In Between Dragons by Michael Kandel

Author:Michael Kandel [Kandel, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Bantam Sepctra Books
Published: 1990-09-25T23:00:00+00:00

17

When I alighted, my cape fluttering behind me, I found myself on a vast plain on which were mounds, here and there, of what appeared to be mucilage. “So this is dimension X,” I thought. Cautiously I probed, bracing myself for a blast of staggeringly ferocious, mind-bogglingly alien psi, but nothing of the sort happened. A few of the mounds of mucilage moved a little, shifted slowly, and I saw now that each of them had a pair of slender knobbed tentacles, like the horns of a snail. I noticed furthermore that the mounds exuded a smell not unlike that of dead leaves and dead fish. These must be, I told myself, the inhabitants of the psi-fiend’s home world. The psi-fiend’s brothers and sisters, in a manner of speaking. But they were so peaceful, so passive.

With even greater caution I attempted to enter into telepathic communication with them—or with the nearest one, which was about twenty meters away. Impossible.

The creature, if it was indeed thinking, was not thinking in any way I could identify as thought. There was not even the subpsychic hum one receives, back on Earth, from the trees and the grass and even the humble plankton on the bosom of the sea.

Only one thing remained for me to do, and old Borgenicht, I was sure, would have fainted dead away at the suggestion, for this was not only sticking one’s head into the lion’s mouth, this was climbing inside—completely—and taking up quarters in the lion’s stomach. I would become one of these mucilaginous beings. For how else was I to learn what made the psi-fiend tick?

The danger, of course, lay in the difficulty of return. Not only was one buried in the flesh, as it were, of another life-form, but one’s very mind—personality and will—became that of the creature. This was not mimicry, this was full noumenal and psychoconsubstantial similitude, and no little cunning was needed to guarantee that one would find the way back, from creature to man— particularly if the creature was reluctant to part with its quintessential itness.

Like a diver over unknown waters I held my nose, muttered a Tantric mantra, set my five-cent turtle to 8:15 P.M. and pulled out the alarm button, its rear right leg, then plunged headfirst into

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