Part 2

In the distance the avalanche had ground to a halt. Now, no more boulders were bounding down the hill. A vast, puzzled silence held the mountains. In that silence, Zen fancied he could hear the thoughts of the frightened men who had remained alive thus far, and were wondering how to prolong their precarious existence. They were also wondering if staying alive was worth the effort involved. Why not give up now and be done with all tragedy, with all tears, with all trying to find the road to the future?

Up the trail a man began to scream.

Like a homing pigeon that has finally found the right direction, the nurse moved toward the sound. Zen caught her arm again. Looking puzzled, she stopped. "Please, colonel. I am needed up there." She nodded up the slope in the direction of the screaming man.

"You are probably needed by many others," he commented.

She did not seem to understand. "But I am a nurse. It is my duty to help those who are wounded."

"I know." He was a little startled to find himself in sympathy with this impulse. "But, not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because that slope is still too hot to be safe." He held up his left wrist. Instead of a watch, he wore a miniature radiation counter there. The needle was creeping up toward the red line.

"The radiation count is about forty right here at the mouth of this prospect hole," he pointed out.

"That is interesting," the nurse said. The tone of her voice said it was not important.

"Halfway up the slope, it will hit a hundred. At the top of the ridge, where the explosion took place, the count may reach a thousand." In his opinion, he had said enough.

In her opinion, he had not said anything at all. "That makes no difference. Wounded men are up there. I am a nurse. My duty is clear to me."

"If you try to help them under these circumstances, you will become a casualty yourself."

"But what of the men who need help?"

"They will simply have to get out of the radiation zone themselves, or wait until the area is clear and help can reach them."

"You are heartless!"

"Not at all," he denied. "If anything could be done to help them I would be doing it. Don't you understand what has happened? That was an Asian N bomb that exploded. In an N bomb the immediate effect is minor. The real purpose of the weapon is to spray the area with high intensity radiation, to make the ground unfit for living for months. Any living creature caught within the direct blast of the radiation is doomed, and neither you, nor I, nor the medics, can do anything to help them--" He broke off as another man began screaming up the slope.

The nurse was irresolute. "But that man needs help," she pointed out.

"Certainly he needs help," Zen agreed.

"Well--"

Zen watched her carefully. She seemed to understand his words but something else pulled at her far more strongly: the screaming of the injured man. Each time the soldier cried out, she started in his direction.

"Well, well, thank you, colonel." Turning, she moved with a sure stride up the slope.

Zen swore under his breath and started after her, then caught the motion as the question rose in him as to why she should throw her life away. She knew the meaning of radiation in lethal quantities. Unquestionably, she also knew what would happen to any normal human who ventured into a hot zone.

Was she, then, a normal human being? Was he actually witnessing one of the miracles performed by the new people? If she came off the mountain slope alive, it would certainly prove something. Zen cursed again. She was going where he could not safely follow. If she returned unharmed, he had enough proof to warrant following her to the ends of the earth, if need be.

III

The radio transmitter inside Zen's pack was small but very powerful. It did not look like a radio transmitter at all; there was no antenna and no apparent source of power. Only the tiny earphone and the throat microphone revealed its true nature.

He slipped the phone into his ear, fitted the microphone against his throat, then picked up the piece of plastic tubing that was red on one end and green on the other. Wires ran from each end of this tube to the small box that housed the transmitter.

"Red goes to the right hand," he muttered. "Green to the left. Or is it the other way around?" Making up his mind that red went to the right, he closed his fingers around the ends of the plastic tube, then watched the tiny meter on top of the small box that contained the transmitter.

The needle moved on the dial.

"Calling nine dash nine," he spoke. "This is six one calling nine dash nine." He repeated the call three times, then sat back on his haunches to await an answer.

"Come in six one," the earphone said. "What color is red?"

"It's green this week," Zen answered promptly.

"What color was it last week?"

"Last week? Um. Oh, yes. No color."

"And that means--"

"White. This is Kurt Zen, colonel, intelligence, reporting. Connect me immediately with General Stocker."

Satisfied with the identity of the caller, the operator said, "Just a minute, colonel, I'll see if the general will talk to you."

"Tell him it's important," Zen urged.

"They always say that," the operator sighed. "I'll put you through as soon as I can."

"Kurt, boy, where are you?" General Stacker's voice boomed into a distant microphone. The general's voice always boomed, he was always hearty, he was always sure that while things might look black right now, they would work out all right in the end. By the time the booming voice reached Zen's earphone, it had been transformed into a tinny squeak. Kurt thought he detected an uneasy note in the squeak and he wondered if the general had finally glimpsed the end, and was finding it not quite as he had supposed.

"In hell, general," Zen answered. He swiftly told where he was and what had happened. "Cuso's blooper knocked out the last pass by which we can bring an effective force against him. This whole area is loaded with radiation."

"How will we ever root that bastard out of his hole now?"

"That's for the staff to decide. I have more important news."

"Yes? Talk, Kurt, and fast. You don't mean that you--"

"Yes. I mean I think this nurse may be it. I don't know yet." Zen explained what had happened.

"Damn it, Kurt, do you mean to tell me that if she comes back alive, you will know she is immune to the radiation, and hence must be one of the new people? But if she comes back dead, or so loaded with radiation that she will die within a few days, then you will know she was just like all the rest of us?" Even through Zen's earphone, the general's voice had begun to boom.

"That's the way I see it," Zen answered.

"But goddammit--Are you hurt, Kurt?" The general's voice was suddenly solicitous. "Are you all right?"

"Damn it, I'm in my right mind," Zen answered. "I was in a prospect hole when the blast went off. Don't you think I've got enough sense to take cover?" Stocker's suddenly solicitous attitude irritated him. "Sorry, sir," he apologized an instant later.

"It's quite all right, boy. I know that nerves get frayed in combat. But this nurse--"

"That's the way I see it, sir," Zen said doggedly. "I request permission to follow her."

"If she comes back alive, you mean?"

"I would appreciate it if you would stop reminding me of that possibility."

"Oh. So you are emotionally interested in her?"

"Well, what if I am? She's a nice kid."

"They all are, boy. They all are--until you get to know them. As to permission to follow her, you've not only got it, but it's an order. We've got to find out about these new people. One of them appeared in President Wilkerson's private office this morning and told him to call off a planned landing in Asia."

"Really?" Zen said. "In the President's office!"

"That's what I said."

"Did it really happen? I mean, was anyone present?"

"No one except the President's secretary. She's under heavy sedation right now, from shock. She thought God Almighty Himself had come walking in. The old man is not in much better shape." Stocker's voice showed signs of strain. "I've got my orders from Wilkerson himself and I'm passing them on to you. _Find these new people!_ Follow that nurse to hell if you have to."

"Right, sir."

"Report to me when you have something to report--that is, something besides going to bed with her. Off." Zen grimaced as he pulled the tiny phone out of his ear. He slipped the transmitter back into the pack and slung it over his shoulder. The radiation count was dropping but it was still too high for safety. He looked longingly up the trail. Wounded men were coming down but Nedra was not in sight.

The wounded men were no longer a fighting unit, but had become individuals, each one intent only on his own survival. Patriotism had gone from their minds, they no longer gave a hoot about saving their country, but were only interested in saving their own lives.

Far up the trail, Zen could see a tall figure moving upward. The nurse! He unslung the pair of field glasses from his shoulder. Through the powerful lenses Nedra's lithe figure was very clear. He saw her move to the side of the trail and kneel beside a wounded man who lacked the courage to walk downhill. Somehow she got the man to his feet and started him along the trail. He stumbled and fell. Again the nurse knelt beside him but this time she made no attempt to lift him. Instead, she got to her own feet.

Zen decided the man had died as he fell.

She continued on up the slope.

Down below, motors roared and then came to a halt. Turning, Zen saw that a first aid station was being set up down there. The medics worked fast; already they were directing the wounded men to the back end of a truck, where an examination station had been set up. But, fast as they worked, they were too late to help the vast majority of the wounded. The futility of the effort depressed Zen, so he returned his attention to the nurse.

She was in the middle of the trail again. The avalanche, directly ahead of her, had stopped her progress. A man was with her.

Through the glasses, the man looked as tall and craggy as a mountain peak. No soldier, he was without helmet or other headgear. His hair, white as the snow on top of a mountain, was flying in the wind. His face looked like a statue hewn in granite. Zen guessed that he was a resident of this region, a mountaineer who had sought safety in these remote fastnesses, and who had been blasted out of his hiding place by Cuso's radioactive blooper and was wandering down this trail to die. The nurse was talking to him.

Involuntarily, as if they had a will of their own, Zen's legs started carrying him up the slope. He had taken a dozen steps before he remembered the counter on his wrist.

"To hell with the count!" he thought. "I'm going up there and drag her down here. She's not going to throw her life away while I skulk like a coward down below. I don't give a damn whether she's one of the new people or not. She's human!"

He climbed the slope with giant strides. Then he saw that Nedra was running toward him and waving him back.

"Colonel! You can't come up here."

"I _am_ coming up there!" he shouted in reply.

"No!"

When he did not stop, she ran faster toward him. The craggy man kept pace with her. Reaching Zen, she caught his sleeve, turned him around, and started him down the slope. "You can't be here." Her voice was breathless with protest.

"Are you giving me orders?" Zen growled. Secretly he was pleased because she was concerned about him.

"If you will permit me, colonel, I think Nedra's intention is to save your life," the craggy man spoke. He had a voice like a bell tolling in the distance, sweet-toned and musical, but with overtones of great strength.

"What about _her_ life?" Zen demanded.

"I'm going down now, colonel," the nurse said hastily. "They've set up a first aid station. They will need me there."

"You will need their attention is what you mean," Zen said.

"Colonel, the counter!" she answered.

The needle was well over the hundred mark and was still rising.

"Come, colonel." Hooking her arm in his, Nedra began moving down the rough, boulder-strewn trail. Zen did not move. She tugged harder.

"Your life is in danger here, sir," the craggy man said, politely.

"That is of interest to me only," Zen answered. "And what about your life?"

"Colonel, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine," the nurse said quickly. "Colonel Zen, Sam West. We'll talk while we walk down to the first aid station."

"A pleasure to meet you, sir," West said, extending his hand. His handclasp was firm but there was a suggestion of additional power in his fingers.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. West. Do you live around here?"

"Over that way," the craggy man said, nodding vaguely over his shoulder.

Again the nurse tugged at Zen's arm. He set his feet solidly on the mountain trail. "We'll talk right here."

"But you are taking an unfair advantage of Nedra," the craggy man protested. "This area is heavy with radiation and this is neither the time nor the place to be swapping horses."

"Then why are you two here?"

"I was getting out of the area as fast as I could when I met Nedra," West said. "I would still be getting out of it, but fast, if you were not stopping me."

"I'm not stopping you," Zen said. "There's the trail. Hit it. Nor you either," he said to Nedra.

"Don't be silly, Kurt," the nurse said. She was pleading with him now.

"All right. But on one condition. Why did you come up here in the first place? You knew the area was hot."

"I--I lost my head," the nurse said promptly. "My emotions ran away with me. I'm a nurse and wounded men needed my attention. I went to them. You will come down the trail with us, won't you?" The violet eyes begged him to believe in her.

"What made you lose your head?"

"Why--shock, I suppose. This is the first time I was bombed. Also, the screaming of the wounded. Really, sir, I am a nurse." The way she said the word, being a nurse meant something. The violet eyes had grown tired of begging and were on the verge of spitting anger at him.

"I don't believe a damned word you have said," Zen said. "You didn't lose your head back there in the prospect hole."

"Please, Kurt." Again she rugged at his arm. "I'll talk to you all you want down below. But don't try to force me to stay here."

Reluctantly, Zen yielded to the pressure on his arm. Relief appeared in the violet eyes and the face of the craggy man showed a sudden release from some inner strain. Dimly, he thought he had seen that craggy face somewhere before but the picture that flicked through his mind was gone before he could fit a time and place tag on it. Going down the trail, he steered the nurse toward a truck where the medics had set up equipment to test the amount of exposure to radiation. In doing this, he discovered that she was steering him in the same direction.

"I don't need the medics," he protested. "I'm all right. I wasn't exposed long enough to do any damage."

"Of course you're all right," she answered. Her tone was similar to that of an indulgent mother reassuring a hurt child.

"You're the one who needs help," he said. He was certain she had remained too long.

"I'm going to get it if I need it," she said, soothingly.

Zen could hear the occasional crunch of boots behind them. West was keeping silent. He did not seem to be in a hurry.

Zen started to speak to Nedra. The thought of what he wanted to say was dim in his mind and he could not quite find words for it but he knew that it had something to do with a wish that the world were different and that the human race were not trying to destroy itself. Why should he be wishing this? The reason for his thinking became a little clearer. He was wishing the world were different so that he might make love to this nurse under conditions that would permit this love to bear other fruit than frustration, despair, and death.

He found himself wishing that a vine-covered cottage existed somewhere, a place where a man and a woman might live in peace and reasonable security, raising some kids who could play on a mountain slope that was not saturated with atomic radiation.

"Here is the first aid station," the nurse said. "And--"

"And what?" he asked her when she did not continue.

She gave his arm a squeeze. "And thank you for the dream," she whispered.

As Kurt Zen turned startled eyes toward her, wondering how she had known what he had been dreaming, her face seemed to dissolve in a gray mist.

He plunged, unconscious, to the ground at her feet.

IV

The jar of striking the ground seemed to bring the intelligence agent back to consciousness instantly. As Nedra started to kneel beside him, he was already getting to his feet. She tried to help him rise. He shrugged her hand away.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. This didn't seem quite right. "I--I--" He tried to think what had happened. "I fainted. That's all. I just fainted." To him, this seemed a reasonable explanation for everything that needed explaining.

Nedra seemed to think otherwise. "But men like you don't just faint," she protested.

"I did."

"They don't faint unless something is wrong with them," Nedra continued. "Are you sure you're not suffering from delayed shock following the bomb explosion? Or--" Her voice slid away into silence as if she were afraid to voice the thought that was in her mind. Behind her, West said nothing.

"I just did it," Zen said, becoming more indignant. "I fainted. Who says it can't be done?" Confusion existed somewhere. He was sure it was the nurse who was confused. He shook his head in an effort to clear up her difficulty.

"I saw you do it. All I am trying to say is that perhaps there may be a reason for it."

"Nope," Zen said. "I'm not going to the aid station. No reason for it. I'm all right. It's the world out there that is wrong." This made sense to him.

"I know you are all right," Nedra answered. Her face showed strain. "But it might be a good idea to have the doctors check, just to make sure."

Zen, busy shaking his head again, hardly heard her. He had the impression that her confusion would clear up in a minute. Somehow it reminded him of the confusion that he had suffered after inhaling a whiff of nerve gas, once. When had this happened? He was not sure, now. Perhaps it had taken place in the remote past, perhaps on some other planet ... he realized his mind was wandering. Again he shook his head.

"But I really think, colonel--"

"I wasn't shaking my head at you," Zen corrected.

"Good. Then we will go see the doctors."

"I didn't mean that either. I was shaking my head to clear it. There's a fog in it."

"A fog in your head?" Unease appeared in her voice.

"Yes. What's wrong with that? Lots of men have fogs in their heads." To him, this seemed a reasonable statement. "Lots of men have to go to the docs every couple of weeks to have the fogs blown out of their heads." Thinking he had made a joke, he laughed.

Nedra did not think he had said anything funny. Resolutely, she took his arm. "Come with me, colonel." As she led him toward the truck which the medics were using for a first aid station, something happened.

He saw clearly.

He saw everything.

The ability to see came suddenly, out of nowhere. One second it was not there. Then it was there. It was like seeing with eyes, except it was better than ocular perception had ever been. With it, he was not only able to see surfaces, he could also see into the interior of things. An acute understanding of what he saw went with the perception.

He saw that the Universe was as tall as a man, and no taller. He saw that it was as wide as a man, and no wider. He saw that it was as broad as a man, and no broader.

He saw the human race in its entirety, one man and all men, all men in one man. Simultaneously, he saw the whole history of the race, he saw the long journey it had made from so-called inanimate matter to the point where it was now a creature that looked outward to the stars. He saw that the destiny of the race lay in those stars, and in all that vast expanse of space between them, if it did not destroy itself in the process of growing to star stature. He saw that the race could do exactly this, that it could blow itself back to the component atoms that composed it, in which case the long and toilsome, heart-breaking struggle upward from the atomic level would have to begin all over again.

He also knew what he was doing with this clear seeing.

He was touching the race mind.

He was in contact with the race field.

His consciousness had been lifted to the level of that vast, all-pervading, but very subtle force field that comprised the race mind.

The knowledge was sudden agony in him, a pain that was needle sharp in the region of his heart. The pain was strange because, while he could feel it and knew it was happening in his body, it had no meaning to him. He was detached from it, it hurt his body, but it did not hurt or harm him.

His body was alarmed by the pain, his breathing quickened, and a faint trace of sweat appeared on his skin. But he was not alarmed. Even if his body fell dead, he would not be concerned.

"What is it, Kurt?" his ears heard Nedra say. She had detected his heavy breathing and she was alarmed. "Are you about to faint again?"

"No," his lips answered. His body laughed at the question. He heard the sound of his laughter as being both his and not his. His body knew it was not going to faint. His laughter sounded hollow and out of place but he did not care about that either.

Ahead, soldiers were lined up at the back end of the truck, waiting their turn in line.

"Your rank entitles you to priority," Nedra said hesitantly.

"In the place where I am now, my rank doesn't exist," he answered. "I join the end of the line, I take my turn." He was quite stubborn about this.

The nurse looked pleased. He wondered if he had said something important. To him, what he had said seemed obvious. Behind him, West was a silent shadow wrapped in an enigma. Even with his sudden new perception, his contact with a higher form of consciousness, he could not perceive West clearly. Something about the craggy man defied penetration and analysis.

The men in the line ahead of him waited for their turn, shuffling forward each time the medics finished with their examination. There was no talk in the line. Not a man grumbled, not a man complained. Knowing men, Zen knew that this was ominous.

These men had had it. They knew they had had it. In the face of that knowledge, nothing else mattered. Outwardly, they looked fit. Inwardly, something had happened to them. It seemed to Zen that he could see glows coming from their bodies. One was swaying. Zen seemed to glimpse a blob of light moving suddenly upward from the man. The soldier fell. He did not move a muscle after he hit.

Nedra started toward him. Zen shook his head. "No use," he said.

"Why not?"

Zen pointed skyward. "He went that way."

Her face whitened as she caught his meaning. "I'll make sure."

She moved forward and inspected the fallen man, felt for a pulse, and felt again, then got to her feet. As she returned, her back seemed to have acquired a new sag.

An officer shouted from the truck, his voice gravel rough from tension. In response, a stretcher-bearing detail moved forward. They inspected the body of the fallen man, then lifted it and tossed it to the side of the trail. One clipped a dog tag from it, then ran a counter over it. He grunted to his companion, who tied a red tag on the dead man's wrist.

"Up that way, boys, you can find some more," Zen called to them, jerking his thumb up the slope.

"We're not a burial detail," was the answer.

The soldiers in the line shuffled forward.

"Hey! It's gone!" Zen said suddenly.

"What's gone?"

"I'm back," Zen said.

"You never went anywhere," the nurse said.