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as an army of robotic drones  silvery spheres with a multitude of flexible
attachments  fulfilled this necessity. When the drone on duty in Hall 275
saw a black object tumbling from a gravpad anchored halfway up the Yzashok
recreation tank, it moved in to sweep up the offending item. The drone regis-
tered the black square as a standard information projector, obviously dropped
by the guide on the gravpad. It secured the item away in its storage unit, and
moved on.
The kiss is purely of the physical world, It is the first sensation that Amarill
dell katit vo Pridka has ever felt purely with the basic senses, unenhanced by
telepathy. She draws away from Jirenal in shock. She puts a hand over her
mouth, tries to stop her body from shaking uncontrollably as she looks at his
wide, glistening mouth, his long, white and alien face.
What has happened? She can feel nothing. It is as if all her receptors have
been deadened.
And then the beautiful flowers open up again, not just red this time, but
burning with a multitude of unsuspected colour, like vandalism and riots in
her mind. The colours of passion, the colours of devotion and subjugation to
Jirenal.
 Excellent, says his voice, inside and outside her mind.  The Pridka have
earned their reputation.
 What  what have you done?
 A simple game, says Jirenal, standing before her, a strong, dark shadow,
his hands clasped behind his back.  I entered your mind, and adjusted it. A
mere test of my powers. His head swivels slowly to look at the translucent
surface of the tank to the side of their gravpad. It stretches above and below
them.  Imagine if I were to attempt such an experiment   he glances back at
her   on a larger scale.
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And she watches, helpless, as he presses his forehead up against the surface
of the tank and closes his eyes in concentration. He places his palms flat on
the tank too.
For a minute, nothing happens. Then, a shrill beeping sound emits from
Amarill s wrist unit. She checks the readings, in horror.
 Stop! Please! She tries to grab Jirenal s arm. His hands, flat against the
crystal blue surface, seem immovable. His expression is one of the utmost
concentration.  The temperature! Amarill cries desperately.  You must stop!
The lizard-like occupants of the great communion of minds, irresistibly at-
tracted to the pull of Jirenal s, are swimming towards him. They are clustering
on the other side of the tank like filings attracted to a magnet.
Amarill is pale with horror. Her fins are rippling uselessly, sending out blank
messages to her fellow Pridka. No feeling. It is like going blind.
In the tank, the fluid crisps to ice, trapping every one of the Yzashoks like
flies in amber. They are silent and still.
Jirenal lets out a long, satisfied breath. He lowers his head, and his hands,
and then looks up to smile at Amarill.
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15
The Dead in Mind
 So, said the Doctor, striding through the TARDIS corridors,  you have reached
the stage of civilization where you can expand your minds without the need
for drugs. You are the most advanced telepaths I ve ever met. And yet you
still haven t learnt to be more than children with expensive playthings.
That is a harsh judgement, Doctor.
The voice, in his head, was definitely that of a woman now. It was the sort
of voice that a human being might have found suggestive of a long, hot soak,
with a glass of of champagne on a table beside the bath-tub. The Doctor, of
course, did not respond to such allure in the same way.
 You grew, the Doctor said,  developed as a race . . .  He paused at a four-
way junction where the roundels seemed slightly larger and tinged with more
grey. He was thinking  And became so responsive to telepathic suggestion
that you could use it, much as a human would use physical strength, to affect
elements in the physical world. You built cities by the power of thought alone.
It is more than thought, Doctor. Such an inadequate term. In your terminology
it is felt as a kind of  A pause.  music.
 Hmm, said the Doctor. He took out a coin from his pocket, tossed it, caught
it on the back of his hand with a resounding smack and looked at it. He
shrugged, and turned back the way he had come.
You cannot understand what it is like. You are not a Sensopath. To be almost
totally cut off from the harmony of communication with my kind  it is worse
than being deprived of sight and hearing.
 I realize that.
The Doctor paused before a section of the wall, tapped on it with his um-
brella. It swung open with a creaking sound. Steps led down inside, down
into the blue-grey churchlike coolness of the tertiary console room once more.
At the edge of the city of Banksburgh, the rubble was piled high. Twisted
metal, like strange plants with leaves of rust. Ton upon ton of stone, forming
giant hills of debris. Abandoned canisters and crates.
A wind blew, like the last wind of all time, causing great upheavals of dust
that shrouded the wasteland as if in fog. The city could dimly be seen, below
in the valley, the pinnacle of the library still jutting above it all.
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Out of the gloom came bright beams of green, sweeping across the de-
bris, and behind them, with a purposeful gait, came the predatory figure of
Shanstra. She looked around the destruction, and was pleased.
Behind her, following at the hem of her cloak like a faithful hound, was Suzi
Palsson, her face tired and drawn, yet unnaturally bright with attention and
devotion. She stood several paces behind her mistress as Shanstra, hands on
hips, nodded and smiled grimly.
 Good. If this is what they are capable of on their own, then with my power
among them there will be even greater sport. She gestured with a long arm.
 Come.
They scrambled down a vast slope, a scree formed from the remains of the
city suburbs. About halfway down, the remnants of a house poked up like a
dead face, its windows yawning emptily across the scree. Rammed up against
the wall, covered with a film of dust, was the shell of a Phracton unit, and
there was a brittle, half-collapsed human skeleton in the dust beside it.
 Remnants of war, said Shanstra in fascination.  These fragments of life and
death.
Rippling blue light washed over the Gothic architecture, but the Doctor went
straight for the stone console.  I m calibrating the signal from its original
source, he said to the room in general, knowing that the Sensopath would
hear the thoughts that accompanied his words.  With any luck, we ought to
materialize very close to where the TARDIS left Bernice.
Ah. Your . . . companion. I believe she has an interesting mind?
 And she wants it to stay that way! the Doctor snarled suddenly, glowering [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]