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Young - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Girl in His Mind - -Author: Robert F. Young - -Illustrator: Jack Gaughan - John Pederson - -Release Date: August 18, 2016 [EBook #52845] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN HIS MIND *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="370" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<h1>THE GIRL IN HIS MIND</h1> - -<p>By ROBERT F. YOUNG</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph3">Every man's mind is a universe with countless<br /> -places in which he can hide—even from himself!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated -version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7 -practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however, -it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted -the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the -nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was -slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the -shadows at the back of the room. "Is she free?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps."</p> - -<p>Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of -love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one -moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the -next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto -she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then, -the word "chocoletto", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was -misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent -lived up to it completely.</p> - -<p>She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes -dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a -vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was -splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.</p> - -<p>He beckoned to her when the dance was over and, after slipping into -a white thigh-length tunic, she joined him at his table. She ordered -Martian wine in a liquid voice, and sipped it with a finesse that -belied her cannibalistic forebears. "You wish a night?" she asked.</p> - -<p>Blake nodded. "If you are free."</p> - -<p>"Three thousand quandoes."</p> - -<p>He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She -slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number -and stood up to leave. "I will meet you there in an hour," she said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Her hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a -bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4 -night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native -sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for -on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to -find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to -booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—</p> - -<p>A human girl.</p> - -<p>He paused in the doorway. The girl was sitting cross-legged on a small -mat, a book open on her lap. Xenophon's <i>Anabasis</i>. Her hair made him -think of the copper-colored sunrises of Norma 9 and her eyes reminded -him of the blue tarns of Fornax 6. "Come in," she said.</p> - -<p>After closing the door, he sat down opposite her on the guest mat. -Behind her, a gaudy arras hid the hut's other room. "You are here to -wait for Eldoria?" she asked.</p> - -<p>Blake nodded. "And you?"</p> - -<p>She laughed. "I am here because I live here," she said.</p> - -<p>He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. 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."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"How old are you?" Blake asked.</p> - -<p>"Fourteen."</p> - -<p>"And what are you going to be when you grow up?"</p> - -<p>"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the -mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an -institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to -give me my freedom."</p> - -<p>"I see," Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. "Homework?"</p> - -<p>She shook her head. "In addition to my courses at the mission school, I -am studying the humanities."</p> - -<p>"Xenophon," Blake said. "And I suppose Plato too."</p> - -<p>"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of -them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person."</p> - -<p>"I'm sure you will be," Blake said, looking at the arras.</p> - -<p>"My name is Deirdre."</p> - -<p>"Nathan," Blake said. "Nathan Blake."</p> - -<p>"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame -flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then -he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he -was.</p> - -<p>Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent -of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom. -She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in -profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose -and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column -of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken -up the <i>Anabasis</i> again, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the -walls.</p> - -<p>He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into -the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom, -and much more richly appointed. 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"It's not that so much," Blake said.</p> - -<p>"What?" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....</p> - -<p>He rose up once in the night, thinking to find his hotel bed. His next -awakening was in the grayness of dawn, and he got up and dressed and -moved silently to the doorway. The girl slept just without the arras on -a thin sleeping-mat, and he had to step over her to gain the anteroom. -In sleep, a strand of her copper-colored hair had tumbled down across -her forehead and lay like a lovely flower upon the virginal whiteness -of her skin. There was something saintly about her quiet face.</p> - -<p>When he reached the alley he began to run, and he did not stop running -till the chocoletto sector was far behind him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The hill was a memory-image and Aldebaran 12 rain-country hills were -notoriously steep. Blake was breathing hard when he reached the crest.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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. The trio seemed -a little closer now.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="341" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Ever since he had first set foot into his mind, some ten hours ago, -they had been on his trail, but for some reason he had been unable -to bring himself to go back and find out who they were and what they -wanted. Hence he was as vexed with himself as he was with them.</p> - -<p>After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started -across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed -materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the -duplicated sand.</p> - -<p>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. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her -presence.</p> - -<p>Mind-country was as temporally inconsecutive as it was topographically -incongruous, so Blake was not surprised when the Deneb 1 wasteland gave -way to an expanse of boyhood meadow. Near the meadow was the house -where Blake had lived at a much later date. In reality, the places were -as far apart in miles as they were in years, but here in the country -of his mind they existed side by side, surrounded by heterogeneous -landscapes from all over the civilized sector of the galaxy and by the -sharply demarcated spectra of a hundred different suns. A few of the -suns were in the patchwork sky—Sirius, for example, and its twinkling -dwarf companion. Most of them, however, were present only in their -remembered radiance. To add to the confusion, scattered night memories -interrupted the hodge-podge horizon with columns of darkness, and here -and there the gray column of a dawn or dusk memory showed.</p> - -<p>The house was flanked on one side by a section of a New Earth spaceport -and on the other by an excerpt of an Ex-earth city-block. Behind it -flowed a brief blue stretch of Martian waterway.</p> - -<p>Sabrina's footsteps led up to the front door, and the door itself was -ajar. Perhaps she was still inside. Perhaps she was watching him even -now through one of the remembered windows. He scanned them with a -professional eye, but saw no sign of her.</p> - -<p>Warily he stepped inside, adjusting the temperature of his all-weather -jacket to the remembered air-conditioning. His father was sitting in -the living room, smoking, and watching 3V. He had no awareness of -Blake. At Blake's entry he went right on smoking and watching as though -the door had neither opened nor closed. He would go right on smoking -and watching till Blake died and the conglomeration of place-times -that constituted Blake's mind-world ceased to be. Ironically, he was -watching nothing. The 3V program that had been in progress at the time -of the unconscious materialization had failed to come through.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The memory was a treasured one—the old man had perished in a 'copter -crash several years ago—and for a long while Blake did not move. -He had never been in his own mind before. Consequently he was more -affected than he might otherwise have been. Finally, stirring himself, -he walked out into the kitchen. On a shelf above the sink stood a gaily -colored box of his mother's favorite detergent with a full-length -drawing of Vera Velvetskin, the company's blond and chic visual symbol, -on the front. His mother was standing before the huge automatic range, -preparing a meal she had served twenty-three years ago. He regarded her -with moist eyes. She had died a dozen years before his father, but the -wound that her death had caused had never healed. He wanted to go up -behind her and touch her shoulder and say, "What's for supper, mom?" -but he knew it would do no good. For her he had no reality, not only -because he was far in her future, but because in his mind-world she was -a mortal and he, a god—a picayune god, perhaps, but a real one.</p> - -<p>As he was about to turn away, the name-plate on the range caught his -eye, and thinking that he had read the two words wrong, he stepped -closer so that he could see them more clearly. No, he had made no -mistake: the first word was "Sabrina", and the second was "York".</p> - -<p>He stepped back. Odd that a kitchen range should have the same name as -his quarry. But perhaps not unduly so. Giving appliances human names -had been common practice for centuries. Even a name like "Sabrina -York", while certainly not run-of-the-mill, was bound to be duplicated -in real life. Nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness accompanied him when -he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor.</p> - -<p>He went through each room systematically, but saw no sign of Sabrina -York. He lingered for some time in his own room, wistfully watching his -fifteen-year-old self lolling on the bed with a dog-eared copy of <i>The -Galaxy Boys and the Secret of the Crab Nebula</i>, then he stepped back -out into the hall and started to descend the stairs.</p> - -<p>At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front -yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the -panes, and came to an abrupt halt. 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. 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.</p> - -<p>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. -Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to -attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared -to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail -led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little -bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony -was over. He had no choice.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches -traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints -slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had -paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain -tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile -and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the -remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he -had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned -upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to -cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on -the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with -streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have -been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!</p> - -<p>Deirdre was speaking. "Yes," she was saying, "at nine o'clock. And I -should very much like for you to come."</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"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!"</p> - -<p>"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—"</p> - -<p>A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks. -"What right has <i>he</i> got to take me! Did <i>he</i> scrimp and go without -in order to put me through high school and college? Has <i>he</i> booked -passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?"</p> - -<p>"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—"</p> - -<p>"What do <i>you</i> know about conscience?" Deirdre demanded. "Conscience -is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt -feelings aren't reliable criteria. 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?"</p> - -<p>"I'll come to New Earth to visit you," Blake said. "Venus is only a few -days distant on the new ships."</p> - -<p>She stood up. "You won't come—I know you won't." She stamped her foot. -"And you won't come to the prom either. I know that too. I knew it all -along. Sometimes I'm tempted to—" Abruptly she broke off. "Very well -then," she went on, "I'll say good-by now then."</p> - -<p>Blake Past stood up too. "No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority -house with you."</p> - -<p>She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her -hauteur. "If you wish," she said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Blake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered -halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other -people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to -register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present. -All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the -girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.</p> - -<p>Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying -at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.</p> - -<p>His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction -was shock. His third was fear.</p> - -<p>His amazement resulted from recognition. One of the three women arrayed -before him was Miss Stoddart, his boyhood Sunday-school teacher. -Standing next to her in a familiar blue uniform was Officer Finch, -the police woman who had maintained law and order in the collective -elementary school he had attended. Standing next to Officer Finch was -blond and chic Vera Velvetskin, whose picture he had seen on box after -countless box of his mother's favorite detergent.</p> - -<p>His shock resulted from the expressions on the three faces. Neither -Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch ever particularly liked him, but they -had never particularly disliked him either. This Miss Stoddart and this -Officer Finch disliked him, though. They hated him. They hated him so -much that their hatred had thinned out their faces and darkened their -eyes. More shocking yet, Vera Velvetskin, who had never existed save -in some copywriter's mind, hated him too. In fact, judging from the -greater thinness of her face and the more pronounced darkness of her -eyes, she hated him even more than Miss Stoddart and Officer Finch did.</p> - -<p>His fear resulted from the realization that his mind-world contained -phenomena it had no right to contain—not if he was nearly as -well-adjusted as he considered himself to be. The three women standing -before him definitely were not memory-images. They were too vivid, for -one thing. For another, they were aware of him. What were they, then? -And what were they doing in his mind?</p> - -<p>He asked the two questions aloud.</p> - -<p>Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at -his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. "You ask us that?" Miss -Stoddart said. "Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!" -said Officer Finch. "And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of -righteousness!" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together, -blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in -unison: "You know who we are, Nathan Blake. <i>You</i> know who we are!"</p> - -<p>Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his -own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial -universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the -objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but -universes nonetheless.</p> - -<p>The discovery came about quite by accident. After projecting himself -into a patient's memory one day, a psychologist named Trevor suddenly -found himself clinging to the slope of a traumatically distorted -mountain. His patient was beside him.</p> - -<p>The mountain proved to be an unconscious memory-image out of the -patient's boyhood, and its country proved to be the country of the -patient's mind. After many trials and errors, Trevor managed to get -both himself and his patient back to the objective world, and not long -afterward he was able to duplicate the feat on another case.</p> - -<p>The next logical step was to enter his own mind, and this he also -succeeded in doing.</p> - -<p>It was inevitable that Trevor should write a book about his discovery -and set about founding a new school of psychology. It was equally -inevitable that he should acquire enemies as well as disciples. -However, as the years passed and the new therapy which he devised cured -more and more psychoses, the ranks of his disciples swelled and those -of his enemies shrank. When, shortly before his death, he published a -paper explaining how anyone could enter his or her own mind-world at -will, his niche in the Freudian hall of fame was assured.</p> - -<p>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. In order to return to the -objective world, it was necessary in both cases to locate the most -recently materialized place-time and take one step beyond it.</p> - -<p>By their very nature, mind-countries were confusing. They existed on -a plane of reality that bore no apparent relationship to the plane -of the so-called objective universe. In fact, so far as was known, -this secondary—or subjective—reality was connected to so-called -true reality only through the awareness of the various creators. In -addition, these countries had no outward shape in the ordinary sense of -the word, and while most countries contained certain parallel images, -these images were subject to the interpretation of the individual -creator. As a result they were seldom identical.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>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. Society's answer was -the psyche-police, and the psyche-police hadn't been in action very -long before the first private psycheye appeared.</p> - -<p>Blake was one of a long line of such operators.</p> - -<p>So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a -criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been -a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York -had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used -the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened -on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had -ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image.</p> - -<p>Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office -hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case -he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its -thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had -done so after accepting his case—or was it before? He couldn't quite -remember—the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed -open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray.</p> - -<p>He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the -woman's handkerchief with the initials "SB" embroidered on it lying -by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry -was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had -entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.</p> - -<p>Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless -she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently -materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was -assured.</p> - -<p>Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past, -and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances -whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How, -then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it -to enable her to use it as a point of entry?</p> - -<p>The other thing that bothered him was of a much more urgent nature. -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. One woman whom he had apprehended in her -own mind had created a walking-talking Virgin Mary who watched over -her wherever she went. And once, after tracking down an ex-enlisted -man, he had found his quarry holed up in the memory-image of an army -barracks with a ten-star general waiting on him hand and foot. But -these, and other, similar, cases, had to do with mal-adjusted people, -and moreover, the super-image in each instance had been an image that -the person involved had <i>wanted</i> to create. Therefore, even assuming -that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why -had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart, -Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of -Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from -the ecstatic "oh's" and "ah's" they kept giving voice to, the place -delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them -standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a -doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine, -gazing up into the branches at a bird that had come through only as a -vague blur of beak and feathers.</p> - -<p>Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a -memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set -aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake -sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place -for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions -of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a -dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense -of the word English at all—the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly -enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now -the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the -other famous dwellings.</p> - -<p>Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints -showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path -and let herself in the door.</p> - -<p>They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no -reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that -had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical -repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as -fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.</p> - -<p>He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge -grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and -platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly -in a corner, the bare wooden table—</p> - -<p>He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the -table no longer bare.</p> - -<p>A man sat on the former and a bottle of wine stood on the latter. -Moreover, the room showed signs of having been lived in for a long -time. The floor was covered with tracked-in dirt and the walls were -blackened from smoke. The grill-work of the hearth was begrimed with -grease.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Whatever else he might be the man sitting at the table was not an -image out of the past. He was too vividly real. He was around Blake's -age, and about Blake's height and build. However, he was given to -fat. His paunch contrasted jarringly with Blake's trim waist. His -vaguely familiar face was swollen—probably from the wine he had -drunk—and his too-full cheeks were well on the way to becoming jowls. -His bloodshot eyes were underscored with shadows, and his clothing -consisted of odds and ends out of Blake's past: a tattered, too-tight -pullover with the letter "L" on the front, a pair of ragged red-plaid -hunting breeches and a pair of cracked riding-boots.</p> - -<p>Blake advanced across the room and picked up the bottle. One sniff told -him that it came from a memory-image of a Martian wine-cellar. He set -the bottle back down. "Who are you?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>The man looked up at him sardonically. "Call me Smith," he said. "If I -told you who I really am, you wouldn't believe me."</p> - -<p>"What are you doing in my mind?"</p> - -<p>"You should know the answer to that one. You put me here."</p> - -<p>Blake stared "Why, I've never even seen you before!"</p> - -<p>"Granted," Smith said. "But you used to know me. As a matter of fact, -you and I used to get along together famously." He reached around and -got a cup off the wall-rack. "Pull up a chair and have a drink. I've -been expecting you."</p> - -<p>Bewildered, Blake sat but shoved the cup aside. "I don't drink," he -said.</p> - -<p>"That's right," Smith said. "Stupid of me to forget." He took a swig -out of the bottle, set it back down. "Let's see, it's been seven years -now. Right?"</p> - -<p>"How the devil did you know?"</p> - -<p>Smith sighed. "Who should know better than I? Who indeed? But I guess -I can't kick too much. You certainly materialized enough of the stuff -in your—shall we say 'wilder'?—days." He shook his head. "No, I can't -say I've suffered in that respect."</p> - -<p>Comprehension came to Blake then. He had heard of the parasites who -lived in other person's minds, but this was the first time he had ever -happened to run across one. "Why, you're nothing but a mind-comber," he -said. "I should have guessed!"</p> - -<p>Smith looked hurt. "You do me a grave injustice, friend. A very grave -injustice. And after my being so considerate of this cottage and using -the back door and everything! The young lady who stopped by a little -while ago was much more understanding than you are."</p> - -<p>"You talked with her then?" Blake asked. He suppressed a shudder. For -some reason it horrified him that his quarry should be aware that so -despicable a creature inhabited his mind. "What—what does she look -like?"</p> - -<p>"<i>You</i> know what she looks like."</p> - -<p>"But I don't. I took the case on such short notice that I didn't have a -chance to get a picture or even a description of her."</p> - -<p>Smith regarded him shrewdly. "What did she do?"</p> - -<p>"She murdered her father," Blake said.</p> - -<p>Smith guffawed. "I should have known it would be something like that. -Ties in perfectly. By the way, what's her name?"</p> - -<p>"Sabrina York—not that it's any of your business."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but it is my business—as much my business as yours. As a matter -of fact, I'm going to help you find her."</p> - -<p>Blake stood up. "No, you're not," he said. "You're going to get out of -my mind and you're going to stay out—"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="600" height="431" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>He paused as a knock sounded on the door. Smith answered it, and a -moment later Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin filed -into the room and arrayed themselves before Blake. Again three arms -were raised; again three forefingers were pointed accusingly at his -chest. "Wretched creature!" said Miss Stoddart. "Consorting with so -foul a fiend!" said Officer Finch. "And in so vile a den of iniquity!" -said Vera Velvetskin.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus3.jpg" width="600" height="460" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>For a while Smith just stood there staring at the three visitors. 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!"</p> - -<p>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. Then they fairly scampered from the room. Officer Finch -was the last in line, and Smith helped her along with the toe of one -of Blake's cracked boots. The shriek she emitted coincided with the -slamming of the door.</p> - -<p>Smith leaned weakly against the door and began to laugh. "Shut up," -Blake said, "and tell me who they are!"</p> - -<p>Tears were rolling down Smith's blotchy cheeks. "<i>You</i> know who they -are. You created them, didn't you? The skinny one is the one who told -you about Moses in the bulrushes and the husky one is the one who saw -to it that you didn't step out of line in school and the one with the -nice shape is the one you associate with the immaculateness of your -mother's kitchen sink. Spiritual virtue, civil virtue—and physical -virtue!"</p> - -<p>"But why did I create them?" Blake demanded. "And why are they -following me around like a bunch of vindictive harpies?"</p> - -<p>"There!" Smith said. "You almost had it. Not harpies, though—Furies. -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."</p> - -<p>The remark angered Blake to the extent that it dispelled his amazement. -He shoved Smith away from the door and opened it. "All that may be," -he said, "and maybe I did know you once upon a time. But don't let me -find you here when I get back. Understand?" He paused in the doorway, -frowning. "Tell me one more thing, though. Why Burns's birthplace? Why -should a memory-image like this appeal to a mind-comber?"</p> - -<p>Smith grinned. "Bobby Burns has always fascinated me—just as he has -you. Or should I say 'us'?" The grin turned into a leer, and he picked -up the bottle and waved it back and forth like a baton—</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My love, she's but a lassie yet,</div> - <div class="verse">My love, she's but a lassie yet;</div> - <div class="verse">We'll let her stand a year or twa,</div> - <div class="verse">She'll no be half sae saucy yet;</div> - <div class="verse">I rue the day I sought her O!</div> - <div class="verse">I rue the day I sought her O!</div> - <div class="verse">Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd,</div> - <div class="verse">But he may say he has bought her O.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>Furious, Blake strode down the path. Smith's taunting laughter sounding -in his wake.</p> - -<p>The three Erinyes were waiting for him at the gate, and fell in behind -him when he turned down the lane. He lost Sabrina's trail in front of -the farmhouse where Coleridge wrote <i>Kubla Khan</i>, picked it up again -opposite the Mitre Tavern. Presently it veered right, passed between -Milton's birthplace and Stratford-on-Avon, and entered a night-image. -He was halfway down a dim-lit street, the Erinyes just behind him, -before he realized where he was.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Disciplined trees stood at attention along two suburban strips of -lawn. Beyond them, half-remembered houses showed. One of them stood -out vividly—a round, modernesque affair surrounded by a quarter-acre -of grass and shrubs and flowers. It was the house he had rented while -Deirdre Eldoria was attending high school. It was a house he had hoped -never to see again.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>The room was a far cry from the one he had just left. The hearth -was built of meticulously mortared red bricks. The thick rug was a -two-dimensional garden of multicolored flowers. There were exquisite -tables and flower-petal stools. There were deep chairs that begged to -be sat in. A sybaritic sofa occupied an entire wall.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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. Now she returned -her attention to the book, and Blake Past leaned forward in order -to read the passage that she was in doubt about. And as he did so, -her copper-colored hair touched his cheek and the warm tingle of the -contact traveled down through the years to Blake Present.</p> - -<p>Overcome by the poignancy of the moment, he stepped back from the -window, colliding with the three Erinyes as he did so. They moved a -little distance away, arrayed themselves, and started to raise their -right arms. "Oh, can it!" Blake said disgustedly. In the darkness -behind him, someone laughed. "<i>My love, she's but a lassie yet</i>," Smith -sang in a cracked baritone. "<i>We'll let her stand a year or twa, -she'll no be half sae saucy yet!</i>"</p> - -<p>Blake whirled, and flashed his light into the shadows. The light picked -up Smith's retreating figure. "Get out of my mind!" Blake shouted. "Do -you hear me? Get out of my mind!"</p> - -<p>Laughter danced in the darkness, silence ensued. Turning back toward -the window, Blake saw that Blake Past and Deirdre Yesterday were -leaving the living room. He watched them come out the front door, walk -around the corner of the house and start down a starlit garden path.</p> - -<p>Forsaking Sabrina's trail, he followed them along the path, the Erinyes -at his heels, and watched them sit down on a little white bench beside -a rose-riotous trellis. As he watched, Blake Past broke one of the -roses free and pinned it in Deirdre's cupreous hair.</p> - -<p>Blake Present plunged away from the moment and picked up Sabrina's -trail again. <i>Why did I sit there beside her?</i> he demanded silently -of the remembered stars. <i>Sit there beside her like her lover when -the roses were in bloom? Father-protector—father-fool! I slept with -her mistress, and I would have been her Naoise! Within earshot of her -conched ear I lay with her black whore-mother, and when the satyr in me -was replete I stepped over her thin child's body and ran away!</i></p> - -<p>Behind him in the night, the Erinyes hissed and murmured to each other -gloatingly.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Sabrina's trail had been erratic before. Now it became even more so. -It approached this boundary and that, only to veer off in another -direction. Sometimes it doubled back upon itself, and each time -Blake was able to cut down on her lead. He should have been elated. -Strangely, however, he was not. Instead, a feeling of uneasiness -afflicted him, increasing as the distance between them shrank.</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>He forced himself to move forward among the gray ghosts of trees. He -crossed a shallow, scum-covered stream, leaping from rock to rock, and -afterward climbed a hill. Hearing a loud splash behind him, he turned -and looked back.</p> - -<p>Miss Stoddart, in trying to cross the stream, had lost her balance -and fallen in, and Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin were trying to -help her to her feet. As he watched, they too lost their balance and -joined their companion in the greenish water. There followed a period -of hysterical floundering, after which the trio waded dripping and -bedraggled to the bank.</p> - -<p>Blake would have laughed, had not the place-time oppressed him. -Descending the opposite slope of the hill, he entered a wide valley. -Presently he glimpsed the buildings of the Great Starway Cartel -processing plant through the trees.</p> - -<p>The overseer's bungalow was visible just to the left, and it was toward -this latter structure that Sabrina's footprints pointed. The original -clearing had swarmed with chocolettos. Blake's, however, did not. In -his single-mindedness of six years ago he had had eyes for only two -people—the overseer and Deirdre.</p> - -<p>Stepping into the clearing, he saw the man now—the bearded bestial -face, the long arms, the large and hairy hands—and he saw the -fifteen-year old girl lying on the ground where the man had thrown her -after she had slapped his face. After a moment he saw himself of six -years ago step out of the grove of rubber trees and advance white-faced -into the scene.</p> - -<p>"No!" the girl lying on the ground cried. "He'll kill you!"</p> - -<p>Blake Past ignored her. The overseer had drawn a knife. Now the knife -flashed, and a streak of crimson appeared on Blake Past's arm. The -knife flashed again, but this time it described a large arc and landed -a dozen feet away. Now the overseer's throat was between Blake Past's -hands, and the bearded face was changing colors. It grew green first, -then blue. Blake Past shook the man several times before letting him -slip to the ground. He dropped a handful of <i>quandoe</i>-notes on the -heaving chest.</p> - -<p>"That's what you paid for her," he said. He withdrew a paper from his -breast pocket, unfolded it and held it before the gasping overseer's -eyes. "Sign it," he said, handing it to him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The overseer did so, lying on his side. Blake Past pocketed the paper -and helped the girl to her feet. The tarn-blue eyes were wide in the -thin child's face. "Eldoria died," she blurted. "They—"</p> - -<p>Blake Past nodded. "I know. But they can't sell you any more. I own you -now."</p> - -<p>"I am glad," the girl said. "I knew from the first moment I saw you -that you were noble. I shall like being your slave, and I will serve -you very faithfully."</p> - -<p>Blake Past looked away. Blake Present lowered his eyes. "Can you walk?" -Blake Past asked.</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes. I am very strong."</p> - -<p>She took a step forward, swayed and would have fallen, had not Blake -Past caught her. "I—I guess I am not quite as strong as I thought," -she said. "But I shall recuperate swiftly. Why did you come back, -<i>mensakin</i> Blake?"</p> - -<p>"I came back to buy you from Eldoria," Blake Past said. He did not add -that the memory of her saintly face as he had seen it when he stepped -over her had lasted a whole year, or that his dreams of her had made a -mockery of his sleep. "When I found out that Eldoria had died and that -you had been sold again, I came directly here."</p> - -<p>"You will not be sorry. I will make you an excellent slave."</p> - -<p>"I didn't buy you for that reason. I bought you to give you your—"</p> - -<p>"There is one request I would like to make, however," the girl -interrupted. "I would like to take 'Eldoria' as my surname. She was -very kind to me, and I would like to repay her in some way."</p> - -<p>"Very well," Blake Past said. "'Deirdre Eldoria' it will be, then."</p> - -<p>He picked her up and carried her into the grove. Blake Present watched -them till they disappeared among the trees. He knew where Blake Past -was taking her—had taken her. Back to the settlement, and from there -to the spaceport, and thence to Ex-earth. Ex-earth and high school, -then college—</p> - -<p>She had never been his slave, though. He had been hers.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Sabrina's trail circled back into the grove and left the place-time by -a different route. Immediately it became erratic again. It was evident -to Blake that she was searching for a particular memory-image and that -she was having trouble finding it. Perhaps she knew of some moment in -his past where she would be safe even from him.</p> - -<p>When he stepped into the little Dubhe 4 settlement he instinctively -assumed that it was on the same chronological plane as the plantation -place-time. However, the darkness that instantly enclosed him and the -stars that sprang to life in the sky apprised him that such could not -possibly be the case. This was the Dubhe 4 settlement of seven years -ago. This was the night he had sat in the chocoletto cafe and watched -Eldoria dance—the night he had kept a tryst with her in her hut; the -night he had first seen Deirdre.</p> - -<p>But why had Sabrina come here? Where in this wretched little -memory-image did she expect to find sanctuary?</p> - -<p>Suddenly he knew. Eldoria's hut. He would rather die than enter it -again, and somehow Sabrina must have discovered his attitude. Probably -even now she was within those four remembered walls, laughing at him.</p> - -<p>Anger kindled in him. The effrontery of her! Daring to pre-empt a -moment that belonged solely to him! He would enter the hut if it killed -him. If he had to, he would tear down its walls and banish its memory -forever from the country of his mind.</p> - -<p>With the aid of his pocket torch, he found her footprints in the dust. -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.</p> - -<p>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. It wasn't his business to know how or -why she had done the deed. It was his business to find and apprehend -her.</p> - -<p>Presently, in the darkness before him, he made out a motionless -white-robed figure. He approached it warily, found to his consternation -that it was frozen in the act of taking a step forward. He shone his -light into the face. It was dark bronze in hue. The eyes were wide -apart, and the teeth showed in a vivid white line between half-parted -purple lips. Eldoria, on her way to keep her tryst with him....</p> - -<p>But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient, -Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past -in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had -either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a -professional to do the job.</p> - -<p>Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing.</p> - -<p>He went on, not quite so confidently now. He had proceeded less than a -dozen steps when he saw the brooch. It was lying in the dust just to -the left of one of Sabrina's footprints, and it threw back the light -of the torch in glittering shards that hurt his eyes. Disbelievingly, -he picked it up. The Erinyes clustered around him to see what he had -found. They were still wet and dishelved and reeked of the piercing -odor of decayed algae. They looked anything but happy.</p> - -<p>Blake turned the brooch over in the palm of his hand. The inscription -on the back leaped up and smote him right between the eyes, and he -staggered and nearly fell. <i>To Deirdre Eldoria</i>, he read, <i>from Nathan -Blake.</i></p> - -<p>He stood there numbly for a long while, not thinking—unable to think. -Finally he slipped the brooch into his pocket and moved on.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He was trembling when he reached the door of Eldoria's hut. The -footprints led straight up to the threshold and came to an end. -Diffidently he touched the primitive knob, turned it and pushed the -door open. He stepped inside and closed the door in the faces of the -three Erinyes. The remembered anteroom seemed smaller and more sordid -than the original, but he knew that it was really no different. He had -remembered it accurately enough. It was he who was different, not the -room.</p> - -<p>Opposite the door, Deirdre Yesterday sat immobile before the arras. -Equally immobile, Blake Past sat facing her. Deirdre Yesterday's lips -were parted in the midst of uttering a soundless word. The <i>Anabasis</i> -lay open on her lap.</p> - -<p>Blake Present found it difficult to breathe. The difficulty stemmed -from a physical as well as an emotional source. Someone was burning -incense.</p> - -<p>He wiped his forehead. Then, bracing himself, he walked over to the -arras, parted it and stepped into the inner room.</p> - -<p>The inner room was empty.</p> - -<p>A small notebook lay upon the dais among the scattered scarlet -cushions. Near it was a faint depression in the foamy coverlet. Blake -picked up the notebook. The first page contained a hastily written -message:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Nate dearest, I've lost my nerve, and by the time you read this I -shall have run away. Please forgive me for disobeying you. I wanted -desperately to fulfill your wishes by going to New Earth and attending -Trevor University, and now I shall, because sitting here in this -little room I have faced at last the very real possibility that you -really do not love me. I had hoped that by entering your mind and -leading you back through our moments together to the moment when we -met and by freezing that moment and letting you find me in this room, -you would be shocked into associating me with Eldoria rather than with -the naive little girl sitting outside the arras—with sex, rather -than with saintliness; that I could bring you to understand that the -little-girl image you have of me is as unrealistic as the father-image -you have of yourself. 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—</i></p></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>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 <i>away</i> from the hut, he remembered.</p> - -<p>Straightening, he surveyed the golden tapestries that adorned the -room's four walls. It was not at all difficult to pick out the one -behind which she was standing. It was difficult, though, to go over and -raise it. Her face was pale, and the khaki hiking suit she was wearing -made it seem all the more so. She stepped out of her hiding place, and -he let the tapestry fall into place behind her.</p> - -<p>She would not meet his eyes. "In another moment I would have been -gone," she said. "Oh, Nate, why did you come so soon!"</p> - -<p>Suddenly the arras parted, and Smith stepped into the room. Without -pausing, he advanced across the resilient carpet, shoved Blake aside -and took Deirdre into his arms. He grasped her hair, pulled her head -back and bent his evil face toward hers.</p> - -<p>Outraged, Blake seized the man's shoulder, spun him around and struck -him in the mouth. Instantly his own mouth went numb, and he tasted -blood.</p> - -<p>He knew who Smith was then.</p> - -<p>Glancing into Deirdre's eyes, he saw that she knew too, and realized -that she had known all along.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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. Hence the latter had had to go. Smith, -therefore, was but another aspect of himself—a flesh-and-blood alter -ego who was overplaying his role in an attempt to force Blake into a -response that would make the two of them one again.</p> - -<p>Knowing who Smith was supplied Blake with the answer to who Sabrina -York was.</p> - -<p>Unconsciously he had been aware all along of Smith's presence in the -English park image. When he discovered that Deirdre had entered his -mind he had been so utterly horrified over the prospect of her running -into his depraved alter ego that he had unconsciously concealed her -presence from himself by supplying her with a fictitious identity. She -had deliberately ransacked the little office and left her handkerchief -behind in the process in order to apprise him of her whereabouts and to -induce him to follow her, but he had rejected the initials "D. E." on -her handkerchief and substituted the initials of the first name that -came into his mind—Sabrina York. Next he had needed a logical reason -to go after her and bring her back. His profession had supplied part of -it, and his father-complex had supplied the other.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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. The column of Deirdre's neck was strong and -shapely. Her breasts were in full and virginal bloom. <i>Who is she that -looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and -terrible as an army with banners?</i> Hungrily Blake took her in his arms.</p> - -<p>When, a long time later, he released her, Smith had disappeared.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The three Erinyes were standing forlornly in the street when Blake and -Deirdre left the hut. The hatred had vanished from their faces and they -were looking at each other as though they had just lost their last -friend. Certainly they had lost their <i>raison d'etre</i>. Blake sighed. -Having created them, he was responsible for their welfare. Now that -they were unemployed it was up to him to do something about it.</p> - -<p>Deirdre was regarding them with wide eyes. "Eumenides yet!" she gasped. -"Oh, Nate, if you aren't the darndest!"</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>He faced the three Erinyes.</p> - -<p>He left them planning their new way of life.</p> - -<p>Being human, he would probably have need of them again.</p> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girl in His Mind, by Robert F. 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Young - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Girl in His Mind - -Author: Robert F. Young - -Illustrator: Jack Gaughan - John Pederson - -Release Date: August 18, 2016 [EBook #52845] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN HIS MIND *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE GIRL IN HIS MIND - - By ROBERT F. YOUNG - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963 - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - - Every man's mind is a universe with countless - places in which he can hide--even from himself! - - -The dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated -version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7 -practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however, -it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted -the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the -nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was -slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the -shadows at the back of the room. "Is she free?" he asked. - -"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps." - -Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of -love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one -moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the -next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto -she was light-skinned--more bronze, really, than brown. But then, -the word "chocoletto", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was -misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent -lived up to it completely. - -She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking--the eyes -dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a -vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was -splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her. - -He beckoned to her when the dance was over and, after slipping into -a white thigh-length tunic, she joined him at his table. She ordered -Martian wine in a liquid voice, and sipped it with a finesse that -belied her cannibalistic forebears. "You wish a night?" she asked. - -Blake nodded. "If you are free." - -"Three thousand quandoes." - -He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She -slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number -and stood up to leave. "I will meet you there in an hour," she said. - - * * * * * - -Her hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a -bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4 -night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native -sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for -on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to -find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to -booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl-- - -A human girl. - -He paused in the doorway. The girl was sitting cross-legged on a small -mat, a book open on her lap. Xenophon's _Anabasis_. Her hair made him -think of the copper-colored sunrises of Norma 9 and her eyes reminded -him of the blue tarns of Fornax 6. "Come in," she said. - -After closing the door, he sat down opposite her on the guest mat. -Behind her, a gaudy arras hid the hut's other room. "You are here to -wait for Eldoria?" she asked. - -Blake nodded. "And you?" - -She laughed. "I am here because I live here," she said. - -He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. 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. - -"How old are you?" Blake asked. - -"Fourteen." - -"And what are you going to be when you grow up?" - -"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the -mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an -institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to -give me my freedom." - -"I see," Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. "Homework?" - -She shook her head. "In addition to my courses at the mission school, I -am studying the humanities." - -"Xenophon," Blake said. "And I suppose Plato too." - -"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of -them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person." - -"I'm sure you will be," Blake said, looking at the arras. - -"My name is Deirdre." - -"Nathan," Blake said. "Nathan Blake." - -"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais." - - * * * * * - -She got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame -flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then -he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he -was. - -Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent -of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom. -She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in -profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose -and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column -of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken -up the _Anabasis_ again, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the -walls. - -He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into -the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom, -and much more richly appointed. 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." - -"It's not that so much," Blake said. - -"What?" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his.... - -He rose up once in the night, thinking to find his hotel bed. His next -awakening was in the grayness of dawn, and he got up and dressed and -moved silently to the doorway. The girl slept just without the arras on -a thin sleeping-mat, and he had to step over her to gain the anteroom. -In sleep, a strand of her copper-colored hair had tumbled down across -her forehead and lay like a lovely flower upon the virginal whiteness -of her skin. There was something saintly about her quiet face. - -When he reached the alley he began to run, and he did not stop running -till the chocoletto sector was far behind him. - - * * * * * - -The hill was a memory-image and Aldebaran 12 rain-country hills were -notoriously steep. Blake was breathing hard when he reached the crest. - -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. The trio seemed -a little closer now. - -Ever since he had first set foot into his mind, some ten hours ago, -they had been on his trail, but for some reason he had been unable -to bring himself to go back and find out who they were and what they -wanted. Hence he was as vexed with himself as he was with them. - -After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started -across the Deneb 1 wasteland. 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. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her -presence. - -Mind-country was as temporally inconsecutive as it was topographically -incongruous, so Blake was not surprised when the Deneb 1 wasteland gave -way to an expanse of boyhood meadow. Near the meadow was the house -where Blake had lived at a much later date. In reality, the places were -as far apart in miles as they were in years, but here in the country -of his mind they existed side by side, surrounded by heterogeneous -landscapes from all over the civilized sector of the galaxy and by the -sharply demarcated spectra of a hundred different suns. A few of the -suns were in the patchwork sky--Sirius, for example, and its twinkling -dwarf companion. Most of them, however, were present only in their -remembered radiance. To add to the confusion, scattered night memories -interrupted the hodge-podge horizon with columns of darkness, and here -and there the gray column of a dawn or dusk memory showed. - -The house was flanked on one side by a section of a New Earth spaceport -and on the other by an excerpt of an Ex-earth city-block. Behind it -flowed a brief blue stretch of Martian waterway. - -Sabrina's footsteps led up to the front door, and the door itself was -ajar. Perhaps she was still inside. Perhaps she was watching him even -now through one of the remembered windows. He scanned them with a -professional eye, but saw no sign of her. - -Warily he stepped inside, adjusting the temperature of his all-weather -jacket to the remembered air-conditioning. His father was sitting in -the living room, smoking, and watching 3V. He had no awareness of -Blake. At Blake's entry he went right on smoking and watching as though -the door had neither opened nor closed. He would go right on smoking -and watching till Blake died and the conglomeration of place-times -that constituted Blake's mind-world ceased to be. Ironically, he was -watching nothing. The 3V program that had been in progress at the time -of the unconscious materialization had failed to come through. - - * * * * * - -The memory was a treasured one--the old man had perished in a 'copter -crash several years ago--and for a long while Blake did not move. -He had never been in his own mind before. Consequently he was more -affected than he might otherwise have been. Finally, stirring himself, -he walked out into the kitchen. On a shelf above the sink stood a gaily -colored box of his mother's favorite detergent with a full-length -drawing of Vera Velvetskin, the company's blond and chic visual symbol, -on the front. His mother was standing before the huge automatic range, -preparing a meal she had served twenty-three years ago. He regarded her -with moist eyes. She had died a dozen years before his father, but the -wound that her death had caused had never healed. He wanted to go up -behind her and touch her shoulder and say, "What's for supper, mom?" -but he knew it would do no good. For her he had no reality, not only -because he was far in her future, but because in his mind-world she was -a mortal and he, a god--a picayune god, perhaps, but a real one. - -As he was about to turn away, the name-plate on the range caught his -eye, and thinking that he had read the two words wrong, he stepped -closer so that he could see them more clearly. No, he had made no -mistake: the first word was "Sabrina", and the second was "York". - -He stepped back. Odd that a kitchen range should have the same name as -his quarry. But perhaps not unduly so. Giving appliances human names -had been common practice for centuries. Even a name like "Sabrina -York", while certainly not run-of-the-mill, was bound to be duplicated -in real life. Nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness accompanied him when -he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor. - -He went through each room systematically, but saw no sign of Sabrina -York. He lingered for some time in his own room, wistfully watching his -fifteen-year-old self lolling on the bed with a dog-eared copy of _The -Galaxy Boys and the Secret of the Crab Nebula_, then he stepped back -out into the hall and started to descend the stairs. - -At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front -yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the -panes, and came to an abrupt halt. 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. 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. -Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to -attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared -to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail -led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little -bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony -was over. He had no choice. - - * * * * * - -The bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches -traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints -slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had -paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain -tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile -and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the -remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he -had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned -upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to -cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on -the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with -streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have -been feeling old to have pictured himself like that! - -Deirdre was speaking. "Yes," she was saying, "at nine o'clock. And I -should very much like for you to come." - -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! Did _he_ scrimp and go without -in order to put me through high school and college? 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. 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." - -She stood up. "You won't come--I know you won't." She stamped her foot. -"And you won't come to the prom either. I know that too. I knew it all -along. Sometimes I'm tempted to--" Abruptly she broke off. "Very well -then," she went on, "I'll say good-by now then." - -Blake Past stood up too. "No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority -house with you." - -She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her -hauteur. "If you wish," she said. - - * * * * * - -Blake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered -halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other -people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to -register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present. -All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the -girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat. - -Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying -at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him. - -His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction -was shock. His third was fear. - -His amazement resulted from recognition. One of the three women arrayed -before him was Miss Stoddart, his boyhood Sunday-school teacher. -Standing next to her in a familiar blue uniform was Officer Finch, -the police woman who had maintained law and order in the collective -elementary school he had attended. Standing next to Officer Finch was -blond and chic Vera Velvetskin, whose picture he had seen on box after -countless box of his mother's favorite detergent. - -His shock resulted from the expressions on the three faces. Neither -Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch ever particularly liked him, but they -had never particularly disliked him either. This Miss Stoddart and this -Officer Finch disliked him, though. They hated him. They hated him so -much that their hatred had thinned out their faces and darkened their -eyes. More shocking yet, Vera Velvetskin, who had never existed save -in some copywriter's mind, hated him too. In fact, judging from the -greater thinness of her face and the more pronounced darkness of her -eyes, she hated him even more than Miss Stoddart and Officer Finch did. - -His fear resulted from the realization that his mind-world contained -phenomena it had no right to contain--not if he was nearly as -well-adjusted as he considered himself to be. The three women standing -before him definitely were not memory-images. They were too vivid, for -one thing. For another, they were aware of him. What were they, then? -And what were they doing in his mind? - -He asked the two questions aloud. - -Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at -his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. "You ask us that?" Miss -Stoddart said. "Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!" -said Officer Finch. "And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of -righteousness!" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together, -blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in -unison: "You know who we are, Nathan Blake. _You_ know who we are!" - -Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled. - - * * * * * - -It had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his -own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial -universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the -objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but -universes nonetheless. - -The discovery came about quite by accident. After projecting himself -into a patient's memory one day, a psychologist named Trevor suddenly -found himself clinging to the slope of a traumatically distorted -mountain. His patient was beside him. - -The mountain proved to be an unconscious memory-image out of the -patient's boyhood, and its country proved to be the country of the -patient's mind. After many trials and errors, Trevor managed to get -both himself and his patient back to the objective world, and not long -afterward he was able to duplicate the feat on another case. - -The next logical step was to enter his own mind, and this he also -succeeded in doing. - -It was inevitable that Trevor should write a book about his discovery -and set about founding a new school of psychology. It was equally -inevitable that he should acquire enemies as well as disciples. -However, as the years passed and the new therapy which he devised cured -more and more psychoses, the ranks of his disciples swelled and those -of his enemies shrank. When, shortly before his death, he published a -paper explaining how anyone could enter his or her own mind-world at -will, his niche in the Freudian hall of fame was assured. - -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. In order to return to the -objective world, it was necessary in both cases to locate the most -recently materialized place-time and take one step beyond it. - -By their very nature, mind-countries were confusing. They existed on -a plane of reality that bore no apparent relationship to the plane -of the so-called objective universe. In fact, so far as was known, -this secondary--or subjective--reality was connected to so-called -true reality only through the awareness of the various creators. In -addition, these countries had no outward shape in the ordinary sense of -the word, and while most countries contained certain parallel images, -these images were subject to the interpretation of the individual -creator. As a result they were seldom identical. - - * * * * * - -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. Society's answer was -the psyche-police, and the psyche-police hadn't been in action very -long before the first private psycheye appeared. - -Blake was one of a long line of such operators. - -So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a -criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been -a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York -had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used -the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened -on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had -ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image. - -Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office -hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case -he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its -thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had -done so after accepting his case--or was it before? He couldn't quite -remember--the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed -open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray. - -He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the -woman's handkerchief with the initials "SB" embroidered on it lying -by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry -was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had -entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit. - -Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless -she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently -materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was -assured. - -Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past, -and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances -whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How, -then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it -to enable her to use it as a point of entry? - -The other thing that bothered him was of a much more urgent nature. -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. One woman whom he had apprehended in her -own mind had created a walking-talking Virgin Mary who watched over -her wherever she went. And once, after tracking down an ex-enlisted -man, he had found his quarry holed up in the memory-image of an army -barracks with a ten-star general waiting on him hand and foot. But -these, and other, similar, cases, had to do with mal-adjusted people, -and moreover, the super-image in each instance had been an image that -the person involved had _wanted_ to create. Therefore, even assuming -that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why -had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart, -Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin? - - * * * * * - -They followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of -Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from -the ecstatic "oh's" and "ah's" they kept giving voice to, the place -delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them -standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a -doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine, -gazing up into the branches at a bird that had come through only as a -vague blur of beak and feathers. - -Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a -memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set -aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake -sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place -for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions -of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a -dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense -of the word English at all--the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly -enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now -the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the -other famous dwellings. - -Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints -showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path -and let herself in the door. - -They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no -reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that -had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical -repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as -fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well. - -He remembered the living room distinctly--the flagstone floor, the huge -grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and -platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly -in a corner, the bare wooden table-- - -He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the -table no longer bare. - -A man sat on the former and a bottle of wine stood on the latter. -Moreover, the room showed signs of having been lived in for a long -time. The floor was covered with tracked-in dirt and the walls were -blackened from smoke. The grill-work of the hearth was begrimed with -grease. - - * * * * * - -Whatever else he might be the man sitting at the table was not an -image out of the past. He was too vividly real. He was around Blake's -age, and about Blake's height and build. However, he was given to -fat. His paunch contrasted jarringly with Blake's trim waist. His -vaguely familiar face was swollen--probably from the wine he had -drunk--and his too-full cheeks were well on the way to becoming jowls. -His bloodshot eyes were underscored with shadows, and his clothing -consisted of odds and ends out of Blake's past: a tattered, too-tight -pullover with the letter "L" on the front, a pair of ragged red-plaid -hunting breeches and a pair of cracked riding-boots. - -Blake advanced across the room and picked up the bottle. One sniff told -him that it came from a memory-image of a Martian wine-cellar. He set -the bottle back down. "Who are you?" he demanded. - -The man looked up at him sardonically. "Call me Smith," he said. "If I -told you who I really am, you wouldn't believe me." - -"What are you doing in my mind?" - -"You should know the answer to that one. You put me here." - -Blake stared "Why, I've never even seen you before!" - -"Granted," Smith said. "But you used to know me. As a matter of fact, -you and I used to get along together famously." He reached around and -got a cup off the wall-rack. "Pull up a chair and have a drink. I've -been expecting you." - -Bewildered, Blake sat but shoved the cup aside. "I don't drink," he -said. - -"That's right," Smith said. "Stupid of me to forget." He took a swig -out of the bottle, set it back down. "Let's see, it's been seven years -now. Right?" - -"How the devil did you know?" - -Smith sighed. "Who should know better than I? Who indeed? But I guess -I can't kick too much. You certainly materialized enough of the stuff -in your--shall we say 'wilder'?--days." He shook his head. "No, I can't -say I've suffered in that respect." - -Comprehension came to Blake then. He had heard of the parasites who -lived in other person's minds, but this was the first time he had ever -happened to run across one. "Why, you're nothing but a mind-comber," he -said. "I should have guessed!" - -Smith looked hurt. "You do me a grave injustice, friend. A very grave -injustice. And after my being so considerate of this cottage and using -the back door and everything! The young lady who stopped by a little -while ago was much more understanding than you are." - -"You talked with her then?" Blake asked. He suppressed a shudder. For -some reason it horrified him that his quarry should be aware that so -despicable a creature inhabited his mind. "What--what does she look -like?" - -"_You_ know what she looks like." - -"But I don't. I took the case on such short notice that I didn't have a -chance to get a picture or even a description of her." - -Smith regarded him shrewdly. "What did she do?" - -"She murdered her father," Blake said. - -Smith guffawed. "I should have known it would be something like that. -Ties in perfectly. By the way, what's her name?" - -"Sabrina York--not that it's any of your business." - -"Oh, but it is my business--as much my business as yours. As a matter -of fact, I'm going to help you find her." - -Blake stood up. "No, you're not," he said. "You're going to get out of -my mind and you're going to stay out--" - -He paused as a knock sounded on the door. Smith answered it, and a -moment later Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin filed -into the room and arrayed themselves before Blake. Again three arms -were raised; again three forefingers were pointed accusingly at his -chest. "Wretched creature!" said Miss Stoddart. "Consorting with so -foul a fiend!" said Officer Finch. "And in so vile a den of iniquity!" -said Vera Velvetskin. - - * * * * * - -For a while Smith just stood there staring at the three visitors. 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. Then they fairly scampered from the room. Officer Finch -was the last in line, and Smith helped her along with the toe of one -of Blake's cracked boots. The shriek she emitted coincided with the -slamming of the door. - -Smith leaned weakly against the door and began to laugh. "Shut up," -Blake said, "and tell me who they are!" - -Tears were rolling down Smith's blotchy cheeks. "_You_ know who they -are. You created them, didn't you? The skinny one is the one who told -you about Moses in the bulrushes and the husky one is the one who saw -to it that you didn't step out of line in school and the one with the -nice shape is the one you associate with the immaculateness of your -mother's kitchen sink. Spiritual virtue, civil virtue--and physical -virtue!" - -"But why did I create them?" Blake demanded. "And why are they -following me around like a bunch of vindictive harpies?" - -"There!" Smith said. "You almost had it. Not harpies, though--Furies. -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. "All that may be," -he said, "and maybe I did know you once upon a time. But don't let me -find you here when I get back. Understand?" He paused in the doorway, -frowning. "Tell me one more thing, though. Why Burns's birthplace? Why -should a memory-image like this appeal to a mind-comber?" - -Smith grinned. "Bobby Burns has always fascinated me--just as he has -you. Or should I say 'us'?" The grin turned into a leer, and he picked -up the bottle and waved it back and forth like a baton-- - - My love, she's but a lassie yet, - My love, she's but a lassie yet; - We'll let her stand a year or twa, - She'll no be half sae saucy yet; - I rue the day I sought her O! - I rue the day I sought her O! - Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd, - But he may say he has bought her O. - -Furious, Blake strode down the path. Smith's taunting laughter sounding -in his wake. - -The three Erinyes were waiting for him at the gate, and fell in behind -him when he turned down the lane. He lost Sabrina's trail in front of -the farmhouse where Coleridge wrote _Kubla Khan_, picked it up again -opposite the Mitre Tavern. Presently it veered right, passed between -Milton's birthplace and Stratford-on-Avon, and entered a night-image. -He was halfway down a dim-lit street, the Erinyes just behind him, -before he realized where he was. - - * * * * * - -Disciplined trees stood at attention along two suburban strips of -lawn. Beyond them, half-remembered houses showed. One of them stood -out vividly--a round, modernesque affair surrounded by a quarter-acre -of grass and shrubs and flowers. It was the house he had rented while -Deirdre Eldoria was attending high school. It was a house he had hoped -never to see again. - -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 room was a far cry from the one he had just left. The hearth -was built of meticulously mortared red bricks. The thick rug was a -two-dimensional garden of multicolored flowers. There were exquisite -tables and flower-petal stools. There were deep chairs that begged to -be sat in. A sybaritic sofa occupied an entire wall. - -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. Now she returned -her attention to the book, and Blake Past leaned forward in order -to read the passage that she was in doubt about. And as he did so, -her copper-colored hair touched his cheek and the warm tingle of the -contact traveled down through the years to Blake Present. - -Overcome by the poignancy of the moment, he stepped back from the -window, colliding with the three Erinyes as he did so. They moved a -little distance away, arrayed themselves, and started to raise their -right arms. "Oh, can it!" Blake said disgustedly. In the darkness -behind him, someone laughed. "_My love, she's but a lassie yet_," Smith -sang in a cracked baritone. "_We'll let her stand a year or twa, -she'll no be half sae saucy yet!_" - -Blake whirled, and flashed his light into the shadows. The light picked -up Smith's retreating figure. "Get out of my mind!" Blake shouted. "Do -you hear me? Get out of my mind!" - -Laughter danced in the darkness, silence ensued. Turning back toward -the window, Blake saw that Blake Past and Deirdre Yesterday were -leaving the living room. He watched them come out the front door, walk -around the corner of the house and start down a starlit garden path. - -Forsaking Sabrina's trail, he followed them along the path, the Erinyes -at his heels, and watched them sit down on a little white bench beside -a rose-riotous trellis. As he watched, Blake Past broke one of the -roses free and pinned it in Deirdre's cupreous hair. - -Blake Present plunged away from the moment and picked up Sabrina's -trail again. _Why did I sit there beside her?_ he demanded silently -of the remembered stars. _Sit there beside her like her lover when -the roses were in bloom? Father-protector--father-fool! I slept with -her mistress, and I would have been her Naoise! Within earshot of her -conched ear I lay with her black whore-mother, and when the satyr in me -was replete I stepped over her thin child's body and ran away!_ - -Behind him in the night, the Erinyes hissed and murmured to each other -gloatingly. - - * * * * * - -Sabrina's trail had been erratic before. Now it became even more so. -It approached this boundary and that, only to veer off in another -direction. Sometimes it doubled back upon itself, and each time -Blake was able to cut down on her lead. He should have been elated. -Strangely, however, he was not. Instead, a feeling of uneasiness -afflicted him, increasing as the distance between them shrank. - -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. - -He forced himself to move forward among the gray ghosts of trees. He -crossed a shallow, scum-covered stream, leaping from rock to rock, and -afterward climbed a hill. Hearing a loud splash behind him, he turned -and looked back. - -Miss Stoddart, in trying to cross the stream, had lost her balance -and fallen in, and Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin were trying to -help her to her feet. As he watched, they too lost their balance and -joined their companion in the greenish water. There followed a period -of hysterical floundering, after which the trio waded dripping and -bedraggled to the bank. - -Blake would have laughed, had not the place-time oppressed him. -Descending the opposite slope of the hill, he entered a wide valley. -Presently he glimpsed the buildings of the Great Starway Cartel -processing plant through the trees. - -The overseer's bungalow was visible just to the left, and it was toward -this latter structure that Sabrina's footprints pointed. The original -clearing had swarmed with chocolettos. Blake's, however, did not. In -his single-mindedness of six years ago he had had eyes for only two -people--the overseer and Deirdre. - -Stepping into the clearing, he saw the man now--the bearded bestial -face, the long arms, the large and hairy hands--and he saw the -fifteen-year old girl lying on the ground where the man had thrown her -after she had slapped his face. After a moment he saw himself of six -years ago step out of the grove of rubber trees and advance white-faced -into the scene. - -"No!" the girl lying on the ground cried. "He'll kill you!" - -Blake Past ignored her. The overseer had drawn a knife. Now the knife -flashed, and a streak of crimson appeared on Blake Past's arm. The -knife flashed again, but this time it described a large arc and landed -a dozen feet away. Now the overseer's throat was between Blake Past's -hands, and the bearded face was changing colors. It grew green first, -then blue. Blake Past shook the man several times before letting him -slip to the ground. He dropped a handful of _quandoe_-notes on the -heaving chest. - -"That's what you paid for her," he said. He withdrew a paper from his -breast pocket, unfolded it and held it before the gasping overseer's -eyes. "Sign it," he said, handing it to him. - - * * * * * - -The overseer did so, lying on his side. Blake Past pocketed the paper -and helped the girl to her feet. The tarn-blue eyes were wide in the -thin child's face. "Eldoria died," she blurted. "They--" - -Blake Past nodded. "I know. But they can't sell you any more. I own you -now." - -"I am glad," the girl said. "I knew from the first moment I saw you -that you were noble. I shall like being your slave, and I will serve -you very faithfully." - -Blake Past looked away. Blake Present lowered his eyes. "Can you walk?" -Blake Past asked. - -"Oh, yes. I am very strong." - -She took a step forward, swayed and would have fallen, had not Blake -Past caught her. "I--I guess I am not quite as strong as I thought," -she said. "But I shall recuperate swiftly. Why did you come back, -_mensakin_ Blake?" - -"I came back to buy you from Eldoria," Blake Past said. He did not add -that the memory of her saintly face as he had seen it when he stepped -over her had lasted a whole year, or that his dreams of her had made a -mockery of his sleep. "When I found out that Eldoria had died and that -you had been sold again, I came directly here." - -"You will not be sorry. I will make you an excellent slave." - -"I didn't buy you for that reason. I bought you to give you your--" - -"There is one request I would like to make, however," the girl -interrupted. "I would like to take 'Eldoria' as my surname. She was -very kind to me, and I would like to repay her in some way." - -"Very well," Blake Past said. "'Deirdre Eldoria' it will be, then." - -He picked her up and carried her into the grove. Blake Present watched -them till they disappeared among the trees. He knew where Blake Past -was taking her--had taken her. Back to the settlement, and from there -to the spaceport, and thence to Ex-earth. Ex-earth and high school, -then college-- - -She had never been his slave, though. He had been hers. - - * * * * * - -Sabrina's trail circled back into the grove and left the place-time by -a different route. Immediately it became erratic again. It was evident -to Blake that she was searching for a particular memory-image and that -she was having trouble finding it. Perhaps she knew of some moment in -his past where she would be safe even from him. - -When he stepped into the little Dubhe 4 settlement he instinctively -assumed that it was on the same chronological plane as the plantation -place-time. However, the darkness that instantly enclosed him and the -stars that sprang to life in the sky apprised him that such could not -possibly be the case. This was the Dubhe 4 settlement of seven years -ago. This was the night he had sat in the chocoletto cafe and watched -Eldoria dance--the night he had kept a tryst with her in her hut; the -night he had first seen Deirdre. - -But why had Sabrina come here? Where in this wretched little -memory-image did she expect to find sanctuary? - -Suddenly he knew. Eldoria's hut. He would rather die than enter it -again, and somehow Sabrina must have discovered his attitude. Probably -even now she was within those four remembered walls, laughing at him. - -Anger kindled in him. The effrontery of her! Daring to pre-empt a -moment that belonged solely to him! He would enter the hut if it killed -him. If he had to, he would tear down its walls and banish its memory -forever from the country of his mind. - -With the aid of his pocket torch, he found her footprints in the dust. -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. It wasn't his business to know how or -why she had done the deed. It was his business to find and apprehend -her. - -Presently, in the darkness before him, he made out a motionless -white-robed figure. He approached it warily, found to his consternation -that it was frozen in the act of taking a step forward. He shone his -light into the face. It was dark bronze in hue. The eyes were wide -apart, and the teeth showed in a vivid white line between half-parted -purple lips. Eldoria, on her way to keep her tryst with him.... - -But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient, -Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past -in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had -either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a -professional to do the job. - -Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing. - -He went on, not quite so confidently now. He had proceeded less than a -dozen steps when he saw the brooch. It was lying in the dust just to -the left of one of Sabrina's footprints, and it threw back the light -of the torch in glittering shards that hurt his eyes. Disbelievingly, -he picked it up. The Erinyes clustered around him to see what he had -found. They were still wet and dishelved and reeked of the piercing -odor of decayed algae. They looked anything but happy. - -Blake turned the brooch over in the palm of his hand. The inscription -on the back leaped up and smote him right between the eyes, and he -staggered and nearly fell. _To Deirdre Eldoria_, he read, _from Nathan -Blake._ - -He stood there numbly for a long while, not thinking--unable to think. -Finally he slipped the brooch into his pocket and moved on. - - * * * * * - -He was trembling when he reached the door of Eldoria's hut. The -footprints led straight up to the threshold and came to an end. -Diffidently he touched the primitive knob, turned it and pushed the -door open. He stepped inside and closed the door in the faces of the -three Erinyes. The remembered anteroom seemed smaller and more sordid -than the original, but he knew that it was really no different. He had -remembered it accurately enough. It was he who was different, not the -room. - -Opposite the door, Deirdre Yesterday sat immobile before the arras. -Equally immobile, Blake Past sat facing her. Deirdre Yesterday's lips -were parted in the midst of uttering a soundless word. The _Anabasis_ -lay open on her lap. - -Blake Present found it difficult to breathe. The difficulty stemmed -from a physical as well as an emotional source. Someone was burning -incense. - -He wiped his forehead. Then, bracing himself, he walked over to the -arras, parted it and stepped into the inner room. - -The inner room was empty. - -A small notebook lay upon the dais among the scattered scarlet -cushions. Near it was a faint depression in the foamy coverlet. Blake -picked up the notebook. The first page contained a hastily written -message: - - _Nate dearest, I've lost my nerve, and by the time you read this I - shall have run away. Please forgive me for disobeying you. I wanted - desperately to fulfill your wishes by going to New Earth and - attending Trevor University, and now I shall, because sitting here - in this little room I have faced at last the very real possibility - that you really do not love me. I had hoped that by entering your - mind and leading you back through our moments together to the - moment when we met and by freezing that moment and letting you find - me in this room, you would be shocked into associating me with - Eldoria rather than with the naive little girl sitting outside the - arras--with sex, rather than with saintliness; that I could bring - you to understand that the little-girl image you have of me is as - unrealistic as the father-image you have of yourself. 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. - -Straightening, he surveyed the golden tapestries that adorned the -room's four walls. It was not at all difficult to pick out the one -behind which she was standing. It was difficult, though, to go over and -raise it. Her face was pale, and the khaki hiking suit she was wearing -made it seem all the more so. She stepped out of her hiding place, and -he let the tapestry fall into place behind her. - -She would not meet his eyes. "In another moment I would have been -gone," she said. "Oh, Nate, why did you come so soon!" - -Suddenly the arras parted, and Smith stepped into the room. Without -pausing, he advanced across the resilient carpet, shoved Blake aside -and took Deirdre into his arms. He grasped her hair, pulled her head -back and bent his evil face toward hers. - -Outraged, Blake seized the man's shoulder, spun him around and struck -him in the mouth. Instantly his own mouth went numb, and he tasted -blood. - -He knew who Smith was then. - -Glancing into Deirdre's eyes, he saw that she knew too, and realized -that she had known all along. - -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. Hence the latter had had to go. Smith, -therefore, was but another aspect of himself--a flesh-and-blood alter -ego who was overplaying his role in an attempt to force Blake into a -response that would make the two of them one again. - -Knowing who Smith was supplied Blake with the answer to who Sabrina -York was. - -Unconsciously he had been aware all along of Smith's presence in the -English park image. When he discovered that Deirdre had entered his -mind he had been so utterly horrified over the prospect of her running -into his depraved alter ego that he had unconsciously concealed her -presence from himself by supplying her with a fictitious identity. She -had deliberately ransacked the little office and left her handkerchief -behind in the process in order to apprise him of her whereabouts and to -induce him to follow her, but he had rejected the initials "D. E." on -her handkerchief and substituted the initials of the first name that -came into his mind--Sabrina York. Next he had needed a logical reason -to go after her and bring her back. His profession had supplied part of -it, and his father-complex had supplied the other. - -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. The column of Deirdre's neck was strong and -shapely. Her breasts were in full and virginal bloom. _Who is she that -looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and -terrible as an army with banners?_ Hungrily Blake took her in his arms. - -When, a long time later, he released her, Smith had disappeared. - - * * * * * - -The three Erinyes were standing forlornly in the street when Blake and -Deirdre left the hut. The hatred had vanished from their faces and they -were looking at each other as though they had just lost their last -friend. Certainly they had lost their _raison d'etre_. Blake sighed. -Having created them, he was responsible for their welfare. Now that -they were unemployed it was up to him to do something about it. - -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. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girl in His Mind, by Robert F. Young - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN HIS MIND *** - -***** This file should be named 52845.txt or 52845.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/2/8/4/52845/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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