Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick Page B

thing to be a Heeb. Because the Heeb had found the Pure Way, had dispensed with the unnecessary.
    Opening the door of the shack he stepped out once more into the morning cold.
    “Where are you going?” Elsie shrieked after him.
    Ignatz said, “To confer.” He shut the door behind him and then, with the cats trailing, set off on foot to find Omar Diamond, his colleague among the Skitzes.
       By means of his Psionic, unnatural powers he teleported here and there about the moon until at last, sure enough, there was Omar, seated in council at Adolfville with a representative of each clan. Ignatz levitated to the sixth floor of the great stone building, bobbed against the window and rapped until those within noticed him and came to open the window for him.
    “God, Ledebur,” Howard Straw, the Mans rep, declared. “You smell like a goat. Two Heebs in the room at once—foul.” He turned his back on everyone, walked off and stood staring into space, fighting to hold back his Mans anger.
    The Pare rep, Gabriel Baines, said to Ignatz, “What’s the purpose of this intrusion? We’re in conference.”
    Ignatz Ledebur communed silently with Omar Diamond, telling him the urgency of their need. Diamond heard him, agreed, and at once, by combining their skills, the two of them left the council chamber; he and Diamond walked together across a grassy field in which mushrooms grew. Neither spoke for a time. They amused themselves by kicking over mushrooms.
    At last Diamond said, “We were already discussing the invasion.”
    “It’s going to land in Gandhitown,” Ignatz said. “I experienced a vision; those who are coming will—”
    “Yes, yes,” Diamond said irritably. “We know they’re chthonic powers; I acquainted the delegates with that fact. No good can come from chthonic powers because they’re heavy; like the corporeal animae they are they will sink down into the earth, become mired in the body of the planet.”
    “Moon,” Ignatz said, and giggled.
    “Moon, then.” Diamond shut his eyes, walked without missing a step even though he could no longer see where he journeyed; he had retreated, Ignatz realized, into a momentary, voluntary catatonia. All the Skitzes were prone to this, and he said nothing; he waited. Halting, Omar Diamond mumbled something which Ignatz could not catch.
    Ignatz sighed, seated himself on the ground; beside him Omar Diamond stood in his trance and there was no sound except the faint rustling of far-distant trees beyond the limits of the meadow.
    All at once Diamond said, “Pool your powers with mine and we will envision the invasion so clearly that—” Again his words became arcane mumbling. Ignatz—even a saint could be annoyed—sighed again.“Get hold of Sarah Apostoles,” Diamond said. “The three of us will evoke a view of our enemy so real that it will actualize; we will control our enemy and his arrival here.”
    Sending out a thought-wave, Ignatz contacted Sarah Apostoles, asleep in her shack in Gandhitown. He felt her awaken, stir, mumble and groan as she rose from her cot to stagger to her feet.
    He and Omar Diamond waited and presently Sarah appeared; she wore a man’s coat and man’s trousers, tennis shoes. “Last night,” she said, “I had a dream. Certain creatures are hovering near here, preparing to manifest themselves.” Her round face was twisted with worry and a nagging, corroding fear. This gave her an ugly contracted look, and Ignatz felt sorry for her. Sarah had never been able, in times of stress, to purge the destructive emotions from her being; she was bonded to the soma and its ails.
    “Sit down,” Ignatz requested.
    “We shall make them appear
now
,” Diamond said. “And here at this spot. Begin.” He ducked his head; the two Heebs also ducked their heads, and together the three of them applied their mutually-reinforcing visionary powers. They struggled in unison, and time passed—none of them knew how much—while that which they