"Why are you calling, Andy?" "Because I love you. And I want to ask you a favor, Tina." "What, Husband?" "Will you undress for me now?" "Andy! My, my, my." He explained the situation to her. "Be careful," she said. "I love you." "I'll be careful. But I've got to be aware of myself as a physical being. You understand." She smiled. "May I take my time?" "Not too long." She was an uninhibited girl and took great pleasure in displaying herself. Her skin was pure white and her stomach smooth and softly rounded. He could feel the weight of her breasts on his palm. "God is good," he said. "Thank you." His glands flooded his body. His body ached to stroke, squeeze, kiss, penetrate. "You'd better go," he said. "Before I break the screen down." She bowed. "Live with God, Husband." "Live with God, Wife." * * * * * The screen faded. He put on his robe and jabbed the hypodermic into his wrist. Then he knelt to pray. He did not pray for power. Intelligence and hard work could give him that. He prayed for mercy, compassion, recognition of his own flawed nature. He prayed for courage and the end of fear. The balls danced between his hands. He sang the Song of Praise, the love song to the world. _Gloria mundi._ Glory in the world, glory in the flesh, glory in the flow of life. Creation is a flow and man a bubble bouncing on the flow. Bubble that will burst but bubble that is. Bubble that feels, strives, blends with other bubbles. Bubble that can fill Creation! He roared at the walls of existence. His mind yawned and stretched and came awake. He prowled across the woods and parks. Gigantic, he gazed at the mortals who stumbled through the shaded tunnels of the world. These are such as me. These share my doomed existence. And that one? That one lying in the brush with an axe? That one, preparing to kill, clawing since he was a baby at a world that torments him? That also is me. Smith rose to his knees and swung the axe. John Dyer crumpled with a severed spine. The axe swung twice and two men fell. The hunters dropped to their bellies. Rifles cracked. Bullets sang in the grass. Now they knew they had to kill Smith or die. Now they felt no mercy. Sordman hovered over them. What he feels, I will feel. His hate will be my hate. His anger mine. His hate must be absorbed in great compassion, in tenderness and rationality. _Or I will be destroyed with him._ In the room the balls spun and whirled. He lay prostrate on the floor, the yellow bomb-burst on his back. He was afraid. His weakness was naked. He had always known he would someday meet a personality he could not forgive. When that day came he would shatter and flee, like Smith, to any refuge he could make. "Show your heads! Show your heads and I'll kill you!" A bullet smashed into Smith's leg. He screamed and flailed the axe. Shouting curses and threats, he crawled through the brush. The hunters crawled after him.