Not that the contact with the race mind nullified the pain or made it any less real. Fire was still fire and torture was still the same. But neither were very important.
Other things were.
Zen tried to concentrate his attention on the other things. The room, the shouting Cuso, the two Asians who were holding him down while the third thrust the matches under his nails, the shivering Cal, the lieutenant who was over-eager to obey his leader's orders, all these seemed to become misty and vague. These things were real; there was no question about that. But his mind was contacting another reality which made these things different. Time began to lose its meaning.
He wondered if he was fainting. Another question came across his thoughts, heeled over like a sailing ship moving across the wind. Was he dying?
There was no shock with the thought. If that was the way it was, then he was more than ready.
"You are not fainting and you are not dying," the race mind whispered to him. "Come closer to me."
"How do I come closer to you?"
"Let go." The voice of the race mind was like a whisper from the other side of infinity. "Let go and come to me."
Dimly, he wondered how one let go. The answer came with the question. The words meant exactly what they said, the meaning was literal—let go.
As he performed the action that went with the words, the big gallery, Cuso, the lieutenant, and the torturers faded away and became a part of a misty world that seemed to have no real existence. Even the pain vanished.