by Jerry Sohl
It was nearly noon when he left the building for his lunch. The two men who had been following him appeared from nowhere and entered a near-by restaurant behind him. One of them took a table near his, obviously to overhear the conversation he might have with someone—if he were to meet someone there. You’re on the wrong track, fella. The other man took a table near the door.
Back again at the apartment he settled down on the sofa-bed with a book, tried to get interested in it. He was awakened from a sound sleep by thunderous knocks on his apartment door.
He knew who it was before he opened the door.
General Deems walked into the room, followed by an army captain. The two shadows stood in the doorway.
“Close the door, Smollet,” the general said.
The captain closed it and stood there. The general strode around the room, eyes flicking over the envelopes, the bottle of whiskey, the book Martin had been reading. He turned to Martin.
“Any way out of here other than that door.”
“The window,” Martin said. “But it’s a drop of three floors.”
The general stopped in the middle of the room, legs wide apart, hands in his army coat, eyes level with Martin’s.
“Get your notebook out, Smollet,” he said vigorously. “Mr. Enders is going to tell us all about it.”
Captain Smollet took off his coat and hat, put them on the sofa-bed, arranged his notebook on the dining-area table, poised his pencil expectantly over the blank sheet.
Martin had not moved from beside the door. He had merely folded his arms and watched the captain with some amusement.
“Now, Enders, where is the girl?”
“I don’t know.” It was the truth.
“Were you two in this together?” The general’s burning stare bore into him.
“What do you mean by ‘this,’ General?”
“You know damned well what I mean by ‘this.’” General Deems showed how much he had been hurt by pacing the room, gesturing wildly as he talked. “What kind of fools do you take us for? You drop your investigation and run away with this blonde girl. Where did that put us? And all that stuff you’re handing out about the stars—Wilson and Myers told me about that. What’s your angle?”
“I was telling the truth.”
“Come off it, Enders,” the general jeered. “Who are you kidding? Who is behind it all? Who got to you? How much did he pay you? And while you’re at it, who thought up all this gobbledegook you’re passing off in an effort to cover up?”
“You would be amusing, General, if you weren’t so pathetic.”
The general’s color deepened perceptibly. His eyes whipped at Martin and the room took warmth from his anger.
“You are something pretty dirty, Martin Enders,” he seethed. “Selling your own country down the river. Don’t tell me, I know. One of these smart boys with all the answers who thinks he can play both sides to win, place and show. Like so many bright boys, you don’t have a heart. Major premise, minor premise and conclusion and to hell with the human element. If people don’t fit in your equations forget them—”
“Just a minute!” Martin felt sudden anger burning like bowel pain inside him, resentment flaring in his brain. He crossed to the sofa-bed and sat on it, lighting a cigarette with a hand that trembled. “You have me confused with something and someone else,” he said. “I don’t like talk like that. I served my country honorably and well; you said my record shows that.”
“But why—”
Martin put up his hand. “Don’t start it again, please. I’m at fault, I suppose, the way I’ve acted. But I want to tell you something: what I’ve had to say is true!”
“For God’s sake!” The general took off his hat, sailed it across the room where it hit the wall, bounced back and rolled a few feet on the floor.
“Will you listen, General? Will you?”
The general plopped into a chair, ran a hand over his bald head, into the grey bristles over his neck.
“It’s just as I said. The Capellans will leave Earth soon. When they do, we’ll lose our reason. That’s why it doesn’t make any difference what you do or what I do. A man about to be hanged makes jokes about it to those within hearing to prove he isn’t afraid, though he may be quaking inside. I am like that man.”
“Maybe you have lost your reason,” the general said, studying his face. He softened. “Perhaps they are right, Wilson and Myers. They think you’ve gone off the deep end. I guess you have.”
“The insane,” Martin said evenly, “are usually happy. I am not.”
“Why didn’t you call me from Park Hill or after you left it? If you had tried to explain it then...”
“If I had called you, the Capellans would have known where we were. I had run away with a Capellan, you see. Dr. Penn was a Capellan, too—”
“The Capellans, the Capellans! That’s all you talk about. Where are these—these Capellans? Where do they live? Show me one Capellan and I’ll believe you.”
“They are on another plane,” Martin explained patiently. “For that reason, they are invisible to us.”
“Invisible, eh?” The general eyed him thoughtfully. “If you believe that, then you are nuts. But I don’t think you are. The girl figures in this somewhere and you’ve got her hidden. She’s probably the one we really want. Where is this Virginia Penn?”
“Somewhere between heaven and Earth,” Martin said.
“Getting flippant again, eh, Enders?” The general came over, hands on hips, standing menacingly over him.
“He’s not flippant, General. He’s wrong. I’m not between heaven and Earth. I’m right here in this room.”
“Virginia!” Martin jumped from the sofa-bed, almost upsetting the general. He looked around. Virginia was not there.
“Who was that?” The general’s face was purple. “You’ve got a recording, Enders. Mighty funny.”
“Mighty funny.” The voice was Virginia’s. She laughed.
“Where are you, Virginia?”
“You shut up,” the general said. “Smollet!”
The captain, who had been trying to find the source of the voice himself, rose. “Yes, sir!”
“Give this room a thorough examination for that loudspeaker.”
“Martin said Capellans are invisible,” Virginia said. “So we are. You’ll find no loud-speaker here.”
Captain Smollet was looking in lamps, behind books, in corners, along the molding.
“It’s no use, Captain Smollet,” Virginia said. “You won’t find anything.”
Martin felt the gratifying rush of cold wind, saw Virginia materialize in a corner of the room.
“Here I am, General,” she said, smiling sweetly.
Chapter 16
“More of your tricks, Enders,” the general said a little uncertainly. “Where have you been hiding her?”
“You are a mighty hard man to convince, aren’t you, General?” Virginia said, moving toward him, smiling mischievously.
“Thank God you came back, Virginia,” Martin said. “I thought you might not make it.”
“You stay where you are, Miss Penn,” the general said. “I don’t know where you came from, but now that you’re here, you can tell us why you and Mr. Enders ran away from Park Hill.”
“I suggest you go home to your wife and children, General,” Virginia said, seating herself next to Martin. “You’ll find in a few days your question has no importance.”
“Am I going to get double talk from you, too?”
Virginia fixed him with a fishy eye. “People usually find the truth hard to believe.”
The flush of red which had momentarily receded was rising again in the general’s face.
“I ought to run you both in,” he said. “I ought to let you sit it out in separate cells in some cold, dank county jail while you are being investigated. But there’s no time for that. I’ve got to know now. Today!”
“What is it that is really bothering you?”
The ge
neral put his hands to his forehead, ran the palms past his temples.
“What happened to Forrest Killian? Who is behind the move to stop the regeneration project? Why? And what part do you two have in this whole thing? Do you think you can answer that?”
“I’ll answer them in order,” Virginia said. “Forrest Killian is—dead, you would say. The molecules that composed his being have been scattered far and wide. No one at the present time is trying to stop regeneration; there is no need to. Martin and I have no place in it any longer. We merely want to be together to the end.”
“The end? The end of what?”
“Your civilization.”
The general threw his hands in the air. “I give up,” he said. “I’ve tried to be decent. I’ve tried to give you both a chance to be truthful, but you are evasive. Do you frankly expect anyone to believe this hogwash about losing reasoning power—this star business?”
“It really doesn’t matter, General,” she answered.
“It so happens that it does matter, young lady,” he whipped back.
“Are you tired of this?” Virginia asked Martin, sitting up straight as if she were going to do something about it.
“Frankly, yes.”
The general only glared at them.
Virginia sat very still, furrowed her forehead slightly in thought.
The general looked uncomfortable. Captain Smollet was frankly puzzled.
Then both their mouths dropped open in amazement. The general’s arm rose and met with resistance. His fingers were running along something solid before him. He was speaking and Captain Smollet was answering, looking at something in wonder. But their voices were muffled and could hardly be heard.
“There,” Virginia said, settling back. “That ought to keep them occupied for a while.” She looked at Martin, who met her eyes with questioning ones of his own. She laughed. “You’ve heard of these one-way mirrors, haven’t you? Well, I put one between us and the officers. We can see them and they can’t see us. Cozy, don’t you think?”
Martin watched the searching, feeling officers in their amazement. They had called in the two shadows who had been just outside the door. All four of them were running their hands along the air.
“Miss me?” Virginia cupped her hand behind his head.
“Damn right!” He drew her to him, kissed her soundly. “How much time do we have?”
“Departure Day is three days from now. Actually, I don’t know when they’ll stop sending out the thought-reinforcing radiations. Probably shortly before they leave Earth.”
“You’re going with them, I suppose?”
Virginia shook her head. “I waited until the last Capellan returned from his Earthly existence. Then I came back. In this way I knew I’d run into none of them here.”
“They could be watching.”
“Too busy getting ready to leave. Oh, they could appear, I suppose. But I don’t think they will. Got a cigarette?”
He lit two. “You still haven’t answered me. Are you going with them?”
She examined the lighted end of her cigarette. “No.”
“But what you said back in Utah—I will turn into—”
“A cave man?” She smiled. “What’s wrong with a cave man? You’d make a cute one. You’d look nice in a beard.”
“But you don’t want that!”
“You’d have no inhibitions…”
Her remark and her nearness stirred him, but he said, “You’re making light of it. You know it won’t be pretty.”
“I will lose much of my power, too, I’ve learned,” she said gravely. “There probably is nothing I could do to help you retain your intelligence. But”—and she was grim—”I’ve made my decision. I’ve found you and I’m going to stick by you.”
He kissed her and held her head against his chest. “Promise me,” he said, “promise me you’ll go back—just before the end.”
“They wouldn’t have me now. They will find I’m gone and this time they’ll forget about me. They’ll think, Good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ve been too errant. Besides, I don’t want them to see me again. They know I wouldn’t go back with them even if they did come after me.”
They jumped at a terrible pounding. One of the shadows had picked up a chair and was hammering the partition with it.
“Will it hold?”
“Yes. But that noise!”
There were more people on the other side now: a policeman, two men in work clothes and many faces out in the hallway. They were all talking to each other and each person had to come over to feel the partition and register astonishment.
“That’s enough of that,” Virginia said. “They’ll have everybody and his brother out there soon. Let’s see. There ought to be some way...”
“Not a fire again,” Martin said.
“No. That would only bring more people. We’ve got to get them out of here.”
“The only way to do that,” Martin said glumly, “is for us to leave.”
“That’s it!” she cried, flashing him a smile.
“But we can’t do that! I mean, we don’t want to.”
“Come on,” she said, getting up from the sofa and drawing him to another part of the room next to the partition.
“First,” she said, “we create us.” She concentrated, narrowing her bright blue eyes and pouting her full red lips.
In a little while the air moved about in the area around the sofa, the light rippled and eddied and two shapeless masses were created there.
“I’m not much of a sculptress,” she said. “Let me know if I’m doing this wrong.” She continued her concentration.
The shapeless masses suddenly took shape. There was the blonde hair, lovely, wavy blonde hair, the blue eyes—how they sparkled!—the curving form, the legs.
“That’s not the same dress,” Martin said. “And besides—”
“I know. The skirt is too short.” She laughed. “They’ll be so busy looking at my knees—I hope—they’ll forget it’s not the same outfit. Now don’t go prudish on me and tell me it’s not nice.”
The man took shape. Martin Enders to a “T.”
“You see,” Virginia said. “I can’t improve on you.”
The two duplicates sat looking vacantly ahead. Little by little they came alive. Suddenly Martin’s double took his Virginia in his arms and kissed her passionately.
“You see what my dress does to you?” Virginia said.
“My head is easily turned,” Martin commented.
Virginia’s double slapped her Martin. He looked amazed.
“Now, children,” Virginia said. “You are brain children, you know.”
The two on the sofa looked at her without surprise.
“I will create a door,” Virginia said. “I want you two to go through it. Do whatever the general on the other side says. You are to go where he tells you, try to act as much like us as possible. I will be watching you. Is that clear?”
The two nodded. The other Martin held her hand.
“Isn’t he sweet?” Virginia giggled.
“He probably resents that label.”
“You’re sweet,” the other Virginia said.
“You’re an angel,” the other Martin said.
“See? He doesn’t resent it. You never called me an angel.”
Virginia was thoughtful once again. A crack appeared in the air and a silver doorknob materialized in the wall of nothing.
The two duplicates rose, the other Martin turned the doorknob, opened the door and they passed through. The door clicked shut behind them, the crack and the doorknob vanishing.
The people on the other side milled around the newly created couple. The general elbowed his way through, was gesturing and, from the looks of his throat muscles, was also quite vehement.
The crowd dispersed as soon as the other Martin and Virginia had been escorted out of the room.
“Well,” Virginia said. “They’re gone.”
Martin looked at her sharply.
She was tired. Though she still looked toward the door, there was not the look of triumph on her face he expected. Her shoulders sagged and he noticed for the first time the dark circles under her eyes.
He had sensed inner conflict; the hysterical quality of her return, her delight with the mirror-wall and the creation of the other couple attested to a temporary escape from a problem. He could feel the residual tenseness in her.
“Why so glum all of a sudden?”
“Was I glum?” she said, brightening. “I didn’t mean to be. I was merely thinking how ironical it is that now we have found ourselves, there is a time limit.”
“Why do your people have to take along this device you mention which affects our higher thinking? If they would only leave it, there would be no problem.”
“The original Three—the mother, father and their first son—look on Earth’s present civilization as an artificial thing, a state they created,” Virginia explained. “As someone would do who visited, they are to leave this planet much as they found it. I have been told it is always done that way.”
“You mean this has been done before?”
“Many times before on other worlds, according to our history, but of course not by the group here now. The original couple came from a planet such as yours. That other planet was made to revert back to its crude beginnings when the group left it to go back to Capella Four. You see, there is a limit to the amount of progress allowed. You have reached that point. You would have either advanced fast to the next step, or you would have destroyed yourselves. We might have profited from the latter; the Triumvirate feels it would be dangerous to allow the former.”
“Why not leave and just let us advance? I still don’t see why not.”
“You have grown too fast,” Virginia said. “You have too many primitive tendencies. You have advanced fast technologically while you have stood still for many hundreds of years sociologically. If left as you are, there would be none of us around to curtail your warlike natures. You are not a very model society by our standards. If you had advanced this far in millions of years, you would have lost many of these bad traits during the process. But you haven’t. You have done it overnight—with our help. To put it bluntly, you are too close to the savage.”