And then, worst of all, he had poisoned her own daughter’s mind against her, her only daughter, the child she had borne at his insistence. He had schooled Ilena to hate her, and now in her old age she had nobody.
She opened puffy eyes again, unwillingly, on the horrid present. And saw Harry Burk, who had paused in his restless pacing and confronted the others, hands thrust deep into his pockets and shoulders squared.
“We’ve still got a few minutes left,” he said. “I’m going to go back over my ideas about getting us out of this mess. We know that, whatever the Fishers’ psychological weapons are, a human mind can lick one of theirs. Pete Goda proved that. But we don’t know just how. I don’t think Pete had what you’d call a ‘strong’ mind; he just had something to tie to. The best I can say about that is that every one of us better grab tight to whatever is his strongest hold on life, and don’t let go!”
The words hammered even into Mrs. Jordan’s numb mind. She looked at Harry Burk with desperate hope, with an upsurging of blind trust. His purposeful speech, his resolute bearing . . . surely somehow he’d rescue them.
The second hand still swept. Burk went on hurriedly, “I’ve made arrangements. One thing I learned from Pete that may be useful is the fact that after a human body is overcome by one of the alien minds, it’s practically helpless for a while—until the Fisher’s perfected its control, I suppose. So—if some of us don’t come through, are possessed, they’ll have to be made harmless by whoever does make it.” He gestured to the table in the middle of the salon, where several lengths of stout cord lay coiled. “I’ve set signal rockets ready to fire. They ought to be launched two or three hours from now, when the ship will be crossing the southern travel lanes. If only one of us should escape, that one will have to attend to everything. Everybody got it?”
Mrs. Jordan saw the others nod, and she, herself, nodded vaguely.
“One of us, at least, has to win out. We don’t want to be responsible for letting the Fishers loose on the human race again.”
He paused, and in the silence Leoce Linforth’s clear young voice rose. “Perhaps we shouldn’t try. . . . There were some others who killed themselves, rather than do that.”
Mrs. Jordan swiveled her head about again. The girl sounded terrifyingly as if she meant it. . . . Leoce was leaning forward, her slanted eyes fixed on Burk—eyes moist and luminous. Burk shook his head, smiling faintly. “I think you’d be voted down on that,” he told Leoce. “Most of us here want to go on living.”
“But if . . .”
Ilena Burk broke in crisply, “If this Pete Goda, who seems to have been rather an oaf, could fight off the Fishers, I don’t see why we can’t. We’re all reasonably intelligent people. That ought to make a difference.”
“Difference, sure,” said Burk. “But which way?”
Charles Linforth burst out, his voice unnaturally shrill: “Can’t you tell us anything more definite about what we’re up against? How can we—”
“Shut up,” said Burk flatly, without taking his eyes off his wife. “From what Pete told me, in the Dupays everybody meets his devils alone. Each of us has to make his separate fight. So—good luck, all.”
There was something in the ship.
It was a delicate odor, a perfume; perhaps no two of them sensed it alike, but to each it was an ecstasy of sweetness. Yet it couldn’t be perfume. The ship was sealed, hurtling through empty space.
There was a smothered sound as someone tried to speak or cry out. But the perfume was overpowering, a poison sweeter than all poisons, that fumed up in the brain in a night-colored vapor of sleep.
V
Mrs. Jordan went down into the abyss screaming, crying, pleading for a little more time. She snatched at the weary flesh that was slipping away from her, and there was only the darkness; she grasped nothing but her fear, and hugged it passionately to her.
Her mind worked faster than it had for years. She knew suddenly that her fear was the only thing that could save her. The Fishers tried to deceive their victims, Harry had said. They couldn’t fool her, because she was too much afraid of them.
The darkness lifted, and with it her immediate panic. Her eyes focused again, and she was sitting in her armchair, the lighted salon around her. Ilena sat facing her, pale and composed; Charles Linforth leaned beside the elevator shaft, and near him Harry stood facing them with his hands in his jacket pockets, his shoulders thrown back.
“We’ve still got a few minutes left,” he said. “I’m going to go back over my ideas—”
In the darkness, grappling in a mental Cimmeria that had closed down again like a thunderclap. . . . The alarm had gone off in her blurred mind just in time for her to turn and face the thing that had come creeping up behind her while its shadow-show was before her eyes. Behind? It was everywhere, it was the darkness. But the fear had come back, too, and the fear fought for her.
The Fisher was gone.
She knew better than to believe that whispered suggestion. It was watching her through the darkness, searching her for another weak spot. At first it had responded to her panicky wish for a little more time. But that hadn’t been good enough. It was probing more deeply, mercilessly. . . .
Through the blackness between her and her body, she could hear her own heart beating somewhere, slow, hesitant beats as if every one might be the last. . . . Then she realized that the heartbeats were really footfalls, slow, halting, and lastly that the footsteps were her own, it was she who was plodding through the dark. Why? To escape?
Another step—the blackness became gray half light, gray with hints of dull color like the iridescence of decay. Her feet still carried her forward. Mrs. Jordan realized that she was in a building with a vaulted ceiling borne by columns, a place with the air of a chapel built for some venerable religion. Guttering candles burned before dark niches along the shadowed walls, but black darkness lay in the alcoves and she could not see what was there.
As she walked among the columns, it seemed to her that from the corner of her eye she could see a darkness following her, flowing at her very heels and engulfing everything behind her. But when she turned, the columns, the sternly carved walls, were still there in the iridescent gray light.
Without volition, she paused before a niche. Something gleamed palely in its shadow; she bent and picked up the votive candle, held it so that its feeble light fell on the skeleton.
The thing stood there, planted on its feet, all its bones shining white and bare—the skull with its black eye sockets, the cage of the ribs, the dangling arms of naked bone, the ungainly pelvis . . . Mrs. Jordan stood holding the candle, staring; the skeleton did not exactly frighten her, but she felt an unreasoning, hateful disgust.
Something whispered to her to go on to the next niche.
Still holding the candle, she obeyed; and the wavering light fell on what stood in the shadow there.
Had this one been buried and dug up again, or had it never been buried at all? She couldn’t tell, for the flesh and the tattered remnants of clothing were so far gone in putrefaction that if any earth clung to it it was indistinguishable. Her hand with the candle trembled, and the flame flickered, making obscene shadows in the corruption of its face. Its eyes and nose were gone, like those of the skull; its mouth was clenched shut, but lipless, and the teeth stood out hideously long from the dried and shrunken gums. Lank hair still clung to its head.
She stared fascinated, enveloped in the horror of it and its stench. She thought, then, that she glimpsed a flicker of life in the sunken eye sockets; but the movement was that of a mass of white worms.
The darkness touched her on the shoulder.
She moved, quivering, to the third alcove. The candle dripped hot wax upon her hand and she felt nothing.
Here was no rotting horror, only the logical third of the series—the pale rigid figure of one newly dead, a bloodless wax-like face from which open eyes stared, filmed in sightlessness. Yet it was death; she had seen the series in reverse, and bef
ore this one lay the stinking decay, the worms, at last the white, unhuman perfection of naked bone. . . . Now it was that she screamed, the candle slipped from her hand and went out. The darkness rushed in to cover what she had seen.
The last figure had been herself. And the others . . .?
Mrs. Jordan did her best to remember that none of this was real. The Fisher was near her in the darkness, waiting, like a patient beast. It had found her fear in her mind, and it was using what it had learned.
But the light was returning. Not the evil gray light of the shadowed chapel, but a light that was golden, warming and rich as wine. A light, an air such as she had not known since—since—
She stood under a stone arch, looking out across a rolling meadow. The morning sun sparkled on dew, and the woods beyond were deep and musical with bird calls.
There was a chill in the shadow beneath the arch, and she knew that if she turned she would see the gray corridor with its columns and its niches of blasphemy. She shivered, knowing she could never bear to go back that way.
She walked out into the open, onto the meadow. As she walked, she became aware that she was barefoot, walking unshod in the dew-wet grass. She was light, her steps were effortless and turned easily into hops and skips.
It was good to be very light and small, and to feel like dancing. She had forgotten how it was . . . where had she forgotten? In a bad dream, perhaps.
She had dreamed that she was sick and weary and that life was not before her. But she didn’t want to remember that any more.
The woods were deep and mysterious, a place to explore. She ran lightly across the grass, toward their green inviting depths, not caring really now what she might find.
One is ours, brothers.
VI
Charles Linforth strove tensely to make his mind the coldly calculating instrument it was meant to be, to render his brain a fortress against invasion. He had to resist, for he had left so much undone—and he couldn’t believe that any of the others would succeed in withstanding the Fishers; all of them were weak and foolish in one way or another.
But the inrush of darkness shook his control. He groped wildly, and his hand closed on something hard, smooth, and cool—the knob of a door. Spasmodically he wrenched it open.
Light spilled out, momentarily dazzling him. When he had stopped blinking he saw a long room where men, soberly garbed, grave of face, sat round a polished mahogany table.
Linforth almost laughed. Who do you think you’re fooling? he asked silently of the thing that he felt waiting behind him in the darkness. This isn’t the Board Room of Jordan Enterprises, with the Directors in session, back on Mars. It’s merely an illusion behind my eyes; I could wipe it out by refusing to believe in it.
He felt pleased with himself for having so easily penetrated the fraud.
Nevertheless, he didn’t feel like turning and stepping back into the darkness where the thing lurked; the lighted room, illusion or no, was preferable. He closed the door firmly behind him.
The Directors rose and bowed respectfully to Linforth. Why, he thought amusedly, this gets better and better! In real life he wouldn’t even be permitted to enter the room like this, uninvited.
“Welcome, Mr. Jordan,” said the President of the Board, and the other members echoed the greeting in a murmur of voices.
Linforth stared at them. But there was no hint of a joke, no telltale flicker of derision in the deferential faces. They all thought he was Loran Jordan.
But Loran Jordan was dead . . . or was he?
In a place like this, Linforth reminded himself tenaciously you had to be very careful to separate the real from the unreal, take nothing for granted. He must keep his wits about him. You had to be very careful, very cunning, to outwit Loran Jordan . . . No! To outwit the Fishers, he meant.
“Would you like to see the annual report, Mr. Jordan?” inquired the President.
“Give it to me,” said Linforth snappishly. It would clear his mind, he felt sure, to look at hard figures, profit and loss. He was always at his best with figures. He took the proffered bundle of papers and sat down at the head of the table to study them.
But the report was confusing. It seemed to consist mostly of obituary notices, some of them bearing the name of Loran Jordan, others that of Charles Linforth.
Puzzled and angry, he shoved the papers fluttering to the carpeted floor, and stood up. “You’re not fooling me!” he snarled, and turned toward the door, determined to fling it open.
“Just as you say, Mr. Jordan,” said the President obsequiously. “Ahem . . .” He cleared his throat circumstantially, and just as Linforth’s hand touched the doorknob, asked: “Mr. Jordan—would you care to see the traitor, Linforth?”
Linforth spun round as if hornet-stung. “What was that?”
“The impostor Linforth has been brought up from the dungeons. We understood that you wished him to view the—ah—ceremonies.”
“Oh, yes, the ceremonies,” said Linforth vaguely, determined not to show ignorance. “When do they begin?”
“Whenever you desire, Mr. Jordan; we have been awaiting your arrival.”
“Very well, then,” said Linforth. “Let’s get on with it.” He knew he was taking chances—but he had to see what came next.
“This way to the elevator,” said the President.
They got in the elevator and rode up, up, and up. The walls of the shaft were transparent, and Linforth saw that they were rising to the summit of a tower that rose tremendously, till the landscape of Mars was spread out like a map below, like a map of the British Empire in the old schoolbooks, all pinkish red. And still the elevator climbed. He remembered no such lofty tower atop the Jordan Building; it must have been one of the things that Linforth, he meant Jordan, had done without asking his advice. . . .
The elevator halted. They were on the dizzy top of the tower, a narrow space girdled by a parapet. Not far away, looking over the edge at the remote landscape below, stood a man with hands shackled behind him, who turned to face them as they trooped onto the roof.
The President of the Board boomed orotundly: “Behold the traitor Linforth!”
The fettered man stood watching them impassively. He had the slight figure, the gray, deceptively unassuming features of Loran Jordan.
Linforth whispered to the President, almost in a panic, “Watch out. You’ve got to watch him closely. He’s very resourceful.”
“Don’t worry,” said the President aloud. “The chains are the best steel. The traitor will not escape!”
Linforth—the real one, as he kept reminding himself he was—took a deep breath. “Is everything ready?” he asked nervously.
The President made a sweeping gesture at the panorama around them. “Behold!” From the tower’s height you could see all over Mars, see the vast network of Jordan Enterprises—mines, mills, factories, smelters, transportation facilities—flung far and wide across the face of the planet. Even diminished by distance, it was an awe-inspiring, almost overwhelming spectacle.
Linforth looked out from the tower with a tightening of the throat, a thrill of ecstasy, knowing that all of it was his and his alone. . . .
“Here you are, sir,” someone said, and hands placed an object before him—an old-fashioned exploder, a little contrivance with batteries and trailing wires.
Linforth bent and grasped the handle of the plunger. He glared triumphantly at the figure that seemed to be Loran Jordan.
“Watch this!” he snapped, and pushed the handle.
Everywhere on Mars the buildings, the diggings, the tracks and terminals that belonged to the Jordan Company heaved skyward in an endless series of mighty explosions. Flames spurted, smoke billowed up to blanket the ravished red landscape. A tremor shuddered through the tower.
But Loran Jordan stood unmoved; fettered as he was, there was a hint of a lopsided smile on his face, an old and well-remembered trick of his.
“Well?” shrieked Linforth above the distant crackling of fl
ames. “What do you think of that?”
“What of it?” said Jordan, with his lopsided smile. “If, as you say, you are really Loran Jordan, whereas I am the abominable traitor Charles Linforth—what should I care?”
Linforth quivered. He said thickly, “I’ll make you care!” and rushed at the other, thrusting with both hands at the gray figure of memory, hated, adored. It toppled backward over the parapet.
He leaned after it, and saw it falling, twirling and growing tiny, down toward the bank of smoke that covered the land below. The smoke was rising now to meet it, and the felling body vanished; the smoke kept rising, toward the summit of the tower.
The Directors clapped their hands and cried in unison, “The traitor Linforth is dead! Well done, Mr. Jordan!”
Two are ours, brothers!
VII
The darkness closed over Leoce’s head like water, and she sank down, down, out of light and fife, strangely numb and uncaring. . . .
Then realization came like the shock of an icy bath, and she began instinctively fighting, clawing her way back. But in the blackness there was no up or down and it was like when she was a child and woke smothering from a nightmare of darkness to find that the waking was only a dream and the darkness was still that of enveloping nightmare. In the dream there was always someone with a knife, someone whose face she couldn’t see—
In her terror she screamed in a child’s voice, “Mother!”
Her mother appeared out of the night, white as if in a spotlight, pale as Leoce had seen her last in the moments before shipwreck. . . . Leoce remembered, and sobbed, “No, no, I don’t want you, Mother, you’re dead.” There was only the darkness and her own weeping, dwindling, fading as distance diminished it.
But now she was wholly aware, remembering. She whispered passionately, “But Vm alive. I don’t want to die, not yet, it’s not enough—”
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 70