Gradually, Swimmer grew aware of faces in the crowd around MacPreston. One particularly caught his attention: a square-faced hulk of a man at MacPreston’s left—eyes like brown caverns above a hooked nose, dark straw hair wisping away to twin bald spots at the temples. This man betrayed an obvious interest in the details of how Swimmer had sunk the ship.
But none of these people appeared to grasp the urgency, the danger to Ob … and Uncle Amino.
MacPreston went over Swimmer’s story … and over it … and over it … and over it.
The position of the diamond box—how had that guided him in placement of the explosives?
“Look!” Swimmer suddenly raged. “Don’t any of you realize what’ll happen if Jepson’s boys find out he’s dead?”
“Jepson’s boys aren’t going anywhere,” MacPreston said.
“But they’ll kill Ob … and my uncle,” Swimmer said.
“Doubtful,” MacPreston said. “Now, about this Ob. You say your uncle picked her up with a time machine?”
Swimmer had to explain then about the time machine, Jepson’s money, about the break-through, the inaccurate controls. With every new question to answer, he could feel time running out for Ob and his uncle.
“Time machine,” MacPreston sneered.
The hook-nosed man tugged at MacPreston’s sleeve. MacPreston look up, said: “Yeah, Mish?”
“Outside,” the man said. “Wanta talk.” They left the room.
* * *
More time raced past. Swimmer began to lose all hope.
MacPreston and his companion returned followed by an Army general and a Ranger colonel. The Colonel was speaking as they entered: “Three hundred and eighty men, counting the single-scooters and manjets, plus the twenty-five flying tanks the Marines are sending; that should do it.”
“What about him?” the General asked, and he nodded toward Swimmer.
“Rumel goes with us,” MacPreston said. “You heard what the President said.”
“We still have three hours of daylight,” the Colonel said. “That’s plenty of time.”
“Do you need transportation?” the General asked.
“We’ll use our limousine,” MacPreston said.
“Stay high and out of it until we send the signal,” the General said. “I don’t suppose you’re armored.”
“A Presidential limousine—you’re joking!” MacPreston said.
“Yeah, well I still want you out of it until the shooting’s over,” the General said. “No telling what armament a mob like that’ll have.”
“What shooting?” Swimmer asked.
“We’re going in and rescue your uncle and your stone-age woman friend,” MacPreston said. He shook his head. “Time machine.”
Swimmer took two deep breaths, said: “You know where they are?”
“We have a plan of the house from the architect,” MacPreston said. He started to turn away, looked back at Swimmer. “One of Mish’s boys just handed me the damndest report I’ve ever seen in my life—from a Professor Elwin in Cambrai, France. You know this Elwin?”
“I know who he is,” Swimmer said. And he stilled his own questions in the hope that these people would launch themselves into their promised action.
“Time machine,” MacPreston muttered, but there was awe rather than doubt in his voice.
Swimmer felt something grab his left wrist, looked down to find the wrist connected by handcuffs to the right wrist of the hook-nosed companion—Mish.
“I’m Mischa Levinsky, CID,” the man said, staring hard at Swimmer. “Wanta talk to you sometime, Rumel, about that Mazatlan operation. For one man, that was a dilly.”
CID, Swimmer thought. The President. Army. Rangers. Marines. He had the feeling that he was lost in a mad pinball machine, about to be bounced from bumper to bumper while MacPreston shouted. “Tilt! Tilt! Tilt!”
“Let’s roll it,” Levinsky said.
VI
The combined force dove into the lake island out of the afternoon sun, screaming in like a swarm of angry insects onto an enemy hive. Army armored single-scooters formed a solid ring around the beach perimeter. Marine flying tanks darkened the sky. Leaping Rangers in manjets popped up and down through the pines.
To Swimmer, watching from the rear of the limousine which hovered at about seven thousand feet southeast of the scene, the orderly pandemonium was an insane game. He found it difficult to associate any of his own actions with this result. Had it not been for his fear over Ob, Swimmer knew he’d have found the whole thing ludicrous.
The limousine dropped down to three thousand feet, moved in closer.
Swimmer glanced at MacPreston on his right. “Are they…”
“Dunno yet,” MacPreston said. “Pretty good operation, eh, Mish?”
“Too damn many of ’em,” Levinsky growled. “Wonder they aren’t falling all over each other.”
“What do you think, Rumel?” MacPreston asked.
“What?”
“Is it a good operation?”
They’re nuts, Swimmer thought. He said: “I agree with Mr. Levinsky. Jepson couldn’t have had more than twenty of his men down there … from my count. I’d have held the armor out farther and gone in with fifty men.”
“Where would you have hit?” MacPreston asked.
Levinsky nodded.
“Right on top of the house.”
The limousine dropped to five hundred feet above the lake’s southeast shore. Swimmer could hear scattered rifle shots. Each one sent an agony of fear through him.
Ob …
A man-made serenity returned to the island, a shocked silence broken only by faint shouts heard across the hush of water. A line of men with their hands in the air was marched onto the island’s dock through a cordon of single-scooters.
Something buzzed from the limousine’s dash.
“That’s it,” MacPreston said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The limousine slanted in to the patch of open ground beside the chalet. Its hover jets raised a cloud of pine-needle duff that settled slowly after the motors were silenced.
MacPreston opened his window, sneezed from the dust.
A Ranger captain ran up, saluted, spoke through the window. “All secure, sir. Professor Rumel and the—ah—woman are safe in the house.”
Swimmer allowed himself a deep sigh.
“What were the casualties?” Levinsky demanded.
“Sir?” The Ranger captain bent to peer in at Levinsky.
“The casualties!” Levinsky snapped.
“We have ten wounded, sir. Eight from our own crossfire. Nothing serious, though. And we killed two of the—uh—men here. Wounded four others.”
MacPreston touched a button beside him. The limousine’s bubbletop swung back with a hiss of hydraulic mechanism.
“Fifty men right on top of the house,” Levinsky muttered. “Would’ve been plenty.”
“Well, Captain,” MacPreston said, “bring Professor Rumel and the woman out here. I’m anxious to meet them.”
The Ranger captain fidgeted. “Well, sir … you know we had orders to handle her and the Professor with kid gloves and we—”
“So bring them out here!”
“Sir, the woman refuses to leave her work.”
“Her work?”
“Sir, Professor Rumel says she’ll take orders only from his nephew there.” The Captain nodded toward Swimmer.
Swimmer absorbed this silently, but with a strong upswing of good humor. He liked this Captain. He liked MacPreston. He liked Levinsky and all this damn fool mob of fighting men. Swimmer was surprised to come out of this reverie and find Levinsky and MacPreston staring at him.
“What didn’t you tell us?” Levinsky asked.
About Ob working on the diamond, Swimmer thought. He swallowed, said: “I think she likes me.”
“So?” MacPreston said.
“So that’s good,” Swimmer said.
“From the description, she sounds like a
freak,” MacPreston said. “What’s good about it?”
Swimmer suddenly did not like MacPreston. The emotional reaction was apparently quite evident in the glare Swimmer turned on the Presidential assistant. “Maybe the description’s wrong,” MacPreston said.
“Wally,” Levinsky said, “why don’t you shut up?”
* * *
In the embarrassed silence which followed. Swimmer looked at Levinsky, reflecting: Ob a freak? She’s no more a freak than I am! So she has extra equipment. In her day, that was an advantage. And it isn’t her fault she was snatched out of her day. She didn’t ask to be brought here and have people sneer at her. Just because of the way she looks. She’s a normal and healthy human female. Probably a lot more normal and healthy than this MacPreston jerk!
MacPreston, his face flushed with anger, turned to the Ranger captain, said: “She refuses to come out here?”
“Sir, the professor insists she’ll only take orders from his nephew. I’m … I hesitate to use force.”
“Why?” MacPreston demanded. “Don’t you have enough men for the job?”
“Sir, there’s a bench in there must weigh four hundred pounds. They hid this Jepson behind it. We wanted to move the bench to see if Jepson was really dead. Sir, she lifted that bench with one hand.”
“A four-hundred-pound bench? With one hand?”
“Yes, sir. Oh … and Jepson was really dead, sir. Skull crushed. According to the Professor, she did that with one blow of her fist.”
“Her fist?” MacPreston turned his outraged stare onto Swimmer. “Rumel, what kind of female is that in there?”
“Just an ordinary, normal woman,” Swimmer said.
“But—”
“Nothing unusual at all about her!” Swimmer said. “In her day, she may even have been a ninety-seven-pound weakling. She didn’t ask to be brought here, MacPreston. She didn’t ask to have people pronounce stupid judgments on her appearance.”
MacPreston studied Swimmer’s face, noting every detail of it from the low hairline to the vanishing chin. Presently he said: “Sorry, Mr. Rumel. My error.”
Swimmer nodded, thinking: She’ll only take orders from me. A crazy elation filled him. He felt his left wrist being lifted by the handcuffs, looked down to see Levinsky unlocking the cuff.
“Mish, what’re you doing?” MacPreston asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Levinsky asked.
“Now, wait a minute, Mish,” MacPreston said. “I sympathize with your request, and the President does, too. But there are large obstacles. This man has committed crimes which no other man—”
“He’s the best demolition man I ever met,” Levinsky said.
“But we have the Russians to think about!” MacPreston said unhappily.
“Well give ’em Jepson,” Levinsky said. “Jepson’s dead. He can’t object … or dispute our story.”
Swimmer massaged his wrist where the handcuff had been, stared from MacPreston to Levinsky. Their conversation made no sense to him. The Ranger captain, still standing beside the limousine, appeared equally puzzled.
“But Rumel has been identified!” MacPreston said.
“So?” Levinsky said.
“So the Russians’ll know he was involved. What use can he be to you after that? He has a face—excuse me, Mr. Rumel, but it’s true—that a Minnesota farmer could identify after seeing it only twice in the newspapers. How could you hide that from the Russians?”
“Don’t be stupid, Wally! I never wanted to use him that way. I want his knowledge, his experience. I want him in the academy.”
“But if we don’t hand him over to prosecution with the rest of that mob—”
“What if we claim he was our agent all along? What if we say he infiltrated the Jepson mob for us?”
“You said it yourself, Mish. They know who the expert was. They know who sank that boat.”
“So?”
MacPreston frowned.
“You heard what the President said,” Levinsky said. “If Rumel proves cooperative, and if we deem it advisable after our field investigation—”
“I don’t like it.”
“The Russians won’t like it, either. Especially when we give them back their diamond and the Jepson gang, what’s left of it.”
“The boat!”
“We’ll apologize about the boat.”
Give them back their diamond, Swimmer thought. Oh, God! And Ob’s in there cutting that rock into little pieces!
“I’ll have to think about it,” MacPreston said. “Discomfiting the Russians would give me just as much pleasure as it would you. But there are other considerations.” He looked up at the Ranger Captain. “Well, what’re you standing there for?”
“Sir?”
“Take us to Professor Rumel and this … woman.”
“Sir, I’ve … I think we’d better hurry.”
“Why?”
“Well, sir, it’s what I’ve been trying to … sir, this work she won’t leave—she’s cutting up that Mars diamond.”
Swimmer had not suspected MacPreston could move that fast. The limousine’s door was slammed open. MacPreston grabbed his arm, and they were out and running—up the chalet’s front steps with armed men in uniform leaping aside, through the door and into the living room.
Overturned chair, broken windows, a bullet-splintered wall: all testified to the violence of the attack. A cordon of guards was opened to the hall leading into the workroom.
MacPreston stopped short. Swimmer bumped into him, was bumped in turn by Levinsky who was right on their heels.
“That sound,” MacPreston said.
Swimmer recognized it. The sound came from the hallway.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
MacPreston released Swimmer’s arm, advanced on the hall like a bull preparing to charge. A nudge from Levinsky sent Swimmer following after. He felt he was being escorted to his execution, and found it odd how their feet kept to the rhythm of Ob’s chipping.
Into the workroom they paraded.
The place appeared untouched by the military’s violence except for a shattered window at their left. Professor Amino Rumel stood beside the window. He turned as his nephew entered, said: “Conrad! Thank heaven you’re here. She won’t do a thing I say.”
* * *
MacPreston stopped a good six feet from where Ob was working. He stared at the square brown figure, noting the intense concentration in every line of her back, the play of muscles. Swimmer and Levinsky stopped behind him.
Crack!
Crack!
The Professor advanced on Swimmer. “There’s been the most dreadful confusion,” he said.
“In heaven’s name, Rumel, stop her!” MacPreston rasped.
“I’ve tried,” the Professor said. “She pays no attention to me.”
“Not you!” MacPreston roared.
Crack!
The Professor drew himself up, stared at MacPreston. “And who,” he asked, “might you be?” He turned oddly pleading eyes on Swimmer. It was obvious that MacPreston had remembered about the four-hundred-pound bench being lifted with one hand.
Swimmer tried to find his voice. His throat felt as though it had been seared with a hot poker. Slowly he brushed past MacPreston, touched Ob’s arm.
Ob dropped mallet and wedge, whirled on Swimmer with a glare that sent him retreating one quick step. At sight of him, though, a smile stretched her mouth. The smile held a radiant quality that transfixed Swimmer.
“Ob, you can stop the work now,” Swimmer whispered.
Still smiling, she moved close to him, put a calloused forefinger to his cheek in the silent invitation of the cave, testing the emotion she read on his face. There were no scars on the cheek to count his years—and the skin was so sweetly, excitingly soft … like one of the Cave Mother’s babies. Still, he appeared to understand the fingerplay. He drew her aside, brushed a lock of hair away from her cheek, touched her ears.
Ob want
ed to take his hand, lead him to the bench and show him the work, but she feared to break the spell.
“Even with the bullets flying around,” Professor Rumel said, “she paid no attention. Just went right on, as though—” His voice trailed off. Presently he said: “Dear me. She wouldn’t know about bullets.”
Swimmer heard the voice as though it came from a dream. Part of him was aware that MacPreston and Levinsky had gone to the bench, that they were bent over it muttering. What he read on Ob’s face made all of that unimportant.
The words of the Cave Mother came back to Ob: “It’s all right to play with the males and sample them, but when the time comes for permanent mating, my magic will tell you which one to choose. You’ll know at once.”
How wise the Cave Mother had been to know such a thing, Ob thought. How potent was the Cave Mother’s magic!
* * *
Swimmer felt that he had come alive, been reborn here in this room, that behind him lay a whole misplaced segment of non-existence. He wanted to hug Ob, but suspected she might respond with painful vigor. She’d have to be cautioned about her strength before she broke his ribs. He sensed also that she might not have the inhibitions dictated by current culture. He could imagine her reacting with complete abandon if he should kiss her.
Slowly he pulled away.
Ob saw his reluctance, thought: He thinks of the devil-gods. We must distract the devil-gods, occupy them with other things. Then perhaps they’ll take their thunder-magic elsewhere, and leave mortals to the things which interest mortals.
But Swimmer had just begun to think about consequences. He found himself filled with wonder that he had never before worried about the legal consequences of his actions. The Mars diamond had attracted him, he realized, because it was a romp, a lark, a magnificent joke. But after what had happened to the rock, MacPreston and Levinsky would have to throw him to the Russians. They couldn’t just hand over a mess of chips and say: “Sorry, fellows … it came apart.” Everything had come apart—and Swimmer was struck speechless by fear of what might happen to Ob.
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 65