For a moment I almost thought I had got through and that she was going to be able to see it from my point of view, but then she said, "How can you be so blind?"
"I could ask you the same thing. Just look around you. Does this look like the work of man-hating monsters?"
"It's just a part of their scheme to lull you into trusting them."
"Here we go again," I said, rising and looking out the vast expanse of window. "Our arguing won't convince either of us that the other is right. I spent six weeks in your world. Now you spend a month in one of mine. Maybe you'll see why I couldn't accept what I was told."
"No," Sally said. "You won't be able to brainwash me that easily. I know better. I know what the Kriths are, and I won't believe their Lie."
I suddenly wished that I knew what the Kriths were and what they wanted, what they really wanted from us. And I realized then, maybe for the first time, that Sally and Mica and Scoti and the others in Staunton had planted some serious doubts in my mind, doubts that I would, sooner or later, be forced to resolve.
In the garden behind the cabin was an enormous swimming pool, a great free-form thing some hundred yards long and maybe fifty yards wide at its widest point. One end was no more than a few inches deep, but the other, where the diving boards were, was at least fifteen yards to the bottom. And the water was a clear crystal, pure, reflecting the cloudless blue sky above.
Along the sides of the pool ran a wide strip of soft, spongy green material, a vast mattress for sunbathing. Here and there were reclining chairs and two extensions of the autokitchen for dialing meals and drinks.
We had been there for three days by then, and Sally had begun to relax some, at times even seeming to forget where she was and why and that she was, by her own definition, my prisoner. We had been swimming in the pool, diving and splashing and even occasionally laughing at our own foolishness. Finally, exhausted, we had climbed out of the pooi onto the sun-deck and lay dripping with water. I dialed us drinks and lay back looking up at the clear blue sky of this Earth, a world uncluttered by the more obvious works of civilization.
"Eric," Sally said suddenly, a sharp edge of seriousness to her voice, "we can't go on like this."
How many times across the Lines have women said that and for how many different reasons?
"Why?" I asked in all seriousness.
"I'm beginning to like you too well," she said. "I really believe you're sincere about what you say." She paused. "Sometimes I even forget and just, well, enjoy myself and then I remember and . . . Well, when I remember what I am and what you are and what this place is and why we're here, when I remember these things I hate myself for enjoying it and I hate you for making me enjoy it. And I think that sooner or later I will come to hate you enough to kill you."
"I wouldn't want you to do that," I said, jealously thinking about her relationship with Mica. Back in Staunton she had told me that she was his mistress. I somehow just couldn't bring myself to imagine her in bed with that cold fish, and I wondered just what it was that she felt for him. I couldn't believe it was love or even real sexual attraction to him.
Why then, I asked myself, had Sally been his mistress? Well, maybe you could attribute it to hero worship, gratitude for what she believed he and his Paratimers were doing for her and her people. If she could marry Count Albert von Heinen to advance the American rebel cause, couldn't she be bedding with Mica for just about the same reason? It seemed sort of likely to me -- especially when she had never shown any real affection toward the Paratimer leader -- and it did help my ego a lot to thiink it was so, as if I didn't have to compete with the man if I could show him up for what he was -- whatever he was.
Then she brought me out of my thoughts.
"Listen to me," she said, sitting up. "One of us is right and the other is wrong. Do you agree?"
"Well, yes. There must be objective proof somewhere."
"Then if we learn what's true, can't we both accept it?"
"Yes, I'll accept it if we can find real proof."
"Can you call your Kar-hinter some way?"
"No, but the skudder pilot said that he'd be coming here to see us in a few days. Why?"
"Ask him about this Cross-Line Civiibation you talk about. Ask him to take us there and show us that it really exists and that it's as wonderful as they claim it is. And then, if he does, I'll believe that the Kriths are really what you think they are and that the Paratimers are as mistaken as you believe."
Perhaps Sally and her friends had made me doubt the Kriths, I thought, but it also looked as if I had somehow made Sally begin to doubt what she had been told. We were both doubting the verities by which we had lived -- but they could be proved, one way or the other. Kar-hinter could take us to the Cross-Line Civilization, show us how men and Kriths worked together to build a perfect world -- and that would solve our problems, destroy my own growing doubts, and show Sally that everything I had told her was true. It was so simple. Why hadn't I thought of it before?
"Okay," I said. "We'll do that. We'll get Kar-hinter to take us there.
Four more days went by before Kar-hinter arrived.
It was night. The yard-tending robots had completed their work and the carefully controlled nightly rain had begun to fall. Sally and I were inside the cabin watching a videotape of the classic Pirates of Avalon, with English dubbed, when I heard a rapping at the door.
"What's that?" Sally gasped, almost leaping to her feet.
"I'll see," I said, rising and crossing to the door.
When I told the door to open and the cabin's light spilled through it out into the darkness, I saw the tall, naked form of a Krith.
"Kar-hinter?" I asked, not sure that I recognized him in the poor light. And all Kriths do look pretty much alike to a human.
"Hello, Eric," Kar-hinter replied, water running down his face from the steady rain, dripping from his chin, trickling down his nearly olive-colored, hairless body. "May I come in?"
"Of course," I said. "We've been expecting you."
As Kar-hinter came into the room, shook water from his body like a dog, and found himself a chair, I cut off the video player and turned up the lights.
"Hello, Sally," he said. "I hope that you are finding Eden to be a pleasant place of captivity."
"There are worse prisons," Sally said, forcing herself to smile just a little despite the revulsion she must have felt. She moved back in her chair, trying to cover herself with her arms and legs as if there were some reason she should not let the alien see her naked, though I have never known a Krith to find any human being sexually attractive. I have the impression that their ideas of sex bear little resemblance to ours, but I don't know anything about them.
"I am glad you have accepted it," Kar-hinter said. "Eric is not an unpleasant jailer, I trust."
Sally looked at me, but did not reply.
"At least there is no open enmity," Kar-hinter said. "I had even hoped that pehaps you were lovers by now. Eh, Eric?
"We get along," I said.
"Ah, but you sleep in separate beds, I think," the Krith said.
"Does it matter to you?" I asked, knowing that there was an angry, resentful edge to my voice. What business was it of his?
"I only want you to be satisfied, Eric," the alien said. "And you, Sally, do you still consider me a monster and Eric a traitor to mankind?"
"I've seen nothing yet to change my opinion of either of you," she said coldly. I wondered how much of it she really meant.
"You are doing a poor job of converting her, Eric."
"Is that my job?"
"No," Kar-hinter said. "Her conversion is of no importance to me. She can believe what she wishes. I only want to see you happy, Eric, rewarded, so to speak, for what you have done for us."
"Us?" Sally asked.
"Ah, yes, must I explain every plural pronoun I use?"
He was as close to being angry as I had ever seen him -- him or any other Krith.
"By us," Kar-hinter was sayi
ng, "Sally, I mean allied mankind and Krith. We are partners in our own salvation."
"I wish I could believe that," Sally said.
"Do you really?" Kar-hinter asked. "That would be a beginning, at least."
"Kar-hinter," I said "let's cut out this verbal fencing for a minute."
"Of course, Eric."
"I want to make a request."
"Anything that is within my power to grant is yours, the Krith said.
"I Want you to take Sally and me to the Cross-Line Civilization."
"Why, Eric?" He didn't seem surprised at my request, but then did anything ever seem to surprise him?
"Well, that's one of the cornerstones of the Paratimers' arguments against the Kriths," I said. "They say that the Cross-Line Civilization is one of the Great Lies, the other one being the Contratime signals. Well, if we could show Sally that the Cross-Line Civilization does exist, she would accept that she is the one who has been lied to."
"But, frankly, Eric, it is of no importance to me what she thinks is true or false."
"It's important to me."
"I see." Kar-hinter paused for a moment. "And you, Eric, why do you want to see the Cross-Line Civilization?"
"I just told you."
"Did you? Or, Eric, might it be that you too have begun to believe her and her Paratimers? Is she converting you, Eric?"
"Does it matter?" I asked. "If we can visit the Cross-Line worlds, neither of us would have any reason to doubt."
"But it does matter, my dear Eric," Kar-hinter said slowly, spreading his manlike hands. "You know as well as I that skudders are scarce this far West and must be used only for work of vital importance to the master plans. We just cannot call up a skudder every time we want to take a pleasure trip, especially one so long as the one you propose."
"Surely you could arrange it if you tried," I insisted.
"I could, Eric, I believe, but only if I were convinced it would be worth the while. I am not, not for her. She does not matter to me or to the plan."
"Do I?" I asked slowly, playing what I supposed was my trump card.
"Of course you do, Eric. You are becoming one of our most valuable operatives."
"Then would you arrange such a trip to convince me?"
"Are you that near to defection?"
"I don't know," I said slowly, being more honest with him than I had been before and on purpose. "I don't want to know." I paused, then said to him: "I admit that I've been pretty shaken by some of what has hapopened. The Paratimers were awfully convincing. And I do have some doubts, not many, but some, and I don't like them. I want absolute certainty that I'm doing the right thing, that I'm fighting on the right side. And you can give me that certainty if you'll just take us to the Cross-Line worlds. If you don't . . . Well, I don't mean to be threatening, Kar-hinter, but if you don't, I'll wonder why. And I'll suspect that maybe you didn't take us there because you couldn't, because there's really no such place."
"Quite a speech, Eric," Kar-hinter replied at last. "I did not know that it had gone this far with you."
For the first time I felt fear of Kar-hinter and the whole Krithian machine. What if Sally were right? What if Kar-hinter were really the monster she believed he was? It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to bring in a squad of men and wipe us out here and now. No one would ever know, and my doubts would never have an opportunity to spread if he killed us both now. I wonder if my fear showed.
"So you might turn against us," Kar-hinter was saying slowly, but without antagonism. "I would not want that to happen, Eric. Perhaps I should not have given you this woman."
"She has nothing to do with my doubts at this point," I said. "Can you convince me that what I am doing is right?"
"As I said, Eric, skudders are hardly available for pleasure cruises, but perhaps this is important enough. I will see what I can do. I will return tomorrow and tell you." He rose from the chair where he had sat. "I will leave now. Good night, Eric, Sally."
The not-quite-human smile on Kar-hinter's face faded into a look of intense concentration, and then he flickered out of existence, and Sally and I sat there quietly, looking at the place where he had been and wondering what he would do tomorrow when he returned.
21
Across the Lines
Kar-hinter appeared simultaneously with the skudder, both arriving in the middle of the garden before the cabin just a short while after noon on the day following his visit. The Krith waved for the skudder pilot and the black-uniformed Pall to remain in their seats and walked quickly up the path toward the cabin, smiling broadly in an almost human fashion and waving to Sally and me. We had just come out after hearing the unmistakable whine of the skudder's probability generators.
"Eric," he called, "I have been able to arrange the transportation for the two of you. We shall leave at once for the East. Are both of you ready?"
I looked at Sally.
"I didn't bring anything here with me," she said, "and there's nothing I want to take." She paused. "But, well, I would like to comb my hair and put on some makeup."
Since she had resigned herself to being nude while in Eden, Sally had taken to using body makeup from one of the Europo-Minoan Lines that was supplied by the cabin. Not that I thought she really needed it; her face and body looked fine without it.
"Very well," Kar-hinter said, still smiling as broadly. "There is clothing for you both in the skudder. I do hope that you have eaten."
"Yes," I said. "We just finished lunch."
"Good," the Krith said. "It is a long trip."
"So we've been told," Sally said, her voice suddenly doubtful, as if she were feeling the same sort of fear that I had felt the night before, as if she suspected that Kar-hinter was now arranging to have us both killed before we could express our doubts to anyone else.
"Hurry, then," the Krith said to Sally. "Fix yourself and we shall go."
She went back into the cabin, almost seeming fearful of leaving me alone with Kar-hinter.
* * *
It wasn't long before we entered the skudder and began the trip across the Lines.
The small skudder was crowded with the five of us in it, though neither the pilot nor Pall spoke, and Pall hardly even moved. Pall, if you weren't looking at him, was easy to ignore.
After a while you can almost become adjusted to just about anything, even the mind-wrenching, stomach-twisting sensation of skudding across the near infinity of parallel universes. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. At least I seemed to become more adjusted than usual as the trip lengthened from minutes to hours and still we moved.
Sally, Kar-hinter and I talked very little after the first few minutes. Despite the adjustment, talking in a skudding craft seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.
There were two bundles of clothing for us, brightly colored, nearly transparent, form-fitting sleeveless shirts and knee-length pants, pointed shoes, and peaked caps. Kar-hinter assured us that these were the height of sartorial splendor in the first of the Cross-Line worlds that we were about to visit.
To pass the time, Kar-hinter had provided us with a stack of magazines from Sally's native Line, some of which I suppose she found interesting. I was left to boredom. A large thermal bottle of coffee sat on the floor between us and after our stomachs had more or less adjusted to the flickering, we each, Sally and I, had a cup.
What happened after my first cup of coffee seemed unimportant at the time, but in retrospect it loomed much larger, and I later thought it might be the key to the whole sequence of events.
When I finished my cup of coffee, I set the cup carefully on the floor beside me, picked up one of the magazines, a cheap colonial picture magazine devoted mostly to news, gossip, and rumor about the British nobility, pictures of castles and of peers of the realm, subtle hints of what lord was sleeping with whose wife in articles written for a child's mentality. My eyelids began to grow heavy in the middle of a story about a party held by the Earl of Something and attended only by the D
uchess of Whatsit (she was the complete guest list) and how neighbors and servants later claimed that they saw them dancing in the nude in the earl's garden to the music of the fifty-piece orchestra the earl had hired. I never did find out what happened after the nude dance, but I have a good imagination. I put the magazine down and saw that Sally was nodding too. This didn't strike me as unusual: the skudder trip had now become dull and uninteresting, and sleep would be the best thing for us both until we got to our destination. I shifted into a more comfortable position, closed my eyes and thought about as little as I could until a warm, comfortable drowsiness slowly settled over me.
At the Narrow Passage Page 21