5. Block

Block watched as the sun came up over the walls of the old fortress. The day was crisp, the sky clear, a startling color of blue. The birds were singing in profusion. A light wind was gently rustling the trees whose leaves were the light green often seen with fresh-planted grass. The smell was the smell of life.

He stood at the front gate of the fortress watching the husky men, dressed uniformly in dark suits, powder blue button down shirts, light green ties, eyes covered with aviator's sun glasses, suit coats bulging with automatic pistols unconcealed beneath, pistols carried casually to individual fashion.

In accordance with International Treaty, Block had declared the fortress temporarily the property of The Representative World Government, forfeit, for one reason, because it was a possession of an entity that made an attempt on the life of The Chairman, but for a million others, including the abuse of unprotected minors.

The structure, whose prior ownership would have to be determined to find out how it remained in private hands for so long, would eventually be turned over to Quebec Province as a part of the historical heritage of the Gaspé peninsula.

Lanette commented she felt an oldness, not just in the fortress itself, but in the land it was on, a feeling the land transcended time, went back to the earliest period of the Earth's formation.

These thoughts were mere flickers in Block's mind as he watched, an unpleasant feeling filling his stomach, as the horde of nude, handcuffed children, wrapped in blankets, nothing more than animals really, were processed into trucks waiting to take them to psychiatric facilities operated by the World Health Organization.

Block couldn't even visualize how a human mind could conceive of a program that systematically reduced all that was human to its basic animal origins.

The children, without the constraints of whatever discipline had been instilled in them, could only growl and snap at each other and their protectors, their teeth clicking out spittle and blood where they'd bitten their lips and cheeks.

The worst sight had been covered by the absence of dawn, as the injured and mutilated boys and girls had been carried on stretchers from the dungeon-like room where no one had yet come up with an explanation for what had happened. In spite of their injuries, some so severe they wouldn't make it out of the fortress, they had to be put in restraints attached to the rolling beds for the trip to the helicopters hastily brought in to carry them to hospital facilities also operated by the World Health Organization.

The WHO also took over available facilities in both the Provinces and the States to supplement their own rapidly filling facilities.

Block turned to re-enter the fortress and ran into Lanette, Lansdowne in tow.

"Incredible, eh? Nothing in science could prepare me for this," he said to Block.

"Nothing in anything could prepare anybody for this," Lanette replied for him. "Is Georges' transportation ready?" she asked Block.

Block pointed to a small, high-speed helicopter. It wasn't the one he and Lanette arrived in. That one was found with its intake ducts jammed with the body parts of what was assumed to be the remains of Lacotte. It would take DNA testing to verify the obvious.

"You're on your way. With Prime Minister Bourgesie's invasion of his friendly neighbor, I don't know what sort of resource problem you're going to face getting supplies to outfit the tankers. I would imagine, though, it would be more important than ever to solve the problem.

"I don't know what the Council of Representative Governments is going to do, but Bourgesie's action is so disruptive of the orderly conduct of international commerce, it's a danger to the entire world.

"The line has to be drawn somewhere. We can't continue to allow individuals to gain control of nations that contribute little or nothing to the orderly processes of international relations, arm their people to the hilt, then take actions that lead to the destruction of the very order they benefit from but refuse to participate in.

"The age where one nation can wage war on another because they're so incontinent, they allow their population to outstrip the space they have to support, is past.

"No longer can we allow war on the basis of expansionism.

"At one time, the Earth may have appeared infinite with respect to the number of people that could live on it.

"Now it's finite.

"We can't seem to stop one group from overpopulating itself, what did Lof call it, self-induced triage, the murder of one's own children simply by giving them birth, but we sure can stop them from overrunning the land of other groups that are attempting to control the balance between their population, their knowledge, their technology, and their ultimate contribution to moving the world forward to a stage where a person's choices will coincide with their contributions because their choices will be limited to their contributions.

"Look at this." He gestured at the kids being led into the trucks.

"The biggest problem the world has today is producing enough educated adults to maintain and expand the balanced technocracy coming into existence on the planet.

"The world doesn't need muscle, it needs brainwork, hard brainwork. To get it, we need education, open education to capture those people born with the ability and the willingness to place themselves in a position to contribute.

"We can't do much with those who can't or won't except try to support them, get them through their lives comfortably.

"But somebody like Bourgesie who not only allows his population to increase, but encourages it to keep himself in power, and then is forced to move across a neighbor's borders where his expanding population rapes, tortures and murders the neighboring population simply because it has run out of space, that's a crime against humanity that must be redressed.

"It's a crime against humanity because it is a movement against the establishment of an orderly world marketplace for the interchange of goods, ideas, and culture. Without an orderly world marketplace, the planet will devolve into a cesspool of individual fiefdoms, and with technology available to all fiefdoms, the planet will eventually be destroyed.

"And it must be redressed because the future of humanity is too important to let it be endangered by single individuals whose mentality hasn't developed past the end of their pricks."

"Rudolph Lang was found dead this morning," Lanette said quietly. "Overdosed."

"Shit."

It was the first time Lanette saw his shoulders sag like he'd lost half his wind.

"Just shit," he repeated, wiping a tear from his eye.

The rustle of the trees, the songs of the birds, the snapping of the children's teeth filled the moment of silence.

Block turned to Lansdowne. "It's more important now than ever you get your stuff hooked up in the tankers, eh?"

He emphasized the "eh," breaking the gloom, taking Lansdowne by the hand, shaking it and leading him over to the waiting helicopter.

Lanette gave Lansdowne a piece of paper. "This is my private mailbox. You just keep my computer advised where you are all the time. I won't forget your proposition, no, not won't, can't."

They watched as he climbed up, strapped himself in, and backed off as the blades rapidly gained momentum and the machine rose in the air, disappearing back over the Perce Rock side of the hill.

"Things are happening fast," Lanette commented.

"They haven't even started. Have you found out anything more about what we're dealing with?"

"Lots. Come on in. I want to show you something."

"How extensive is this so called religion?"

"Extensive, with this type of operation in every country in the world."

"You're sure it's not an intelligence operation? I can't imagine something going this renegade, but its clear it's not operated by any particular nation."

"It's not."

"How in the world did something like this get so pervasive without anyone knowing about it?"

"A lot of people knew about it, they just didn't know what they were dealing with."

They passed through the courtyard and into the massive stone facing of the fortress.

"What about the woman?"

"Her name is Karen Carenson. She's twenty-four years old, the child of American expatriates, people maneuvering from various laws."

"Twenty-four? She doesn't head this whole thing, does she? She can't. Not at that age."

"That's unclear. The public knowledge we do have about her is she's a superior lay of the first order. The word is, being inside her makes a man feel like a million tiny tongues are caressing him.

"Is that possible? Do I feel that way to you?"

"You feel like heaven," Block said tentatively.

"Ha!" Lanette exclaimed. "You've been in both of us, so you should be able to compare what I feel like with what she feels like."

" I was being violated for crying out loud."

"Well, if I were a man, I bet being caressed by a million tiny tongues would be something. You're interested, aren't you? I bet if you got the opportunity, you'd put it in her again, wouldn't you?"

"I didn't put her in it the first time, she sat on it," Block replied, hoping to put the topic to sleep.

They walked into the main office.

"Well, you'd better not do it to her before you get me wired up. I might slice something off if you do. Here."

Lanette spun the lock on a safe-like door back and forth several times and pulled the handle down.

"I closed it back up to keep the stink out and frankly, it's not a sight you'd want to inflict on someone."

She pulled the door open.

Block gagged.

"This was apparently your girl friend's private torture chamber."

Block couldn't believe the filth. The implements were rusted to the point he'd be afraid to pick one up. The lighting was gloom, but sufficient to show dried blood, pieces of decaying flesh, chips of bone and dried up body organs spewed and splayed from floor to ceiling, on walls, even darkening the light fixtures.

"It reminds me of the picture they took in the room of Jack the Ripper's last victim," he said, trying to preserve his breath.

"Only worse," Lanette replied.

Block backed out, more in recoil than a planned physical movement.

Lanette followed, closing the door.

"I have a special forensics team coming in to see if we can identify any of the victims. There sure is plenty of blood to get genetic information from. I'm willing to bet we'll find traces of some of our missing oilmen."

"I don't doubt it. Is there a bar in this place?"

"Fully stocked."

"Get some wine and let's get out of here. I need to set up a command post somewhere. Is there an extra helicopter around anywhere?"

"Sure is, with plenty of scotch."

"Listen, let's make a detour, somewhere in the woods, somewhere there's only the sound of the trees and birds, with blue sky above."

"I thought you'd never ask. I'll still bring the wine."

They headed out the front and wound around the side of the fortress the way they'd sneaked up the night before. Block moved quickly down the fire road until he could see the defense perimeter, the backs of suit-clad machine gun toting guards, then back-stepped into the woods away from view.

He came to several hours later, the sun hotter on his bare back, but the wind still cool enough to give him a chill.

"Your time's not getting any better," Lanette said, stroking the back of his neck, "but the frequency is improving. Seven times in two hours. That's pretty good. Of course, I'd rather have it one time for two hours, but then again I don't know, I never had it one time for one minute, but I'm sure that'll come when you get me wired up. Here, let me get you some wine. My cousin Pascal does it seven times in seven minutes. But she straps a vibrator in her and just goes to work so she can push a button, and there she is smiling at a customer, and wham, she gets off."

"You have cousins too?" Block asked, sitting up and taking the wine.

Lanette looked around. "Can you feel the land?"

Block looked at her.

"I'm sitting on it," he said.

"No. I mean feel it. Feel the oldness, the age. It's like this was the first land ever made when the planet was formed. Sitting here, it's like my body is reaching back into the rock as it congeals out of molten lava."

"I can't say I do feel it. I'm not sensitive that way."

"I feel it. I feel this land is old. I don't know how I feel it, or where the memory is coming from. It's not even a memory. It's like a picture formed in my mind, a picture without a memory, but a picture that becomes a memory after it forms."

"Where do you come from?"

"The same place you do, the United States."

"I mean what are your roots?"

"Hard to say. Janette pays attention to that sort of stuff. She thinks we came from an area of land that's now in Spain. It's just west of some of the oldest hills in the world, around the Serranta de Cuenca on the road from Valenica halfway to Madrid. The hills don't match the surrounding landscape at all and the Roman ruins are said to be built on ruins that have no date.

"There's a little town called Requena where they have some of the most beautiful light-eyed blonds in the world, right in the middle of Spain. Of course, I'm light-eyed, although not so much as Janette, but I'm not as beautiful as these girls are, or at least not as beautiful as Janette says they are, I've never seen them. And then there're some more around the Scandinavian countries and the Low Countries, like the Shiots, Janette calls them the dumb Shiots of Amsterdam, but I really just don't know and it's not nice to talk about your relatives that way.

"In America, we're Americans, and we're all of this world, or at least, I think we're all of this world. Do you think some of us aren't?"

"Sometimes I wonder about you, or at least me when I'm in you."

Block sipped the wine, trying to remember the last two hours. She was right. It had been seven times. He could remember them distinctly, each having characteristics different from all of the others, each . . .

"You're thinking of a million tongues again aren't you? Do I feel like a million tongues working away at you? I can't imagine what that would feel like, can you tell me?"

"I wasn't thinking about a million tongues."

"You were thinking about being in me."

"Well . . ."

"Then I don't feel like a million tongues. You do remember what it was like to be in Karen, then, don't you? You do have something to compare."

"No, no I don't. I was just thinking with you, each time is different."

"Well, that's good. If each time's different, sooner or later it'll feel like a million tongues."

Block sighed and sipped his wine.

"We've got to get back to business."

"Okay," Lanette poured him some more wine. "What's the business."

"I'm going to do something no man has ever done before."

"You're going to stay in me for more than a minute?"

"No. I'm going to seize The Art of the Lord in the name of International Treaty, make it forfeit."

"That's going to be harder than staying in me for more than a minute, for crying out loud. You can't forfeit The Art of the Lord. It's a church, a religion. How can you forfeit a religion. There's a law that prevents the government from interfering with religion. This thing's all over the world. There's no treaty from the Council of Governments giving you the power to forfeit a religion."

"You have this Karen Carenson making an attempt on The Chairman, right?"

"Sure, but . . ."

"You have her connected to The Art of the Lord, right?"

"Sure but . . ."

"There's a treaty dealing with the forfeiture of property belonging to individuals or organizations attempting to prevent the orderly establishment of The Representative World Government."

"Sure but . . ."

"But what?"

"A religion isn't an individual or an organization. It's a system of beliefs. You can't forfeit a system of beliefs. How do you even know what a religion is?"

"I may not know what a religion is, but I know what it isn't, and this art crap isn't a religion."

"If you abolish a religion, even if it isn't a religion, you'll have every organized religion in the world after your hide. On general principles alone, they'll say, first them, next us.

"You just can't do it!"

"I can and I will. I intend to confiscate all of its property."

"But it's church property. After beliefs, the church is composed of an organized set of those beliefs shared by a common group of believers who come together at a place of worship, usually the church property, they have a system of spiritual leaders to guide them and those people are usually gathered together in other buildings called nunneries or monasteries, in short, the property is just an extension of the practice of the belief system."

"There's no place in the world for a belief system that exploits the young for the purpose of destroying young and old alike."

"But the world has to accommodate all beliefs. Are you the one to determine which beliefs are good and which beliefs are bad?"

"No. But I'm the one who can determine which practices are good and which practices are bad.

"Have you seen a single practice of The Art of the Lord that's acceptable practice? Have you seen one artifact of the practices of The Art of the Lord that's an acceptable practice?"

"We'd better talk to Janette about this. She knows The Chainman better than I do because I don't know him at all, but she's a psychologist. I'm a sociologist and I'm going to tell you there's going to be hell to pay if you announce you're going to confiscate the assets of The Art of the Lord."

"Then what do you suggest I do? We can't let them continue to operate."

"Confiscate the assets of The Save Our Children Foundation. Don't even mention The Art of the Lord."

"But isn't that the same thing?"

"Sure, but it doesn't appear to be the same thing."

"How about the opposition from organized religion?"

"You're not attacking organized religion. The Art of the Lord is a front. It can't stand up to financial scrutiny. It doesn't matter what you attack, its financial situation will always unravel to the detriment of the organization.

"Organized religion isn't susceptible to that kind of attack because it's financially accountable to its members.

"If you pull a dollar off the money tree of a sham religion, the leaves will fall in a pile.

"You just don't want to pull the leaves off that represent the claim to a belief. Let those alone. You yourself just said it's the practice you're after, not the belief. Practices cost money. Practices are your property."

"But organized churches have property."

"The ownership is accountable to the faithful adherents."

"What if this Carenson person can mount a campaign just as she did in response to Lof's speech?"

"So much the better. It'll just focus the spotlight on the fact the beliefs are a sham and the monetary interests are the heart of the operation.

"And it'll be fitting. Without property, they'll have only their beliefs to profess. If their beliefs are true, then they'll need no more.

"You can't restrict the right to believe because belief is at the very core of the spirit we conceive the world with. It's your reflective mind, the right side of the brain you have evolving into the world of the future where intellectual resources will balance the use of the planet with the need for the perpetuation of the human spices."

"But you can restrict human and civic rights."

"All freedoms, except for the freedom of belief, have to be restricted in order to preserve them. The freedom of speech is restricted by the laws against slander. But more to the point, the right to own property is an infringement on everybody else's rights.

"Ownership of property restricts the use of that property by others.

"If that property is used to the detriment of others, the ownership is forfeit.

"That's the basis for the international covenants against using private property to hinder the formation of The Representative World Government. Everybody's interest in the formation of a World Government is so great, it outweighs any individual property right."

Block sipped his wine, thinking about what Lanette said. It justified what he intended to do, but it justified it in a way that made it an imperative.

"The right to believe infringes on no one," he repeated. "You know, Lanette, I don't know how The Council of Representative World Governments is going to respond to our friend Bourgesie's invasion, but I think the principle is the same."

Lanette saw his point immediately. "If private individuals use public property to thwart the formation of The Representative World Government, the property can be considered to have been converted to private use and it's therefore subject to forfeiture and return to the public domain."

"Exactly. That's why CORWOG should kick Bourgesie's butt back inside his borders.

"But what we're doing here is begging a question that needs begging. What right does The Representative World Government have to discipline a nominal member like Bourgesie? If CORWOG goes in and bombs Bourgesie's people back into the Stone Age, what is to keep someone from saying CORWOG is no better than Bourgesie?"

"You're basically going to destroy a religion whether you do it in the name of the property or not."

"Right. When we deal with absolutes, we have to identify the absolute. When we say the Council of Representative World Governments, what absolute are we dealing with? Are we dealing with abstract tangibles such as the freedom of speech, or of religion, or is there another freedom, a more important freedom everyone seems to have overlooked, a freedom that must be protected at all costs to ensure the survival of the race, one that can only be preserved by The Representative World Government?"

Lanette's eyes clouded over as if she were seeing into the past.

"I get a sense of history from this ground, a formation of a picture of groups of people coming here to meet, not in anger, but to exchange what they have with each other.

"I see some groups with food, others with fuel, still others with the implements fashioned to combine the two.

"I see three groups, all different, each with a skill the others need to survive.

"I see those three groups becoming a multitude, a marketplace where goods and services are exchanged, information traded, customs and usages explored."

"No one can survive without the marketplace," Block said. "The marketplace is the oldest form of survival, whether it was a combination of two hunters bringing down their prey, or three to plough, plant and harvest the land, or a place for the two groups to exchange the fruit of their labor.

"We are all alone, but we cannot survive alone. Internally, we exist independent of the world, but externally, in the physical world, our physical survival depends on the marketplace, the physical exchange of goods and services.

"It has been such since time immemorial. The freedom of the marketplace has to be preserved at all costs and only The Representative World Government can accomplish that."

"Then," Lanette said, still viewing a landscape where the prominence overlooking the inlets that extended to the Atlantic Ocean was a gathering place for the peoples that inhabited the area, a place for meeting and exchange, "the survival of the species depends on commerce and the marketplace. The existence of the marketplace itself becomes the basic right without which all other rights become irrelevant."

"It's only when there's been a blockage of the marketplace as a result of a disbalance between the people and the resources available to sustain the people that the reflective nature of the species, the goal of evolution, is abandoned to the reflexive, and even reactive nature, returning humankind to its origins.

"We are only as far away from our origins as the stability of the marketplace allows. If the marketplace is disrupted, survival becomes our first order of business and survival requires only that our tissue lives, and it'll live at the expense of all other tissue."

Lanette's eyes were coming back to the present, to the fresh sprout greenness of the trees against the blueness of the sky.

"The purpose of The Representative World Government is to preserve an orderly marketplace," Block was underscoring. "Any act endangering the formation and maintenance of orderly markets endangers the lives depending on those markets.

"Our existence is far removed from the source of its sustenance. It depends on the channels of commerce that exist as a web, encircling the planet.

"If a person like Bourgesie wants to get together with a neighbor and fight to the point each has to send their women and children onto the battlefield to slaughter each other, as long as the slaughter doesn't affect the orderly operation of the marketplace, it doesn't endanger the lives of those who aren't involved in it.

"It may be unfortunate, painful even, to see it happen, but we can't create evolution in the laboratory of the world. We are a part of both. We can only look after our own little corner, promote the orderly conditions that will encourage the survival of those who're willing to participate in a reflective world and therefore become a part of it.

"But when Bourgesie turns his attention to another neighbor whose participation in an orderly world market will be disrupted by that attention, disrupting in turn the orderly world market, then that attention endangers you and me sitting on this hillside and everybody else in the world who depends on the web of the market for their existence."

"The right, then," Lanette said, "the right isn't an individual's right, but the collective right of individuals to meet and exchange in the marketplace. It's not the interference with an individual's right to go to the marketplace as such, although that's an interference in the marketplace, its the interference in the marketplace itself that must be prevented."

"And which only The Representative World Government can prevent."

"Which makes its primary function the preservation of the marketplace so the freedoms of the individual participants can be preserved," Lanette added.

"So Georges can go off and stop the disappearance of the oil from the tankers. CORWOG can stop Bourgesie.

"And we can go after this woman Karen Carenson and put the bricks to what is possibly a far more disruptive effect on the marketplace, the attempt to disrupt it by destroying it directly. She may be responsible for the disappearance of the oil, and she may be responsible for the attempt on the life of The Chairman, and she's most certainly responsible for the death of Lof, but her active encouragement of increasing the population can only lead to a blockage that'll result in the total breakdown of the marketplace and a reversal of evolution so future generations will devolve to the reflexive rather than evolving toward the reflective."

"And you want to get inside her so you can feel her million tongues."

"Why do you keep bringing something up that will make me want something you say you don't want me to want?"

"Oh, don't be silly. I'm a woman."

She refilled his glass and flipped open her computer.

"This makes me excited for some reason, and you know how excited I get."

"What. Thinking about me in Karen Carenson?"

"No. I had the transmissions analyzed."

"From the fortress."

"Yes. They have a relay system so every message they've sent was randomly transferred through anywhere from eight to thirty relays before it reached its destination.

"We, of course, didn't have any reason to try to trace anything until now. We have all their locations, so all you have to do is punch an authorization key and their property will be forfeit."

"How does that get us to Karen?"

"We have the helicopters disappearing in the Atlantic off the Bahamas and we have her helicopter doing the same thing about five hundred miles southeast of here, again right in the middle of the Atlantic.

"We just don't know what they're disappearing in to.

"There're preliminary indications the flight path that led to the abandoned copper mind halfway from here to Murdochville came out of the Atlantic at a point about three hundred miles northeast of the Bahamas."

"So we have an underwater aircraft carrier of some sort?" Block asked.

"Must be. But we certainly haven't been able to spot it. If we had its dimensions, we could program them into the computer and let it search for us, but with only guesses, it's going to take awhile."

"They must have some sort of headquarters."

"All messages were computer controlled so each location equaled all other locations. There's no way to tell a central location by the volume of traffic. And, of course, if they have a mobile unit plowing under the waters of the Atlantic, that's going to confuse things even more.

"There was one unusual thing, though. In only one case did the number of messages received equal the number of messages sent."

"The idea being the location was randomly monitoring traffic?"

"As well as always getting a response to what it sent out. There's something even more interesting about the location."

"Oh?"

"It doesn't exist."

"It doesn't exist?"

"It comes from a point about a mile northeast of De'Corvo Acores. I know something about De'Corvo. It's like this place. It's a picture without a memory. There's something about De'Corvo that'll tell us where this point is. There's something about this point that'll tell me something about me.

"It's a feeling of excitement I've never had before. I wish Janette were here to explain it. I wish I could see her again.

Block got up, offering her a hand. "Well, it may be a while before we're finished and a while longer before The Chairman is finished if they decide to slam Bourgesie back into his hole.

"We'd better get moving to find out about this point of yours. What's the transportation situation?"

Lanette smiled mischievously. "We have to go back to the Chic Chocs. Isn't that where you had them store that little box you're going to use to wire me up? On the Stratostreamer? Sure it is. Come on, now. You can tell me, I already know."

Block had the pilot fly them over the copper mine on the way to the Stratostreamer. The pit was a huge tiered gouge on the face of the planet. He could see operatives working around the Stratodart Karen used to get there.

They continued to their landing strip in the Chic Chocs. The Stratostreamer was already prepared, warming on the runway, waiting for them.

Lanette picked up the plastic case sitting on the lounge chair on the side of the door entrance and held it out for Block.

"Can I look inside?"

"Do anything you want, but I think we'd better concentrate on getting where we're going."

"Spoil sport. Do I ever deny you anything? But then, you didn't deny me, did you. You just played on my sense of decency and fair play, my desire to do a good job. Well, I hope when the time comes, you do a good job because I'm just dying to find out what it's like to be wired up. Fix your own drink."

Block did, pouring some scotch over an ice cube, sitting down, opening his computer, and punching up his command line.

He felt the Stratostreamer glide down the runway and rapidly climb away from the Earth just as he was taking a sip of his drink.

"Should I try to reach The Chairman and tell him what we think about knocking off Bourgesie?" he asked.

"Chicken," Lanette said over her shoulder.

"Why chicken?"

"You're just trying to get him to create some heat so you won't have to take it for confiscating the church assets."

Block took another sip and typed out a command: As a result of violations of international treaty to be specified, all assets of The Save Our Children Foundation are forfeited to the Council of Representative World Governments. All officials of the organization will be taken into custody to determine their knowledge and complicity in the organization's activities. All others associated with the organization will be processed in accordance with their age and independence. This directive applies to all organizations that control or are controlled by the organization itself and all organizations related to such organizations.

He read it several times and then sent it off over his command code without reading it to Lanette. It'd set into motion a massive operation based on the locations Lanette pinpointed from the organization's message system.

He closed his computer and sat back, his mind running back to the conversation he, Lanette and Lansdowne had in his rock before it was gutted by the explosions set by the children the foundation was seeking to save.

There did seem to be a clear evolution of the mind, as if it started out merely to react to the environment as much as the lichen on a rock reacted to the changes in temperature from night to day back to night and then to day again, a continuous cycle which kept the lichen reacting as long as the changes were occurring.

Instead of assigning a particle for every observable effect, an electron for electricity, a graviton for gravity, a photon for light, a thermion for heat, and so on, it seemed reasonable to assume a single particle and assign it the properties that were apparent in nature.

He knew matter was held together, so there must be an attractive property to the particle, and he knew matter was convertible to light which traveled at 186,000 miles a second, so there must be a property of motion.

With a particle that moved at the speed of light and also had a propensity to hold it together if the movement could be overcome, both matter and light could be accounted for.

But how about the gradations in between?

If the structure of matter could gain or lose some of the particles depending on the conditions in which the matter found itself, then flows of the particles could be directed by manipulating the state of the matter and providing a channel for the flows.

Thus, if at one point, matter could be induced to have a deficit of particles, it'd have a tendency to attract other available particles.

A deficit of particles could therefore be considered to be negative and if a path were provided so an element with excess particles could give some of them up, the flow of the particles would determine which element had the deficit. If it had a deficit, negative, minus particles, particles could be made to flow toward the deficit. Electrical circuits were made by manipulating the relationship between areas where there was a deficit of the particles.

But the reactive basis for life was manipulated naturally in nature.

If two rocks had different compositions and were in proximity to each other on the face of the planet, they'd have a difference in potential with respect to each other. If they could find a channel, the deficits and excesses of electrons in each, their difference in potential, would equalize and there would be no difference.

Given the crystal nature of matter, the need for matter to form a surface, this equalization couldn't take place.

When the matter was on the surface of a rotating planet, causing the elements to heat up and cool on a systematic basis, the changing differences in potential would cause the rocks to slowly destroy themselves.

The destruction would create a breakdown, producing different compounds of the elements and sooner or later these compounds would form themselves along the lines that separate the differences in potential in order to provide a means for those differences to equalize.

Thus, the simple lichen on rocks are atoms and molecules of atoms that form around the flows moving between these potential differences.

The lichen is animate because the particles are always moving toward the potential that has the largest deficit of electrons.

Because the planet is always rotating, the potentials are always changing and the direction of the flows is always changing.

The constant change is what is measured as life, animate matter as opposed to inanimate matter. It'd continue to exist as long as there are changing potentials that exist to give rise to it and it'd always come into existence as a result of changing potentials.

But the movement is merely reactive.

It does nothing but satisfy the changing potentials.

It is, Block realized, the same principle that operates the reactive functions in the human body and all other organic physical operations. The body is made up of a number of systems that are actually subsystems of the overall system.

These subsystems are all operated on the same basis as the lichen on the face of a rock shot through with changing potentials.

Food fuels the subsystem's operations, its breakdown causing the changes in potentials that operate the subsystems, that allow sweat glands to cool, digestive juices to work, lungs to absorb oxygen, the heart to continue beating.

All of these subsystems operate on a purely reactive basis.

But they all have to react with respect to each other. Lichen doesn't need a traffic cop, but when specialized lichen develop into an overall system whose existence has to depend on the smooth running of each of the specialized systems, a method of coordination has to develop to coordinate those systems.

This is the purely reactive portion of the brain and, on an evolutionary basis, Block could see it not only had to develop first, it had to develop as the organization became more complex. It was basic to the operation of any organism.

However, the next stage involved action to get the food the organism needed to survive. Trees had no choice but to exist. If there was enough sustenance available, they would survive. If not, they would die. But when animate matter became ambulatory, could move in the environment, the mind evolved, and that mind was solely concerned with getting food, sex and the dominance needed to acquire both.

This was the reflexive stage, where people just reacted to get what they wanted at any cost.

Block knew every brain had a reflexive part. If the organism lacks food, the reflexive part of the brain takes over to ensure the organism gets food.

It'll do anything to obtain food because it isn't operating from reason, only need.

Block knew that everyone was only a meal away from what they were before evolution evolved animate matter past the reactive stage, through the reflexive stage into sentience and the reflective stage.

While the reflexive state was absolutely necessary for the survival of the organism once the organism, animate, became ambulatory, once it was loosened from its moorings and had to navigate within the environment, it had to develop another portion of the brain.

Regardless whether the mind was in a reflexive or reflective state, the mind had to exist in order for the organism to form some sort of picture of external reality that would allow the organism to react to it, to anticipate what was happening in physical reality so it could avoid harmful physical reality.

Becoming ambulatory forced the creation of the portion of the brain that led to sentience because some structure had to evolve that could perceive the external world in a manner that would allow the organism to act within it.

Block favored the concept of a perceptor. Why shouldn't there be a perceptor, or a structure that allowed perception, if that structure could be made out of the same particles that made up the universe.

If a particle could be visualized conceptually with two properties, one giving it speed and the other causing it to be attracted to all other particles, those two opposing properties could be used to explain the existence of the great cycle in the universe. The particles came together under certain circumstances to form matter. That matter existed as physical reality until something caused it to ignite. Once it ignited, it underwent combustion. Combustion converted the particles that made up the matter into highly structured electromagnetic emissions. Those highly structured electromagnetic emissions expanded over an expanding sphere until the particles that made it up dissipated into individual particles that in turn reformed into matter to start the process all over again.

The entire operation, the formation of matter, its movement, its ignition, combustion, and expansion in a field of electromagnetic emissions occurred within the expanding fields of all combusting objects.

Movement and ignition and matter formation were all dictated by the strengths of these fields at any one point.

If a particle with two properties could describe the cycle of universal operation, why couldn't it also form into a perceptor, a mind, if the properties permitted?

Opposing properties could lead to equilibrium if the opposing forces equaled each other.

The concept of a mind then became a web of evenly spaced particles held together by the opposing forces of each of the particles that made up the web.

Because the particles need be only large enough to define non-existence, a mind could be made up of uncounted trillions of these particles and never be detected.

But even though it couldn't be detected, it could detect the streams of particles bouncing off external reality and transmitted by the optic nerve into the structure of the mind. The presence of one of the two forces, the attractive nature of the force, as they passed through as a result of the other force, the force of motion, would cause the individual particles in the mind to become disbalanced from the equilibrium created by the web of opposing forces.

The disbalancing could then be perceived as a picture of external physical reality to the extent the mind was healthy and in operating order.

Block knew this concept was violently opposed to the neural net theory in which perception was created by the memory of individual neurons as those neurons were conceptualized, but the neural net model didn't explain perception at all and certainly couldn't be tied to the fact that perception is based on the strength of the flows of elementary particles as they bounce off physical reality.

Block thought at the beginning of the ambulatory phase of the organism's evolution, the mind, the web of particles that produced a picture of external reality, must have just been a simple enough web to form a picture so the organism could reflexively react to its external environment.

And like the reactive core of the brain function, the reflexive portion of the brain that evolved as a result of the ambulatory needs of the organism for survival in a changing environment became a permanent, necessary function, a layer over the operating core which reactively kept the subsystems operating in unison with each other.

But having to constantly recreate a picture of physical reality was a very inefficient method of ensuring an organism's survival.

The normal evolution of the organism, which was toward survival, permanence of a nature that would allow it to perceive itself and the universe in which it existed, required certain situations in physical reality to be recognizable.

If the organism had to reconstruct physical reality every time it encountered it, it'd never be able to do more than reflexively react to existing current conditions in the environment. This would lead to organisms that aimlessly moved across the face of the Earth with little purpose other than survival.

If the organism could encode an electrical bundle so it could be shot through the mind in order to form a picture of external physical reality, it could encode the picture it formed of physical reality and save it in storage for future comparison with physical reality.

It wasn't that big a problem, Block realized upon contemplation. At any one instance, the eye encoded the strength of all flows of particles that reached its surface in one digitized picture, if that was in fact the way the eye worked. Even if it wasn't digitized, it still had a way to provide a relative value to the differences in the flows it received at any one instant.

This packet of information was transmitted to the mind. It had a relative value made up of information about each of the flows the eyes recorded and its total electrical value was the value of the sum of all of the flows recorded.

When the mind reconstructed the picture of reality by recreating the individual flows that made it up and firing them through the mind, the mind was disbalanced to the extent of those individual flows.

As the flows passed through the mind, the individual particles in the mind sought to regain their equilibrium.

In doing so, they created a feedback flow approximating the original flow.

The feedback flow then became a packet of information approximating the original packet of information.

The mind, having converted external reality into an internal representation of external reality, could then store that packet of information.

How?

Because each packet was made up of particles and the sum total of those particles, which could themselves be in the trillions, was unique. The extent to which the packet had a charge, the ability to attract other particles, differed with each packet.

However, instead of attracting other particles, the charge, the net deficit, caused the packet to affix itself to the chemical constructions of the brain, in the neurons, for future recall.

And how did recall occur?

The constant oscillation of the mind between various states of disequilibrium produced a continuous flow of particles measurable as an electrical current.

The strength of this current depended on the equilibrium of the mind, it being caused by the movement of the individual particles in the mind.

The packets of information were stored by the strength of the current that flowed through the mind at the time of their formation. The flow was always related to the electrical deficit of the packet.

Thus, if an organism perceived something in the environment it's perceived before, the packet of information about that external reality would reach the mind through the eyes, causing the mind to form a picture of that external reality.

The mind in turn produced an electrical flow equal to the unique nature of the packet.

The unique flow moved through the multiple connections of the neurons, picking up packets with deficits similar to the one creating the picture.

Packets were picked up and fed into the mind for comparison with the picture of external reality being formed.

Thus, as long as the mind was receiving recognizable external input, the organism merely had to act reflexively. It was only when the flow from external reality couldn't recall a packet that the organism's actions would be brought to a halt until it could figure out what to do about the conditions in external reality for which it had no experience, no basis for recall.

So while becoming ambulatory created a reflexive portion of the mind to deal with the organism's survival in external reality, it didn't allow it to anticipate situations in external reality it hadn't yet encountered.

This wasn't conducive to survival.

Survival required the organism be able to anticipate changes in physical reality, and being able to anticipate changes in physical reality gave the organism the ability to change physical reality in order to conform it to be conducive to its own survival.

The organism developed sentience.

And with sentience, the massive growth of the storage portion of the brain occurred to accommodate the ability of the brain to reflect on the pictures of external reality it stored.

Without delving into the specialized portions of the brain developed to handle the electrical impulses that were derived from the external environment through touch and sound, and to a lesser extent, taste and smell, Block could clearly see the brain as consisting of three layers, each representing a stage of the brains evolution, each fully required for the successful operation of the organism.

The reactive silently kept the subsystems coordinated, the reflexive moved the organism through the environment leaving the reflective free to solve the problems that would lead to the continued existence of the species.

But just as every step of the evolutionary process depended on the prior step, the reflective depended on the reflexive and the reflexive on the reactive.

If the organism was constantly subjected to new situations or to a changing physical environment that required continuous attention so the reflexive constantly required attention, there would be no time for the reflective.

If the organism wasn't provided with the fuel to keep its reactive operations running silently, the reflexive operations would take over the reflective and instead of contemplating the environment, it would plunder the environment to satisfy its basic needs.

And if the organism developed to a stage of living in reflective communities with the community's support dependent on the reflective, and that support was removed, forcing the entire community to revert to the reflexive, the plunder of the environment that would result from the joint reflexive actions could be truly horrible.

And there's the justification for my action, Block thought, finishing up the last of his scotch.

The belief was a part of his reflective operation. Belief could arise from the reflexive part of the brain, if I burn incense to Baal, I will be able to possess my love, if I cross my two forefingers, the devil will pass me by, if I toss a virgin into a volcano, it won't erupt.

But the beliefs weren't the type that resulted in the creation of an imaginary world toward which all could aspire.

The reflective beliefs took the ills of reality, the interactions of people operating in a reactive and reflexive world, where food and pleasure were the only rewards, and pain the only way to obtain them, and infused them with the creation of an ideal world, a world which, if all could conform, would end the ills of the world that did exist.

The reflective took the pictures of reality that were constructed by the mind and in the quiet of its recesses, away from reality, rearranged those pictures into a world unlike the real world. It then instructed actions be taken in the real world that would bring reality closer to the world reconstructed in the mind.

What was bad was the creation of pictures of a world that was worse than the world that existed, and the conduct of acts in the real world in accordance with those pictures, or even worse because of its shear hypocrisy, the creation of pictures of a world that was better than the world that existed, and the conduct of acts in the real world to impose those pictures regardless whether the real world found the beliefs practical or not.

It wasn't the beliefs, which were important to evolution, but rather the acts that had to stand alone as acts in the real world, acts that furthered the evolution of the reflective or acts that retarded the evolution of the reflective.

And even the acts could escape condemnation by direct action in opposition if they infringed on the evolution of the reflective, to use the old term, between consenting adults. If Bourgesie and his neighbor wanted to spend ten years destroying each other's populations, and that destruction had no real effect on the world's marketplace, the marketplace providing the support of the outdated reflexive systems of the evolving reflective world society, their bestiality, their reflexive grunts and moans, stabs and slashes, would be nothing more than rival warfare in the deep jungles of the Amazon, where the start and finish would be of little note other than to the survivors of the bloody bodies lying around the jungle floor.

But let Bourgesie take his antics into the marketplace, let him conduct activities threatening the evolving reflective society, and he threatens to turn that evolving reflective society into the same reflexive society Bourgesie promotes.

"That simply can't be permitted!"

Block slammed his glass on the counter, slung ice cubes into it, and filled it overly full.

"I was only looking at the relationship between the Serranta de Cuenca and De'Corvo Acores," Lanette said, startled. "They're only a couple of degrees apart in latitude. You can give me that, can't you?"

"What? Oh, I just sent off the order to seize the assets of The Save Our Children operation. I was just thinking of some of the things we were talking about with Lansdowne. What were you saying about giving you some latitude?"

"De'Corvo. It's only a couple of degrees off the Serranta de Cuenca and Requena. Requena? You remember? The Spanish town with the beautiful light-eyed blondes Janette thinks we, or at least our ancestors, came from. It's a good fifteen hundred kilometers away from Acores, but it's strange, the terrain and all, and I think Acores is strange and wonderful, like a land that shouldn't exist, a land of memory, although I've no memory of it."

"How long before we get there?"

"We're almost there. You've been getting a little rest. We should land at Lajes Airport in Terceira in about fifteen minutes. They have a helicopter waiting for us."

"And?"

"And we go to De'Corvo."

"Why De'Corvo? Better, what is De'Corvo?"

"De'Corvo is the northwestern most island in the group, the group being the tops of extinct volcanoes, or at least more or less extinct. You know volcanoes. You never know.

"I see the key on De'Corvo."

"You see the key? Just what does that mean, you see the key?"

"I tell you, I see images in my mind, images that don't come from memory, but which go into memory as soon as I form them so I can't tell whether they're real or not, but I know they aren't because I've never been there before. I couldn't remember something that never happened to me could I? No. And yet I do."

"That reminds me some more of our talk with Lansdowne. If the mind is merely a cloud of electrons, a phenomena like ball lightening, then it disappears when the conditions for its existence, the animation of the organism to which it's attached, disappears."

"Under Georges' theory, the electrons would just go and do something else, and whatever it was we were would cease to exist."

"What if my thinking is right and there's actually a durable mind? If the electrons were brought together into a stable web of equilibrium, the stability of the web wouldn't depend on the organism, but on the internal stability of the web itself."

"So," Lanette said, "when the organism ceased to be animate, the stable web . . ."

"The mind."

"The mind would continue to exist?"

"I don't see why not. And I don't see why it couldn't attach itself to another organism and continue its development."

"You think it could take its memories with it?"

"That's just what I was thinking. Memories have to be stored information and according to my thoughts, the stored information would be in the form of the same encoded packets of particles that allowed the mind to reconstruct external reality in the first place.

"I suppose it'd be possible for a mind to drag some of the memory along with it, but I'd think it'd be the exception rather than the rule.

"The evolution of the mind seems to hinge more on its ability to identify and solve problems than its ability to store and retrieve information."

"Then what I'm seeing aren't memories?" Lanette asked.

"Not stored memories, at least, although we've no way of knowing what they are."

"But if they're just images that form in my mind, aren't they like dreams?"

"No," Block replied, "I think dreams are the result of our mind regaining its equilibrium. I think the mind we're modeling being thrown into disequilibrium in order to perceive external reality wouldn't be able to perceive that reality very well if it were kept in a constant state of disequilibrium.

"I think that's the reason the mind has to sleep. Its particles have to move back into a state of equilibrium. As they do, they produce electrical currents that travel throughout the brain randomly recalling encoded packets containing the pictures of external reality compatible with the currents that become our dreams.

"Your feeling these pictures aren't coming from either memory or reality, but are going into memory after they're formed, would seem to indicate you're picking up compatible packets from the area you're in."

" The ancient land of Gaspé," Lanette said.

"Well, may be, but it remains to be seen whether these images have any basis in reality."

Block waved out the command window with his glass. Terceira was a growing dot of beauty in the blue Atlantic below. The Stratostreamer banked in response to its program, leveled off, and began its gentle descent into Lajes.

Block finished his drink and prepared to open the door as the plane came to a stop next to a high-speed helicopter with its blades slowly rotating.

Lanette was out first, turning to help Block down.

"Hi, Mike," she said to the smartly dressed young man standing at attention beside the door of the helicopter.

"Yes Mam," Mike replied, averting his eyes.

"I hope he doesn't end up like your other boyfriends," Block commented.

"You're my boyfriend. At least I think you are. You are, aren't you? I never had a boyfriend that lasted this long. I never had a boyfriend that lasted at all, at least more than once, so you have to be my boyfriend. You're going to end up okay, aren't you? I hope so."

She was in the command couch receiving the thumbs up and the helicopter rose into the cloudless blue sky before she concluded, "You'll end up okay."

In moments, the sea was a clear surface beneath them.

"We won't pass over any other island on the way according to my chart. De'Corvo is northwest of Terceira."

"What are we looking for?" Block asked.

"I've signal's coming from a point that's to the northeast of De'Corvo, but I don't have anything on the charts that's to the northeast of De'Corvo. I've had satellite photos checked and I can't find anything northwest of De'Corvo. That, however, could be misleading. This is a volcanic chain, probably the oldest land mass this side of Cuenca and, come to think of it, Gaspé, if a bunch of peaks could be considered to be a land mass. The land has to be down there somewhere, so if its a volcanic chain, the beaches might be non-reflective, the rock absorbent, in short, the thing might be invisible to a satellite."

"How about shipping charts."

"De'Corvo is an island with a couple of fishing villages. The big ships don't go anywhere near it. The fishermen don't make charts. We have contacted officials on De'Corvo, well, they're not really officials, they have kind of an ideal situation, they just live a nice life and don't fish to the northwest because of the current situation, the current being the type that might end them up in South America.

"So it looks like whatever is to the northwest of De'Corvo is placed to stay without too much scrutiny."

"How are we going to find it?" Block asked. "If you can't see it from a satellite, we certainly aren't going to be able to see it from this helicopter unless we are extraordinarily lucky. A mile northeast of something covers a lot of territory."

"That's where the key comes in. My mind formed an image of a miniature Acores chain, like someone made a model of it, and there's something about the model that locates what we're looking for."

"Why would someone make a model of something they'd taken such great care to hide?"

"So they could find it."

"But if they hid it, they could find it."

"Not if it were hidden ages ago. Not if the model was designed to be used long after the mountains and valleys hiding it had changed, moved, submerged, been destroyed."

"How could a key be designed to survive a cataclysm? Why even try?" Block asked.

"Because it'd be better than not trying. I think maybe what we're looking for is so valuable, the greatest effort would be taken to preserve it and its location. Maybe a million keys were made so at least one would survive and that's the one I'm seeing."

"How ancient are we talking about?"

"I've no idea. Does it make a difference?"

"The classic concept of evolution requires the gradual development of the species over a long period of time. It also presupposes a continuous development. It generates an assumption there never was a period when humanity was more intelligent or knowledgeable than it is right now."

"Really? It does that? I thought that was more or less a generational assumption. We all think we know more than our ancestors. We all think we have better bodies than our ancestors. We all think we do things better than our ancestors.

"It's societal. We can read about history, but the people are never the real exciting people we meet every day of our lives.

"Even when we see pictures of people in history, photographs, we can't see the animation that gave them their spirit and personality. We read a description of a person as being sensual, having untold lovers, capturing the fancy of everyone, and when we look at the picture, we see a dried up prune, a nothing.

"We can't capture the essence and therefore we tend to think everything that's gone before is in black and white and we're in Technicolor.

"We think that way, so every generation before us must've thought that way too.

"Now you're telling me it's an implicit conclusion in the classical theory of evolution?" Lanette asked.

"Perhaps our theories, at least the assumptions embedded in them, are merely the result of the invisible assumptions we live with in our everyday lives.

"But where they come from isn't as important as the fact they exist. And when reality conflicts with assumptions, especially hidden assumptions, it's reality that'll disappear, not the assumptions.

"Remember when it was discovered Venus was about eight times as hot as the Earth, but the hidden assumption that resulted from Newton's error that an object will travel in a straight line unless a force acts on it to make it move in another direction, that the solar system was set in motion at a point in history and remained in motion undisturbed, meant that Venus either couldn't be eight times as hot as the Earth, or the two couldn't have been formed at the same time.

"But the hidden assumption in Newton's error, as is well understood today, a body actually remains at rest until a force puts it in motion, which leads to the less obvious conclusion that even though bodies such as the Earth and Moon are moving relative to each other, they are at rest with respect to the forces acting on them, made it unthinkable that Earth and Venus were formed at different times in the history of the solar system.

"Some things are so ingrained in the thought process that to question them is just not an acceptable alternative.

"So they came up with the nonsense about the greenhouse effect, that somehow the atmosphere of Venus is composed in such a way, the heat goes in and doesn't come out, raising the temperature of the surface of the planet to eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit."

"I remember that one," Lanette said. "If that were possible, the Earth would've long since been filled with little greenhouses to supply its energy needs."

"Right. Then they send the Magellan spacecraft over to map Venus inch by inch so they could show how its surface operated in accordance with the theory of plate tectonics developed on Earth to explain the geological disturbances caused by the flood.

"What do they find? They find a surface that's young.

"In other words, the lava is flowing as if the planet was formed recently in a geological time based on surface features.

"Was the option available that Venus could actually be young?

"Because of the hidden assumption involved in Newton's error, a young Venus wasn't an acceptable alternative, it wasn't even a thinkable alternative. As a result, the billions of dollars in equipment, time and talent were directed at discovering just what the mechanism was that allowed Venus to rejuvenate its surface in the recent geological past."

"So what your saying is," Lanette said, "there's no possibility there're keys from the past because our ancestors, all being less intelligent than ourselves by generational degrees, could never have produced them."

"According to the classical theory of evolution.

"With Originism, the theory that life develops where the conditions exist for it to develop, and it develops to match those conditions, there's evolution from the simple to the complex, but that evolution doesn't occur on a straight line basis.

"I doubt life can exist on a planet with a temperature of eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit and when a planet cools in the emptiness of space to the point life forms and evolves, I don't think it progresses from fishies to birdies to lovely creatures such as yourself.

"I think it develops the systems rapidly as soon as the planet cools and the atmosphere condenses its water out. It's not all from one, it's all at once."

"In other words," Lanette asked, "development is parallel rather than linear?"

"Both. It's linear with respect to the development of the systems, whether it be a system leading to a reaction to heat, or a system converting air pressure to recognizable electrical signals, or a feedback loop causing physical discomfort until a counter stimulation is provided to give it relief, a system leading to the urgency of sexual desire and its resulting satisfaction, or merely a system keeping time so a heart can beat, but parallel with respect to how those systems are combined to make up the animate, ambulatory and sentient life we find populating the planet."

"So civilizations could rise and fall on a serial basis, with time wiping out the knowledge of one to the consciousness of the next."

"It'd be hard for me to believe the planet has been stable enough to allow for the uniform and continuous development of a species. And I'm not so sure the knowledge of prior civilizations isn't available, although it doesn't seem to get into the consciousness, as you call it, of later generations.

"Look at the flood situation, where complete and accurate reports are preserved in all cultures with an oral tradition converted to writing.

"But because such a flood is scientifically impossible, it couldn't have happened and therefore didn't. Now, of course, with the attractive force connected to the rate at which a planetary body is cooling, not only are the traces of water on the moon's surface explainable, but also the seabed nature of its surface.

"And of course, the flood stories."

"And, the flood stories."

"So perhaps I'm reconstructing something that occurred prior to the flood?" Lanette asked.

"You haven't reconstructed anything yet, but I think you're going to get your chance."

Block indicated a small jewel appearing rapidly on the horizon.

Lanette slowed the forward airspeed of the helicopter to get her bearings. The island, the top of a dormant volcano, was about four miles long.

"I think I want Caldeirao. It's the crater of the volcano. It's in the northwest area of the island."

Block watched silently as she maneuvered the craft deftly over the treetops on the sloping hills leading up to the mouth of the crater. As they flew over the lip, the blue water, matching almost exactly the blue sky, stunned Block. Located in the water, as if a mirage in the sky, they saw a series of tiny islands.

Lanette held up her chart. "See the similarity?"

Block looked at the chart, the representation of the Acores, and then the surface of the lake.

It looked like someone had created a miniature world on the surface of the lake, the world of the Acores, and the world had been transported to the sky.

The vision gave Block an eerie feeling.

He observed quietly as Lanette began to propel the craft slowly around the miniature islands. She altered the circles and the altitude, each vista providing a slightly different perspective to the model of the Acores.

"I think I'm beginning to get myself oriented. I don't have anything to compare it too. It's somehow not the same, and yet it is."

"What does it feel like in your mind?" Block asked quietly.

"Like it's straining to understand something, sort of like attempting to compare something with nothing.

"Sometimes it feels right, sometimes it feels less right.

"And I don't really know what I'm looking for."

Block watched silently as she bounced the vehicle around in more erratic arcs.

"If we take that one to be Terceira, then this one should be Flores, and the one just to the north of it De'Corvo."

She moved the helicopter so it was directly above the two islands she'd identified as the sister islands of Flores and De'Corvo.

"There should be some way of telling where what we're looking for is by these three points, or maybe only two of them."

"If there is, whoever did it must've had the same ability to hover up here as we have," Block observed.

"I certainly hope so."

Lanette began to move the craft slowly toward the island representing De'Corvo, straining her eyes looking at the water, or rather under the water, to see if there was any marker that would give her a clue to what she was looking for.

"Nothing," she said.

She moved back in the direction of Flores, and then to the northwest around Flores, out over the Atlantic in the direction of Gaspé, then back into De'Corvo in a southeast direction.

"Nothing," she said again.

She turned around, got her bearings to the southeast of Flores, and began to circle counterclockwise in the direction of Gaspé in order to come over De'Corvo from the northeast.

"Still nothing."

She came in over the shore of the tiny island representing De'Corvo and let the helicopter hang for a few minutes.

"I've come in from the west, the northwest, the north, the northeast, the east, the southeast directly in the direction of Gaspé, the south . . ."

"What do you mean, 'in the direction of Gaspé?'" Block interrupted her.

"Gaspé. Over there." She pointed out the command windrow at a piece of ground jutting out into the lake with a small rock sticking up at the end of it.

"My heavens. Gaspé!" she cried. "What the heck is that doing here? I didn't even realize I was using it for a reference point. Gaspé, Perce Rock shouldn't be here in the Acores."

"I don't think it is. It might be a clue."

"You think?" Lanette laughed. "Let's just give something a try here."

She moved the craft rapidly over the blue water to the simulated Gaspé Peninsula, letting it hover over the miniature Perce Rock.

Her eyes scanned the surface carefully, but Block was the first to notice the anomaly, followed by Lanette's exclamation of agreement as he started to point at a dot of light that seemed to be a part of the ripple of the surface as it reflected the bits and pieces of sunlight caught in its movement. The dot didn't disappear, staying steady, a beacon in a blinking array of randomly moving lights.

"What do you think causes that?" she asked.

"I've no idea," Block answered.

She moved the helicopter toward the light and it disappeared. She backed up directly over Perce rock and the light reappeared.

"If we can't get any closer than this, we're probably never going to find out what causes it. Let's just triangulate it," she said.

Her fingers worked rapidly over the keypad, using the miniature Flores and Terceira to form the base of a triangle, and the steady beacon as the tip.

"Got it," she exclaimed.

She fed the information into the automatic pilot, which then located their real position with respect to actual islands.

"Here's to it."

Lanette pushed a button activating the autopilot and the helicopter began to drift purposely in a northwesterly direction. As it passed over the lip of the volcano and moved over the northwest shore of De'Corvo, Lanette and Block kept their eyes glued on the smooth blueness below, the color streaking green to brown the further they moved from shore.

"I don't see a thing," Block said.

"Me either, and my eyes are beginning to hurt."

The helicopter moved on slowly, the Atlantic revealing nothing, and then came to a halt.

"Nothing," Block said.

"We're still up a thousand feet.," Lanette observed.

Lanette took off the autopilot and moved the craft slowly toward the surface of the ocean.

"For crying out loud," Block said as something took shape. "It came out of nowhere."

Lanette saw the same thing.

The island was nothing more than a rock jutting perhaps thirty feet off the surface of the water. It had beaches, quite wide in response to the island's flatness, but the color of the sand, black, was almost the same as the color of the water and caused the sun's rays to reflect back just as if it were actually water, the flatness of the beach keeping it perpetually moist.

Block had to double check to make sure he wasn't looking at a mirage.

Lanette maneuvered the helicopter around the invisible shore.

"Okay," she said. "There."

Block let his eyes follow her fingers. Almost invisible on the beach, a portion was blacker than the rest because it was reflecting the rays of the sun directly off the water rather then the moist sand.

"A dock," she said.

"Of sorts. Looks like a place where something that floated just under the surface of the water would tie up," Block observed.

"Looks like it would hold a bunch of helicopters," Lanette noted. "Now we know the size of whatever it is that's making helicopters and planes appear and disappear into the surface of the ocean."

Lanette was already uploading the dimensions. "The computers should be able to locate our friend Karen for you in no time."

Block studied the layout below him. There was no indication there was a surface door between the dock and the island itself.

"What about guards?" he asked.

"Would you guard something like this? Anybody you left here would increase the chance of detection rather than reduce it. This is just not findable. And if it were found accidentally, the first place the finder would go would be De'Corvo, telling his tale as loud as he could only to run into some innocent-eyed child for a final farewell," Lanette said. "No. This place is empty. I can feel it."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So how do we get in."

"Walk in, silly."

Lanette piloted the helicopter to a point in the center of the flat island, the ground sloping gradually away from the center, the rocks uneven but smooth with the continuous wear of wind and rain.

"It should be right here in the center somewhere. It's not hard, something like a cave entrance, but nothing difficult. Don't you dare forget to take your little tool kit. Well, it isn't so little, is it?"

Block was out of the helicopter, helping her down, when he saw the depression in the ground, a sort of natural trail between two sets of rocks which turned behind one of the rocks and dropped down about eight feet, the way made safe by stairs carved gently into the turn.

"Here?" he asked.

"Here," Lanette replied. "I'll go first. I'm sure they've engineered some hookup with the dock, which is really a shame. This building is exquisitely engineered. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing could cause tremendous damage. Follow me."

She moved around the rocks and proceeded down the slopping staircase.

Before Block knew it, he had a roof over his head and was moving down a slopping passageway, the passage itself turning in a circle, but one so gentle he couldn't tell which direction he was going after the first ten or fifteen feet.

A feeling of dizziness overcame him.

"Don't worry about being off center," Lanette commented. "The design was made to contrast confusion with order."

Block didn't respond, concentrating on following her through what appeared to be a maze.

"We're almost there," she whispered.

He almost stumbled against her back, regaining his balance just as they burst into a large room, or at least Block assumed it was a room. He couldn't see the walls. All he could see were the dots of light filling it like a lattice, each point hanging in space vibrating in place, seemingly coming from nowhere.

Lanette moved into the lattice. Where she was, the lights disappeared but the remaining ones, the ones outlining the surface of her body, caused her to disappear by contouring themselves to her shape.

She became an image in the lattice of light, a reflection of what Block knew her to be, but her existence was only in the points of light as they danced and moved to accommodate her presence and movements.

It appeared she'd become the points of light and the points of light, rather than Lanette, were moving in front of him.

He looked down at his own body.

He was still there. He hadn't yet moved into the lattice of light. He put his hand up to the edge of the lattice. The points of light moved and a hand made up of light moved towards his hand, then through the surface, becoming Lanette's hand. It grasped his and pulled him into the lattice of light.

He was rapidly enveloped, feeling a sense of peace as his body became the light surrounding him.

"It'll take just a second," the fluid, changing image in front of him cautioned. "Look at yourself."

He did. He looked like he was reconstructed out of individual atoms, as if he was a dream, a disturbance of a cloud, a chimera.

He saw Lanette regain solidity in front of him and found his arm, and then himself, become real also.

He looked around.

The light was all around them. It gave him the feeling he was on the inside a light bulb.

The area was large enough for three or four people, but apparently designed for only two.

At the center of what Block started visualizing as a room, a chair, more like a throne, made out of what looked like rock, dominated.

He walked over and touched it.

It felt smooth as silk.

He pressed his palm against it.

It looked like rock but it gave to the pressure of his hand.

"Sit in it," Lanette said. "You'll be surprised."

Block stepped on the slightly raised platform, turned, and eased himself into the seat.

It was like sitting on a tongue. It yielded to the pressures of the contours of his body effortlessly. If he moved his back slightly, it adjusted itself to the change. If he sat motionless, it remained motionless, but not exactly motionless because it was providing active support for his body.

"Move over," Lanette said. "It's big enough for two and I don't want to sit on your lap, at least not right now."

Block moved to his left. The chair anticipated his movement, giving in at just the right places.

Lanette sat down next to him, squeezing him a little.

The chair moved to accommodate her.

She put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.

"Neat, eh?"

"Neat, eh! But what the heck is it?" Block asked.

"Can't you tell?"

"I'm not so sure I can."

"You've been talking enough about it. Thinking about it. Get it? Thinking about it? It's a mind!"

"A mind?"

"Well," Lanette said, "not a real mind. But it's sort of like you envisage it, isn't it?"

Block tried to focus his eyes on the points of light.

"There's just too many points of light. It looks like one big sheet of light even though I can see the points."

"I can adjust that," Lanette said.

She put her hand down the side of the chair and in moments, the number of points began to thin out.

"Now do you see it? Each of the points could represent an individual particle in your concept of the mind."

Block waited until the points of light thinned appreciatively. It did indeed look like his concept of a mind that could perceive and therefore reconstruct reality.

The points hung motionless in the space around them.

"When we moved through the light, the light seemed to define us, become our movements. That's because the light was reflecting us."

"My concept of a mind," Block said, "is that streams or flows of light will travel between the points of light, the spaces between the particles, and cause the particles to move out of equilibrium."

"Like this?" Lanette said, manipulating the controls.

A thin stream of light angled through the room. As it passed by a point of light, the point of light was deflected slightly in the direction of the stream.

As long as the stream remained, all the points of light next to it were deflected toward it. Other points of light in the grid remained unaffected.

"Yes, like that."

Block watched in fascination as Lanette turned the stream off and the points of light deflected in response to its existence moved back into place.

"This is done with a computer program, of course. Its like the old computer memory before the transistor made logic gates possible, you remember, where the grid was made up of intersecting wires and each wire had a magnetic coil to hold or not hold a charge.

"The computer knows where every point of light is and it knows where the beam is going through the grid, so it can cause the points of light to move as if the presence of the stream of light was attracting them to it."

She sent a dozen streams of light though the lattice grid, each from a different direction.

The points of light responded to the existence of the streams of light.

At points, two streams passed between the same two points, causing their movement to be greater than if just one had passed. At other points, two streams passed on either side of a point, canceling each other out, the point remaining in position.

Lanette continued to play with the controls, creating and eliminating flows at random. The points of light became dancing points as they moved to and fro in response to the presence of the streams.

"It seems somebody came up with your theory before you," she teased.

"It doesn't have any provision for memory recall."

"No it doesn't. Nor does it have any way of identifying what the patterns mean."

"Right. If it were actually a mind, the first thing it'd need would be the ability to collect the individual flows of particles and encode them in packets for recall."

"It'd need a way to recall those packets to compare new patterns with patterns it'd already experienced, right?" Lanette asked.

"Right. There's no relationship between the flows you are creating and any specific reality and thus recall would simply be a computer comparison."

"Which is exactly how your model works. I can program this baby to remember the patterns, store the memories, then recall them when similar patterns appear. It's the way a computer operates, for gosh sakes."

"How does this thing work, anyway?" Block asked.

"Light activated lasers. It works as long as there's sunlight, although it has an auxiliary light source to drive it if there's no sunlight. The light is converted into a single non-expandable quantity and emitted in an invisible stream. The dots appear only where the streams intersect. The visible streams representing the incoming reality are simply a stronger quantity. The computer moves the points of intersection in accordance with the existence of the stronger flows."

"Is it a toy, a learning tool? What?"

"It's therapeutic. Watch."

Lanette made some more adjustments. The points of light disappeared into the background as the streams of light creating them became stronger.

In a moment, the cavern was filled with a latticework constructed of evenly spaced beams of light.

"It relaxes the mind. Its order must reflect the mind's need for order."

Block felt the effect clearly. It seemed to remove the tensions from his body just like a refreshing night of sleep.

"Are you doing all of this from your mind forming images, or are you using memory, or have you been here before?"

"I don't know if I've been here before, but it just seems once I have the first image, my mind naturally moves to the second. Its sort of exhilarating, like it must feel to learn how to fly when you didn't know you could."

"Without an airplane." Block added.

"Right. Like I'm just a little ahead of my understanding, like I have to work to keep my mind up with my body."

"Well, I imagine something like this could be built today without too much trouble."

"I'm sure it could. But was it? I think we're going to find some very sophisticated charge-coupled devices converting light to electricity with the resulting electricity powering the entire operation.

"I think we're going to find a self-contained unit here operating with principles that eliminate any moving parts. I think we're going to get a lot of technology out of here, technology we're capable of, but which we've been theoretically limited to ignoring.

"You did make arrangements for forfeiting this, didn't you?" she concluded.

"We'll have to give some sort of physical description to somebody to get it on a map somewhere before we can do the actual forfeiting, but I entered the coordinates you gave me from you analysis of the communications signals."

"So it's forfeit?"

"As good as."

"Good. Because I'm going to have Georges come here to work when he finishes wiring up his tankers."

"I thought he said his mind was his laboratory."

"Don't be facetious. You're just jealous."

"Well, we did kind of eliminate his old base of operations. But he said he needed the light to be irregular in order to force him to think in unique ways."

"He can make the patterns any way he wants. But I think he'll want to use the pattern of order, the pattern that seems to remove the stress from the body so the mind can work itself out. That's why I think this is a good model for your concept of the perceptor. Watch."

Lanette made some more adjustments, causing the points of light to return, this time in jagged form, patterns forming and disappearing without rhyme or reason.

Block immediately felt a physical reaction. His stomach grew tighter, his palms moistened, his heart beat faster.

"I see. I see. Retune it, for crying out loud."

Lanette returned to the uniform pattern. Block felt himself settle down instantly.

"Might have been a torture device," Lanette remarked.

"I sincerely hope not, although the mind is the source and recipient of all torture."

"This will be the perfect place for Georges. He can take today's pseudo-science and its mass hole practitioners who make up the impossible, quarks, black holes, neural nets and the like to disguise the fact they can't explain the obvious things like planetary rotation, electricity, or even what happens when a match burns, now there, I'm sounding exactly like you so I've got to convince you, he can take them kicking and screaming out of the dark ages of mass gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics, and the expanding universe into the technological reality of the present."

"You don't have to convince me of anything. Whoa. What's happening?"

The orderly streams of light flickered and died out. For a split second, they were in total darkness. Then the walls of the cavern began to glow, at first light green, then up the spectrum to yellow, a soft yellow bathing them in softness.

Block knew the color, the green mixing with yellow and then becoming yellow, the interchangeability of it, the inability to adequately grasp it.

Looking at Lanette for an explanation, he remembered where he'd seen the color.

It was the color of her eyes.

"The sun went down," she said simply. "What's the matter. Did I turn green?"

"I just realized the glow from the walls matches your eyes."

"Oh, really? That's interesting."

"Where's the glow coming from?"

"That's going to have to be a project of my precious Georges, but I know a pretty good idea."

"You know a pretty good idea?"

"I seem to know what is causing the glow."

"Are you going to enlighten me?"

"That's good. Enlighten. Well, it seems to contradict current belief. In fact, it seems current belief is bassakwards."

"When hasn't it been. What can be right in a system that enshrines theory as fact and ignores fact that disagrees with theory. What does it contradict? Let me rephase that. What's causing the walls to glow a yellowish green?"

"According to current thought, the side of the planet facing the sun, the daytime side, is absorbing the sun's radiation. When the Earth rotates so the sunny side moves away from the sun and becomes the dark side, the dark side starts to radiate the heat absorbed when it was facing the sun.

"That was the original argument used to discredit the new paradigm, the theory the attractive force is caused by the cooling of the object it's associated with. There was never a heat loss associated with the planet. It never radiated more than it absorbed and therefore there wasn't anything for the attractive force to be associated with.

"It was even suggested if the theory were true, people would float off the planet on the night side and come crashing down to Earth when the planet got around to daylight again.

"It's reminiscent of the universal fear when Corpernicus suggested the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. If it weren't, because everything fell toward the center of the universe, what was keeping people from flying off it into the sun?

"Of course, Newton got rid of that fear by saying everything always falls toward the center of whatever it fell toward."

"Are you going to tell me what makes the walls glow or not?" Block asked.

"It's like your theory of the mind. When the surface of the Earth is facing the sun, the emission field of the sun is replacing the electrons holding the atoms of matter that makes up the surface of the Earth together. The matter on the surface of the Earth isn't absorbing something when it's exposed to sunlight, it's giving something up, emitting something, your electron."

"That's what's happening," Block agreed.

"Okay, then let's reverse the situation. According to current thought, when the matter that makes up the surface of the Earth passes into the night side, away from the sun, it gives off the electrons it's acquired during the day."

"But we've just concluded it doesn't acquire anything, it gave up something."

"So what is left for it to do?"

"Reacquire the particles it lost?" Block asked.

"Precisely. Have you ever felt the sudden chill that occurs the instant the sun goes down? If the Earth were re-radiating what it's taken in during the day, there would be no sudden chill. There'd be the same amount of radiation. It'd just be moving in the other direction."

"So what's happening when the sun goes down is the Earth quits radiating and begins to pull electrons out of the environment because when the field is removed, it all of a sudden has a deficit?"

"Right," Lanette said. "The atoms in the matter now need electrons again."

"So it pulls them from wherever they are, in the air, from the grass, from your skin, turning them cold. We get cold because the Earth is removing the electrons it lost during the daytime, taking them from the environment. If that's right, we should be getting cold right now. I don't feel cold."

"That's because the wall's treated with a substance that's reactive to the movement of the electrons," Lanette replied. "When the cavern walls start to recapture the electrons they lost during the daytime, a flow is established from the environment into the matter making up the walls. The matter making up the walls somehow converts those returning electrons to light and, of course, heat."

"I'll be darned. That's neat. We haven't developed anything like that yet."

"It's like you say, how can you develop something if your theory tells you it can't occur."

"Right. Here, we believe the Earth absorbs radiation during the day and radiates it during the night, but heck, how could anyone think that anyway. It wouldn't get cold at night. Come to think of it, when something gets hot, it's getting hot not because it's absorbing radiation from an external source, but because it's emitting the electrons we feel as heat.

"That's as big a mind-bender as realizing the moon isn't actually moving, it's at rest with respect to the forces acting upon it."

"It may be, but now its time for you to bend my mind."

"Bend your mind?"

"Wire me up, silly. You can't get out of it anymore. No more delays. Right now! Right here!"

"On the rock floor?"

Lanette jumped off the chair, pulling him off after her, and activated another control beside the armrest.

The chair slid back revealing a slight depression in the rock floor where the chair had been. Block went over and felt a side of the depression. It was softer than the chair, the silky, cushion like surface a pleasure to his touch.

The depression was slightly larger than a king-sized bed. Lanette was tossing out pillows from a smaller opening in the floor.

At each of the four corners of the sunken bed, golden posts angled outward, the golden light of the room deepening the gold of each post.

Lanette finished tossing the pillows on the bed, pillows that, although they looked like rocks, seemed to float in the shimmering air, and went over to the box she'd made Block bring from the helicopter.

"Does this have some sort of combination or can I just open it. Something this valuable must have a lock on it. You wouldn't want just anybody getting access to it, would you? But then, if it does what you say it does, why wouldn't you want everybody getting access to it. What's better than being wired up properly?"

She pushed the latch and it clicked open.

She looked at Block, her yellow eyes turning slightly green, contrasting momentarily with the yellow glow from the walls as the yellow glow shifted toward the green end of the spectrum to match their new color.

"What are those hook things at the corners of the bed?" Block asked.

"For you to tie me up, silly." Lanette replied, opening the top of the box.

Block felt an unbearable stab of anticipation slice through his stomach, his legs grow weak, his breath catch.

"Oh my gosh!" Lanette exclaimed.

She lifted a silver cylinder out of the case, its silvery color taking on the hues of the cavern walls.

"My goodness!" she said again.

Block started to say something, but his mouth had turned dry.

Lanette held it up. It was about two feet long and eight inches in diameter.

"Are you going to stick this in me? I said I'd do anything you wanted, but I don't think it's physically possible.

"Are you?"

Her eyes, somewhere between green and yellow, seemed to grow in size and intensity.

"No," Block finally got out. "That's just the motor. It's a vibrator."

"A vibrator? I told you I've tried every type of vibrator there is. They don't do a thing for me."

"This baby's an industrial strength vibrator that vibrates irregularly. That's why it's so large. I guarantee it'll get the job done."

She looked in the box and began to pull out attachments.

"Where in the world did you ever get such a thing?"

"A madam I knew willed it to me."

"You knew a madam. Whatever for? I wouldn't think you'd ever need a madam. What did she use it for. Does it work on men?"

"She told me when she first went into business, she'd ask her clients why they were coming there. They pretty uniformly answered that their wives and girlfriends were frigid, they didn't like sex.

"After giving it some thought, she decided the only reason their wives and girlfriends wouldn't like sex was, they weren't getting any sex."

"You mean like me, they weren't feeling anything even though they were getting it?"

"Right. So she decided to open a side business training the wives of her customers how to experience orgasms."

"Really? Wouldn't that kill her real business?"

"Well, once she got them wired up, she converted them to her extensive selection of sex toys which they willingly bought and became addicted to. After they started getting off on the sex toys, they didn't care how many girls their husbands slept with and the madam's business actually increased. Anyway, after years of trial and error, she discovered the only way to get through the resistance to having an orgasm by women who had passed into adulthood without the ability was to use an industrial sized vibrator on them, one the mind couldn't anticipate.

"She said the only way to break through their mental resistance was to subject their clitoris to an irregular vibration strong enough to confuse their mind, which she figured was sending signals to neutralize the clitoris."

"She said the mind was sending signals to neutralize the signals the body was sending the mind to have an orgasm? My mind is keeping my body from having an orgasm? I have a good mind. It wouldn't do that to me."

"She read of an experiment where a cat was wired up to trace electrical impulses from an environmental influence as they moved into its brain. They put it in a silenced room. Each time they created a noise, they could trace the impulse moving through the brain.

"But when a couple of delicious mice were put in a glass cage in the room with the cat, there were no impulses detected moving toward the brain when a noise was made. They reasoned the brain was producing a countersignal to the signal being produced by the noise. The brain was neutralizing the physical input.

"My friend reasoned the same thing was happening to her frigid female customers. Because of conditioning or prior experience, each time a signal of pleasure was sent from the clitoris to the brain, the brain simply sent a counter signal canceling out the original signal.

"She had this vibrator built to specifications so its operation had no predictability.

"It moves in such a way, the body can never anticipate what the effect on the clitoris will be, and as a result, the brain becomes confused trying to counter the signals it's receiving.

"As some of the physical signals start getting through, the brain becomes more and more occupied with the signals and less occupied with trying to counter them and eventually it gives up and allows the body to experience an orgasm."

"Sounds like more theory to me."

"Whether it's theoretically correct or not, it worked one hundred percent of the time."

"Well," Lanette said, jumping up. "What are we waiting for?"

She put the attachments and the cylinder back in the box and placed it at one end of the bed. Then she went back over to the opening she'd taken the pillows from, took out a wad of golden tinsels and tossed them to Block.

"Time to get to work."

"What's this?" he asked, catching the wad, which separated into thin golden cords around him.

"That's to tie me up with," Lanette replied, slipping her clothes off.

Block felt the ability to move drain out of him again as her perfect body reflecting the golden green light moved in his mind. His mind tried to sort the movement out over the physical responses his body was sending him from her words about tying her up.

"What is it about you guys?" Lanette asked. "Why do you get so excited about tying up a sex partner. I just don't want to accidentally interfere with you while you're going about your business of wiring me up. You wouldn't expect a doctor to operate on someone with their arms and legs flailing about would you? And I hope that's what mine will be doing, or at least I hope that's what they'll be trying to do."

Block struggled to get his mind in control of his body. He did so by moving in reality and having his mind inspect the result of that movement. He picked up a strand of the golden rope, marveling at its texture. It felt soft and seemed to meld into the flesh in a way that wouldn't do any damage.

"Come on, come on." Lanette urged. "Those things aren't going to hurt me. They're made out of the same thing the bed is made of."

She moved onto the bed and squirmed her way up to one of the corners, patting the golden post.

"Just come over here and tie my wrist up. You can tie a knot, can't you?"

Block had settled his mind down by focusing on his external movements, so he moved slowly around the bed to the corner Lanette indicated.

"I know how to tie a knot," he said mechanically, taking her wrist and wrapping the golden rope around it. He didn't have to tie a knot because the rope melded into itself, holding her wrist softly in its embrace.

He put the other end around the post where it clung like a part of the post.

He'd avoided looking at her, her perfect body reflecting the soft light, her yellow eyes shining, expectant, but he couldn't resist.

He looked and he saw the hand restrained and the world dissolved in front of him. He half moved, half fell, rolling onto the bed, onto her, and into her, the sensations flooding his mind, destroying his resolve, leaving him panting on his back ages later, the feeling of her fading slowly from all the nerves in his body.

"That was nice," Lanette said. "but it's not exactly what I had in mind." She waved her other wrist in front of his face. "Could we please get on with it?"

Block opened his eyes to the soft glow.

"Oh," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Oh boy," he added.

He picked up three strands of the golden rope, tossing two at the ankle posts and taking the third around the edge of the bed to the corner where Lanette had her arm outstretched, waiting.

"You do want me on my back don't you, cause I can get anyway you want?"

"I guess so."

"You guess? You mean you've never done this before?"

"Why would I've done this before? How would I end up with a girl who'd never had an orgasm?"

"You ended up with me."

"Well frankly, I couldn't resist you and I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me."

"I don't have a sign on my forehead telling everybody I can't have an orgasm and frankly, it embarrasses me. I told you because, well, you're you. Here," she said, holding out her other wrist. "I'm never going to have one if you don't get on the ball."

Block repeated the operation with her other wrist, this time being extremely careful not to look at her out of the corner of his eye. However, as he moved to tie her ankle, a clear picture formed in his mind of her lying on her back, her legs askew, her wrists fastened to the two posts, spread-eagled, open, available, waiting.

"Eyiee," he screamed, and was on her, in her, lying next to her, exhausted, panting, his mind screaming, thank you, thank you, over and over.

"I'm certainly glad you don't last more than thirty seconds or so," Lanette commented. "or we'd never get this thing done."

She waved an ankle in the air. "Could we get on with it?"

Block slowly pulled himself off the bed and, keeping a careful watch on what his hands were doing, picked up a strand and fastened it to the post, then, carefully keeping his eyes on the rope, to her ankle.

As the rope melded onto the delicate curve of her ankle, his eyes followed the ankle up to the calf, its curves coming out of nowhere and going directly into his mind, up her slim leg to her thighs, and . . .

He couldn't control his lips.

They followed his eyes and dragged the rest of him along with them. They moved between her thighs and fastened on her lips, but he wanted to move inside her, crawl up in her, bath his whole body in the glory that was her.

He couldn't, so he had to do the next best thing, sliding up her and in her as if every particle of his body wanted to occupy the space that every particle of her body occupied.

He collapsed, rolling over on his back, looking at the top of the cave, the light there a darker yellow because of the distance.

"Only one more to go," Lanette said. "I've never heard of anyone with your stamina. That makes ten times today alone."

Block rapidly fastened her other ankle.

"Sorry, just can't help myself. Make that eleven."

"Why be sorry?" Lanette asked as he moved over her, on her, in her, and then collapsed in a fetal heap beside her.

She remained silent, looking down at the top of his head as he lay there, his breathing slowly returning to normal.

The images of her spun in Block's mind, her perfect body, the light, her yellow eyes, interweaving so he couldn't get a clear focus.

He opened his eyes to orient himself, searching out physical reality.

He looked up directly into her golden eyes staring peacefully down at him.

His eyes caught. He couldn't move them. He tried to blink, but he couldn't. He couldn't break the connection.

He felt himself begin to move, to be drawn upward toward those glorious yellow jewels. As he came closer, the gold from her eyes replaced the golden glow from the walls.

He fell through their surface like it was a reflection on the top of a lake into the tangle of clearly defined nerves.

He moved up the nerves, expecting to enter the darkness of her brain. Instead he found himself rocketing through a perfectly formed structure made up of vibrating points of energy, the tiniest bits of matter, equally spaced, stretching to the limits of his mind's perception.

Before he could examine anything, create a picture of his surroundings, he whisked past the structure and became a part of a flow moving throughout the maze of her mind. He could see other structures lined up like memories on a shelf, the flow passing some by, picking some up, depositing others, moving on, always moving.

He felt himself come back around and saw he was about to be fired into the structure again.

He willed himself out of the flow, moving over to a familiar vantage point, a point he'd occupied only in his imagination.

He marveled at her mind.

Even in his wildest imagination he'd never visualized anything so perfect. The streams of particles flowing between the individual particles making up Lanette's mind hardly moved them out of their positions.

Each particle, vibrating in its stable web of force, was affected only slightly as the streams passed, the movement being more of a change in the rate of vibration within the interconnected web than in its point in space.

Block wondered if this was because it was Lanette's mind he was viewing. He wondered if Shandra's mind would be as perfect. He wondered about his own. He wondered whether the mind could actually deteriorate with misuse, whether it could grow if it were devoted to its purpose of reflection.

He didn't have to wonder whether it could survive. Her mind was more stable than anything he could visualize with physical matter. It was physical matter, just physical matter in a different form.

And its stability was obtained not from its environment, but from its own existence. It could clearly exist independent of its environment.

Block's heartbeat jumped as the individual particles making up her mind changed their rate of vibration and movement on a massive scale.

He looked over in the direction of her optic nerves and saw that Lanette, who'd been looking absently-mindedly at him lying beside her on the bed, her eyes open, was taking in a static view of reality. Her mind had been quiet because she was forming identical pictures of reality.

But Block had moved in external reality and Lanette's eyes followed him, causing the angles of physical reality to change and the flows entering her mind to change, to continually reconstruct the changing external physical reality.

Block watched through Lanette's eyes as he got up and moved to the end of the sunken rock bed. He saw the case at the end of the bed and watched as he took out the cylinder and attached a cushioned cup to its end.

He looked back at Lanette's mind. She was fixated on the reflections of the device he held in his hand. There was no input coming from her recall at all. Even though he saw himself taking the vibrator and moving it toward her over the mounds of her perfect breasts, the input was totally external.

As the cup touched her between her legs, her recall function started immediately, drowning out the input from external reality.

She shut her eyes at the same time.

Block could see the input function was bringing forth pictures of her flesh vibrating, of her doing what he was doing, of the sensation of vibration, the anticipation of the sensation of her flesh vibrating.

The picture of her doing it to herself changed to her watching her doing it to herself. That in turn brought forth a picture of a pornographic cartoon she'd apparently once seen and she dissolved into one of the cartoon characters. The particles making up her mind couldn't make the two conform, causing a momentary break in the continuity of her perception.

Her mind sent out signals during the lapse that made her smile, her sides heaving in short bursts with her short breaths.

Block realized she was suppressing the urge to laugh out loud.

And then the cup of the vibrator touched her and her recall confirmed it was the right place. She opened her eyes to check, but she could only see Block looking intently at what he was doing and she got a picture of a doctor in a mask and her mind balked once again, sending an impulse in the interim that almost made her laugh out loud.

Block saw her suppress the urge and form a picture of a cooperative patient. She moved her body into the vibrator in response and resumed her attitude of waiting for the vibrations to start.

When they did start, Block could see the flood of confirming packets shooting pictures through her mind, yes, it was the right spot, yes, they feel like vibrations, yes, nothing was happening.

A series of pictures of a big floozy blond madam assiduously working on an assembly line of frigid wives and girlfriends formed in her mind and she concentrated on that awhile. Because it was totally fabricated, it didn't cause her mind to miss a beat until she came up on the assembly line.

She laughed internally, barely able to hide it physically.

"Lanette proves women's theory on counter-feedback wrong," she examined the headline she'd constructed in her mind, letting it ride with the vibrations being physically input.

Block looked around to see what was happening. He was inclined to disbelieve the madam's theory also, but there had to be some reason for the blockage and the device's success.

He knew he was observing the reflective portion of her brain, the right side function. He could easily move over to her left side function, the reflexive function that allowed her to move without conscious concern, the portion that produced the computative and mathematical functions.

It was hard to find because it was so small in comparison with her contemplative portion, but he'd seen it disrupt the contemplative process with his own eyes.

Or at least with his own imagination when he'd dreamed he entered Janette's mind.

But at that time, his understanding of what was going on wasn't as clear as it was now.

Her left side function could clearly stop her reflective function, in fact bring it to a complete halt and probably even keep it from getting started, if it perceived something as new and refused to assimilate it into experience.

And of course, Block, in his youth, had used the reflexive side, mentally reciting the multiplication tables, to keep himself from coming during intercourse until it dawned on him the whole purpose of intercourse was to come.

But Lanette was a willing person, she'd tried it herself, there was nothing out of experience that'd put a halt to her gaining experience and she definitely wasn't reciting the multiplication tables.

Of course, she could be just plain afraid of having an orgasm. Could the reflexive part of her brain put a halt to the reactive part?

Block decided to go down and see what was happening in the reactive part, the portion of her brain that devoted itself to the arbitration between and among her subsystems.

He found everything operating on a perfectly normal basis except it was encountering trouble dealing with the unexpected bursts of impulses every time Lanette's mind recalled something so incongruous with what was happening in reality, it created an impulse to laugh.

Block looked more closely and noticed that while the rhythm and strength of the vibrator was changing in an unpredictable fashion, Lanette's reflexive response was so perfect, it appeared she could anticipate each change and, as a result, the change was having no effect on her mind.

Even if the madam's theory was correct, Lanette wouldn't prove it.

Frustrated, he returned to the contemplative portion of her brain, marveling at its perfect configuration, its ability to respond to the slightest impulse in either external or internal reality.

He could see she was reconstructing a picture from her recall function, a picture of an external reality that came into existence as soon as she acted to make it a reality.

She was forming a picture of herself getting up, putting her clothes on and saying, "Well Ronald, I guess I'm just hopeless. I guess you won't be able to wire me up. I guess you'll never be able to find out if Karen Carenson's vagina is like a million tongues because I said if you couldn't wire me up, you couldn't have her, at least not without dire consequences to yourself."

She formed the picture of herself getting up over and over, but she didn't really want to get up because she didn't want to admit failure.

But the vibrations were beginning to get troublesome, and she would have to get up sometime, so . . .

With a clear picture of herself getting up in her mind, she started to get up.

She'd forgotten her arms and legs were constrained.

As she moved to get up, pulling her hands down so she could prop herself up on her elbows, her hands didn't budge.

The picture of herself getting up, clear in her mind, attempted to change to a picture of herself not being able to get up.

Her mind, so perfect, was still only one mind.

She couldn't construct two pictures in her mind at the same time unless the two were so close together, they could each modify the other.

The electrons that made up her mind couldn't be in two places at the same time.

She couldn't reconcile the picture of her getting up with the physical reality of her not being able to get up.

Block saw the electrons that made up her mind freeze in place. He had to duck to avoid being engulfed by the flows blasting into Lanette's mind. He could see electrons in her mind move violently in response to the unexpected flows.

As Lanette struggled to regain control of her mind, recreating the picture of her getting up, Block looked hastily around to see where the flows were coming from.

They were coming from the reactive portion of her brain.

The orderly sending and receiving of messages that normally occurred on an invisible basis was being disrupted and the result was erratic flows discharging directly into Lanette's mind, disrupting the picture she was trying to reconstruct, the picture of her trying to get up.

She managed to reconstruct the picture and once again attempted to act on it.

Her hands wouldn't move.

An even stronger blast hit from the reactive portion of her brain.

Lanette attempted to form another picture. She tried to move her legs.

She couldn't.

Another blast from her subsystems.

Lanette's mind was struggling to regain its equilibrium, but the more she struggled, the more she tried to form a picture of herself free, the more she tried to act on the picture, the more her mind was disrupted by the uncontrolled blasts from her subsystems.

Block could see the electrons making up her mind attempting to gain a semblance of order, seeking it anywhere they could find it.

Her mind began to sense the only order, the only repetitive process going on in her body, was the sensation from the vibrator.

Her mind began to construct a picture of what was going on there, what was occurring that was consistent, what was so certain it could construct a picture of without having the picture blasted away in disruption.

As her mind started to construct a picture of the vibrator working on her clitoris, it began to reconstruct a picture of its effect on her clitoris. It began to sort out the signals her reactive brain invisibly moved back and forth among and between her subsystems looking for a signal that had something to do with her clitoris, attempting to sense its purpose.

Block watched in fascination as her mind shifted back and forth between the various signals. He was almost seared when the correct one was found and it separated itself from the reactive portion of her brain and blasted into the reflective portion, reinforcing it rather than disrupting it.

Block could visualize the additional input. Lanette arched her back in response and let out a cry. The combination pulled her arms and legs against the restraints, causing her mind to focus even more closely on the signals coming from her vibrating labia and clitoris.

Focusing in turn caused Lanette's clitoral signal to blast back into her mind, reinforcing her picture, causing her to arch her back still further, and, as her body filled with the anticipated pleasure that frenzied her mind, scream in delight, pull against the constraints even more, reinforcing the picture of her clitoral stimulation, which caused the sensation of clitoral stimulation to become stronger, moving the anticipated pleasure directly into her mind.

Block could clearly see where it was heading, with every act reinforcing every other act. He had to get out of her mind and in her before she had her orgasm so he could have it with her.

"Open your eyes," he pleaded. "Please open your eyes."

He was rewarded with the picture of clitoral stimulation beginning to fade, being refreshed by memory, by recall, but the recall beginning to alter and cause it to disappear.

Lanette opened her eyes. Block could see himself throwing the vibrator across the room and climbing on her.

Lanette sighed and closed her eyes, the picture reforming in her mind, a picture of her putting her arms around him, but not being able to do so, the picture of her clitoral stimulation reforming as he entered her, becoming even stronger.

He felt himself being drawn into her mind, he felt himself moving with each and every particle making up her mind, he lost all sense of time, but he didn't care because he knew his time wouldn't come until she came.

He waited, his mind breathless, as she built the images that brought the blasts agreeing with the images, the blasts making her cry out, scream, her body twist back and forth, reinforcing the images with each movement until the flows flooded both of their minds, sending the electrons making them up into a flood of unbearable light, an intensity of delight, beauty.

"What time is it?" Block mumbled, coming back to consciousness.

"Ummm, I don't know," she replied. "Time doesn't mean anything. We've been going at it for days. I turned off the mind relaxer. Ready for some more?"

"All you have to do is ask, Lanette."

"Lanette?" she said with surprise. "My twin sister's named Lanette. I'm Danette!"