Yesterday's doors
changed my mind, changed it though it meant banishment at least, or worse, for me. I rose and hurried after them, calling out a name. They did not turn, did not seem to hear me. In my mind I intended to call: "Master Bols! Master Bols!"

But not until I came to myself, whoever myself was beside Adam Everyman, in The Lab in the woods behind Westchester, did I realize that I was yelling, over and over again: "Doctor A! Doctor A! Doctor A!"

Amazed, I looked at him. He was indeed Bols the Atlantean Master, which identified him far more clearly than did "Doctor A."

"Yes, Anghor," said Doctor A. "You have followed after me for twelve thousand years to correct the hideous wrong you wrought in Atlantis. Is it not so?"

I shuddered, realized that my body was bathed in horror sweat.

"Send me back!" I said. "I must know fully the depths of my ancient infamy. Send me back!"

But the savant only shook his head at me, as if I were a wilful child.

"Man would not be able to endure himself if he could remember all his infamies," said Doctor A, "which is why it is given only to the supernaturally strong in spirit to remember. But since this is only experiment, out of which we hope to benefit the world and thus balance your personal books, Anghor, as well as our own, you will return, into the heart of the Catastrophe, to remember, record, and bring back.

"After all, you have returned this time without bringing the details of your Mist Dispersing Screen, or the vessel by which you planned to save yourself. Both contain practical data of use to the world. Let us first evaluate what we have, combining your work as Father Wulstan with that of Anghor, and see what we have upon which to base the Total You!"

"How can we total me, or anyone, without opening all the doors of each one's mind—subconscious—House of the Skull—from the Present to the Beginning?"

"With a drop of water from the sea," said Doctor A, "we can postulate the sea itself!"

There was a period of relaxation—breakfast-luncheon-dinner in the Lab, before I should return for answers nobody in The Lab seemed to be able to give me to my satisfaction. I ate without noting what I ate, like a man famished, still sitting in my personal "electric chair." Detective Jan Rober had arrived and made himself at home in the Lab. I grinned at him.


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