Nightmare journey

managed to find the source of it. The moving air raised a hollow whistling sound in the polished runnels, an eerie groan that caused Jask goosepimples and kept him looking behind for some pursuing beast.
    I don't believe this is the place, Tedesco 'pathed at last. If the Presence was ever stationed here, it left long ago.
    Perhaps it's dead-Chaney.
    You sound like Jask.
    I didn't mean to say we'd quit here, Chaney 'pathed. In any case we'd be fools not to go on.
    Jask 'pathed, All day I've sensed the presence of-something. I can't clearly say what. But just at the edge of my esp perceptions I register a psychic force of some kind.
    Me, too, I think, Melopina 'pathed.
    The Presence?-Tedesco.
    Not that, I'm sure, Jask 'pathed. It's more of a cacophony, a wild noise, than it is an ordered consciousness.
    I don't feel it-Chaney.
    Nor I -Kiera.
    I'm blank, too-Tedesco.
    Jask shook his head. Imagination-maybe.
    But that night, when they camped at the edge of the black glass field, he could not sleep, certain that the force/creature/entity he had sensed was hovering over them, observing them, or crying for recognition across a gulf as wide as all Time.
    In the morning they read the maps, charted their course to the Glacier of Light, and set out once more. Jask could not tell if the unseen creature were still with him, though he felt strongly that it was.
    25
    THE WATCHER dreams of friendships lost, times passed, companionships long forgotten. It dreams of home, the brood- holes of the mother world, the bees of fertilization, and the hives in which it has, millennia passed, endured a million moments of ecstasy. It dreams of seas with living water, of a sky with three suns. It dreams of touching and being touched…
    It stirs.
    It feeds.
    The tickle it has felt for some days has grown worse, a reception of certain psychic energies whose emanation is the whole reason for the Watcher's being here in the first place. The tickle is not bad enough to wake it. But soon, it will be annoyed and rise up…

The Second Journey: THE GLACIER OF LIGHT
    26
    MERKA SHANLY contrived to be in a public place-seated in the enclave's senso-parlor, experiencing a prewar emotion film-when the official announcement was made.
    The sound, smell and tactile sensations faded.
    Viewers grumbled, looked questioningly at those seated beneath the senso-helmets on either side.
    The moving colors on the screen, shapeless, became even more so, lost all psychological resemblance to the emotions of the film, faded slowly out until the screen was white, blank.
    A moment later the enclave's public address system was spliced into the parlor's broadcast facilities, as it reached every Pure in the fortress no matter where he was or what he was doing.
    The audience quieted.
    The square, sober face of Kitson Helger, enclave news promoter, flashed onto the screen in the front of the parlor. His eyes were darkly ringed, and his lips were pale and trembling. He said, “Little more than an hour ago our General put through an emergency call to Dr. Danfrey, ordering him to the Military Suite. Upon arrival Dr. Danfrey discovered our General was experiencing a series of severe heart palpitations. Despite all that Dr. Danfrey could do, our General passed away fifteen minutes ago. Until the Committee on Leadership elects a replacement Preakness Bay Enclave is without a guiding light. Services of mourning are being held in all enclave chapels.”
    The sober face evaporated.
    Merka Shanly, wearing a mask of grief, raced up the aisle of the parlor, pushed through its exit doors.
    The Pures in the parlor watched her leave. There was no one in Preakness Bay Enclave who did not know that she had been the General's mate for more than three months, longer than any woman before her.
    In the corridors she passed other Pures, who tried to stop her and offer their condolences. She pushed past them, fighting to hold onto her grief-stricken expression, trying not to crack open before them.
    She stepped into the lift, dropped, was caught in the beam, floated swiftly upward until she called out the number of the floor she wanted. The lift delivered her. She stepped out and hurried down the main hall of the governmental level, toward the Military Suite.
    The door opened at her command, closed behind her.
    She walked across the foyer, through the main lounge, through the library and into the master bedroom.
    “So far?” she asked.
    Dr. Tokel Danfrey looked up, nodded, and turned back to the corpse