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  Peel said: "Five simultaneous realities is a contradiction in terms. It's a paradox—impossible."

  "Then I offer you the impossible."

  "And the price?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The price," Peel repeated with growing courage. "We're not altogether naive. We know there's always a price."

  There was a long pause; then the voice said reproachfully, "I'm afraid there are many misconceptions and many things you fail to understand. Just now I cannot explain, but believe me when I say there is no price."

  "Ridiculous. Nothing is ever given for nothing."

  "Very well, Mr. Peel, if we must use the terminology of the marketplace, let me say that we never appear unless the price for our service is paid in advance. Yours has already been paid."

  "Paid?" They shot involuntary glances at the rotting body on the shelter floor.

  "In full."

  "Then?"

  "You're willing, I see. Very well—"

  The cat was again lifted in the air and deposited on the floor with a last gentle pat. The remnants of mist clinging to the shelter ceiling weaved and churned as the invisible donor advanced. Instinctively the five arose and waited, tense and fearful, yet with a mounting sense of fulfillment.

  A key darted up from the floor and sailed through midair toward the door. It paused before the lock an instant, then inserted itself and turned. The heavy wrought-iron bolt lifted and the door swung wide. Beyond should have been the dungeon passage leading to the upper levels of Sutton Castle—a low, narrow corridor, paved with flagstones and lined with limestone blocks. Now a few inches beyond the door jamb, there hung a veil of flame.

  Pale, incredibly beautiful, it was a tapestry of flickering fire, the warp and weft an intermesh of rainbow colors. Those pastel strands of color locked and interlocked, swam, threaded and spun like so many individual life lines. They were an infinity of flames, emotions, the silken countenance of time, the swirling skin of space—They were all things to all men, and above all else, they were beautiful.

  "For you," the quiet voice said, "your old reality ends in this room—"

  "As simply as this?"

  "Quite."

  "But—"

  "Here you stand," interrupted the voice, "In the last kernel, the last nucleus so to speak, of what once was real for you. Pass the door—pass through the veil, and you enter the reality I promised."

  "What will we find beyond the veil?"

  "What each of you desires. Nothing lies beyond that veil now. There is nothing there—nothing but time and space waiting for the molding. There is nothing and the potential of everything."

  In a low voice, Peel said, "One time and one space? Will that be enough for all different realities?"

  "All time, all space, my friend," the quiet voice answered. "Pass through and you will find the matrix of dreams."

  They had been clustered together, standing close to each other in a kind of strained companionship. Now, in the silence that followed, they separated slightly as though each had marked out for himself a reality all his own—a life entirely divorced from the past and the companions of old times. It was a gesture of utter isolation.

  Mutually impulsed, yet independently motivated, they moved toward the glittering veil—

  II

  I am an artist, Digby Finchley thought, and an artist is a creator. To create is to be godlike, and so shall I be. I shall be god of my world, and from nothing I shall create all—and my all will be beauty.

  He was the first to reach the veil and the first to pass through. Across his face the riot of color flicked like a cool spray. He blinked his eyes momentarily as the brilliant scarlets and purples blinded him. When he opened them again, he had left the veil a step behind and stood in the darkness.

  But not darkness.

  It was the blank jet-black of infinite emptiness. It smote his eyes like a heavy hand and seemed to press the eyeballs back into his skull like leaden weights. He was terrified and jerked his head about, staring into the impenetrable nothingness, mistaking the ephemeral flashes of retinal light for reality.

  Nor was he standing.

  For he took one hasty stride and it was as though he was suspended out of all contact with mass and matter. His terror was tinged with horror as he became aware that he was utterly alone; that there was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to touch. A bitter loneliness assailed him and in that instant he understood how truthfully the voice in the shelter had spoken, and how terribly real his new reality was.

  That instant, too, was his salvation. "For," Finchley murmured with a wry smile to the blankness, "it is of the essence of godhood to be alone—to be unique."

  Then he was quite calm and hung quiescent in time and space while he mustered his thoughts for the creation.

  "First," Finchley said at length, "I must have a heavenly throne that befits a god. Too, I must have a heavenly kingdom and angelic retainers; for no god is altogether complete without an entourage."

  He hesitated while his mind rapidly sorted over the various heavenly kingdoms he had known from art and letters. There was no need, he thought, to be especially original with this sort of thing.

  Originality would play an important role in the creation of his universe. Just now the only essential thing was to insure himself a reasonable degree of dignity and luxury—and for that the secondhand furnishing of ancient Yahweh would do.

  Raising one hand in a self-conscious gesture, he commanded. Instantly the blackness was riven with light, and before him a flight of gold-veined marble steps rose to a glittering throne. The throne was high and cushioned. Arms, legs and back were of glowing silver, and the cushions were imperial purple. And yet—the whole was hideous. The legs were too long and thin, the arms were rickety, the back narrow and sickly.

  Finchley said, "Owww!" and tried to remodel. Yet no matter how he altered the proportions, the throne remained horrible. And for that matter, the steps, too, were disgusting for by some freak of creation the gold veins twisted and curved through the marble to form obscene designs too reminiscent of the erotic pictures Finchley had drawn in his past existence.

  He gave it up at last, mounted the steps, and settled himself uneasily on the throne. It felt as though he was sitting on the lap of a corpse with dead arms poised to enfold him in a ghastly embrace. He shuddered slightly and said: "Oh, hell, I was never a furniture designer—"

  Finchley glanced around, then raised his hand again. The jet clouds that had crowded around the throne rolled back to reveal high columns of crystal and a soaring roof arched and paved with smooth blocks. The hall stretched back for thousands of yards like some never-ending cathedral, and all that length was filled with rank on rank of his retainers.

  Foremost were the angels; slender, winged creatures, white-robed, with blonde, shining heads, sapphire-blue eyes, and scarlet, smiling mouths. Behind the angels knelt the order of Cherubim; giant winged bulls with tawny hides and hoofs of beaten metal. Their Assyrian heads were heavily bearded with gleaming jet curls. Third were the Seraphim; ranks of huge six-winged serpents whose jeweled scales glittered with a silent flame.

  As Finchley sat and stared at them with admiration for his handiwork, they chanted in soft unison: "Glory to god. Glory to the Lord Finchley, the All-Highest, . . . Glory to the Lord Finchley—"

  He sat and gazed and it was as though his eyes were slowly acquiring the distortion of astigmatism, for he realized that this was more a cathedral of evil than of heaven. The columns were carved with revolting grotesques at the capitals and bases, and as the hall stretched into dimness, it seemed peopled with cavorting shadows that grimaced and danced.

  And in the far reaches of those columned lengths, covert little scenes were playing that amazed him. Even as they chanted, the angels gazed sidelong with their glistening blue eyes at the Cherubim; and behind a column he saw one winged creature reach out and seize a lovely blonde angel of lust to crush her to him.

  In sheer desperat
ion Finchley raised his hand again, and once more the blackness swirled around him.

  "So much," he said, "for Heavenly Kingdoms—"

  He pondered for another ineffable period as he drifted in emptiness, grappling with the most stupendous artistic problem he had ever attacked.

  Up to now, Finchley thought with a shudder for the horror he had wrought, I have been merely playing—feeling my strength—warming up, so to speak, the way an artist will toy with pastel and a block of grained paper. Now it's time for me to go to work.

  Solemnly, as he thought would befit a god, he conducted a laborious conference with himself in space.

  What, he asked himself, has creation been in the past?

  One might call it nature.

  Very well, we shall call it nature. Now, what are the objections to nature's creation?

  Why—nature was never an artist. Nature merely blundered into things in an experimental sort of way. Whatever beauty existed was merely a by-product. The difference betw—

  The difference, he interrupted himself, between the old nature and the new god Finchley shall be order. Mine will be an ordered cosmos devoid of waste and devoted to beauty. There will be nothing haphazard. There will be no blundering.

  First, the canvas.

  "There shall be infinite space!" Finchley cried.

  In the nothingness, his voice roared through the bony structure of his skull and echoed in his ears with a flat, sour sound; but on the instant of command, the opaque blackness was filtered into a limpid jet. Finchley could still see nothing, but he felt the change.

  He thought: Now, in the old cosmos there were simply stars and nebulae and vast, fiery bodies scattered through the realms of the sky. No one knew their purpose—no one knew their origin or destination.

  In mine there shall be purpose, for each body shall serve to support a race of creatures whose sole function shall be to serve me—

  He cried: "Let there be universes to the number of one hundred, filling space. One thousand galaxies shall make up each universe, and one million suns shall be the sum of each galaxy. Ten planets shall circle each sun, and two moons each planet. Let all revolve around their creator! Let all this come to pass. Now!"

  Finchley screamed as light burst in a soundless cataclysm around him. Stars, close and hot as suns, distant and cold as pinpricks—separately, by twos and in vast smudgy clouds—Blazing crimson—yellow—deep green and violet—The sum of their brilliance was a welter of light that constricted his heart and filled him with a devouring fear of the latent power within him.

  "This," Finchley whimpered, "is enough cosmic creation for the time being—"

  He closed his eyes determinedly and exerted his will once more. There was a sensation of solidity under his feet and when he opened his eyes cautiously he was standing on one of his earths with blue sky and a blue-white sun lowering swiftly toward the western horizon.

  It was a bare, brown earth—Finchley had seen to that—it was a vast sphere of inchoate matter waiting for his molding, for he had decided that first above all other creation he would form a good green earth for himself—a planet of beauty where Finchley, God of all Creation, would reside in his Eden.

  All through that waning afternoon he worked, swiftly and with artistic finesse. A vast ocean, green and with sparkling white foam, swept over half the globe; alternating hundreds of miles of watery space with clusters of warm islands. The single continent he divided in half with a backbone of jagged mountains that stretched from pole to snowy pole.

  With infinite care he worked. Using oils, watercolors, charcoal, and plumbago sketches, he planned and executed his entire world. Mountains, valleys, plains; crags, precipices and mere boulders were all designed in a fluent congruence of beautifully balanced masses.

  All his spirit of artistry went into the clever scattering of lakes like so many sparkling jewels; and into the cunning arabesques of winding rivers that traced intricate designs over the face of the planet. He devoted himself to the selection of colors; gray gravels, pink, white and black sands, good earths, brown, umber and sepia, mottled shales, glistening micas and silica stones—and when the sun at last vanished on the first day of his labor, his Eden was a paradise of stone, earth, and metal, ready for life.

  As the sky darkened overhead, a pale gibbous moon with a face of death was revealed riding in the vault of the sky; and even as Finchley watched it uneasily, a second moon with a blood-red disk lifted its ravaged countenance above the eastern horizon and began a ghastly march across the heavens. Finchley tore his eyes away from them and stared out at the twinkling stars.

  There was much satisfaction to be gained from the contemplation. "I know exactly how many there are," he thought complacently. "You multiply one hundred by a thousand by a million and there's your answer—and that happens to be my idea of order!"

  He lay back on a patch of warm, soft soil and placed palms under the back of his head, looking up. "And I know exactly what all of them are there for—to support human lives—the countless billions upon billions of lives which I shall design and create solely to serve and worship the Lord Finchley—that's purpose for you!"

  And he knew where each of those blue and red and indigo sparks was going, for even in the vasty reaches of space they were thundering in a circular course, the pivot of which was that point in the skies he had just left. Someday he would return to that place and there build his heavenly castle. Then he would sit through all eternity watching the wheeling flight of his worlds.

  There was a peculiar splotch of red in the zenith of the sky. Finchley watched it absently at first, then with guarded attention as it seemed to burgeon. It spread slowly like an ink stain, and as the moments fled by, became tinged with orange and then the purest white. And for the first time Finchley was uncomfortably aware of a sensation of heat.

  An hour passed and then two and three. The fist of red-white spread across the sky until it was a fiery nebulous cloud. A thin, tenuous edge approached a star gently, then touched. Instantly there was a blinding blaze of radiance and Finchley was flooded with searing light that illuminated the landscape with the eerie glow of flaring magnesium. The sensation of heat grew in intensity and tiny beads of perspiration prickled across his skin.

  With midnight, the unaccountable inferno filled half the sky, and the gleaming stars, one after another, were bursting into silent explosions. The right was blinding white and the heat suffocating. Finchley tottered to his feet and began to run, searching vainly for shade or water. It was only then that he realized his universe was running amuck.

  "No!" he cried desperately. "No!"

  Heat bludgeoned him. He fell and rolled across cutting rocks that tore at him and anchored him back with his face up-thrust. Past his shielding hands, past his tight-shut eyelids, the intolerable light and heat pressed.

  "Why should it go wrong?" Finchley screamed. "There was plenty of room for everything! Why should it—"

  In heat-borne delirium he felt a thunderous rocking as though his Eden were beginning to split asunder.

  He cried, "Stop! Stop! Everything stop!" He beat at his temples with futile fists and at last whispered, "All right. . . if I've made another mistake, then—all right—" He waved his hand feebly.

  And again the skies were black and blank. Only the two scabrous moons rode overhead, beginning the long downward journey to the west. And in the east a faint glow hinted at the rising sun.

  "So," Finchley murmured, "one must be more a mathematician and physicist to run a cosmos. Very well, I can learn that later. I'm an artist and I never pretended to know all that. But. . . I am an artist, and there is still my good green earth to people—Tomorrow—We shall see . . . tomorrow—"

  And so presently he slept.

  The sun was high when he awoke, and its evil eye filled him with unrest. Glancing at the landscape he had fashioned the day previous, he was even more uncertain, for there was some subtle distortion in everything. Valley floors looked unclean with the pale sheen
of lepers' scales. The mountain crags formed curious shapes suggestive of terror. Even the lakes contained the hint of horror under their smooth, innocent surfaces.

  Not, he noticed, when he stared directly at these creations, but only when his glance was sidelong. Viewed full-eyed and steadfastly, everything seemed to be right. Proportion was good, line was excellent, coloring perfection. And yet—he shrugged and decided he would have to put in some practice at drafting. No doubt there was some subtle error of design in his work.

  He walked to a tiny stream and from the bank scooped out a mass of moist red clay. He kneaded it smooth, wet it down to a thin mud, and strained it. After it had dried under the sun slightly, he arranged a heavy block of stone as a pedestal and set to work. His hands were still practiced and certain. With sure fingers he shaped his concept of a large furred rabbit. Body, legs and head; exquisitely etched features-it crouched on the stone ready, it seemed, to leap off at a moment's notice. Finchley smiled affectionately at his work, his confidence at last restored. He tapped it once on the rounded head and said, "Live, my friend—"

  There was a second's indecision while life invaded the clay form; then it arched its back with a clumsy motion and attempted to leap. It moved to the edge of the pedestal where it hung crazily for an instant before it dropped heavily to the ground. As it lumbered on a halting course, it uttered horrible little grunting sounds and turned once to gaze at Finchley. On that animal face was an expression of malevolence.

  Finchley's smile froze. He frowned, hesitated, then scooped up another chunk of clay and set it on the stone. For the space of an hour he worked, shaping a graceful Irish setter. At last he tapped this, too, and said, "Live—"

  Instantly the dog collapsed. It mewled helplessly and then struggled to shaking feet like some enormous spider, eyes distended and glassy. It tottered to the edge of the pedestal, leaped off, and collided with Finchley's leg. There was a low growl, and the beast tore sharp fangs into Finchley's skin. He leaped back with a cry and kicked the animal furiously. Mewling and howling, the setter went gangling across the fields like a crippled monster.