You will approach without use of your appendages.
The command was as clear as if it had been spoken aloud. Tennant took a deep breath. He thought of the space beside Opal. It took about three seconds and he was there, having spanned a distance of some ninety feet. He was getting good at it.
Dog does trick, he thought.
He went through the entire routine at Opal’s bidding. When at last he was allowed to relax, he wondered, not for the first time, if he weren’t mastering some of the alleged Guru arts. At once he felt probing investigation. Opal, like the rest of the captors, was as curious as a cat—or a human being.
* * * *
Tennant sat against a wall, drenched with sweat. There would be endless repetition before his workout was done. On Earth, dogs were said to be intellectually two-dimensional creatures. He wondered if they felt this helpless futility when their masters taught them to heel, to point, to retrieve.
Some days later, the training routine was broken. He felt a sudden stir of near-sick excitement as he received the thought:
Now you are ready. We are going through at last.
Opal was nervous, so much so that he revealed more than he intended. Or perhaps that was his intent; Tennant could never be sure. They were going through to Tennant’s own dimension. He wondered briefly just what his role was to be.
He had little time to speculate before Opal seemed to envelop him. There was the blurring wrench of forced teleportation and they were in another room, a room which ended in a huge irregular passage that might have been the interior of a giant concertina—or an old-fashioned kodak.
He stood before a kidney-shaped object over whose jagged surface colors played constantly. From Opal’s thoughts it appeared to be some sort of ultradimensional television set, but to Tennant it was as incomprehensible as an oil painting to an animal.
Opal was annoyed that Tennant could make nothing of it. Then came the thought:
What cover must your body have not to be conspicuous?
Tennant wondered, cynically, what would happen if he were to demand a costume of mediaeval motley, complete with Pied Piper’s flute. He received quick reproof that made his head ring as from a blow.
He asked Opal where and when they were going, was informed that he would soon emerge on Earth where he had left it. That told him everything but the date and season. Opal, like the rest of the captors, seemed to have no understanding of time in a human sense.
Waiting, Tennant tried not to think of his wife, of the fact that he hadn’t seen her in—was it more than a year and a half on Earth? He could have controlled his heartbeat with one of his new powers, but that might have made Opal suspicious. He should be somewhat excited. He allowed himself to be, though he obscured the reasons. He was going to see his wife again…and maybe he could trick his way into not returning.
* * * *
The maid who opened the door for him was new, although her eyes were old. But she recognized him and stood aside to let him enter. There must, he thought, still be pictures of him around. He wondered how Agatha could afford a servant.
“Is Mrs. Tennant in?” he asked.
She shook her head and fright made twin stoplights of the rouge on her cheeks as she shut the door behind him. He went into the living room, directly to the long silver cigarette box on the coffee table. It was proof of homecoming to fill his lungs with smoke he could smell. He took another drag, saw the maid still in the doorway, staring.
“There’s no need for fright,” he told her. “I believe I still own this house.” Then, “When do you expect Mrs. Tennant?”
“She just called. She’s on her way home from the club.”
Still looking frightened, she departed for the rear of the house. Tennant stared after her puzzledly until the kitchen door swung shut behind her. The club? What club?
He shrugged, returned to the feeling of comfort that came from being back here, about to see Agatha again, hold her close in no more than a few minutes. And stay, his mind began to add eagerly, but he pushed the thought down where Opal could not detect it.
He took another deep, lung-filling drag on his cigarette, looked around the room that was so important a part of his life. The three women back there would be in a ghastly spot. He felt like a heel for wanting to leave them there, then knew that he would try somehow to get them out. Not, of course, anything that would endanger his remaining with Agatha; the only way his captors would get him back would be as a taxidermist’s specimen.
He realized, shocked and scared, that his thoughts of escape had slipped past his mental censor, and he waited apprehensively for Opal to strike. Nothing happened and he warily relaxed. Opal wasn’t tapping his thoughts. Because he felt sure of his captive…or because he couldn’t on Earth?
It was like being let out of a cage. Tennant grinned at the bookcase; the ebony-and-ivory elephants that Agatha had never liked were gone, but he’d get them back or another pair. The credenza had been replaced by a huge and ugly television console. That, he resolved, would go down in the cellar rumpus room, where its bleached modernity wouldn’t clash with the casual antiquity of the living room.
Agatha would complain, naturally, but his being back would make up for any amount of furniture shifting. He imagined her standing close to him, her lovely face lifted to be kissed, and his heart lurched like an adolescent’s. This hunger was real, not implanted. Everything would be real…his love for her, the food he ate, the things he touched, his house, his life.…
Your wife and a man are approaching the house.
The thought message from Opal crumbled his illusion of freedom. He sank down in a chair, trying to refuse to listen to the rest of the command:
You are to bring the man through the gateway with you. We want another live male.
* * * *
Tennant shook his head, stiff and defiant in his chair. The punishment, when it came, was more humiliating than a slap across a dog’s snout. Opal had been too interested in the next lab specimen to bother about his thoughts—that was why he had been free to think of escape.
Tennant closed his eyes, willed himself to the front window. Now that he had mastered teleportation, it was incredible how much easier it was in his own world. He had covered the two miles from the gateway to the house in a mere seven jumps, the distance to the window in an instant. But there was no pleasure in it, only a confirmation of his captor’s power over him.
He was not free of them. He understood all too well what they wanted him to do; he was to play the Judas goat…or rather the Judas ram, leading another victim to the fourth-dimensional pen.
Grim, he watched the swoop of headlights in the driveway and returned to the coffee table, lit a fresh cigarette.
The front door was flung open and his diaphragm tightened at the remembered sound of Agatha’s throaty laugh…and tightened further when it was followed by a deeper rumbling laugh. Sudden fear made the cigarette shake in his fingers.
“…Don’t be such a stuffed-shirt, darling.” Agatha’s mocking sweetness rang alarm-gongs in Tennant’s memory. “Charley wasn’t making a grab for me. He’d had one too many and only wanted a little fun. Really, darling, you seem to think that a girl.…”
Her voice faded out as she saw Tennant standing there. She was wearing a white strapless gown, had a blue-red-and-gold Mandarin jacket slung hussar-fashion over her left shoulder. She looked even sleeker, better groomed, more assured than his memory of her.
“I’m no stuffed-shirt and you know it.” Cass’ tone was peevish. “But your idea of fun, Agatha, is pretty damn.…”
It was his turn to freeze. Unbelieving, Tennant studied his successor. Cass Gordon—the man, the ex-halfback whose bulk was beginning to get out of hand, but whose inherent aggressive grace had not yet deserted him. The man, that was all—unless one threw in the little black mustache and the smooth salesman’s manner.
“You know, Cass,” Tennant said quietly, “I never for a moment dreamed it would be you.”
“Roger!” Agatha found her voice. “You’re alive!”
“Roger,” repeated Tennant viciously. He felt sick with disgust. Maybe he should have expected a triangle, but somehow he hadn’t. And here it was, with all of them going through their paces like a trio of tent-show actors. He said, “For God’s sake, sit down.”
Agatha did so hesitantly. Her huge dark eyes, invariably clear and limpid no matter how much she had drunk, flickered toward him furtively. She said defensively, “I had detectives looking for you for six months. Where have you been, Rog? Smashing up the car like that and—disappearing! I’ve been out of my mind.”
“Sorry,” said Tennant. “I’ve had my troubles, too.” Agatha was scared stiff—of him. Probably with reason. He looked again at Cass Gordon and found that he suddenly didn’t care. She couldn’t say it was loneliness. Women have waited longer than eighteen months. He would have if his captors had let him.
“Where in hell have you been, Rog?” Gordon’s tone was almost parental. “I don’t suppose it’s news to you, but there was a lot of suspicion directed your way while that crazy killer was operating around here. Agatha and I managed to clear you.”
“Decent of you,” said Tennant. He got up, crossed to the cabinet that served as a bar. It was fully equipped—with more expensive liquor, he noticed, than he had ever been able to afford. He poured a drink of brandy, waited for the others to fill their glasses.
* * * *
Agatha looked at him over the rim of hers. “Tell us, Rog. We have a right to know. I do, anyway.”
“One question first,” he said. “What about those killings? Have there been any lately?”
“Not for over a year,” Cass told him. “They never did get the devil who skinned those bodies and removed the heads.”
So, Tennant thought, they hadn’t used the gateway. Not since they had brought the four of them through, not since they had begun to train him for his Judas ram duties.
Agatha was asking him if he had been abroad.
“In a way,” he replied unemotionally. “Sorry if I’ve worried you, Agatha, but my life has been rather—indefinite, since I—left.”
He was standing no more than four inches from this woman he had desired desperately for six years, and he no longer wanted her. He was acutely conscious of her perfume. It wrapped them both like an exotic blanket, and it repelled him. He studied the firm clear flesh of her cheek and chin, the arch of nostril, the carmine fullness of lower lip, the swell of bosom above low-cut gown. And he no longer wanted any of it or of her. Cass Gordon—
It didn’t have to be anybody at all. For it to be Cass Gordon was revolting.
“Rog,” she said and her voice trembled, “what are we going to do? What do you want to do?”
Take her back? He smiled ironically; she wouldn’t know what that meant. It would serve her right, but maybe there was another way.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I suspect we’re in the same boat. I also have other interests.”
“You louse!” said Cass Gordon, arching rib cage and nostrils. “If you try to make trouble for Agatha, I can promise.…”
“What can you promise?” demanded Tennant. When Gordon’s onset subsided in mumbles, he added, “Actually, I don’t think I’m capable of making more than a fraction of the trouble for either of you that you both are qualified to make for yourselves.”
He lit a cigarette, inhaled. “Relax. I’m not planning revenge. After this evening, I plan to vanish for good. Of course, Agatha, that offers you a minor nuisance. You will have to wait six years to marry Cass—seven years if the maid who let me in tonight talks. That’s the law, isn’t it, Cass? You probably had it all figured out.”
“You bastard,” said Cass. “You dirty bastard! You know what a wait like that could do to us.”
“Tristan and Isolde,” said Tennant, grinning almost happily. “Well, I’ve had my little say. Now I’m off again. Cass, would you give me a lift? I have a conveyance of sorts a couple of miles down the road.”
* * * *
He needed no telepathic powers to read the thoughts around him then. He heard Agatha’s quick intake of breath, saw the split-second look she exchanged with Cass. He turned away, knowing that she was imploring her lover to do something, anything, as long as it was safe.
Deliberately, Tennant poured himself a second drink. This might be easier and pleasanter than he had expected. They deserved some of the suffering he had had and there was a chance that they might get it.
Tennant knew now why he was the only male human the captors had been able to take alive. Apparently, thanks to the rain-slick road, he had run the sedan into a tree at the foot of the hill beyond the river. He had been sitting there, unconscious, ripe fruit on their doorstep. They had simply picked him up.
Otherwise, apparently, men were next to impossible for them to capture. All they could do was kill them and bring back their heads and hides as trophies. With women it was different—perhaps the captors’ weapons, whatever they were, worked more efficiently on females. A difference in body chemistry or psychology, perhaps.
More than once, during his long training with Opal, Tennant had sent questing thoughts toward his captor, asking why they didn’t simply set up the gateway in some town or city and take as many humans as they wanted.
Surprisingly there had been a definite fear reaction. As nearly as he could understand, it had been like asking an African pygmy, armed with a blowgun, to set up shop in the midst of a herd of wild elephants. It simply wasn’t feasible—and furthermore he derived an impression of the tenuosity as well as the immovability of the gateway itself.
They could be hurt, even killed by humans in a three-dimensional world. How? Tennant did not know. Perhaps as a man can cut finger or even throat on the edge of a near-two-dimensional piece of paper. It took valor for them to hunt men in the world of men. In that fact lay a key to their character—if such utterly alien creatures could be said to have character.
* * * *
Cass Gordon was smiling at him, saying something about one for the road. Tennant accepted only because it was luxury to drink liquor that smelled and tasted as liquor should. He raised his glass to Agatha, said, “I may turn up again, but it’s unlikely, so have yourself a time, honey.”
“Oh, Rog!” said Agatha and her eyes were fraudulently wet. Tennant felt pure contempt. She knew that Cass intended to try to kill him—and she couldn’t play it straight. She had to ham it up with false emotion, even though she had silently pleaded with her lover to do something, anything. He put down his empty glass. The thought that he had spent eighteen months yearning for this she-Smithfield like a half-damp puppy made him almost physically ill.
“You’ll make out,” he told her with savage sincerity. In her way, in accord with her desires, Agatha would. At bottom she was, he realized, as primitive, as realistic, as the three who waited beyond the gateway. An ex-waitress, an ex-forewoman, an ex-model of mediocre success—and Agatha. He tried to visualize his wife as a member of his involuntary harem and realized that she would adapt as readily as the other women. But he didn’t want her.
He turned away and said, “Ready, Cass?”
“Right with you,” the ex-halfback replied, hurrying toward the hall. Tennant considered, took another drink for his own road. The signals had been given, the game was being readied. He had no wish to upset the planning. He had some plans also, and theirs gave his enough moral justification to satisfy his usually troublesome conscience.
Agatha put her arms around his neck. She was warm and soft and moist of lip and playing her part with obvious enjoyment of its bathos. She murmured, “I’m so sorry, Rog, darling—”
“Cut!” he said almost in a snarl and wrenched free. He brought out a han
dkerchief—he had remembered to have one created, praise Allah—and rubbed lipstick from his face. He tossed the handkerchief to Agatha.
“You might have this analyzed,” he told her lightly. “It could be interesting. The handkerchief, not the lipstick.”
“I’m glad you’re going!” she blazed, although her voice was low. “I’m glad you’re going. I hope you never come back.”
“That,” he told her, “makes exactly two of us. Have fun.”
He went out into the hall, where Cass was waiting, wearing what was intended to be a smile. They went out to the car together—it was a big convertible—and Cass got behind the wheel. He said, “Where to, old man?”
“The Upham Road,” said Tennant, feeling nothing at all.
* * * *
Cass got the car under way and Tennant sensed them coming through. They warned him that his chauffeur was carrying a weapon concealed in an inside pocket.
As if I didn’t know! Tennant snapped back at them.
Cass tried to drive him past the spot beyond the bridge where the gateway lay hidden in its armor of invisibility. He evidently planned to go miles from the house before doing whatever he had decided to do.
Tennant thought he knew. It would involve riding the back roads like this one for fifteen or twenty miles, perhaps farther. He suspected that the quarry pond in South Upham was his intended destination. There would be plenty of loose rock handy with which to weigh down his body before dumping it into the water.
If it were recovered, Cass and Agatha could alibi one another. In view of his earlier disappearance, this would be simple. Of course there was the maid, but Cass had enough money and smooth talk to manage that angle. They could undoubtedly get away with killing him.
“Stop,” said Tennant, just across the bridge.
“What for?” Cass countered and Tennant knew it was time to act. He wrenched the key from the ignition switch, tossed it out of the car. Cass braked, demanded, “What in hell did you do that for?”
The 31st Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 3