That was all I saw from the balcony, because I didn’t stay there long. Adult Horch weighed about as much as I did, and I suppose the builders had allowed some margin of safety. But it sagged disturbingly under my weight, so I stepped back inside. As I did I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Both the doorframe and the outer edges of the accordion doors were thick with some kind of pale purplish mildew.
It was the kind of thing any Earthly housekeeper would scrub away as soon as detected. Were the Horch as sloppy as that? I didn’t think so. The stuff seemed to be there for a purpose. There were heavy cloth drapes attached to the lintel and doors. They were rolled back, but it looked as though they could be pulled out to cover the moldy purple stuff.
I put that aside for later thought. Inside the room were the chamber pot and the bed. Their purposes were unmistakable. I used them in turn.
Thankfully, this bed was a lot softer than Pirraghiz’s. It was basically a sort of round mattress on the floor, maybe a hundred and fifty centimeters across-just about long enough for me to stretch out. The mattress was covered with something that felt like flannel, and stuffed with little round lumps like bolls of cotton. When I sprawled out on it I meant only to rest and think about what I was going to say to Beert when he arrived, but I think I dozed off.
What roused me was a sound from outside.
It was an airplane. When I got to the balcony to look out it was just landing in one of those untended fields, coming down slow and nearly vertically, like one of the Bureau’s VTOLs. It rolled only a few meters, and as soon as it stopped a Horch got out, met by a couple of others who had been standing by.
Was the one who had just arrived Beert? I couldn’t tell, but he was wearing the cloth belly patch, while the abdomens of the two who were meeting him glittered metallically in the sunlight. The three of them were having an animated conversation, snaky arms and necks swirling around. I couldn’t hear, of course, but I wished I could; some of the flailing arms were pointing toward the building-in fact, to the balcony I was standing on.
I hastily stepped back, more or less out of sight, but it was too late to matter. The three had finished their conversation. One of the shiny-bellied ones climbed into the plane, still yammering at the other. And the one who had just arrived entered the building.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The newcomer was Beert, all right. When I went to the door of my room and peered down the circular stairway, I saw him coming up, the ropy neck pointed straight at me. He called, “I did not think you would come here without authorization, Dan.”
He sounded aggrieved. I didn’t want him angry at me, but I stood my ground. I said, “I’m well now, Beert. I didn’t see any reason to wait.”
He came up and stood beside me, his pointy little face only centimeters from my own. “You do not know all the reasons for what I do, Dan,” he said glumly, and waved me into the room. He closed the door behind us and sat on the edge of the bed, regarding me. “The Greatmother did not expect you yet,” he sighed. “I will have to apologize to her.”
Greatmother? That was the second or third time I’d heard her mentioned, and she sounded important. “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble,” I apologized.
He waved the apology away with both sinuous arms. “I am not in trouble, Dan, but it is not appropriate for things to happen in the nest that the Greatmother doesn’t know about. Where is Pirraghiz?”
“She went back to get some stuff. It isn’t her fault, Beert. It was all my idea.”
“Yes, I had supposed so,” he said moodily. “It has been observed that your species is often unruly.” He thought for a moment, long neck swaying, and then said, “You see, Dan, I am engaged in a number of discussions with the cousins. I had to leave them to come here, and I cannot stay very long. Perhaps we can spend a little time together, but first I must speak with the Greatmother about your presence here. Can you remain in this chamber while I make arrangements for you?”
“Sure I can, but I’d rather-“
He was waving both arms and the neck at me again. “Please, Dan. Do not be still unruly. It will not take me long. Stay here.”
When he came back he looked less fussed. “The Greatmother extends you the courtesy of the nest,” he told me, sounding pleased about it. “When she has time she wishes to meet you in person, but when that may be, I cannot say. Do you need to eat?”
Actually I had been beginning to think of food, but I shook my head. “Pirraghiz doesn’t want me eating anything until she comes back to check it out.”
“Yes, that’s wise. Very well. I’m afraid everyone is quite busy, since we are so shorthanded now, but I think I have something that will occupy you until Pirraghiz shows up. Come, first I will show you the parts of the nest.”
He did, too. From where we stood on the landing he showed me the door to something he called the Repository of the Nest-a sort of library, I gathered. We looked in on the children’s dormitory, where a dozen or so little ones were taking their naps-the same ones I had seen at the band shell, I thought, because the female who was standing guard over them was familiar. Beert told me her name. He told me the names of all the five or six Horch we met along the way, but I didn’t retain any of them. They all greeted Beert with friendly respect, sometimes intertwining necks. Even the teacher-guard. They seemed to be an affectionate bunch.
When we were on the ground floor Beert paused at the entrance. He slapped the accordion door with one arm and said, like any suburbanite with a new split-ranch, “What do you think of our nest then, Dan?” When I told him, as politely as I could, that it was very nice, but it struck me that wicker was a peculiar choice of materials for building a multistory habitat, he said in surprise, “But we could work only with what we had, Dan. The Others gave us nothing.”
“The Others?”
“The ones you call the Beloved Leaders. When they dumped our ancestors here we had no tools, no machines, only our bare arms and teeth. Do you not think we did well? Every section of the nest reinforces every other. It has stood for many generations like this, and will for generations more.”
“Unless there’s a fire,” I said.
That amused him. “But there is no fire in the nest, ever,” he said, and led me to the shed that was used for cooking and eating. This one was made of clay bricks like adobe-and as likely to wash away in the first rain, I thought, but he showed me how the clay was covered with some sort of vegetable sap to protect it from the weather. A meal was being prepared. Though the smells were unfamiliar, they were definitely food, and I was beginning to wish that Pirraghiz would get back. The two Horch doing the cooking were friendly but busier than any two persons needed to be, chopping up vegetables, grinding tubers in a mortar, tending their cooking fires. When I asked Beert if everyone always worked so hard around here, the question seemed to disturb him.
“Not always,” he said moodily. Then he sighed. “We do not have enough people for all the work,” he admitted. “The farms to be tended, the children to be cared for, the nest to be kept in repair. Before we were-“ He hesitated over the next words. “Before we were set free, it was different. Then there were enough of us to do all that needed to be done, and to have time enough to rest, and to study, and to do all the other things we enjoy. But now many of us have left the nest.”
“To go where?”
His head darted around uneasily. “When the cousin Horch freed us they offered to take us out of here. Many nest-siblings went to the planets of the cousins. They wanted to see what a life of leisure was like, with machines to tend to all the drudgery.
This was natural enough, Dan. They had every right to do so, and the Greatmother did not object.”
“But you didn’t go?”
“It is my nest,” he said simply, and then glanced at the shadow cast by one of those bent-over trees. “But look at the time! I must hurry.”
The penny dropped. Of course. The trees had been coaxed to grow in that direction so that they could function as gnomo
ns in vast sundials, the eight bushes planted around them marking the Horch equivalent of the hours of the day. I was so struck by the ingenuity of the system that I hardly heard the rest of what Beert said. Which was: “I have something to give you before I leave.”
He wrapped one of those arms around my shoulders-it was warmer than I had expected-and led me to the pink structure. The two Christmas trees I had seen before were standing immobile not far away, but Beert ignored them. He seemed in good spirits, if rushed. “This is my personal laboratory,” he said with pride.
I looked at it, and at him. “Does that mean you’re some kind of a scientist?”
“Scientist? No, Dan. I am a student. All I hope to learn is what the cousins already know, and this is where I try to learn it. The thing I wish to give you is in the laboratory, but there are delicate machines here; it is better if you don’t come inside until you know enough about them to take care. Wait just a moment.”
He unlocked the door-at least, I guess that was what he did; he pressed both arms against the door in a complicated, sine-wavey pattern, something like an identification signature, I suppose; anyway, the door opened. Lights sprang up inside, and he went in.
I peered after him.
Beert had been right about the machines. The place was full of them, in all stages of completion. It looked like the way he had been learning his cousins’ science was by taking some of their gadgets apart and rebuilding them.
More important, it also looked like this was the place I had been looking for. If there were secrets of Horch technology for me to steal and take back to the Bureau, there was a whole treasure trove of them right here.
And he had implied that, sooner or later, I would be allowed to examine them more closely.
It was the most hopeful thing that had happened to me since Beert rescued me from the torturers. The only sour note was those two Horch robots. Most of their twigs were retracted, but I knew they could spring into action at any moment.
When Beert came back, carrying something in a wicker basket, he saw me watching them uneasily. “Do not worry about the robots, Dan,” he reassured me. “You are here with the permission of the cousins, and there will be no problem. The cousins have been very kind. This laboratory could not have been built without their help. Now let us go back to your chamber.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I never learned Beert’s age, but there was something boyish about him. All the way up the steps he was hissing softly to himself-it was almost a chuckle-and darting his head, almost teasingly, toward mine. But he didn’t speak until we were in my room and the door was closed. I was feeling pretty cheerful myself, partly contagion from Beert, partly the thought of all those Horch secrets waiting for me in his lab.
Then he lifted the lid of the wicker basket. “This is something you may use while Pirraghiz and I are gone,” he said happily.
He took something out of the basket. I recognized it at once and suddenly was not happy at all. It was one of those Beloved Leader helmets. I jumped back, snarling, “No!”
That blew Beert’s own cheerful mood. He darted his head at me incredulously. “You do not wish this? Oh, wait. Perhaps I understand. Are you thinking of the way the interrogation machines used this device? No, I am not giving you this for that purpose. I do not intend to cause you pain. Indeed, you can operate it for yourself. See, here are the selectors.”
He flipped up the little tab on the side of the helmet, exposing its nest of colored grooves, as though he were revealing a great secret. It wasn’t news to me, though. “I’ve seen this already,” I told him. “Rosaleen Artzybachova was tinkering with one like it while we were captives.”
That surprised him. “Did she so? I was not aware of this. Was she able to operate the helmet satisfactorily?”
“Well, no. Not very.”
He wagged his long neck at me. “Indeed I think she would have had great trouble doing so. The selectors are designed for tinier digits than yours-the talons of your Dopey, or of one of Pirraghiz’s people. Let me see if I can find some implement you can use-“
While he was scrabbling in the basket I took the little ceramic toothpick Pirraghiz had given me out of my pocket. “Like this, you mean?”
He swooped his head down almost to touch it, then peered up at me. “You astonish me sometimes, Dan. Yes, that will do.” He took the little splinter out of my hand with the end of one arm-it split, like an elephant’s trunk, to pick it up securely.
I said, “Isn’t this a Beloved Leader device?”
“No longer,” he said absently, tweaking the colored lines. “It is now ours.” He had pressed the helmet against his belly, and seemed to be staring at nothing. Then, sounding satisfied, he said, “Yes, here it is. See, Dan-“ holding up the helmet for me to look at. “I have accessed some of their records for you. You can change from one to another if you wish, but activate only the green selector, otherwise you will be in other files and it will be difficult for you to return to the ones of interest. Do you remember how to put the helmet on?”
I did. I held the thing warily, unable to forget what it had done to me with the Christmas trees.
But was Beert likely to be playing unpleasant tricks? I hoped not. I swallowed. I pulled it over my head, snapped the eyeshades in place—
And, just as before, I was instantly in another place.
I was on a familiar street in New York City. Vendors lined the sidewalk. I had stopped at one of the stalls. I was picking up bits and pieces of the kitschy merchandise this one had to offer, and I felt strange. I felt female. My body was not the one I had been born with; it was tightly bound at the breasts, and when I saw my hands the nails were bright orange and one finger bore a ring like a dragon, with wings outspread. Female hands, all right. Certainly not my own. I-she- seemed to be interested in an old-fashioned wristwatch with the hands of Mickey Mouse pointing out the time, but when the vendor spoke to her she put it back and turned away.
As always with the helmet, I was there. I saw everything this body looked at, I felt everything she touched. I smelled a faint wisp of roasting lamb from a pita joint on the corner, and heard the scream of sirens from somewhere nearby-fire, ambulance, police car, I could not tell which, and the body I was occupying was not interested enough to look.
I pulled the helmet off my head, confused. “What am I looking at?” I demanded.
“Keep looking,” Beert advised. “You will see someone you know well, so the other Dan said. These events are not happening now,” he added. “These are recordings of transmissions which were received some time ago. See it for yourself.”
Hesitantly I put the helmet back on. The body I was wearing glanced at her own watch and, now hurrying, crossed the street and turned a corner.
I recognized the entranceway. It belonged to the midtown office building that held the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory, my grandfather’s legacy to immortalize his name, where I had once gone to work for (and spy on!) my cousin Pat. The body announced herself-the name meant nothing to me-to the floor guard-new since my time-and while she waited for him to call her escort, she was covertly eyeing the man.
I realized that I was looking at a man through the eyes of a woman, and it was instructive to see where her eyes went: face, shoulders (he was pretty solidly built), with special attention to the region of the crotch, both front and back.
Then some other man I didn’t recognize came down, passed her through the turnstiles, into the elevator, up into Pat’s waiting room, and there I saw people I knew quite well.
As I entered the room, Pat’s receptionist, Janice DuPage, got up from her desk and greeted me with a quick hug. “Sorry I’m late,” I-“I”-apologized, and Janice said:
“That’s all right. Just let me sign out and then we can go.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Pete Schneyman, just glancing at us as he passed through the reception room. And while Janice was picking up her purse and checking her makeup, the elevator door
opened again. The person who came out was someone I knew very well indeed.
It was Dr. Patrice Adcock. My cousin. My Pat. The Pat I loved. The Pat I had lost.
My hostess’s eyes were studying her, too, in her own way, while Janice said, “You remember my friend from the cruise? The one I didn’t take?”
There was an edge to her voice, as of some remembered grievance, but Pat only said, “Of course.” She shook hands, shook her hand. I was actually touching the warm, firm hand of the woman I loved. And then she turned away and went into her own office and I tore the helmet off my head.
“What is this?” I demanded. “Whose body was I in? Was it Patrice?”
“It was not any one of your party,” Beert said heavily, his neck hanging low. “Other humans were implanted with the transmitters.”
I scowled at him. “How could that be?” Then a particularly nasty thought crossed my mind, and I said, “Unless-“
Beert’s little snake head swung toward mine, looking into my eyes. “Yes, Dan,” he said. “The Others have reached your planet now.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I don’t know when Beert left my room. I was under the helmet, obsessively eavesdropping on the many, many unwitting-or sometimes witting-human beings who were wearing the bugs implanted by the Others.
I knew of only six persons who had been bugged and returned to Earth, the five of us in the original batch from Starlab, plus Patrice from the ones who had been in captivity. Now there seemed to be hundreds of them.
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