Part 11

"You must develop your own powers." Mentor's thought was as final as fate. "Your mind is potentially far abler than mine. You will in time come to know my mind in full; I never will be able to know yours. For the lesser, but full mind to attempt to instruct in methodology the greater, although emptier one, is to set that greater mind in an under-sized mold and thus to do it irreparable harm. You have the abilities and the powers. You will have to develop them yourself, by the perfection of techniques concerning which I can give you no instructions whatever."

"But surely you can give me some kind of a hint!" Kit pleaded. "I'm just a kid, I tell you--I don't even know how or where to begin!"

Under Kit's startled mental gaze, Mentor split suddenly into four parts, laced together by a pattern of thoughts so intricate and so rapid as to be unrecognizable. The parts fused and again Mentor spoke.

"I can point the way in only the broadest, most general terms. It has been decided, however, that I can give you one hint--or, more properly, one illustration. The surest test of knowledge known to us is the visualization of the Cosmic All. All science is, as you know, one. The true key to power lies in the knowledge of the underlying reasons for the succession of events. If it is pure causation--that is, if any given state of things follows as an inevitable consequence because of the state existing an infinitesimal instant before--then the entire course of the macrocosmic universe was set for the duration of all eternity in the instant of its coming into being. This well-known concept, the stumbling block upon which many early thinkers came to grief, we now know to be false. On the other hand, if pure randomness were to govern, natural laws as we know them could not exist. Thus neither pure causation nor pure randomness alone can govern the succession of events.

"The truth, then, must lie somewhere in between. In the macro-cosmos, causation prevails; in the micro-, randomness; both in accord with the mathematical laws of probability. It is in the region between them--the intermediate zone, or the interface, so to speak--that the greatest problems lie. The test of validity of any theory, as you know, is the accuracy of the predictions which are made possible by its use, and our greatest thinkers have shown that the completeness and fidelity of any visualization of the Cosmic All are linear functions of the clarity of definition of the components of that interface. Full knowledge of that indeterminate zone would mean infinite power and a statistically perfect visualization. None of these things, however, will ever be realized; for the acquirement of that full knowledge would require infinite time.

"That is all I can tell you. It will, properly studied, be enough. I have built within you a solid foundation; yours alone is the task of erecting upon that foundation a structure strong enough to withstand the forces which will be thrown against it.

"It is perhaps natural, in view of what you have recently gone through, that you should regard the problem of the Eddorians as one of insuperable difficulty. Actually, however, it is not, as you will perceive when you have spent a few weeks in re-integrating yourself. You must not, you shall not, and in my clear visualization you do not, fail."

* * * * *

Communication ceased. Kit made his way groggily to his control board, went free, and lined out for Klovia. For a guy whose education was supposed to be complete, he felt remarkably like a total loss with no insurance. He had asked for advice and had got--what? A dissertation on philosophy, mathematics, and physics--good enough stuff, probably, if he could see what Mentor was driving at, but not of much immediate use. He did have a brainful of new stuff, though--didn't know yet what half of it was--he'd better be getting it licked into shape. He'd "sleep" on it.

He did so, and as he lay quiescent in his bunk the tiny pieces of an incredibly complex jig saw puzzle began to click into place. The ordinary zwilniks--all the small fry fitted in well enough. The Overlords of Delgon. The Kalonians ... hm-m-m ... he'd better check with Dad on that angle. The Eich--under control. Kandron of Onlo, ditto. "X" was in safe hands; Cam had already been alerted to watch her step. Some planet named Ploor--what in all the purple hells of Palain had Mentor meant by that crack? Anyway, that piece didn't fit anywhere--yet. That left Eddore--and at the thought a series of cold waves raced up and down the young Lensman's spine. Nevertheless, Eddore was his oyster--his, and nobody else's. Mentor had made that plain enough. Everything the Arisians had done for umpteen million years had been aimed at the Eddorians. They had picked him out to emcee the show--and how could a man co-ordinate an attack against something about which he knew nothing? And the only way to get acquainted with Eddore and its denizens was to go there. Should he call in the kids? He should not. Each of them had her hands full of her own job; that of developing her full self. He had his; and the more he studied the question, the clearer it became that the first number on the program of his self-development was--would _have_ to be--a single-handed expedition against the key planet of Civilization's top-ranking foes.

He sprang out of his bunk, changed his vessel's course, and lined out a thought to his father.

"Dad? Kit. Been flitting around out Arisia way, and picked up an idea that I want to pass along to you. It's about Kalonians. What do you know about them?"

"They're blue--"

"I don't mean that."

"I know you don't. There were Helmuth, Jalte, Prellin, Crowninshield ... all I can think of at the moment. Big operators, son, and smart hombres, if I do say so myself as shouldn't; but they're all ancient history ... hold it! Maybe I know of a modern one, too--Eddie's Lensman. The only part of that picture that was sharp was the Lens, since Eddie was never analytically interested in any of the hundreds of types of people he met, but there was something about that Lensman.... I'll bring him back and focus him as sharply as I can--there." Both men studied the blurred statue posed in the Gray Lensman's mind. "Wouldn't you say he could be a Kalonian?"

"Check. I wouldn't want to say much more than that. But about that Lens--did you really examine it? It _is_ sharp--under the circumstances, of course, it would be."

"Certainly! Wrong in every respect--rhythm, chroma, context, and aura. Definitely not Arisian; therefore Boskonian. That's the point--that's what I was afraid of, you know."

"Double-check. And that point ties in absolutely tight with the one that made me call you just now, that everybody, including you and me, seems to have missed. I've been searching my memory for five hours--you know what my memory is like--and I have heard of exactly two other Kalonians. They were big operators, too. I have never heard of the planet itself. To me it is a startling fact that the sum total of my information on Kalonia, reliable or otherwise, is that it produced seven big-shot zwilniks; six of them before I was born. Period."

Kit felt his father's jaw drop.

"No, I don't believe that I have ever heard anything about the planet, either," the older man finally replied. "But I'll bet that I can get you all the information you want in fifteen minutes."

"Credits to millos it'll be a lot nearer fifteen days. You can find it sometime, though, if anybody can--that's why I'm taking it up with you. While I don't want to seem to be giving a Gray Lensman orders"--that jocular introduction had come to be a sort of ritual in the Kinnison family--"I would very diffidently suggest that there might be some connection between that completely unnoticed planet and some of the things we don't know about Boskonia."

"Diffident! You?" The Gray Lensman laughed deeply. "Like an atomic bomb! I'll start a search on Kalonia right away. As to your credits-to-millos-fifteen-days thing, I'd be ashamed to take your money. You don't know our librarians or our system. Ten millos, even money, that we get full data in less than five G-P days from right now. Want it?"

"I'll say so. I'll wear that cento on my tunic as a medal of victory over the Gray Lensman. I _do_ know the size of these here two galaxies!"

"QX--it's a bet. I'll let you know if we find anything. In the meantime, Kit, remember that you're my favorite son."

"Well, you're not so bad, yourself. Any time I want mother to divorce you so as to change fathers for me I'll let you know." What a terrific, what a tremendous meaning was heterodyned upon that seemingly light exchange! "Clear ether, Dad!"

"Clear ether, son!"

XIII.

Thousands of years were to pass before Christopher Kinnison could develop the ability to visualize, from the contemplation of one fact or artifact, the entire Universe to which it belonged. He could not even plan in detail his one-man invasion of Eddore until he could integrate all available data concerning the planet Kalonia into his visualization of the Boskonian Empire. One unknown, Ploor, blurred his picture badly enough; two such completely unknown factors made visualization, even in broad, impossible.

Anyway, he decided, he had one more job to do before he tackled the key planet of the enemy; and now, while he was waiting for the dope on Kalonia, would be the best time to do it. Wherefore he sent out a thought to his mother.

"Hi, First Lady of the Universe! 'Tis thy first-born who wouldst fain converse with thee. Art pressly engaged in matters of moment or import?"

"Art not, Kit." Clarrissa's characteristic chuckle was as infectious, as full of the joy of life, as ever. "Not that it would make any difference--but methinks I detect an undertone of seriosity beneath thy persiflage. Spill it."

"Let's make it a rendezvous, instead," he suggested. "We're fairly close, I think--closer than we've been for a long time. Where are you, exactly?"

"Oh! Can we? Wonderful!" She marked her location and velocity in his mind. She made no effort to conceal her joy at the idea of a personal meeting. She never had tried and she never would try to make him put first matters other than first. She had not expected to see him again, physically, until this war was over. But if she could--!

"QX. Hold your course and speed; I'll be seeing you in eighty-three minutes. In the meantime, it'll be just as well if we don't communicate, even by Lens."

"Why, son?"

"Nothing definite--just a hunch, is all. 'Bye, Gorgeous!"

The two speedsters approached each other--inerted--matched intrinsics--went free--flashed into contact--sped away together upon Clarrissa's original course.

"Hi, Mums!" Kit spoke into a visiphone. "I should, of course, come to you, but it might be better if you come in here--I've got some special rigs set up here that I don't want to leave. QX?" He snapped on one of the special rigs as he spoke--a device which he himself had built and installed; the generator of a screen which would detect upon every possible band and channel of thought or of intrusion.

"Why, of course!" She came, and was swept off her feet in the exuberance of her tall son's embrace; a greeting which she returned with a fervor at least the equal of his own.

"It's nice, Mother, seeing you again." Words, or thoughts even, were _so_ inadequate! Kit's voice was a trifle rough: his eyes were not completely dry.

"Uh-huh. It _is_ nice," she agreed, snuggling her spectacular head even more firmly into the curve of his shoulder. "Mental contact is better than nothing, of course, but _this_ is perfect!"

"Just as much a menace to navigation as ever, aren't you?" He held her at arm's length and shook his head in mock disapproval. "Do you think it's quite right for one woman to have so much of everything when all the others have so little of anything?"

"Honestly, I don't." She and Kit had always been exceptionally close; now her love for and her pride in this splendid creature, her son and her first-born, simply would not be denied. "You're joking, I know, but that strikes too deep for comfort. I wake up in the night to wonder why, of all the women in existence, I should be so lucky, especially in my children. QX, skip it." Kit was shying away--she should have known better than to try in words even to skirt the profound depths of sentiment which both she and he knew so well were there.

* * * * *

"Get back onto the beam, Gorgeous, you know what I meant. Look at yourself in a mirror some day--or do you, perchance?"

"Once in a while--maybe twice." She giggled unaffectedly. "You don't think that all this charm and glamour comes without effort, do you? But maybe you'd better get back on the beam yourself--I know that you didn't come all these parsecs out of your way to say pretty things to your mother--even though I admit that they've built up my ego no end."

"On target, dead center." Kit had been grinning, but he sobered quickly. "I wanted to talk to you about Lyrane and the job you're figuring on doing out there."

"Why?" she demanded. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Unfortunately, I don't." Kit's black frown of concentration reminded her forcibly of his father's characteristic scowl. "Guesses--suspicions--theories--not even good hunches. But I thought ... I wondered--" He paused, embarrassed as a schoolboy, then went on with a rush: "Would you mind it too much if I went into something pretty personal?"

"You know I wouldn't, son." In contrast to Kit's usual clarity and precision of thought, the question was highly ambiguous, but Clarrissa covered both angles. "I can conceive of no subject, event, action, or thing, in either my life or yours, too intimate or too personal to discuss with you in full. Can you?"

"No, I can't--but this is different. As a woman, you're tops--the finest and best that ever lived." This statement, made with all the matter-of-factness of stating that a triangle had three corners, thrilled Clarrissa through and through. "As a Gray Lensman you're over the rest of them like a cirrus cloud. But you should rate full Second Stage, and ... well, you may run up against something too hot to handle, some day, and I ... that is, you--"

"You mean that I don't measure up?" she asked, quietly. "I know very well that I don't, and admitting an evident fact should not hurt my feelings a bit. Don't interrupt, please," as Kit began to protest. "In fact, it is sheerest effrontery--it has always bothered me terribly, Kit--to be classed as a Lensman at all, considering what splendid men they all are and what each one of them had to go through to earn his Lens. You know as well as I do that I have never done a single thing to earn or to deserve it. It was handed to me on a silver platter. I'm not worthy of it, Kit, and all the real Lensmen know that I'm not. They _must_ know it, Kit--they _must_ feel that way!"

"Did you ever express yourself in exactly that way before, to anybody? You didn't, I know." Kit stopped sweating; this was going to be easier than he had feared.

"I couldn't, Kit, it was too deep; but as I said, I can talk _anything_ over with you."

"QX. We can settle that fast enough if you will answer just one question. Do you honestly believe that you would have been given the Lens if you were not absolutely worthy of it? Perfectly--in every minute particular?"

"Why, I never thought of it that way ... probably not ... no, certainly not." Clarrissa's somber mien lightened markedly. "But I still don't see how or why--"

"Clear enough," Kit interrupted. "You were born with what the rest of them had to work so hard for--with stuff that no other woman, anywhere, ever had."

"Except the girls, of course," Clarrissa corrected, half-absently.

"Except the kids," he concurred. It could do no harm to agree with his mother's statement of a self-evident fact.

* * * * *

He crossed the room and adjusted a couple of dials. His vessel's screens would not now react to the thoughts of Mentor of Arisia, but would still announce the presence of any possible other. "You can take it from me, as one who _knows_, that the other Lensmen know that you've got plenty of jets. They all know also that the Arisians never did and never will make a Lens for anybody who hasn't got what it takes. And so, very neatly, we have stripped ship for the action I came over here to see you about. It isn't a case of you not measuring up, because you do, in every respect. It's simply that you're short a few jets that you ought by rights to have. You really are a Second-Stage Lensman--you know that, Mums--but you never went to Arisia for your real L2 work. I hate to see you blast off without full equipment into what may prove to be a big-time job; especially when you're so eminently able to take it. Mentor could give you the works in a couple of hours. Why don't you flit for Arisia right now, or let me take you there?"

"No--NO!" Clarrissa backed away, shaking her head emphatically. "Never! I couldn't, Kit, ever--not _possibly_!"

"Why not?" Kit was amazed. "Why, Mother, you're actually shaking!"

"I know I am--I can't help it. That's why. He's the only thing in the entire Universe that I'm really afraid of. I can talk _about_ him without quite getting goosebumps all over me, but the mere thought of actually being with him simply scares me into shivering, quivering fits."

"I see ... it might very well work that way, at that. Does Dad know it?"

"Yes ... or, that is, he knows that I'm afraid of Mentor, but he doesn't know it the way you do ... it simply doesn't register in true color. Kim can't even conceive of me being either a coward or a cry-baby. And I don't want him to, either, Kit, so please don't tell him, ever."

"I won't--he'd fry me to a cinder in my own grease if I did. Frankly, I can't see any part of your self-portrait, either. As a matter of cold fact, you are so obviously neither a coward nor a cry-baby that no refutation of that canard is either necessary or desirable. What you've really got, Mums, is a fixation, and if it can't be removed--"

"It can't," she declared flatly. "I've tried that, now and then, ever since before you were born. Whatever it is, it's a permanent installation and it's really deep. I have known all along that Kim didn't give me the whole business--he couldn't--and I've tried again and again to make myself go to Arisia, or at least to call Mentor about it, but I can't do it, Kit--I simply _can't_!"

"I understand." Kit nodded. He did understand, now. What she felt was not, in essence and at bottom, fear at all. It was worse than fear, and deeper. It was true revulsion; the basic, fundamental, subconscious, sex-based reaction of an intensely vital human female against a mental monstrosity who had not had a sexual thought for countless thousands of her years. She could neither analyze nor understand her feeling; but it was as immutable, as ineradicable, and as old as the surging tide of life itself.

"But there's another way, just as good--probably better, as far as you're concerned. You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

"What a _question_! Of course I'm not--Why, do you mean _you_--" Her expressive eyes widened. "You children--especially you--are far beyond us ... as, of course, you should be ... but _can_ you, Kit? _Really?_"

* * * * *

Kit keyed a part of his mind to an ultra-high level. "I know the techniques, Mentor, but the first question is, should I do it?"

"You should. The time has come when it is necessary."

"Second--I've never done anything like this before, and she's my own mother. If I make one slip, I'll never forgive myself. Will you stand by and see that I don't slip?"

"I will stand by."

"I really can, Mums." Kit answered her question with no perceptible pause. "That is, if you are willing to put everything you've got into it. Just letting me into your mind isn't enough. You'll have to sweat blood--you'll think that you've been run through a hammer mill and spread out on a Delgonian torture screen to dry."

"No need for worry on that score, my son." All the passionate intensity of Clarrissa's being was in her vibrant voice. "If you just knew how utterly I have been longing for it--I'll work; and whatever you give me I can take."

"I'm sure of that. And, not to work under false pretenses, I'd better tell you how I know. Mentor showed me what to do and told me to do it."

"_Mentor!_"

"Mentor," Kit agreed. "He knew that it was a psychological impossibility for you to work with him, and that you could and would work with me. So he appointed me a committee of one." Clarrissa was reacting to this news as it was inevitable that she should react; and to give her time to steady down he went on:

"Mentor also knew, and so do you and I, that even though you are afraid of him, you know what he is and what he means to Civilization. It was necessary for me to tell you this so that you would know, without any tinge of doubt, that I am not a half-baked kid setting out to do a man's job of work."

"Jet back, Kit! I may have thought a lot of different things about you at times, but 'half-baked' was never one of them. That is your own thinking, not mine."

"I wouldn't wonder." Kit grinned wryly. "My ego could stand some stiffening right now. This isn't going to be funny. You're too fine a woman, and I think too much of you, to enjoy the prospect of mauling you around so unmercifully."

"Why, Kit!" Her mood was changing fast. Her old-time, impish smile came back in force. "You aren't weakening, surely? Shall I hold your hand?"

"Uh-huh--cold feet," he admitted. "It might be a smart idea, at that, holding hands. Physical linkage. Well, I'm as ready as I ever will be, I guess--whenever you are, say so. And you'd better sit down before you fall down."

"QX, Kit--come in."

* * * * *

Kit came; and at the first terrific surge of his mind within hers the Red Lensman caught her breath, stiffened in every muscle, and all but screamed in agony. Kit's fingers needed their strength as her hands clutched his and closed in a veritable spasm. She had thought that she knew what to expect; but the reality was different--much different. She had suffered before. On Lyrane II, although she had never told anyone of it, she had been burned and wounded and beaten. She had borne five children. This was as though every poignant experience of her past had been rolled into one, raised to the n^{th} power, and stabbed deep into the tenderest, most sensitive centers of her entire being.

And Kit, boring in and in and in, knew exactly what to do; and now that he had started, he proceeded unflinchingly and with exact precision to do what had to be done. He opened up her mind as she had never dreamed it possible for a mind to open. He separated the tiny, jammed compartments, each completely from every other. He showed her how to make room for this tremendous expansion and watched her do it, against the shrieking protests of every cell and fiber of her body and of her brain. He drilled new channels everywhere, establishing an inconceivably complex system of communication lines of infinite conductivity. He knew just what he was doing to her, since the same thing had been done to him so recently, but he kept on relentlessly until the job was done. Completely done.

Then, working together, they sorted and labeled and classified and catalogued. They checked and double checked. Finally she knew, and Kit knew that she knew, every hitherto unplumbed recess of her mind and every individual cell of her brain. Every iota of every quality and characteristic, every scrap of knowledge she had ever acquired or ever would acquire, would be at her command instantaneously and effortlessly. Then, and only then, did Kit withdraw his mind from hers.