Robert F. Young

“ A thick carpet the color of Martian waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet cushions.
Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.
She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. "You need not fear the little one," she said, laying her hand upon his knee. "She will not enter." ”

“ Blake Past shook his head. "Proms aren't for parents. You know that as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the chance."
"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think from the way you talk that you are centuries old!"
"I'm thirty-eight," Blake Past said, "and while I may not be your father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—"
A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks. "What right has he got to take me! ”

“ He followed them down the street, the three Erinyes tagging doggedly along behind him. The trail, erratic no longer, led straight to the labyrinthine alleys of the native sector and thence along the shortest route to Eldoria's hut. For a person who had never been to Dubhe 4, Sabrina York certainly knew her way around.
Maybe, though, she had been to Dubhe 4. He knew very little about her. He knew nothing at all, in fact, save that she had murdered her father. He did not even know how she had murdered him, or why. Abruptly Blake shoved the matter from his mind. ”

“ Erinyes. Tisiphone, Megaera, Alecto. You created them because you wanted to punish yourself. You created them because you can't accept yourself for what you are. You created them because even after putting me in exile you're still conscience-crazy, and they're following you around and bugging you because you want them to follow you around and bug you—because you want to be reminded of what a heel you think you are! You always were a Puritan in wolfs clothing, Blake."
The remark angered Blake to the extent that it dispelled his amazement. He shoved Smith away from the door and opened it. ”

“ But the passing moments have made me realize that all this while I have been deluding myself with false hopes and that I am merely hopelessly in love with a man who does not regard me as a woman at all, who—
Here the message broke off as abruptly as it had begun. There was a mist before Blake's eyes, and he could not swallow. He bent down and felt the depression in the coverlet. It was still warm. There had been no footprints leading away from the hut, he remembered. ”

“ It was a remarkably detailed materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the duplicated sand.
Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks. Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her safety. ”

“ On the sofa sat a man and a girl. The man was himself at the age of thirty-four. The girl was Deirdre Eldoria at the age of seventeen.
Blake Past was helping her with her lessons. The moment was a composite of a hundred similar scenes. Now she raised her eyes from the book on her lap, and Blake Past caught her girlish profile ... and Blake Present, standing in the soft and scented darkness of the remembered spring night with the three Erinyes breathing down the back of his neck, caught it too, and both Blakes knew pain. ”

“ In entering his mind instead of going to New Earth, Deirdre had disobeyed him and thus, after a fashion, had symbolically destroyed him. Hence "Sabrina York" had become the murderer of her father, and Blake had set out in pursuit of her in his capacity as a psycheye. Deirdre had been careful to leave a clear trail, and the reason she had dropped her brooch was to assure him that he was on the right track.
Smith was wiping his mouth and grinning at the same time. Now he advanced upon the girl again. Twenty years fell from Blake's shoulders as he shoved the man aside. ”

“ At length, after detouring around an impassable memory-image of deep space, the trail extended into what at first appeared to be a vast woodland park. It was not a park, though. It was a Dubhe 4 rubber plantation. Blake groaned. Did he have to relive this sequence too?
Apparently he did. Sabrina's footprints were deep and undeniable in the soft earth. They pointed unerringly in the remembered direction. Had she discovered that he was following her? Was she deliberately torturing him by making him back-track along a mental trail that he wanted desperately to avoid? It would certainly seem so. ”

“ Before him lay a memory-image of a section of Deneb 1 wasteland. The image extended for no more than half a mile, but Blake was annoyed that he should have remembered even that much of the wretched terrain. Ideally, a man's mind-country should have been comprised only of the places and times he wanted to remember. Practically, however, that was far from being the case.
He glanced back down into the rain-pocked valley that he had just crossed. The rain and the mist made for poor visibility. He could only faintly distinguish the three figures of his pursuers. ”

“ He had read of the personality-splits that sometimes occurred when there was an acute conflict between the Puritan and satyr, or the good and evil, components of the psyche. But never having previously run across a real-life example he had failed to tumble to the truth when he had entered Burns's birthplace cottage and seen Smith sitting at the table.
When such splits occurred, the stronger component took over completely and the weaker component was exiled to the country of the mind. In Blake's case, the Puritan component had been the stronger, and the satyr component the weaker. ”

“ They can stem from false causes—from ridiculous things like a person's inability to accept himself for what he is." Abruptly she dropped the subject. "Don't you realize, Nate," she went on a little desperately, "that I'm leaving tomorrow and that we won't see each other again for years and years?"
"I'll come to New Earth to visit you," Blake said. "Venus is only a few days distant on the new ships." ”

“ Has he booked passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?"
"Please," Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. "You're only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—"
"What do you know about conscience?" Deirdre demanded. "Conscience is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt feelings aren't reliable criteria. ”

“ He had been in enough minds and he had read enough on the subject of Trevorism to know that people were sometimes capable of creating beings considerably higher on the scale of mind-country evolution than ordinary memory-ghosts. ”

“ Then he turned toward Blake. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "You really do have an overactive conscience, don't you!" He faced the three women again. "Get off his back, you creeps! Can't you see he's got enough troubles without you dogging his footsteps?" He opened the door. "Out, all of you, before I throw you out!"
Three frightened looks settled on the three thin faces, but neither Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch nor Vera Velvetskin made a move in the direction of the door till Smith advanced upon them with lowering countenance. ”

“ Deirdre was regarding them with wide eyes. "Eumenides yet!" she gasped. "Oh, Nate, if you aren't the darndest!"
Blushing, Blake took her arm and beckoned to the Erinyes to follow him. He led the way cross-country to the Walden Pond image. Thoreau was still sitting under the tall pine, gazing raptly up at the blurred bird. The sunlight was warm and benign. Blake almost wished he could remain there himself. He had always been partial to Walden Pond.
He faced the three Erinyes.
He left them planning their new way of life.
Being human, he would probably have need of them again. ”

“ It was inevitable that sooner or later some criminal would hit upon the idea of hiding out in his own mind-world till the statute of limitations that applied to his particular crime ran out, and it was equally inevitable that others should follow suit. ”

“ He was seeing it now, though, and he was going to see it at much closer quarters, for Sabrina's footprints led straight across the remembered lawn to the very doorstep. She had not gone in, however, he discovered presently; instead, she had forsaken the door for a concave picture window through which bright light streamed out onto the grass. The depth of a pair of her footprints showed that she had stood there for a long time, peeking into his past. Despite himself, Blake peeked too. So did the three Erinyes. ”

“ The method employed an ability that had been evolving in the human mind for millennia—the ability to project oneself into a past moment—or, to use Trevor's term, a past "place-time." Considerable practice was required before the first transition could be achieved, but once it was achieved, successive transitions became progressively easier. Entering another person's mind-world was of course a more difficult undertaking, and could be achieved only after an intensive study of a certain moment in that person's past. ”

“ Perceiving his difficulty, the girl went on, "My parents indentured themselves to the Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me."
Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of man's inhumanity to man sickening. ”

“ He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He actually had an impulse to flee.
He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness, leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began. ”

“ His three pursuers were wading through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away—not close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi to match. ”