The hound of death

"No, no." Hamer leaned forward eagerly. "They develop. Each time I see a little more. It's difficult to explain. You see, I'm always conscious of reaching a certain point - the music carried me there - not direct, but by a succession of waves, each reaching higher than the last, until the highest point where one can go no further. I stay there until I'm dragged back. It isn't a place, it's more a state. Well, not just at first, but after a little while, I began to understand that there were other things all round me waiting until I was able to perceive them. Think of a kitten. It has eyes, but at first it can't see with them. It's blind and had to learn to see. Well, that was what it was to me. Mortal eyes and ears were no good to me, but there was something corresponding to them that hadn't yet been developed - something that wasn't bodily at all. And little by little that grew... here were sensations of light... then of sound... then of colour... All very vague and unformulated. It was more the knowledge of things than seeing or hearing them. First it was light, a light that grew stronger and clearer... then sand, great stretches of reddish sand... and here and there straight, long lines of water like canals -"

Seldon drew in his breath sharply. "Canals! That's interesting. Go on."

"But these things didn't matter - they didn't count any longer. The real things were the things I couldn't see yet - but I heard them... It was a sound like the rushing of wings... Somehow, I can't explain why, it was glorious! There's nothing like it here. And then came another glory - I saw them - the Wings! Oh, Seldon, the Wings!"

"But what were they? Men - angels - birds?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see - not yet. But the colour of them! Wing colour - we haven't got it here - it's a wonderful colour."

"Wing colour?" repeated Seldon. "What's it like?"

Hamer flung up his hand impatiently. "How can I tell you? Explain the colour blue to a blind person! It's a colour you've never seen - Wing colour!"

"Well?"

"Well? That's all. That's as far as I've got. But each time the coming back has been worse - more painful. I can't understand that. I'm convinced my body never leaves the bed. In this place I get to I'm convinced I've got no physical presence. Why should it hurt so confoundedly then?"

Seldon shook his head in silence.

"It's something awful - the coming back. The pull of it - then the pain, pain in every limb and every nerve, and my ears feel as though they were bursting. Then everything presses so, the weight of it all, the dreadful sense of imprisonment. I want light, air, space - above all space to breathe in! And I want freedom."

"And what," asked Seldon, "of all the other things that used to mean so much to you?"

"That's the worst of it. I care for them still as much as, if not more than, ever. And these things, comfort, luxury, pleasure, seem to pull opposite ways to the Wings. It's a perpetual struggle between them - and I can't see how it's going to end."

Seldon sat silent. The strange tale he had been listening to was fantastic enough in all truth. Was it all a delusion, a wild hallucination - or could it by any possibility be true? And if so, why Hamer, of all men...? Surely the materialist, the man who loved the flesh and denied the spirit, was the last man to see the sights of another world.

Across the table Hamer watched him anxiously.

"I suppose," said Seldon slowly, "that you can only wait. Wait and see what happens."

"I can't! I tell you I can't! Your saying that shows you don't understand. It's tearing me in two, this awful struggle - this killing, long-drawn-out fight between - between -" He hesitated.

"The flesh and the spirit?" suggested Seldon.

Hamer stared heavily in front of him. "I suppose one might call it that. Anyway, it's unbearable... I can't get free..."

Again Bernard Seldon shook his head. He was caught up in the grip of the inexplicable. He made one more suggestion.

"If I were you," he advised, "I would get hold of that cripple."

But as he went home, he muttered to himself: "Canals - I wonder."

III

Silas Hamer went out of the house the following morning with a new determination in his step. He had decided to take Seldon's advice and find the legless man. Yet inwardly he was convinced that his search would be in vain and that the man would have vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up.

The dark buildings on either side of the passageway shut out the sunlight and left it dark and mysterious. Only in one place, halfway up it, there was a break in the wall, and through it there fell a shaft of golden light that illuminated with radiance a figure sitting on the ground. A figure - yes, it was the man!

The instrument of pipes leaned against the wall beside his crutches, and he was covering the paving stones with designs in coloured chalk. Two were completed, sylvan scenes of marvellous beauty and delicacy, swaying trees and a leaping brook that seemed alive.