Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol IX

by Various

  Then Coburn frowned. Not quite plausible, come to think of it. But Dillon had certainly known about the raid. He was set to take pictures, and he hadn't been surprised. One would have expected Greek Army photographers on hand to take pictures of a raid of which they had warning. Probably United Nations observers on the scene, too. Yes. There should be Army men and probably a United Nations team up where Dillon was.

  Coburn explained to the girl. "That'll be it. And they'll have a radio, too. Probably helicopters taking them out also. I'll go up and tell them to be sure and have room for you."

  He started for the cliff he'd seen Dillon climb. He paused: "I'd better have your name for them to report to Athens."

  "I'm Janice Ames," she told him. "The Breen Foundation has me going around arranging for lessons for the people up here. Sanitation and nutrition and midwifery, and so on. The Foundation office is in Salonika, though."

  He nodded and attacked the cliff.

  * * * * *

  It hadn't been a difficult climb for Dillon. It wasn't even a long one for Coburn, but it was much worse than he'd thought. The crevices for handholds were rare, and footholds were almost non-existent. There were times when he felt he was holding on by his fingernails. Dillon seemed to have made it with perfect ease, but Coburn found it exhausting.

  Fifty feet up he came to the place where Dillon had vanished. But it was a preposterously difficult task to get across an undercut to where he could grasp a stunted tree. It was a strain to scramble up past it. Then he found himself on the narrowest of possible ledges, with a sickening drop off to one side. But Dillon had made it, so he followed.

  He went a hundred yards, and then the ledge came to an end. He saw where Dillon must have climbed. It was possible, but Coburn violently did not want to try. Still ... He started.

  Then something clicked in his throat. There was a rather deep ledge for a space of four or five feet. And there was Dillon. No, not Dillon. Just Dillon's clothes. They lay flat and deflated, but laid out in one assembly beside a starveling twisted bush. It would have been possible for a man to stand there to take off his clothes, if he wanted to. But a man who takes off his clothes--and why should Dillon do that?--takes them off one by one. These garments were fitted together. The coat was over the shirt, and the trousers fitted to the bottom of the shirt over the coat, and the boots were at the ends of the trouser legs.

  Then Coburn saw something he did not believe. It palpably was not true. He saw a hand sticking out of the end of the sleeve. But it was not a hand, because it had collapsed. It was rather like an unusually thick glove, flesh color.

  Then he saw what should have been Dillon's head. And it was in place, too. But it was not Dillon's head. It was not a head at all. It was something quite different. There were no eyes. Merely holes. Openings. Like a mask.

  Coburn felt a sort of roaring in his ears, and he could not think clearly for a moment because of the shrieking impossibility of what he was looking at. Dillon's necktie had been very neatly untied, and left in place in his collar. His shirt had been precisely unbuttoned. He had plainly done it himself. And then--the unbuttoned shirt made it clear--he had come out of his body. Physically, he had emerged and gone on. The thing lying flat that had lapsed at Coburn's feet was Dillon's outside. His outside only. The inside had come out and gone away. It had climbed the cliff over Coburn's head.

  The outside of Dillon looked remarkably like something made out of foam-rubber. Coburn touched it, insanely.

  He heard his own voice saying flatly: "It's a sort of suit. A suit that looks like Dillon. He was in it. Something was! Something is playing the part of Dillon. Maybe it always was. Maybe there isn't any Dillon."

  He felt a sort of hysterical composure. He opened the chest. It was patently artificial. There were such details on the inside as would be imagined in a container needed to fit something snugly. At the edges of the opening there were fastenings like the teeth of a zipper, but somehow different. Coburn knew that when this was fastened there would be no visible seam.

  Whatever wore this suit-that-looked-like-Dillon could feel perfectly confident of passing for Dillon, clothed or otherwise. It could pass without any question for--

  Coburn gagged.

  It could pass without question for a human being.

  Obviously, whatever was wearing this foam-rubber replica of Dillon was not human!

  Coburn went back to where he had to climb down the cliffside again. He moved like a sleep-walker. He descended the fifty-foot cliff by the crevices and the single protruding rock-point that had helped him get up. It was much easier going down. In his state of mind it was also more dangerous. He moved in a sort of robot-like composure.

  He moved toward the girl, trying to make words come out of his throat, when a small rock came clattering down the cliff. He looked up. Dillon was in the act of swinging to the first part of the descent. He came down, very confident and assured. He had two camera-cases slung from his shoulders. Coburn stared at him, utterly unable to believe what he'd seen ten minutes before.

  Dillon reached solid ground and turned. He smiled wryly. His shirt was buttoned. His tie was tied.

  "I hoped," he said ruefully to Janice Ames, "that the Bulgars would toddle off. But they left a guard in the village. We can't hope to take an easier trail. We'll have to go back the way you came. We'll get you safe to Salonika, though."

  The girl smiled, uneasily but gratefully.

  "And," added Dillon, "we'd better get started."

  He gallantly helped the girl remount her donkey. At the sight, Coburn was shaken out of his numbness. He moved fiercely to intervene. But Janice settled herself in the saddle and Dillon confidently led the way. Coburn grimly walked beside her as she rode. He was convinced that he wouldn't leave her side while Dillon was around. But even as he knew that desperate certitude, he was filled with confusion and a panicky uncertainty.

  When they'd traveled about half a mile, another frightening thought occurred to Coburn. Perhaps Dillon--passing for human--wasn't alone. Perhaps there were thousands like him.

  Invaders! Usurpers, pretending to be men. Invaders, obviously, from space!

  II

  They made eight miles. At least one mile of that, added together, was climbing straight up. Another mile was straight down. The rest was boulder-strewn, twisting, donkey-wide, slanting, slippery stone. But there was no sign of anyone but themselves. The sky remained undisturbed. No planes. They saw no sign of the raiding force from across the border, and they heard no gunfire.

  Coburn struggled against the stark impossibility of what he had seen. The most horrifying concept regarding invasion from space is that of creatures who are able to destroy or subjugate humanity. A part of that concept was in Coburn's mind now. Dillon marched on ahead, in every way convincingly human. But he wasn't. And to Coburn, his presence as a non-human invader of Earth made the border-crossing by the Bulgarians seem almost benevolent.

  They went on. The next hill was long and steep. Then they were at the hill crest. They looked down into a village called Náousa. It was larger than Ardea, but not much larger. One of the houses burned untended. Figures moved about. There were tanks in sight, and many soldiers in the uniform that looked dark-gray at a distance. The route by which Dillon had traveled had plainly curved into the line-of-march of the Bulgarian raiding force.

  But the moving figures were not soldiers. The soldiers were still. They lay down on the grass in irregular, sprawling windrows. The tanks were not in motion. There were two-wheeled carts in sight--reaching back along the invasion-route--and they were just as stationary as the men and the tanks. The horses had toppled in their shafts. They were motionless.

  The movement was of civilians--men and women alike. They were Greek villagers, and they moved freely among the unmilitarily recumbent troops, and even from this distance their occupation was clear. They were happily picking the soldiers' pockets. But there was one figure which moved from one prone figure to another much too quickly to
be looting. Coburn saw sunlight glitter on something in his hand.

  * * * * *

  Dillon noticed the same thing Coburn did at the same instant. He bounded forward. He ran toward the village and its tumbled soldiers in great, impossible leaps. No man could make such leaps or travel so fast. He seemed almost to soar toward the village, shouting. Coburn and Janice saw him reach the village. They saw him rush toward the one man who had been going swiftly from one prone soldier to another. It was too far to see Dillon's action, but the sunlight glittered again on something bright, which this time flew through the air and dropped to the ground.

  The villagers grouped about Dillon. There was no sign of a struggle.

  "What's happened?" demanded Janice uneasily. "Those are soldiers on the ground."

  Coburn's fright prevented his caution. He shouted furiously. "He's not a man! You saw it! No man can run so fast! You saw those jumps! He's not human! He's--something else!"

  Janice jerked her eyes to Coburn in panic. "What did you say?"

  Coburn panted: "Dillon's no man! He's a monster from somewhere in space! And he and his kind have killed those soldiers! Murdered them! And the soldiers are men! You stay here. I'll go down there and--"

  "No!" said Janice, "I'm coming too."

  He took the donkey's halter and led the animal down to the village, with Janice trembling a little in the saddle. He talked in a tight, taut, hysterical tone. He told what he'd found up on the cliffside. He described in detail the similitude of a man's body he'd found deflated beside a stunted bush.

  He did not look at Janice as he talked. He moved doggedly toward the village, dragging at the donkey's head. They neared the houses very slowly, and Coburn considered that he walked into the probability of a group of other creatures from unthinkable other star systems, disguised as men. It did not occur to him that his sudden outburst about Dillon sounded desperately insane to Janice.

  * * * * *

  They reached the first of the fallen soldiers. Janice looked, shuddering. Then she said thinly: "He's breathing!"

  He was. He was merely a boy. Twenty or thereabouts. He lay on his back, his eyes closed. His face was upturned like a dead man's. But his breast rose and fell rhythmically. He slept as if he were drugged.

  But that was more incredible than if he'd been dead. Regiments of men fallen simultaneously asleep....

  Coburn's flow of raging speech stopped short. He stared. He saw other fallen soldiers. Dozens of them. In coma-like slumber, the soldiers who had come to loot and murder lay like straws upon the ground. If they had been dead it would have been more believable. At least there are ways to kill men. But this ...

  Dillon parted the group of villagers about him and came toward Coburn and Janice. He was frowning in a remarkably human fashion.

  "Here's a mess!" he said irritably. "Those Bulgars came marching down out of the pass. The cavalry galloped on ahead and cut the villagers off so they couldn't run away. They started to loot the village. They weren't pleasant. Women began to scream, and there were shootings--all in a matter of minutes. And then the looters began to act strangely. They staggered around and sat down and went to sleep!"

  He waved his hands in a helpless gesture, but Coburn was not deceived.

  "The tanks arrived. And they stopped--and their crews went to sleep! Then the infantry appeared, staggering as it marched. The officers halted to see what was happening ahead, and the entire infantry dropped off to sleep right where it stood!

  "It's bad! If it had happened a mile or so back ... The Greeks must have played a trick on them, but those cavalrymen raised the devil in the few minutes they were out of hand! They killed some villagers and then keeled over. And now the villagers aren't pleased. There was one man whose son was murdered, and he's been slitting the Bulgars' throats!"

  He looked at Coburn, and Coburn said in a grating voice: "I see."

  Dillon said distressedly: "One can't let them slit the throats of sleeping men! I'll have to stay here to keep them from going at it again. I say, Coburn, will you take one of their staff cars and run on down somewhere and tell the Greek government what's happened here? Something should be done about it! Soldiers should come to keep order and take charge of these chaps."

  "Yes," said Coburn. "I'll do it. I'll take Janice along, too."

  "Splendid!" Dillon nodded as if in relief. "She'd better get out of the mess entirely. I fancy there'd have been a full-scale massacre if we hadn't come along. The Greeks have no reason to love these chaps, and their intentions were hardly amiable. But one can't let them be murdered!"

  Coburn had his hand on his revolver in his pocket. His finger was on the trigger. But if Dillon needed him to run an errand, then there obviously were no others of his own kind about.

  Dillon turned his back. He gave orders in the barbarous dialect of the mountains. His voice was authoritative. Men obeyed him and dragged uniformed figures out of a light half-track that was plainly a staff car. Dillon beckoned, and Coburn moved toward him. The important thing as far as Coburn was concerned was to get Janice to safety. Then to report the full event.

  * * * * *

  "I ... I'm not sure ..." began Janice, her voice shaking.

  "I'll prove what I said," raged Coburn in a low tone. "I'm not crazy, though I feel like it!"

  Dillon beckoned again. Janice slipped off the donkey's back. She looked pitifully frightened and irresolute.

  "I've located the chap who's the mayor of this village, or something like that. Take him along. They might not believe you, but they'll have to investigate when he turns up."

  A white-bearded villager reluctantly climbed into the back of the car. Dillon pleasantly offered to assist Janice into the front seat. She climbed in, deathly white, frightened of Coburn and almost ashamed to admit that his vehement outburst had made her afraid of Dillon, too.

  Dillon came around to Coburn's side of the vehicle. "Privately," he said with a confidential air, "I'd advise you to dump this mayor person where he can reach authority, and then go away quietly and say nothing of what happened up here. If the Greeks are using some contrivance that handles an affair like this, it will be top secret. They won't like civilians knowing about it."

  Coburn's grip on his revolver was savage. It seemed likely, now, that Dillon was the only one of his extraordinary kind about.

  "I think I know why you say that," he said harshly.

  Dillon smiled. "Oh, come now!" he protested. "I'm quite unofficial!"

  He was incredibly convincing at that moment. There was a wry half-smile on his face. He looked absolutely human; absolutely like the British correspondent Coburn had met in Salonika. He was too convincing. Coburn knew he would suspect his own sanity unless he made sure.

  "You're not only unofficial," said Coburn grimly. His hand came up over the edge of the staff-car door. It had his revolver in it. It bore inexorably upon the very middle of Dillon's body. "You're not human, either! You're not a man! Your name isn't Dillon! You're--something I haven't a word for! But if you try anything fancy I'll see if a bullet through your middle will stop you!"

  Dillon did not move. He said easily: "You're being absurd, my dear fellow. Put away that pistol."

  "You slipped!" said Coburn thickly. "You said the Greeks played a trick on this raiding party. But you played it. At Ardea, when you climbed that cliff--no man could climb so fast. No man could run as you ran down into this village. And I saw that body you're wearing when you weren't in it! I followed you up the cliff when--" Coburn's voice was ragingly sarcastic--"when you were taking pictures!"

  * * * * *

  Dillon's face went impassive. Then he said: "Well?"

  "Will you let me scratch your finger?" demanded Coburn almost hysterically. "If it bleeds, I'll apologize and freely admit I'm crazy! But if it doesn't ..."

  The thing-that-was-not-Dillon raised its eyebrows. "It wouldn't," it said coolly. "You do know. What follows?"

  "You're something from space," accused Coburn, "sneaking around Eart
h trying to find out how to conquer us! You're an Invader! You're trying out weapons. And you want me to keep my mouth shut so we Earth people won't patch up our own quarrels and join forces to hunt you down! But we'll do it! We'll do it!"

  The thing-that-was-not-Dillon said gently: "No. My dear chap, no one will believe you."

  "We'll see about that!" snapped Coburn. "Put those cameras in the car!"

  The figure that looked so human hesitated a long instant, then obeyed. It lowered the two seeming cameras into the back part of the staff car.

  Janice started to say, "I ... I ..."

  The pseudo-Dillon smiled at her. "You think he's insane, and naturally you're scared," it said reassuringly. "But he's sane. He's quite right. I am from outer space. And I'm not humoring him either. Look!"

  He took a knife from his pocket and snapped it open. He deliberately ran the point down the side of one of his fingers.

  The skin parted. Something that looked exactly like foam-rubber was revealed. There were even bubbles in it.

  The pseudo-Dillon said, "You see, you don't have to be afraid of him. He's sane, and quite human. You'll feel much better traveling with him." Then the figure turned to Coburn. "You won't believe it, but I really like you, Coburn. I like the way you've reacted. It's very ... human."

  Coburn said to him: "It'll be human, too, when we start to hunt you down!" He let the staff car in gear. Dillon smiled at him. He let in the clutch, and the car leaped ahead.

  * * * * *

  In the two camera-cases Coburn was sure that he had the cryptic device that was responsible for the failure of a cold-war raid. He wouldn't have dared drive away from Dillon leaving these devices behind. If they were what he thought, they'd be absolute proof of the truth of his story, and they should furnish clues to the sort of science the Invaders possessed. Show the world that Invaders were upon it, and all the world would combine to defend Earth. The cold war would end.

  But a bitter doubt came to him. Would they? Or would they offer zestfully to be viceroys and overseers for the Invaders, betraying the rest of mankind for the privilege of ruling them even under unhuman masters?