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it boomed from the rocky floor--it even floated down the length of the
infinitely-stretching Corridor.
The voice spoke in thunder, yet softly.
Well, Gentlemen?
Krane stared for a second at the woman-thing; then he looked about wildly,
trying to find the source of the voice. His head swung back and forth as
though it was manipulated by strings from above. Well, what?
he shouted to no one.
Have you realized the truth yet?
What truth? What are you talking about? Who is that? Is it you? chimed in
Marmorth, bathed in sudden fear. He pointed an accusing finger at the
woman-thing.
The Corridor shimmered oddly. It lived just behind the stone walls of the
volcano.
I m a voice, Gentlemen. A voice and an illusion. Just an illusion, that s all,
Gentlemen. Just an illusion from both of your minds. Made of equal portions of
your minds. For you are one as strong as the other.
There was a pause. Then:
But tell me, have you realized what you should have known before you were
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foolish enough to enter the
Corridor?
Krane looked at Marmorth with suspicion. For the first time it occurred to him
that perhaps this was a trick on the other s part. Marmorth, recognizing the
glance, shrugged his shoulders eloquently. No! Tell us, then!
What should we have known?
The only real answer as to who is right; which Theorem is the correct one!
Tell me, tell me! they shouted, almost together.
There was silence for a moment. The woman-thing ran a scarlet-tipped hand
across the hideous lizard snout, as though searching for a way to phrase what
was coming. Then the single word sounded in the heart of the volcano.
Neither.
Krane and Marmorth stared past the woman-thing, stared at each other in
confusion. N-neither? shouted
Marmorth incredulously. Are you mad! Of course one of us is right! Me! He
was shaking fists at the gruesome being before him. Illusion, perhaps; but an
illusion that was goading him.
Prove it! Prove it! screamed Krane, stepping forward, flat-footedly, as
though seeking to strike the woman-thing. Then the voice gave them the
solution and the proof that neither could contest, for both knew it to be true
on a level that defied mere conviction.
You are both egomaniacs. You could not possibly be convinced of the other s
viewpoint. Not in a hundred million years. The message dies between you. You
are both too tightly ensnared in yourselves!
The woman-thing suddenly began to shimmer. She became indistinct, and there
were many shadow-forms of her, surrounding her body like halos. Abruptly, she
disappeared from between them. Leaving them alone in the quickening darkness
of the volcano s throat.
Alone. Staring at each other with dawning comprehension, dawning belief.
They both realized it at the same moment. They both had the conviction of
their cause, yet they both knew the womanthing had been right.
Krane, said Marmorth, starting toward the black-bearded man, she s right,
you know. Perhaps we can get together and figure...
The other had started toward the older man as he had spoken. Yes, perhaps
there s something in what you say. Perhaps there s a...
At the instant they both realized it--the instant they considered the other s
viewpoint--the illusion barriers shattered, of course, and the red-hot lava
poured in on them, engulfing both men in a blistering inferno.
What kind of a culture are we breeding around us? A society in which everyone
tries to be average, right on the norm, the common denominator, the median,
the great leveler. College kids demonstrating a callow conservatism that urges
them not to stick their heads above the crowd, not to be noticed. Political
candidates so bland they must of necessity be faceless to gain identification
with their equally faceless constituents. A sameness in thinking, in demeanor,
in dress, in goals, in World Communism, famine, plague, pestilence or the
singing of The Everly Brothers, I fear for the safety of my country and its
people from this creeping paralysis of the ego. I have tried to say something
about it in
All the Sounds of Fear
Give me some light!
Cry: tormented, half-moan half-chant, cast out against a whispering darkness:
a man wound in white, arms upflung to roistering shadows, sooty sockets where
eyes had been, pleading, demanding, anger and hopelessness, anguish from the
soul into the world. He stumbled, a step, two, faltering, weak, the man
returned to the child, trying to find some exit from the washing sea of
darkness in which he trembled.
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Give me some light!
Around him a Greek chorus of sussurating voices. Plucking at his garments he
staggered toward an intimation of sound, a resting place, a goal. The man in
pain, the figure of all pain, all desperation, and nowhere in that circle of
painful light was there release from his torment. Sandaled feet stepping, each
one above an abyss, no hope and no safety; what can it mean to be so eternally
blind?
Again, Give me some light!
The last tortured ripping of the words from a throat raw with the hopelessness
of salvation. Then the man sank to the shadows that moved in on him. The face
half-hidden in chiaroscuro, sharp black, blanched white, down and down into
the grayness about his feet, the circle of blazing-white light pinpointing
him, a creature impaled on a shard of brilliance, till closing, closing,
closing it swallowed him, all gone to black, darkness within and without,
black even deeper, nothing, finis, end; silence.
Richard Becker, Oedipus, had played his first role. Twenty-four years later,
he would play it again, as his last. But before that final performance s
curtain could be rung, twenty-four years of greatness would have to strut
across stages of life and theater and emotion.
Time, passing.
When they had decided to cast the paranoid beggar in
Sweet Miracles, Richard Becker had gone to the
Salvation Army retail store and bought a set of rags that even the
sanctimonious charity workers staffing the shop tried to throw out as
unsaleable and foul. He bought a pair of cracked and soleless shoes that were
a size too large.
He bought a hat that had seen so many autumns of rain its brim had bowed and
withered under the onslaught. He bought a no-color vest from a suit long since
destroyed and a pair of pants whose seat sagged raggedly and a shirt with
three buttons gone and a jacket that seemed to typify every derelict who had
ever cadged an hour s sleep in an alley.
He bought these things over the protests of the kindly, white-haired women who
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