Fire flashed within his skull and he felt one swift shriek of agony that took him in its claws and lifted him and shook him, jangling every nerve, grating every bone.
There was one thought, one fleeting thought that he tried to grasp and hold, but it wriggled from his brain like an eel slipping free from bloody ringers.
Change, said the thought. Change. Change.
He felt the change…felt it start even as he died.
And death was a soft thing, soft and black, cool and sweet and gracious. He slipped into it as a swimmer slips into the surf and it closed over him and held him and he felt the pulse and beat of it and knew the vastness and the sureness of it.
Back on Earth, the psych-tracer faltered to a stop and Christopher Adams went home for the first time in his life before the day was done.
XXVII
Herkimer lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was long in coming. And he wondered that he should sleep…that he should sleep and eat and drink as Man. For he was not a man, although he was as close to one as the human mind and human skill could come.
His origin was chemical and Man's was biological. He was the imitation and Man was reality. It is the method, he told himself, the method and terminology, that keeps me from being Man, for in all things else we are the same.
The method and the words and the tattoo mark I wear upon my brow.