He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online Page A

said, "I'm trying to help her learn what things look
    like. You doubtless do a fine job guiding her around in this
    world which she cannot seebut she needs to know what it
    looks like now, and I'm going to show her."
    "Then she, will not, need me."
    "Of course she will." Render almost laughed. "The pathetic
    thing was here bound so closely to the absurd thing that he
    could not help it. "I can't restore her sight," he explained. "I'm
    just going to transfer her some sight-abstractionssort of lend
    her my eyes for a short time. Savvy?"
    "No," said the dog. "Take mine."
    Render turned off the music.
    The whole mutie-master relationship might be worth six
    volumes, he decided, in German.
    He pointed to the far corner.
    "Lie down, over there, like Eileen told you. This isn't going
    to take long, and when it's all over you're going to leave the
    same way you cameyou leading. Okay?"
    Sigmund did not answer, but he turned and moved off to the
    corner, tail drooping again.
    Render seated himself and lowered the hood, the operator's
    modified version of the ro-womb. He was alone before the
    ninety white buttons and the two red ones. The world ended in
    the blackness beyond the console. He loosened his necktie and
    unbuttoned his collar.
    He removed the helmet from its receptacle and checked its
    leads. Donning it then, he swung the halfmask up over his
    lower face and dropped the darksheet down to meet with it. He
    rested his right arm in the sling, and with a single tapping
    gesture, he eliminated his patient's consciousness.
    A Shaper does not press white buttons consciously. He wills
    conditions. Then deeply-implanted muscular reflexes exert an
    almost imperceptible pressure against the sensitive arm-sling,
    which glides into the proper position and encourages an
    extended finger to move forward. A button is pressed. The sling
    moves on.
    Render felt a tingling at the base of his skull; he smelled
    fresh-cut grass.
    Suddenly he was moving up the great gray alley between the
    worlds.
    After what seemed a long time, Render felt that he was
    footed on a strange Earth. He could see nothing; it was only a
    sense of presence that informed him he had arrived. It was the
    darkest of all the dark nights he had ever known.
    He willed that the darkness disperse. Nothing happened.
    A part of his mind came awake again, a part he had not
    realized was sleeping; he recalled whose world he had entered.
    He listened for her presence. He heard fear and anticipation.
    He willed color. First, red . . .
    He felt a correspondence. Then there was an echo.
    Everything became red; he inhabited the center of an infinite
    ruby.
    Orange. Yellow . . .
    He was caught in a piece of amber.
    Green now, and he added the exhalations of a sultry sea.
    Blue, and the coolness of evening.
    He stretched his mind then, producing all the colors at once.
    They came in great swirling plumes.
    Then he tore them apart and forced a form upon them.
    An incandescent rainbow arched across the black sky.
    He fought for browns and grays below him. Self-luminescent,
    they appearedin shimmering, shifting patches.
    Somewhere, a sense of awe. There was no trace of hysteria
    though, so he continued with the Shaping.
    He managed a horizon, and the blackness drained away
    beyond it. The sky grew faintly blue, and he ventured a herd
    of dark clouds. There was resistance to his efforts at creating
    distance and depth, so he reinforced the tableau with a very
    faint sound of surf. A transference from an auditory concept of
    distance came on slowly then, as he pushed the clouds about.
    Quickly, he threw up a high forest to offset a rising wave of
    acrophobia.
    The panic vanished.
    Render focused his attention on tall treesoaks and pines,
    poplars and sycamores. He buried them about like spears, in
    ragged arrays of greens and browns and yellows, unrolled a
    thick mat of morning-moist grass, dropped a series of gray
    boulders and greenish logs at irregular intervals, and tangled
    and twined the