of this fact that it boasted of its most untestable tenants as having survived the test of time, an-other way of saying that no one could figure out how to disprove them.

Thus, idiotic propositions like matter can neither be created nor destroyed became commonplace in science.

When made-up propositions and hypotheses become accepted as fact, actual reality becomes the hypothesis that produces mental conflicts. Even though mass/gravity was merely a theory, and an unproven theory at that, claiming that it wasn't a reality produced severe mental pain to those who believed it with all their heart and soul, and would quickly lash out at the source of their pain, those that proposed an alternate theory.

The new proposed reality created an impact and as impacts were to be avoided, the conflicting concept was to be avoided.

Most of the scientific establishment simply refused to engage in discussion of the paradigm shift.

As action triangles were in essence based on concepts, on the belief that the picture of reality constructed in the perceptor was obtainable in external reality, the scientific community refused to pursue the implications of gravity being produced by combustion, by the cooling of hot bodies in space.

It was certainly no wonder to Block that one person's belief could create a mental impact in another person.

D'Lazo's face swam back into view at the thought.

Whatever belief system drove his body was so far from Block's understanding, that his rage was understandable.

Given the discomfort mental impacts caused, especially when they were great, it was no wonder that people's bodies became charged from the incessant streams of unwanted electrons flowing into their subsystems as a result of the opposing concepts of real-ity. The only relief he could obtain was eliminating the vile D'Lazo.

D'Lazo was like a deadly virus, a universal plague.

Why should a man, how could a man sit home when the infidel was roaming the Earth with tales of strange gods practicing foreign customs defiling existence. It was only right that opposing concept systems be destroyed because opposing concept systems caused pain, physical pain, right in the gut.

It didn't matter that the professors of those beliefs were hu-man, loved, hated and survived just like anyone else, the mere ex-istence of those beliefs could reach across the world and cause physical damage that had to be redressed.

To get relief from the physical pain the existence of those be-liefs created, it was permissible to hack, slice, cut and mash any-one found holding those beliefs.

The beliefs might be invisible, will of the wisps, conceptual structures constructed as a by-product of the normal operation of the mind reconstructing reality. The conflict they produced with other beliefs might equally be the by-product of the formal opera-tion of the mind reconstructing reality and thus also be invisible, The impacts, the physical response they caused, however, were real responses that had real physical consequences.

When belief becomes fact, opposing beliefs set up conflict reali-ties that have every much a physical impact as the assault of the infidel's sword on the flesh and, Block knew, must be addressed in kind.

Where, he wondered as the wine splashed into his glass, does one discover right and wrong in a world where every right has a wrong.

Where is the absolute, and even more important, how is failure to conform to the absolute punishable?

If the golden rule is the absolute, if everyone can agree that one shouldn't do unto others what one didn't want others to do unto them, how does nature enforce the rule against someone who has no rules?

How do those who attempt to keep the rule protect themselves from those who could care less about the rule?

Block started to pick up his glass but found he had been rubbing something between his fingers. He looked at the sticky ball. It was a small bandaid.

He had showered while waiting for the helicopter and hadn't even noticed it, but now he realized that his ear must be bleeding from the tear caused by D'Lazo yanking off the gold band he wore as a remembrance of his first real intimacy. It had always bothered him that this symbol, created in private by two frightened kids, conflicted with established symbols, but being Block, he didn't have to concern himself with the conflict.

Now he realized that symbols were just physical representa-tions of created reality and set up opposing realities.

The standard of nationhood was designed to cause far more physical damage from its secondary mental impacts than the pole that bore it could ever inflict by using it to rain blows down on the heads of the enemy.

When the standard of nationhood provided protection for all who joined together under it, survival for the group against the incur-sions of other groups, sustenance in a world where there was never enough, could nature enforce any rule, let alone a golden rule against those who have to break the rule to survive?

How, Block wondered, can you do unto others as you would have them do unto you when, if you don't eat, you'll be eaten?

He put the bandaid down. The steward was thoughtful, but he didn't quite know how to go about putting a bandaid on his earlobe.

He put a corner of a napkin in the wine and dabbed at what he now realized was a sore. If the sore were big enough, the blood that carried the food to his subsystems and picked up the garbage would all leak out and his subsystems would start to feed on each other, or break down as food for the hostile organisms his subsystems had been able to keep in check while they were healthy and well fed.

He knew the progression from inanimate, to animate, and then to ambulatory. Sentience was the ability of animate ambulatory mat-ter to move within its environment, react to it, and thus survive.

Inanimate matter was composed of atoms. Animate matter was composed of the same atoms connected together in a fashion that they could modulate changes in the potentials resulting from the changes in the position of the planet. Animate systems such as the skin of a bear, could arrange atoms into inanimate matter, hair, so the skin would be protected in a winter that resulted from the movement of the planet with respect to the sun.

Was sentience, the ability to form pictures of reality that didn't exist in reality and then hold those pictures against the pain of the conflict with reality, was the structure where the comparison oc-curred or failed made up of atoms also?

Block paused over a sip of the wine. This, he thought, did not make sense.

The matter that contains the perceptor, the mind, is made up of atoms, but the mind itself must be less than atoms. What did he get from Easy, that thoughts are the stuff atoms are made out of.

That was it. If an expanding electromagnetic spectrum produced a mechanism that caused the nuclei of atoms to move back toward the source of the heat, then whatever made up the expanding elec-tromagnetic spectrum had to be too small to be caught up in the same mechanism.

A ton of rubbish would crash toward the Earth, but the particles of dust that are the same size as the particles of air will stay as dust in the air. The air, of course, wasn't making the rubbish fall, but the analogy was descriptive.

Atoms would be drawn into the sun by the attractive force be-cause their nuclei were affected by the mechanism that regulated the expansion of the sun's emissions, its electromagnetic emission field.

A particle that made up the nuclei alone would be too small to be captured by the emission field and pulled back into the surface of the sun.

An atom, dragged into the sun by the attractive force, would cease to exist as an atom.

A particle of matter that made up the nuclei standing alone would be too small to be subjected to the attractive mechanism and would never be drawn into the sun. It was what the sun was emit-ting as it consumed the atoms that it attracted, not what the emis-sions attracted.

If the individual particles were organized by changing potentials into a web of stable equilibrium, then they could operate like the perceptor, the mind operated.

Block had seen the phenomena many times in a school of fish.

The fish might be motionless in the water, or moving, but mo-tionless with respect to each other, a massive unit of individual fish, evenly spaced, points of light in the sunlight penetrating the surface above them.

A threat perceived at the edge of the school would ripple through the school, the school reacting as one, moving to avoid the threat. The movement rippling through the school would cause a pattern as the individual fish reflected the sun in a momentarily different pattern.

Block was beginning to think of the perceptor, the mind that was capable of creating a reality that did not exist in reality, as com-posed of the particles of matter that made up the nuclei of atoms, particles that were too small to be subjected to the attractive force.

The particles would be so small that they could not be measured. They could not be measured because any particles that could be ar-ranged into a measuring device would be as large or larger than the particles that made up the perceptor.

After all, light, which is the very device the eye uses to meas-ure reality, is made up of particles so small that they have eluded measurement.

But they exist.

Block began to see the perceptor as made up of a cloud of these particles, uncountable in number, each in equilibrium with the oth-ers.

As external stimuli reached the perceptor, perhaps in a manner similar to digital information, it fired through the cloud of particles that made up the perceptor, disbalancing its equilibrium.

As the individual particles moved, much as the individual fish in the school moved in response to external stimuli, the perceptor would produce a different picture. It would not be a picture formed by sunlight glinting off fish scales, but an electrical mosaic pro-duced as millions of particles moved both back and forth between equilibrium and disequilibrium with respect to one another.

Block reviewed the course of evolution, forming pictures of re-ality in his own perceptor, trying to actually feel if the disequilib-rium were directly noticeable.

Inanimate matter existed with different molecular and atomic structures side by side on the planet. The different structures were under different stresses because each had a different electrical potential.

As environmental temperature affected the potentials, the movement of the planet from day to night and back to day as it ro-tated on its axis produced a continuous fluctuation in the relative potentials.

Where these fluctuations were fairly steady, atoms formed in crystalline structures between the differences in potentials to pro-vide a path for the electricity to flow between the potentials.

Where there were distances between changing potential differ-ences and there were other chemicals available, animate life, the arrangement of atoms and molecules of atoms into structures, formed around the flows moving between the potential differences. As these structures were animated by the electrical flows, they were the first animate matter to form.

This was Originism.

The formation of atoms into animate matter where differences in potentials existed in the inanimate matter clearly showed the evolutionary nature of the process.

The existence of matter proved that matter was intended to de-fine nothingness, the natural condition of the universe.

The fact that matter was constantly in motion, and therefore would constantly be under stress, produced animate matter.

Animate matter was the first step on the evolutionary scale that could only result in matter arranging itself so as to perceive itself.

This was the root of Perceptionism.

Animate matter that was not ambulatory had too narrow a range of survival to develop the structure that could perceive matter. Such a structure would require not only the ability to develop a host that could maintain its existence for a long enough period of time to develop the skills necessary to survive regardless of the environment, it had to survive long enough to develop the skills to pass those skills through the host externally to other perceptors occupying hosts in the environment.

And such a structure would above all have to develop as a per-manent structure.

The atom was a perfect structure. Its range of survival had to be broad in order to give permanence to physical reality.

It was, however, subject to destruction. If it found itself, as sooner or later it would, in the expanding electromagnetic emis-sions of a combusting sun, or even of the internal fires of a com-busting planet, the atom would be drawn at an ever increasing speed toward the surface of the combustion until it became a part of the combustion.

As permanent as the atom was, it was not permanent.

If the evolution towards being able to perceive matter in the universe, and thus to be able to define that matter and the universe in which it existed was towards permanence, the structure that would evolve to perceive the universe would have to be more per-manent than the atom.

The only way a structure could be more permanent than an atom would be if it was not subject to the attractive force.

The only way that a structure could outlast an atom is if it were made up of the same thing an atom was made up of, but arranged so its individual parts would be too small for the attractive mechanism to act on and thus pull toward its source, combusting matter.

The school of fish swam back into Block's mental view, each fish a uniform distance from each of the fish next to it, the move-ment of each fish dependent on the fish next to it and the movement of those fish dependent in turn on the movement of the same fish dependent upon it.

The whole school was a unit, made up of millions of fish con-nected together at its furthermost point because it was connected together at each point, the space between each fish.

Environmental influences registered on the whole as they rippled through the entire structure.

In like manner, the perceptor would be composed of elementary particles trapped in equilibrium one with the other. If two tried to move toward each other, the contiguous particles would resist the movement, attempting to move them back into position.

As particles in the structure moved toward each other, they were each moving away from other particles. When two particles in the structure moved away from each other, the force that at-tracted them together would cause them to move back into equilib-rium.

The perceptor formed because it was in equilibrium, and it sur-vived because it was in equilibrium.

Environmental influences entered the perceptor by being col-lected as electrical signals from the senses of the physical struc-ture that the perceptor occupied.

As these electrical signals were passed through the perceptor, they caused the individual particles of the perceptor to move.

The movement resulted in a disequilibrium within the perceptor.

External reality created a veritable reality within the perceptor by disbalancing the particles that made it up.

If the perceptor received a signal from external reality, it would be disbalanced in a pattern that would reconstruct that ex-ternal reality.

If the signal was removed, the particles that made up the per-ceptor would return to equilibrium, and the picture of reality would fade.

The basic operation of sentience involved the preceptor con-structing a veritable picture of external reality. It then encoded that picture and stored the electrical signals that created the dise-quilibrium in a memory unit, something similar to the gene that re-corded the creation process of animate matter.

Thus, the picture that had been stored could be recalled at will, and when it passed through the perceptor, it would once again re-construct a picture of the reality it represented, although the event that was originally constructed had occurred and was no longer ca-pable of actual perception in the real world.

In like manner, the changing environment that is continually pro-ducing external input into the perceptor will continually change the imbalances within the perceptor so that the perceptor creates a smooth flow of recreated pictures, the disequilibrium moving from one reconstruction to another without hindrance.

Block could use the school of fish analogy to understand why conflicting concepts of reality set up such a problem in the percep-tor.

A school of fish, receiving simultaneous threats from two sides, would begin to react from each side. The fish in the middle, receiv-ing conflicting messages would become confused, not knowing how to react. The confusion would be retransmitted to the unconfused fish and eventually the school would break apart unless it could re-gain its own equilibrium.

Block could readily see why opposing concepts of reality, being forced into a single structure, would cause conflicts. The structure was designed to compare experience with reality and warn the or-ganism when they didn't match so the organism could stop and find out what was different about reality so it could survive in that re-ality. The notification occurred when the two conflicting pictures caused the perceptor to stop operating, and the electricity that op-erated it entered the body's subsystems.

That, Block realized, was the source of the pain when opposing concepts of self were forced into the perceptor.

The perceptor itself was limited to the external reality that it had knowledge of through the senses of the physical structure that it occupied and much of that knowledge was not directly knowable.

The perceptor could cause the physical structure to measure physical reality in order to be able to alter it to better accommo-date its survival but the perceptor could never directly measure the size of the planet or the sun or directly measure the distance between them.

It could never see the actual physical process of combustion. It could see and feel the result, but it could never take a photograph of the physical processes matter was undergoing when it combusted.

To survive, however, it had to understand that which it could not measure. Block felt its basic purpose was to understand that which it could not measure, for otherwise, if it was not formed in the universe to perceive the universe, it had no purpose.

Like lichen on a planet that stopped rotating would cease to exist because it would freeze on the night side or burn up on the dayside, something that had no purpose in the universe would simply cease to exist.

That was the corollary to the basic axiom of Originism, that life existed where the conditions for its existence existed.

The perceptor was the perfect structure to reconstruct a pic-ture of that which it could not measure because it reconstructed a picture of reality and was able to alter that picture at will.

As long as the picture it constructed agreed with the facts that were measurable in external reality, it could assume that the pic-ture was sufficient to act upon.

Of course, if it made a mistake, survival was at stake. You did-n't misjudge the nonmeasurable thickness of ice many times and survive.

"It's a veritable gullywasher in New York canyon," the stew-ard's voice broke into his contemplation.

On the StratoJet, survival was literally out of his perceptor's range of responsibilities and was the perfect place to reconstruct pictures of any reality Block wished.

He accepted a final refill.

"They're stacked up ten high at Kennedy but we'll receive our normal clearance through. We should be at the terminal in five min-utes."

Block thanked him. He focused once again on the perceptor as a school of fish. If it were subjected to enough external conflicts, the stresses would grow to the point that the entire structure would come apart.

That analogy, however, was not exactly precise. The particles of the perceptor were captured in positions of stable equilibrium. They could not fly apart like the individual fish, which, becoming totally confused, could break the school apart.

The perceptor could pass the stresses on to the body and ulti-mately destroy the body but it seemed doubtful that it could de-stroy itself.

If the basic proposition was that you should treat others as you would want others to treat you, what were the consequences of failing to do so? The proposition itself would seem to be designed to allow for the maximum development of the perceptor.

How could matter select out other matter for destruction on the basis of behavior, on the basis of the failure to act in accordance with a certain precept?

How could somebody's actions cause the destruction of some-thing that evolution had created to be indestructible?

He hoped he could derive some answer to the question of the de-structibility of the perceptor before he eliminated D'Lazo because he didn't just want to terminate his animate subsystems, which in the end were really irrelevant.

He wanted to terminate the perceptor that was Lano D'Lazo.

Block thanked the steward and entered the StratoJet terminal. His driver, apparently new on the job, spotted Block immediately and Block followed him to the limousine. He gave the driver the ad-dress of the UN Building just off 45th street in case he hadn't been advised of his destination.

The steward had been correct about the gullywasher. While the sun had come out, the streets were awash in puddles, the gutters gushing past sewer openings that were still backed up. The traffic, cabs with the exception of the occasional limousine, reflected their lights on the wet pavement in contrast to the clearing blue sky.

Block looked at his watch. It was mid-afternoon. Still some day left. He thought briefly of Renon and the coming blockbuster with a tingle of anticipation, but he was surprised at just how far the prospect was from his mind.

He had fallen into a state of grim determination. His thoughts were focused, either consciously or unconsciously, on obtaining his goal. His mind could think clearly, perhaps lucidly, but his percep-tion of his movements were tinged in reality as if he were entering from stage left and carrying out the directions of a carefully crafted script. He might have a life outside the play, but right now, the play was the thing.

The limousine pulled up before the thirty-nine-story Secretariat Building. The driver pulled into the space reserved for the Secre-tariat. The guard started to protest, then recognized the window tag.

Block got out. He told the driver to stay put. He patted himself down. He had a nine-millimeter and two extra clips, more than enough.

He passed through the seven nickel doors and signaled his ID, bypassing a security check that prohibited guns of any type on the premises. Block smiled to himself. He was probably the only armed person in the entire UN complex.

He moved into the lobby, its ceiling soaring seven and a half sto-ries above him. Below him a ball suspended from a seventy-five foot wire attached to the ceiling above moved in a slow arc.

He paused to watch it, not having to wait for it to complete an arc to know that it would not return to the same place on the floor it had been when the arc had started.

People looking at the pendulum might perceive that it moved in an arc that was moving in a circle, the point of return always being a little further around the curve of the circle with each full swing.

It took a change of perception to realize that the pendulum was moving in a stationary arc, back and forth over the same path. The Earth was moving under the pendulum. It was the circle painted on what eventually would be the surface of the planet that was de-scribing a circle under the back and forth motion of the pendulum.

To Block, the leap in perception, from the obvious to the non-measurable reality, signified the transition of the ages, the move-ment from the iron age, the physical reality of the ball that de-scribed the arc, to the age of perception, where understanding would lead to the recognition of life's inanimate origin and the ac-commodation of that origin with the perceptor's ability to create alternate realities out of the matter defining the universe.

It represented the transition between the age when the percep-tor had to spend its time on the survival of the hosts it occupied to the time when the host's immediate survival was ensured and it could concentrate on the perception of the universe, on the survival of the species.

The creation of animate matter was universal. The development of animate systems into groups that allowed the animate matter to become ambulatory was more difficult. The transition to sentience even more difficult.

However, the transition from mere sentience to perception, to a recognition of the existence of the perceptor and an understanding of its operation, was the most difficult transition, a transition that must not be blocked.

The corridor between the Secretariat Building and the Confer-ence Building opened out behind the pendulum. Block started to move toward the corridor and then checked himself.

He knew nothing about D'Lazo's business other than he had an appointment with a Conrad Chincester. A scan by Headquarters showed Chincester out of the office so he didn't know the time or the location of the meeting. He knew it would be in the Secretariat Building if it weren't under some rock on the UN grounds.

Where would D'Lazo spend his time if he were still waiting for his meeting to come up?

Block decided to go out onto the Plaza and enter the Assembly Building at the far end of the row of three.

If D'Lazo were waiting for his meeting, he had a fairly good idea where that wait would be taking place.

He exited out onto the Plaza and looked up to get his bearings. To his right, the majesty of the roof on the Secretariat Building cut the blue sky thirty-nine-stories above. He moved away from that building, beside the low-lying Conference Building, keeping his eye on any openings as he made his way along.

Past the Conference Building, he began to search for an entrance into the common corridors of the Assembly Building. He found one at the corner closest to the Conference Building and eased himself in.

The corridor connecting the Assembly Building with the Secre-tariat Building was directly ahead of him. He felt for the nine-millimeter and moved cautiously forward. As he reached the cor-ner, he peered carefully around into the large somber hallway.

He spotted D'Lazo instantly.

The scum stood transfixed before the red and tan Zanetti, di-rectly in front of Block.

D'Lazo was transfixed, but his eyes weren't. They were darting wildly but lovingly over the myriad images of physical strain.

Block didn't hesitate. The nine-millimeter was in his hand and moving forward with him around the corner, his finger closing on the trigger.

But D'Lazo was like a fly, moving seemingly before Block began his move. His darting eyes had spotted a glint of light off the barrel of the gun. As he vacated his position instantly, his darting eyes opened in surprise as he recognized the figure who was moving around the corner. He shifted his weight instinctively to keep from presenting a stationary target and took a second look to verify his initial identification.

It was Block.

Block kicked himself mentally for moving too rapidly and checked the finger pull on the trigger, calculating whether he could readjust the barrel to score an effective hit.

D'Lazo was like a water spider, moving again in the opposite di-rection. Even in the afternoon, with the visitor traffic down from the downpour, he didn't want to fire widely, least of all in the di-rection of the Secretariat Building where crowds would be gathered around the Foucault Pendulum.

His hesitation was enough for D'Lazo to take off rapidly down the corridor in the same direction that Block was reluctant to let loose a volley.

Block pocketed the gun and took after D'Lazo in active pursuit. As he moved toward the Secretariat Building, the scenes on the Zanetti became more tranquil, representing the movement away form the horrors of medieval honor to universal unity. Block was not becoming more tranquil, however. The images of the effort were merging with the image of D'Lazo, bobbing back and forth in front of him, trying to outpace him but failing because of his shorter legs.

Block knew there were only three ways D'Lazo could go. One, out the front door, was by far the most likely. If D'Lazo took that course, Block would probably quickly lose him in the crowds on 45th.

The other two courses were left and right, toward the two banks of elevators on either side of the lobby.

Block watched closely as D'Lazo closed on the vertical of the pendulum. He would have to go right or left. Block shifted left, as D'Lazo made his commitment, far enough so he would have a straight run if D'Lazo curved around the base of the Pendulum heading for the door.

He didn't. He headed directly for the elevator bank.

Why would he do that, Block wondered. What if there were no elevators? Was he panicked, running like a scared rabbit, or was he leading a follower?

Block rounded the corner and saw D'Lazo facing him, a smile on his face, thirty feet in front of him.

Block stopped and once again pulled out the nine-millimeter, an-other mistake.

D'Lazo sidestepped into a closing elevator and Block, by the time he regained his momentum, was too late to stop the closing door.

He slammed the door in frustration, the difference between him-self in front of an open door with D'Lazo clenched in his fist, and himself, impotent, in front of a closed elevator door, with D'Lazo capable of getting off at any of the thirty-nine floors above, or any of the lower floors for that matter.

He stopped slamming at the closed door as his mind cleared.

Why, he asked, had D'Lazo not bolted for the front door?

He must have thought Block would have someone waiting for him there.

Not a bad idea, now that he thought about it.

D'Lazo must feel he was trapped.

Where do people that feel they are trapped always go?

Up!

An elevator door opened to Block's right. A young girl in a sa-rong got out and Block jumped in, located the button for the thirty-ninth floor and pushed it.

As the door closed, he reached up to the roof of the elevator and removed the plastic honeycomb squares that distributed the light evenly into the car. He found the trap door at the back of the car. Using his fingernail on the flimsy lock, he flipped open the door. Reaching up, he pulled himself through.

Squatting on the top of the rising car, he watched the darkened doors move swiftly by. Glancing up, he saw the light filtering in from the lift housing.

He was operating from one movement to another like a man who was betting all or nothing on the turn of a single card.

If his supposition was wrong, he had lost D'Lazo.

He had no alternative to his supposition.

Either D'Lazo was running from a threat presumed to be bigger than Block alone, or he was stupid. If he weren't stupid, he was paranoid. If he was running, he wouldn't be running to somewhere, the office where he had the meeting, he would be running wildly away from somewhere.

People invariably trapped themselves by running from a fire to a roof.

Block was counting on D'Lazo having the same unreasoned im-pulse. He certainly wasn't leading. Or was he?

As the elevator reached the peak of its ascent, the thirty-ninth floor, Block leaped for the ledge supporting the housing frame. It was still wet from the rain, but the concrete was rough and he was able to get a firm grasp. He looked around for the source of the wetness and saw that the window slanted inward into the shaft. The door to the housing was on the opposite ledge. Block worked on the window, pulling the rusting chain supports out of the wood frame to let the window lie flat against the inner concrete wall. It was funny he thought of the building as modern when it was well into its old age, ripe for replacement.

He slipped quickly through the now full opening and onto the roof. The gravel rooftop was punctuated by equipment islands and puddles from the recent rain.

He took his bearings and located himself down river on the inside part of the building.

He remained quiet, listening for any other movement on the roof that would be signaled by the crunching of the gravel.

While he stood motionless, his eyes followed the top of the ledge that surrounded the floor of the roof. Someone, in the eternal battle against the ever-present starlings and pigeons, had set up a triple tiered fence of wire fastened at intervals to the ledge by ceramic covered fasteners.

Block figured the wires had once carried an electrical charge to discourage the birds from using the ledge as a resting place. They clearly didn't now because they looked as if deterioration had long since set in, relics of some long since forgotten good intentions.

Further down, at the middle of the ledge, a double boom with a series of pulleys on the end gave testimony to the constant need for a building with a glass curtain facade for the services of window washers.

On the far side, the complementary elevator housings stood. Air conditioning apparatus was located in between, with a cooling tower and several cooling pools in-between. A water tower for the build-ing's water supply was behind the cooling tower. Electric wiring crisscrossed back and forth between the various structures and lights were mounted electively to serve the various purposes for which they would be needed at night.

All, Block assumed, located with an eye to keeping the gut op-erations out of view from the front facade and giving a low profile from other vantage points to avoid disturbing the clean lines of the overall building from ground viewing.

The failure of detecting a crunch started Block's mind to con-struct a picture of failure that conflicted with the picture he had of finishing off D'Lazo.

He didn't want to recognize failure, let alone experience its physical effects, and he reinforced his picture of D'Lazo, this time with him stepping out of a door onto the gravel surface.

What door?

He looked around the entire roof with a sweeping gaze. The re-sulting picture placed him on a slab of concrete jutting over five hundred feet up into the air. His mind filled in the part of the picture that he could not see, the sheer walls dropping straight down to the plaza below.

He caught his breath as he involuntarily felt himself falling off the edge of the roof, the picture of the windows racing by a blur, the hard concrete of the plaza floor rushing up to meet him. He felt his legs buckle at the momentary physical reality of his mental re-construction.

Block crouched down so that he was below the level of the wall surrounding the gravel floor of the roof. His breath was shallow. Nothing had physically happened to him but to his body it might as well have happened.

Perceptionism be damned, nothing accounted for the unreasoning phobia he felt when he found himself at heights. Going up didn't bother him. It was the idea of coming down that turned his muscles to liquid.

As he collected himself, he realized that he had been operating on simple energy in his single-minded pursuit of D'Lazo. His mission was not to destroy D'Lazo. It was to prevent him from being able to insert the Diskcard together with the code.

D'Lazo had both the Diskcard, which he had obtained from St. Remain, and the code. If he could get the Diskcard from D'Lazo, his job would be done. Getting rid of D'Lazo was also necessary just to get rid of somebody who had the code.

Of course, D'Lazo could be playing it safe. He could have sepa-rated himself from the Diskcard so that he had the code, with the Diskcard in a safe place for insertion on D'Lazo's instructions.

Block had found him on the ground floor of the UN complex. It was doubtful D'Lazo would have waited around after his meeting with whoever he was in partnership with. And it was doubtful he would have taken the Diskcard with him to the meeting, putting both himself and the code at risk.

It was just fortunate that D'Lazo's death would serve two pur-poses, his and his projects.

But first he would have to deal with his own problems. He transferred the height into miles. One tenth of a mile didn't seem like much. So he was only one tenth of a mile above the ground, sort of like a low flying plane.

Next he needed D'Lazo, but the squeak of a door and the crunch of a foot on gravel solved that problem.

Block was behind the elevator housing. A large puddle of water stretched across the plaza side of the building leaving only a small dry area by the window washing equipment. From his squatting po-sition, he could see the rest of the structures on the roof reflected on the surface of the water.

Forty feet away, he saw the rippling form of D'Lazo cautiously move out of the stairwell housing between the two elevator hous-ings.

Block waited silently as the door slowly shut behind D'Lazo. D'Lazo was startled when it clanged shut. Block wondered if the door could be opened from the outside. It wouldn't make much dif-ference to D'Lazo. For him there was only one way down, and that wasn't the stairs.

He watched as D'Lazo looked around. He walked to the other side of the elevator shaft, stepped gingerly across the shallow water at the edge of the big puddle and leaned over the wall, about waist high to him.

Block caught his breath, resisting the physical feeling of falling that overcame him as he watched D'Lazo nonchalantly put at least half his weight over the edge.

Block couldn't imagine leaning over the ledge simply because he couldn't make himself do it. He might do it as part of doing some-thing else, like saving his life. But to consciously do it?

Inconceivable.

He watched as D'Lazo straightened up. D'Lazo licked his fingers and touched the pigeon wire. Satisfied that there was no charge, he tested it for strength, twisting a strand back and forth to see if it would break. It didn't.

Block watched as he tapped the puddle with the toe of his shoe to test its depth. The water rippled back toward Block's position, showering flickers of light back at Block, one set of flickers that shouldn't have been there.

Block rose, his hand going for the nine-millimeter in his pocket. His movement misdirected the blow aimed at the back of his head and he felt the glancing pain as an iron pipe slid off his right shoul-der.

He turned to his left, away from the blow, his left arm already extended and swinging. It caught his hidden assailant across the side of the head.

Block saw the ridiculous image of a little man with a pinstripe mustache, wearing pinstriped pants arching backwards and bouncing off the elevator housing. He could see in his peripheral vision D'Lazo moving rapidly toward him, but he wasn't going to take a chance on whatever this thing was getting back at him again with the pipe.

The pipe was bouncing to a rest on his left. Block picked it up. The pinstriped man was coming to rest next to the elevator housing. He didn't look pleased with anything and was beginning to hold his hand up, palm out, in surrender.

Block had the pipe in hand. D'Lazo was rounding the edge of the large puddle but had misjudged its depth and was momentarily slowed.

Block took the pipe, transferred it to his right hand with one smooth movement and with the backward motion of his right hand brought it across the wrist of pinstripe's outstretched hand.

The crunch was louder than the wrist's resistance. Pain wasn't even registering on pinstripe's face as the arc of Block's right hand began its descent. His eyes did grow wide and spittle dribbled down one side of his mouth as he realized that the iron bar was heading right for the middle of his head.

Block was already backing away when he felt the impact in his wrist. The forward motion of the bar went further than he ex-pected. A quick look as he was turning his attention back to D'Lazo showed there was very little left of pinstripe's skull, face, or mustache. The skull didn't want to let go of the pipe.

Block turned and brought his hand up to meet D'Lazo who was charging through the air, arms outstretched, teeth bared, scream-ing at the top of his lungs.

D'Lazo, however, hadn't expected Block to make the backward move and was falling short in his leap. He was frantically attempt-ing to put a foot beneath himself to leverage his forward momen-tum.

There was nothing to it for him, though. Block stopped his back-ward motion and met him with both arms locked and rising.

The motion caught D'Lazo under the chest and snapped his upper body away from his direction of travel.

He ended up sitting in the puddle, five inches deep, leaning back on his hands looking up foolishly at Block.

Block reached over, grabbed him under the chin by his shirt and between his legs by the crotch of his pants, and lifted him out of the puddle.

Holding him high over his head, he began to move towards the edge of the building, the area housing the window washing pulleys.

The water in his shoes stopped him. He realized that he was ul-timately going to throw D'Lazo off the roof of the building but he had to sort out the business with the Diskcard first.

He tossed D'Lazo across the puddle. D'Lazo bounced off the low wall and landed in a shallow pool next to the base of the wall.

Block looked around. One of the lights used to flood the window washing staging area was on a rheostat. He turned on the light and rotated the rheostat to see if it was working. The light grew alter-nately dim and bright in response to his manipulation.

He yanked the electrical wire from the light and broke the rheo-stat off its mountings.

D'Lazo was regaining his equilibrium and was starting to stand up.

Block took the exposed portion of the wire that he had torn out of the light and stuck it in the puddle. He turned up the rheostat.

D'Lazo screamed, standing bolt upright.

"Don't like what you give?" he asked, turning the rheostat off.

"Do what you will to me. It won't make any difference in the long run. Nothing does."

He sat down in the pool of water that was barely an inch deep at that point.

"I want the Diskcard."

"I don't have any Diskcard."

"St. Remain had the Diskcard. He was found dead in your villa. The Diskcard was not on him. You have the Diskcard. You can give it to me."

"St. Remain dead? That must have been one wild party. Didn't you enjoy it?"

"I want the Diskcard!" Block turned on the flow of electricity at a low rate to remind D'Lazo of its presence.

D'Lazo flinched, but didn't get up. "I told you I don't have any Diskcard. If you're talking about the manipulation of the money sup-ply, that would be under the jurisdiction of British Operations. The British agent must have the Diskcard. She was the one who was going to get the code word out of St. Remain."

"She? Who's she?"

"The British Agent . . ." D'Lazo tried to recall Mary's name but it wouldn't come. It was irretrievably blocked by his humiliation at the Pyramid where she had used him for her own sexual pleasure. Because he would not willingly retrieve that incident, her name was irretrievable.

"Who?" Block insisted, his hand playing with the electrical con-trol.

"I'm trying, for crying out loud," he cried, flinching from the resulting pain.

D'Lazo tried to recall the name by recalling all the money he was going to make off her which would make up for the sexual humilia-tion. The money, however, only called up images of the millions of Alixes and their beautiful male counterparts yet to be born out of the wombs of the world for his pleasure drifting out of reach.

"The name just won't come, but you could make a lot of money with us. We're going to make a killing when the money supply goes to hell and interest rates go through the roof."

"You asshole. You can't bribe me with something like money. You think The Chairman lets any of his agents have any need for money? Now give me the damn Diskcard and cut out all this shit!"

"I tell you, I don't have the Diskcard. Kill me, you fuck, if that's what you want. Nothingness is better than having to sit here and talk to a jerk-off like you."

"Take your jacket off and throw it over here."

"What for?"

Block took his nine-millimeter and shot D'Lazo left ear off.

"Shit, you bastard." He took the jacket off and tossed it to Block. The area he occupied had dried as the puddle evaporated un-der the afternoon sun.

Block turned the rheostat up to full volume now that D'Lazo was on dry roof. This put an electrical moat around him too large for D'Lazo to jump.

He didn't find the Diskcard in the jacket.

"Shirt!" He ordered.

This, too, was unproductive.

"Pants!" D'Lazo grudgingly took off his pants and tossed them across the puddle.

"Turn around."

D'Lazo clearly didn't have the Diskcard. If he had the code word, finishing him off would still end the risk to currency stability.

He started to level the nine-millimeter and then thought of the pinstriped man, the Chincester character, he assumed. He backed around the elevator shaft where the body lay in the sun, the head caked in blood, beginning to attract various breeds of insects.

He went through his pockets, barely disturbing the flies.

No Diskcard.

He turned his attention back to D'Lazo who was standing across the puddle glaring at him in defiance.

"Go ahead, fuck face, get it over with. Shoot me."

"What do you think is going to happen to you if I do?"

"I'll be dead. What else?"

"You tell me."

"Nothing else. You're dead, you're dead. When I die, I cease to exist, but there will be someone else to carry on my work."

"The days of your work are over."

"The days of my work will never be over. As long as there are more people in the world than there are resources to satisfy their greed, there will be conflicts. As long as there are conflicts, there will be secrets. As long as there are secrets, there will be a need to pry those secrets out, like teeth from a mouth that won't talk, lovingly, one by one, inflicting the greatest amount of pain over the longest period of time.

"Even if there were enough to go around, if everyone had a crown to wear and a little world to rule, there would still be egos that receive slights, imaginary wounds that needed redress.

"As long as there is a mind that can imagine revenge, there will be a need for me to fabricate instruments that can turn the sensory organs nature gave us to protect us from the environment against us in an orgy of agony.

"Shoot me, you bastard, kill me, burn me, maim me, stomp me into a pulp, fry me with your electricity, you will not do away with me.

"I'm as much a part of you as the skin on your body.

"I will be with you for as long as you exist.

"You may kill me, but you can't destroy me."

Block resisted the impulse to pull the trigger, squeeze off a final satisfying round.

"If nothing else, exposure will put a stop to you."

D'Lazo laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. You know how the mind works. To understand something, you have to have something to compare it with that makes it understandable.

"People aren't drawn and quartered in the public square any-more. There is no king to slowly torture would be assassins to death over the period of a day on public television.

"We don't carry out our cutting and burning and crushing in the light of day.

"We do it out of sight, in dark basements and concrete block-houses away from public view.

"If we are merciful and let one of our victims out half alive, and he talks, who's to listen? Who can imagine what we can do? Who wants to think about it even if it's graphically described in the eve-ning news?

"I am invincible. No one can comprehend, hell, no one even wants to comprehend, what I love every little detail of, what I live to do.

"You think you're protected, you ass wipe?

"I'm protected simply by the unwillingness of the world to be-lieve I exist.

"If you hauled me before a jury and went into my delights, what you with your narrow mind might call crimes, in detail, I would get off Scot free because no jury would believe that I could do what I was accused of simply because no member of the jury could imagine themselves doing it.

"If your boss turns against you, there goes your protection.

"My boss is the world and it will never turn on me because it will never admit I exist."

"And if it does?"

D'Lazo's lips turned into a snarling smile.

"If someone wants to admit to my existence, then it's because he's getting a thrill between his legs, it's making his old log stand on end.

"I can stop my critics simply by ensnaring them. The only dif-ference between pain and pleasure is the perception of it. Everyone wants pleasure. If someone wants to expose me, they have to peer into the darkness of my boudoir and once they do, I can draw them in by my pleasure. When I'm finished with them, they won't know the difference between pain and pleasure. They'll only want more.

"And if they don't like what they see, if they don't succumb to my delights, I can just point to my work as an example of what will befall them if they ever try to interfere with me.

"If they still try to interfere with me, I will quite simply kill them.

"So most of the world is ignorant of both me and my indirect rule over them. They either can't or won't recognize my steward-ship.

"Those who are willing to recognize me either become complicit with me or are destroyed by me.

"I'm greater than life itself because life's last perception will be of pain, and pain is my pleasure."

"You're wrong," Block said simply.

They glared at each other over the electrical moat that was slowly diminishing in the afternoon sun.

"You're wrong in your belief that you will cease to exist just because the physical systems that constitute your body will cease to function as a unit.

"And you are wrong when you believe that you will cease to exist when your physical subsystems cease to function.

"You may cease to exist. But that's only because you didn't pur-sue your chance to continue to exist."

"That's blather! There are no consequences for my actions. My actions rest alone as they happen. There is no scribe making record and no judge to prescribe retribution.

"I take my pleasure from the flesh of the world and when I'm finished with it, it is nothing more than dead meat. The steer does-n't spear the butcher.

"I do as I please and breathe the fresh air of my freedom.

"The universe wasn't constructed to wreak vengeance on a soul that doesn't exist."

"There is nothing and there is matter," Block said slowly. "Without matter, there is not even nothingness because nothingness is defined by the existence of matter.

"Without matter, there would be no time because time is nothing but the relationship that occurs with the movement of matter.

"Without perception, there would be no matter because matter without the perception of it would be the same as nothingness with-out matter.

"Therefore your ability to perceive is something."

"If my ability to perceive is something, and that something needs to be saved, if the nebulous essence of my being needs to be elevated by some concept of god you or anyone else might carry around, why, I'll just seek my forgiveness with my dying breath."

"Salvation." Block replied, moving the live wire back into the receding puddle of water. "Forgiveness. You hope in subjective terms.

"Matter in the universe doesn't operate that way. Matter is made up of elementary particles. The elementary particles form into units. The units form into atoms. The atoms break down into elements. The elements give rise to animate matter that can move within the environment.

"There is no time in nothingness so the attempts of matter to form into the atoms that compose us and our environment are of no account.

"As perfect as we find the atoms, we have no guarantee that they are not simply a product of a period measured in our lifetimes of a trillion, trillion years that has some defect to it that will bring this one attempt at constructing a workable atom to an end."

"If there is a defect in creation," D'Lazo scoffed, "then there must be a purpose to creation. There is no restraint on my actions, so there cannot be a purpose to creation."

"The purpose of creation is to be able to perceive creation it-self.

"Matter cannot perceive itself unless it can develop a structure that can perceive the matter that has been created."

"I have a structure that can perceive matter and take pleasure from it, and when I end, so will the structure that I have to per-ceive it end."

"I'm sure it will, but I'm equally sure that it wouldn't cease to exist had you lived a different life."

"I've lived the good life. What other life is there to live?"

"If the purpose of creation is to construct a structure that will be able to perceive creation, the structure matter evolves into to perceive creation must be more durable than the matter that it was evolved to perceive.

"Protecting that structure therefore becomes the sole purpose of life."

"Bull. When I take my pleasures, when I maim and destroy, I can't effect the structure."

"If you kill another, you certainly are not going to be able to de-stroy the structure that is attached to that person, the perceptor that allows that person to perceive the universe.

"But you may affect your own perceptor.

"Your behavior affects the existence of the structure you pos-sess as a part of your physical structure. Persistent self-destructive behavior will result in a lasting effect on your mind."

"Are you saying that my actions cannot destroy another's es-sence but can destroy my own?"

"Irretrievably.

"As matter evolved into atoms and those atoms were instru-mental in molding other atoms into animate matter, matter that could modulate the electrical differences in the original matter, each resulting structure was more durable than the preceding structure.

"As the animate structures became ambulatory, the matter needed to develop chemical structures, new arrangements of atoms that could transmit messages back and forth between the ambula-tory matter and the environment.

"These structures in turn formed structures that could do more than simply react to the environment. They could utilize the physi-cal structure to alter the environment to ensure for the continuous survival over a period sufficient to perceive the environment it occupied and to analyze it in order to understand it.

"This latter structure is far more complex and far more durable than the atom it is designed to comprehend."

"And totally undetectable."

"No more undetectable than the electricity that will destroy your body if you put your foot in the puddle.

"We know very little about the interaction of matter in the uni-verse other than how we indirectly measure it.

"Until the paradigm shift, we knew nothing about the very ap-parent force that holds us to the surface of the Earth.

"The same thing holds true of the perceptor. It is so obvious that it is there, we tend to overlook its existence. We take its existence so much for granted that the proof of its existence becomes invisi-ble.

"We know the perceptor is there because we can use it to recon-struct a fairly representative picture of the matter that exists externally.

"The reconstruction is not the process of a spirit, or a soul, or some other nebulous conceptual structure. It is a process of an ac-tual physical structure that can actually function to perform its purpose.

"Its purpose, of course, is to reconstruct external physical re-ality.

"It is no more directly measurable than the mechanical nature of gravity or light because anything that we use to measure it would be too small to provide us with a measurable result. It is not the Heidelberg Principle where to measure is impossible because the act of measurement would change the thing being measured.

"It is the principle that to measure something, what is being measured has to be at least as large as the unit that is being used to measure it."

"If there is such a structure," D'Lazo snarled, "how can you presume to describe it." D'Lazo's sneer was becoming more a pic-ture of puzzlement than scorn, but his eyes never stopped darting at the size of the diminishing puddle.

"The structure is not that hard to visualize. If atoms are made up of units and units are made up of elementary particles, there are only two possible arrangements that the elementary particles can form into.

"One is the unit, the matter that eventually results in the physi-cal world that we can hold a ruler up to. In this structure, the ele-mentary particles clump together into a ball.

"The resulting ball is big enough to be affected by the attractive force. This is the common effect where an iron ball will fall at the same rate as a feather, but require a different force to be moved against the attractive force. The attractive mechanism closes around each individual unit of an atom so that the number of units held together in the atom doesn't make any difference to that atom's movement in the attractive force unless the movement is restrained.

"When something restrains the atom, all of the units bound to-gether have to be moved against the force at the same time.

"The other structure is made up of individual particles and thus is invisible to the effect of the attractive force. Each particle is too small to be subject to gravity, and thus the entire structure is not subject to gravity.

"The second structure is a structure composed of the elemen-tary particles, each separated from the other, but equally spaced and locked into a web of stable equilibrium with one another.

"The units that make up the nucleus of an atom are so small that they are not directly measurable, yet they may be composed of a trillion elementary particles.

"The perceptor, which is chemically attached to the brain, may be made up of enough elementary particles to compose a trillion of the units that make up the nuclei of atoms, but the particles are not bunched together in the balls that are the units, they are evenly spaced over an area of perhaps two or three cubic inches.

"The area within the mind, a trillion, trillion elementary parti-cles, is immune to the attractive force because the particles are all separated each from the other in a delicate balance and no part of the structure is large enough to be subject to the attractive force.

"Atoms, whose units are subject to the attractive force, will sooner or later be drawn into the source of the attractive force, combusting matter, and will be broken down into their individual elementary particles which then become the electromagnetic spec-trum emitted by the combustion.

"Atoms can be reduced to their elementary particles. The per-ceptor cannot because the individual particles that make it up are not subject to the attractive force and therefore cannot be pulled into combusting matter."

"So my actions are still immune to retribution. I have done what I pleased and I'll continue to do as I please until some shit like you accidentally brings me down.

"And even then, my body may die, but my perceptor will sur-vive to reattach itself to forming animate matter.

"This is delightful. I'll be back to have my pleasure once again.

"The universe is wonderful, an endless cycle of ecstasy. There is no way that inanimate matter can create matter that is able to exhibit not only behavior, but the behavior of choice, free will, and be able to destroy it if the behavior is not satisfactory. Satisfac-tory to who?

"There can be no objective judgment on subjective action.

"I'm free as a bird."

Block once again moved the electrical wire into the receding puddle.

"The particles that make up the perceptor are in perfect equilib-rium. However, if they remained that way, the perceptor couldn't perceive anything. If the spacing of the particles remained uniform, the perceptor would be no different from the unit of an atom where the particles are stationary and make up physical matter.

"It is the spacing of the particles that allows the particles to move, and it is the movement of the particles that allows the per-ceptor to reconstruct external reality.

"The perceptor receives evidence of external reality through the electric signals that connect the brain to the physical portals, the eyes, the skin, the cilia in the ear, the taste buds and the ol-factory nerve endings.

"These electrical signals are transmitted into the perceptor. As they pass through the perceptor, they disbalance the equilibrium of the individual particles that make up the perceptor.

"It is the disbalance of these particles that allows the percep-tor, the mind to construct a picture of external reality.

"As the body to which the perceptor is attached moves through the environment, the spacing of the particles constantly changes as the electrical impulses input from the environment change.

"The particles continually form, reform, and reconstruct exter-nal reality because they are in constant motion as a result of the electrical input from external reality.

"An individual particle may never move more than a distance equal to its size, but it is in continuous motion.

"Because it is in equilibrium with all other particles in the per-ceptor, it is continually trying to move back into its original posi-tion of equilibrium.

"When electrical input is minimized, such as in sleep, the indi-vidual particles all seek to move back into their position of equilib-rium. In doing so, they create reconstructions of reality that no longer exist which are perceived as dreams.

"If they are forced to stay out of equilibrium too long, they will begin to malfunction, creating pictures of reality that don't really exist, eventually closing out outside input in an attempt to regain equilibrium. This occurs as a blackout."

"Ha!" D'Lazo snorted. "I use sleep deprivation all the time. So how does all this theory turn behavior into extinction?"

D'Lazo's eyes never moved from the disappearing puddle.

"The structure of the perceptor developed so that matter could perceive itself.

"If the perceptor is forced to perceive matter as it doesn't ex-ist, its individual particles are forced to remain in disequilibrium.

"Matter once created seeks rest, harmony with other matter. The matter that makes up ambulatory matter has no less a quest. The perceptor that has developed to perceive matter must operate in harmony to perceive that harmony.

"If you believe that the sun travels around the Earth, your per-ceptor can exist in equilibrium. You may be in trouble if you are rocketing through the solar system with the belief, but it isn't going to harm your perceptor.

"If you know that the sun doesn't travel around the Earth and then get up every morning and force your perceptor to believe it does, you are going to harm your perceptor. You will harm it the same way if you force it to accept conclusions based on fantasies rather than reality.

"The real problem for the perceptor occurs, however, when you force it to accept realities that oppose the basic harmony of matter in the universe.

"You can throw your perceptor into disequilibrium by creating realities that don't exist and then forcing your perceptor to believe them in opposition to the harmony of reality.

"You can really mess it up if you turn the realities your per-ceptor creates, realities that aren't in accord with harmony, into actual realities. Once your internally created perversions are ac-tual reality, they exist. Once they exist, they will keep your per-ceptor in disbalance, force it to remain in disequilibrium whether you received pleasure from them or not. The test is whether the actions produced a reality that is in accord, in harmony, with the continued survival of the perceptor and thus the perception of matter in the universe.

"Any acts you author change the reality around you. If that re-ality isn't in harmony with matter in the universe, the resulting reality will alter the harmony of your perceptor by keeping it in disequilibrium.

"Sleep and unconsciousness will not serve to relieve you of your disharmony because the individual particles of your perceptor will replay the disharmony as they seek equilibrium and the replay will force them into even greater disequilibrium.

"And you will waken to the disharmony you have created by your actions. If you take pleasure in damaging your perceptor, you will seek to duplicate the perverted acts over and over in reality, further disbalancing your perceptor.

"We all start out with our perceptors in harmony, in equilib-rium. If we live our lives in harmony, if we attempt to treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated, our perceptors will re-main in equilibrium.

"If we treat others carelessly, if we perform acts that injure others, we make of the world around us, the world we perceive and therefore live in, a world of disharmony, and our perceptors be-come disbalanced.

"Our behavior affects the essence of our existence because the essence of our existence is a physical structure that mirrors our existence. If our existence is not in harmony with the harmony of matter in the universe, the physical structure that reflects that existence will not be in harmony, and in fact, the individual parti-cles that make it up will be in a continual state of disequilibrium."

"So? I like my disequilibrium. It gives me a lot of pleasure. I live for it. If you're right, I'll be back, and the better for it. What's to stop me?"

"The very nature of disequilibrium will stop you.

"The structure of the perceptor evolved out of the structure of the atom. Both the unit of the atom and the perceptor are made up of the same elementary particle.

"The unit of the atom cannot perceive matter because its ele-mentary particles are bound together by its internal forces and are incapable of movement.

"The elementary particles of the perceptor, on the other hand, are evenly spaced. They are not bound together. They can move back and forth within the area of the space between them and the adjacent elementary particles.

"As they move, they reconstruct reality. After they recon-struct it, if reality is removed, they move back into equilibrium and reality fades. Sentience can recreate reality without reality being present, but if it doesn't refresh the particles that make up the perceptor, reality will not exist for the perceptor.

"It is the movement of the particles that recreates the reality.

"If, however, the particles are forced to remain in disequilib-rium as a result of the reality that it has caused to be constructed around it, there are always going to be particles in the perceptor that are closer to each other than they should be.

"The longer the perceptor remains in disbalance, the longer these particles are going to remain in too close a proximity to each other.

"Eventually, if the perceptor is not allowed to regain equilib-rium, the particles will combine with each other.

"At the same time, other particles will have been in too close proximity with still other particles and they will seek to combine.

"As the process continues, not only do the particles of the per-ceptor combine, but the perceptor's ability to reconstruct an accu-rate picture of reality begins to diminish, causing even further disbalance in the perceptor.

"The disequilibrium feeds on itself like a chain reaction. There are a trillion times a trillion elementary particles making up the perceptor, so the process does not occur overnight.

"It takes many, many disharmonic actions over a period of time to create a disbalanced perceptor, but every action solidifies the reality in which the perceptor exists so that every action that is not in harmony with nature adds to the disbalance.

"Eventually, the particles in the perceptor will unitize."

"Unitize?" D'Lazo eyes were still darting at the puddle, now only several feet across, but his eyes were also showing panic.

"Unitize." Block repeated, having read the term, but actually hearing it for the first time himself in context out loud, actually grasping it. "As the perceptor stays disbalanced, the individual particles will have a tendency to come together and eventually form a unit within the overall structure, a unit the same as the unit that makes up the nucleus of an atom.

"The structure of the perceptor developed from the interaction of atoms which are made up of units of elementary particles. If it is abused, if it is not used for its proper purpose, to conform to the harmony of the universe, then, just like lichen on a planet that ceases to rotate, it will cease to exist.

"The individual elementary particles in a perceptor that is forced to remain in disequilibrium will eventually unitize, reform into the basic units of matter, the units that make up the nuclei of atoms.

"First one unit will form, embedded in the structure of the per-ceptor, then ten, then a thousand, and then a thousand thousand.

"Units are subject to the attractive force. They are no longer small enough to avoid the mechanism of attraction.

"Of course, while the physical structure it occupies is still vi-able, with all of its subsystems interacting with each other, the perceptor will remain attached to the chemical structure of the brain.

"The attractive force may very well be affecting it, but it will remain with the structure through which it has caused the dishar-mony.

"But once the physical structure ceases to operate as such, like yours will when I put a bullet between your eyes, then there will be nothing to keep the perceptor from moving with the attractive force.

"As the attractive force is the mechanism of expansion of the electromagnetic emissions from a combusting body, you're per-ceptor will be forced to follow the portions of it that have unitized and it will be inexorably drawn into the closest combusting body where the individual elementary particles that make it up will be disjoined, never again to be."

"If you kill me, you fuck, then you will be damaging your own perceptor and you'll burn in hell too. Shit, if what you say is true, then the human race would have been destroyed long ago."

Block re-leveled the nine-millimeter between D'Lazo's eyes. D'Lazo seemed to have shrunk several inches.

"There is nothing to say that this particular evolution of matter is the correct one. In a universe where matter merely has to define non-existence, and time is nothing but the relation between two events defined by matter, any number of evolutions could have reached the point that we are at with any number of variances.

"It may well be that the perceptor itself is a defective structure to comprehend creation and will be selected out of the evolutionary process.

"What actions affect the perceptor, cause it to be thrown into disequilibrium, are probably discernible only to the perceptor, al-though it's pretty safe to say golden rule behavior won't cause your perceptor to be selected out.

"But I can guarantee you one thing here and now. Your perceptor is about to be selected out of the evolutionary process. You and your kind are not a part of the emerging world."

D'Lazo was across the diminished puddle before Block could pull the trigger. The gun went sprawling and Block with it.

D'Lazo had misjudged the force of his assault, however, and his momentum carried him into the side of the elevator housing with a crash.

In the time it took him to recover, Block was up on his feet. Not having any clothes to grab onto, he grabbed D'Lazo by an ankle and picked him up upside down, dragging him toward the puddle.

D'Lazo, seeing Block's intent, picked the wire out of the water and applied it to the back of Block's leg. The connection did nothing but burn Block and D'Lazo ended up rolling in the puddle.

Block was on him before he could stand up, grabbing an arm this time with the leg and making a full circle.

Sweeping D'Lazo out in an arc, Block let go and watched as he flew over the ledge of the roof.

The effort had been more pleasing than exertion. He bent over and splashed water over the burn on the back of his leg. He was temporizing. He wanted to look over the edge to see D'Lazo splayed out on the pavement below, but the thought of looking over the edge made his legs weak.

He took a tentative step toward the ledge only to see D'Lazo's face, sneering with hate and fear, rise over the ledge.

Fuck, he thought, rushing the ledge without regard to the height.

D'Lazo already had a leg over the edge when Block reached him. They embraced each other like Sumo Wrestlers, Block with the ad-vantage of weight, D'Lazo with the advantage of determination.

They struggled for a moment inconclusively, D'Lazo trying to gain additional purchase with his second leg. He got it on the ledge, but it slipped under the pigeon wire, disabling his effort to a certain extent.

Block got a hold around D'Lazo's back and was able to lift him up from the ledge.

D'Lazo screamed in pain. The pigeon wire had ridden up between his legs. As Block turned him around to throw him off the ledge once again, the wire twisted around his genitals.

Block was unaware of the reason for the scream and didn't even see D'Lazo's eyes bulge from the pressure as he put his foot in the middle of D'Lazo's back and pushed with all his might.

He did see the wire supports pop away from their roof mount-ings one after another, in slow motion, as D'Lazo flew out away from the window washing platform, the surface that had saved him from the original fall.

The side of the Secretariat Building swept away in either direc-tion from where D'Lazo hung momentarily in space on the window cleaning beam, suspended with his balls caught in the pigeon wire, the ceramic mounts pop popping away along either side of the ledge.

Gravity began to take over and D'Lazo's outward motion began its descent, not straight down because the upriver mounts were breaking away at a faster pace than the downriver mounts.

His descent was downriver, in a broad dropping arc. The proc-ess continued until a single mount held, at which point the pigeon wire began to unravel from its triple row down to a single row, all the time D'Lazo's arc gaining depth and momentum.

Around the tenth floor, the pigeon wire strung itself out, putting the quits to D'Lazo's arc.

Block, whose interest in the trajectory superseded the affect of the height, heard an unearthly screech out of D'Lazo's mouth as if his vocal chords had been stretched all the way to his asshole.

He watched as D'Lazo began to swing back and forth like the ball of the Foucault Pendulum whose top in the lobby was roughly even with D'Lazo's bottom.

D'Lazo made several full swings before Block heard his whine.

"I see eternity," he keened in rhythm with his swing.