Phoenix by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Ted White

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley & Ted White [Bradley, Marion Zimmer & White, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Her voice was levelled when she spoke, a flat surface spread thin over panic; toneless. "I'm not a—a nuclear physicist, but it sounds as if you were trying to put the theory of atoms and force-fields into one word. Like—matter not being solid but just little bits of loose energy whirling around and building up into atoms and the atoms into molecules."

"That—I guess so. As if I'd learned to—oh, to see into them. But how? Why?"

"It takes in a lot of territory," she said, still the flat stretched toneless voice. "Just to wake up and find out you had it, whatever it was."

He hardly heard. He drew himself upright, his hands clasped, tensing, searching for words. "Like—like ice and water and steam are all the same thing, only we see them differently. We just see different aspects of the same thing, and it's all the same, all this—motion. And I could control it! I could control everything!"

"Max—"

"Yes, I know. It's frightening. I'm still afraid, and I think I've been afraid ever since I woke up from that dream. I'm afraid to really try anything—oh, thank God you came, Fran! Thank God! I think I'd have cracked up if you hadn't!"

But the moment of complete and intense rapport was gone; Fran had drawn away from him again, and he felt cold and afraid. He had said too much; she was afraid of him again, and her fear, like her love, communicated itself to him through the impalpable fibres in his very skin. He soaked up her fear and babbled it forth again.

"I've been afraid to really try anything, because that's playing God. I've been doing parlor tricks, Fran, because I haven't really wanted to face the fact that I could do so much more than that!

"Think about it! I turned the air around myself to flames—and burned off my pajamas before I thought to do more than protect my body—because that was sort of wild and weird and ego-inflating. I've wished my clothes on, and levitated, and moved things around—but these are little things! Petty things. But Fran, I could have done so much more—I could wipe out war—there are a thousand ways I could do it. I could feed the starving and house the homeless—Hell, that's minuscule, I could change this whole damn planet, I could change myself, make my body so I could go anywhere, anywhere in the whole physical universe—Fran, I could be God!"

His whole body shook. "I could be God, and I'm playing with burning carpets! Fran—oh, Fran, it's too much for me! I'm not God, I don't want it, I'm too small for it—I wish it was only a dream and now I could really wake up and find it never happened—oh, Fran, Fran, tell me what I am, tell me what to do!"

Aware only of pain and terror, he felt his face wet and did not even know he was sobbing.

"You're Max, Max," Fran wept, "You're Max, and I love you—"

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