by Ipomoea
Their little ship looked small and bright, grotesquely out of place alongside the massive and functionally ugly ore and oil carriers. As out of place as he felt.
"You know," he muttered as Joe hit the switches and they fell upward and away from the bleakness, "if only I could find some way to do it fairly I'd drop this whole affair right now, take passage back to Earth, and forget the whole thing. It is just not me!"
"Aren't you interested in problems?"
"Oh sure, but not this kind. Joe, I have never been interested in politics. That may sound strange for a sociologist, but it's true. My interest is in the forces that infuse and move people, in the mass and as individuals, and a politician is neither one nor the other—he's the instrument of a drive, a lust for power. When you couple that lust to the other one, greed for wealth, I just do not want to know. And that's all this is, a cabal of wealthy men obsessed with some urge to wrap up this whole planetary system as their own personal package. This idea that Earth is trving to take it away from them is nothing more than the projection of their own subconscious urges. I think my father knew it, and he was absolutely right—it's insane. Whether they conspired together to get rid of him or not seems to make very little difference now. There'll be a conference, with or without me; that's unavoidable. And it can lead taone of two things: either I agree, go along, become a rubber stamp—or I could try opposing them, and they would crush me without straining themselves. I'm just not equipped. I can't fight them the way my father would have."
"He wasn't very successful," Joe pointed out.
"That could be why someone is trving to kill me," Sam mused. "If that someone has the notion that I would resist, like Dad, be an obstacle in the wav of the plan."
"But what plan?" Joe queried. "Earth has no designs on the Ceti System. Not yet, anywav. The most that could come of it would be a trade war, and that's not likely for a long time yet."
"But somebody thinks so. Joe, I am-sociologist enough to know that no group ever really functions without a leader of some kind. My father was the controlling voice. Not now. Somebody wanted him out of the way. The same somebody wanted me out of the way too. So why don't I just do thatr^
Joe made no reply for a long while. His face was unreadable, calm and inward-turned, thoughtful. "There is still the question of means," he said, at last. "We can discount drugs, because your father showed no other indication of being abnormal. That leaves only the possibility of some kind of specially-tuned radio wave or something similar. I managed to talk to one or two qualified men, and they all agreed that it would be possible but impractical to direct a modulated beam over a distance to strike a specific target no bigger than a man. The three major snags would be distance, power output, and the hazard to anything in between. On the other hand, the whole thing would be enormously simplified if one could contrive to have a tuned receiver at the target end."
"You've got something on your mind," Sam accused, and Joe nodded.
"I thought I had. A suspicion, nothing more than that." He reached into a compartment under the control panel and brought out a metal box. He cracked open the lid to show a fire-ball inside.
"Sun-stones," he said flatly. "This is a sun-stone. So, too, was the one Mr. Eklund gave me and which I tested to destruction just to be quite sure. No doubt about it at all. The point I was pursuing is this: that the sun-stones are precious as gems, yes, but they are also extremely valuable because they have certain rather unique and unusual electronic properties. In certain configurations they can act as a one-unit demodulator; in others the effect is similar to a Gunn device—that is, like a variable capacitor with a zero-infinity range. Other experimenters have reported some extremely interesting effects in extrasensory perception."
"Eh?" Sam stared at him. "Psionics? But that's hokum, isn^t itr
"It's an extremely difficult field in which to be positive, but the reports I have come across indicate something worth following up. So I had to assume that it was a possibility here. That stone has been cut, and cooked with hard radiation too, for some purpose. However"—he extended the box to Sam and shrugged—"I got no results of any kind from mine, although I tested it, as I say, to destruction. .You'd better have yours back."
Sam took it. The little box was surprisingly heavy, probably lead. He tilted it, let the stone roll into his palm, put the box away. Again, the glowing thing was quite definitely warm to the touch, and heavy.
"Worth quite a bit," he said, "if you're right. But why would Eklund give them away? And how come Lemkov, supposedly an expert, coud be so wrong about the stuff they were cut from?"
"I don't know." Joe was flat calm on it, but his face carried just the trace of a frown. "I do not like things that fail to add up....-
Sam heard his voice plainly, and yet it was far away, all at once, and there was a warm tingle in his hand, like a tickle that made him close his fingers by reflex. And now—
"I can hear voices," he breathed, "myself, now. Faint and far away. No words, just a call, very very faint." He looked at Joe in wonder, and then that faded out too, went away, and instead there was a vision, a loveliness to make him gasp and catch his breath. Now there wpre many voices, a vast choir of sound, and yet it wasn't singing just talking, a host of quite impelling voices, calling . . . calling . . .
XI
He stood alone on a low hill, with the sun warm on his face, a delicate breeze caressing his body, and he felt godlike. The quiet wonderment at this state of effortless bliss was like a song. Before him stretched a green and fertile plain, the breeze rippling fugitive patterns in the lush grass. Even as he stared, wondering where he was, the scene modulated to become a wide-curving beach, a vivid blue sea, dazzling white sand. A gay company of exquisite people played there, dipping in and out of the waves, moving over the sands. Wonderful people, the women ravishing, the men handsome and stalwart, all of them naturally and sublimely unadorned— and he knew he was one of them.
The vision dissolved and changed again, to a vista of an elegant village of unobtrusively beautiful dwellings in delicate pastel colors and nestling in graceful garden grounds. Again the people were there, moving gaily and eagerly, nodding and smiling to each other. Now they turned to look to him, to wave, to call him into their company. And the melodious voices grew stronger, still without distinct words, but their meaning was plain: Join with us. Become as we are.
In his mind, although unspoken, he knew it was for him, and that there was more, so much more, than was apparent on the surface. Paradise, a simple land where life was good and happiness was the rightful part for everyone. And power, too. No illness nor sickness here. No poverty, no anxieties, no fears of any kind. Come and join us!
For a while, it seemed, he dawdled and enjoyed the sense of being able to choose. Even this was free. He could refuse if he wished. It was power, although there was no real doubt in his mind that he would choose to go and be with them. Even as he dallied, slightly drunk with the anticipation, out of the moving assembly came three glorious girls, each an exquisite thing, each with a delicate daintiness, each with a radiant and inviting smile to lure him, not that he needed luring.
He could resist no longer. He stirred himself to run—and out of the clamor came a distinct voice, the 'sense* of another who spoke to him, this time in plain words.
"All this shall be yours, and more, if you but follow me. All this!"
Just one breath the vision held, then something fundamental within him made Sam draw back in rejection, revulsion against temptation. The glorious vision wavered and became unreal, dwindled swiftly away. That persuasive voice came stronger now, compelling. "If you but follow me . . ."
"No!" he shouted, and the vision collapsed. "No, damn you, you can't win me that way!"
All at once he was staring wide-eyed at Joe and trying furiously to open his hand. There was a knotting tingle in his palm. His fingers were locked as if someone had replaced the tendons with hot steel wire. Joe moved all at once, lifted his hand and brought it dow
n sharply, palm-edge to Sam's wrist. The shock was agony, but so was the hell-fire that burned in his palm, searing and scorching. His hand flew open helplessly and the glowing red ball fell, to strike the steel deck and explode in a blinding flare of actinic blue. Sam screamed as air got to the burn in his palm.
The next thing he knew, he was stretched out on his bunk, in the cabin Venner had allocated to him so long ago. That sight was normal, familiar and comforting. The rheumatic aches all over his body were not. He groaned as he bent his arm to bring his right palm to where he could inspect it, and groaned again as he saw the fresh burn-mark there, now sealed under a thin skin of ointment. So it had not been a dream, a nightmare, but real. He groaned again and sat up, feeling old. Joe appeared in the doorway.
"Are you all right?" he demanded, and Sam winced.
"I've felt better."
"You know who you are, where you are, remember what happened?"
"Eh? Oh, see what you mean. I'm still sane. I think."
"That's a relief." Joe settled on a seat. "I had no way of checking that. I could tell you hadn't broken any bones, and I have treated the burn in your palm, but I feared you might have been damaged mentally." He shook his head. "That was careless of me. I should have known. But, after all, I did test the other stone, and there was no effect. Not on me."
"There was an effect on me, all right." Sam looked at his palm again and felt the first uprush of genuine deep-seated anger. "Now we know how—for sure. And we know who, too. At least I do."
"If you're fit enough let's get back up to control and you'll have to tell me exactly what happened there. We need all the information we can get."
Sam stirred, found that his aches and pains decreased as he moved, and by the time he was settled in a seat in the control room, with a coffee Joe had provided for him, and which he suspected was generously laced with alcohol, he felt comparatively human again.
"Of course," he said wonderingly, "you didn't see or hear anything, did you?"
"As I told you, the stone had no effect on me."
"No—I meant while I was having my vision. It was real, vivid, a vision of the Promised Land, Utopia—I don't know how to describe it to you properly." Sam had no need to grope since it was still real to him, but so much of it was subjective, what he had felt rather than seen, that he had to struggle to discover the proper words. Joe was very patient, prodding for the odd detail now and then, asking unusual questions about quality, the preciseness of the sounds, the personal impressions, and by the time Sam had satisfied him he looked grave.
Anxious at this novel change in Joe, this break from his customary impassivity, Sam asked, "What do you think of it all? Was it all delusion, or was I seeing something that really exists?"
"I'm not sure, but there are certain indications. You felt automatic rejection once there was a definite suggestion of some one person tempting you?"
"Absolutely. I suppose that's a Puritan relic in me, but I have a horror of being tempted by anyone or anything. Like to feel that I make up my own mind, I suppose."
"Yes." Joe looked even more solemn. "It seems to be something acting on a personality level, a very general message, to be interpreted and modified by you in your own personal values."
Sam looked at it for a moment and thought he could see light. "So that might be why it didn't have any effect on you? I mean"—he tried to be tactful—"your not having a personal ego."
Joe nodded, quite readily. "That is the only answer which fits. Like trying to seduce a deaf man by whispering in his ear."
"I can't imagine what it must be like not to have a personality," Sam confessed candidly, and Joe smiled. The expression lit up his face.
"That's not quite right. I can assume, or discard, almost any personality at will. I quite often do, when it is necessary. What I do not have is a sense of personal identity. It is difficult to define because it is something the normal person takes for granted without thinking about it. I have discussed this at great length with several expert people, and it seems to work out something like this. You never have any doubt as to who you are, at any time, and you seldom think about it. Not your name, which is purely on the side. Even a man with total general amnesia, who can't recall his name, or who he was, is still aware of being himself. I do not have that, at all/'
"I'm afraid that doesn't help a bit," Sam admitted.
"Well, some of the results of my condition are that I have no feeling of owning anything, or wanting anything, or even anticipating anything I may want, or need—for myself, that is. I do whatever Dr. Venner tells me to, and he gives me a very interesting life. I tackle problems because they are problems, not because they are important to me personally. And that calls attention to something else. You, I think, are not the type to crave power, or wealth, or material things."
"That's me," Sam agreed.
"And that would be why, although you describe the scene you saw as being ideal, you wouldn't take it as a bribe. So you rejected it."
Sam shivered as he thought about it. "You know, this is a devilish thing. I mean, you give a man one of those damned fire-balls—and you've got him!"
"Unless, like you, he happens to be resistant to temptation."
"In which case you wind up the voltage and blast him dead, the way my father died. He was a lot like me in that respect."
Joe looked grave again. "That's the part I am not happy about," he declared. "I've examined the spot where that sun-stone flared, and the burn on your palm. I have run tests, as I told you. And I know two things. One is that this demonstration of control is far and away beyond anything I know of, in that field. I know quite a lot, and what I don't know offhand is stored in the computer store, right there. It's a subject of great interest and importance to Dr. Venner."
"So Eklund is a genius!" Sam declared impatiently. "We are agreed on Eklund, aren't we?"
"Oh yes, but it is hard to believe that he can be all that far ahead of the field. We'd have heard of him. However, the other point is more tangible. You said 'wind up the voltage and blast him dead.' And it may have looked like that. But it wasn't. It couldn't have been. Entirely apart from the power density required at the range—and the sun-stone I tested just could not have carried anytliing like that kind of power—there is the range itself. You ask if we agree on Eklund. I would point out that Verdan is roughly one hundred and eighty million miles distant from us; that it would take a message over half an hour for the round tripl**
"But—" Sam began, then halted. "How long was I under?"
"Your whole episode lasted no more than thirty seconds I"
"Wow!" Sam sagged back and shook his head. *Tou've lost me now."
"Unless," Joe murmured, "there is some land of inherent factor in the transmission which strikes a discord when there is resistance—in your case, when you tried to reject the message. That's just conceivable. Looked at from an abstract viewpoint one could regard the preliminary part of the message as a tuning-in, getting the subject aligned, and then passing the master suggestion. And if the subject resists, he feels pain. The more he resists, the more it hurts. Something like that. Varous subconscious compulsions act in a similar manner. The man who tries to force riimself to do something he doesn't want to do, and develops psychosomatic disorders as a result. Hysterical blindness, shell shock, things like that."
"That'll do!" Sam put up a shaking hand. "What are you trying to do, scare me to death?" There was something particularly distasteful to him in the idea that something could get inside his mind and bend it.
"Now we know who," he said, "and how. That's good enough. Question is, what do we do next?"
"I assumed you would agree with me that there is no point in going on to Ophir1 now. A message will suffice, if you still want the conference to take place. So I have reset our course to return us to Verdan as fast as possible. This is something Dr. Venner needs to know about."
"That is fine by me. We can't afford to waste time. That Eklund!" Sam shook his head, awed by th
e magnitude of the problem as it now was, and the goal that Eklund had set himself. One-man ruler of an entire planetary system, a system, moreover, bursting at the seams with wealth. The new world! Eklund's world.
As if tuning in on his thought, Joe said, "We are merely assuming Mr. Eldund is the person responsible. I still find it hard to believe."
"If he's fronting for somebody else we'll make him talk."
"Possibly. I find it hard to believe in anybody else either. I wonder what Dr. Venner is going to say to it all?"
Verdan City Spaceport looked unchanged as they slid down to a berth on the outskirts of the field. Sam felt disappointed, until he counted up and realized, in amazement, that it was barely forty-eight hours ago that they had departed. It felt like weeks! With no delay at all, Joe got on a visor-phone link and called the ISB office. As Ramirez came on, he asked, "Can you tell me where I can contact Dr. Venner, urgently?"
Ramirez looked worried as he shook his head. "I know nothing at all, sir. The last I heard from either Dr. Venner or Miss Martinez was twenty-four hours ago. It was understood that they would call me, or submit some kind of report, every four hours, but there has been nothing!"
"Haven't you done anything?" Sam demanded, but Joe checked his anger with a gentle hand.
"José isn't in a position to take any action. Did they deposit any reports at all, with you?"
"I have two. Will you come for them?"
"No time. It could be urgent. Squeeze 'em. Hold oh a moment."Joe did things with his instruments, then said, "Right. Go ahead!"
The picture shattered into a mish-mash of color and frantic gabbling for a few seconds, then cleared to show Ramirez again. He made a move with his hand, and again there came the tear-up and chatter.
"Right." Joe flipped switches and nodded to Ramirez. "Ill call you if I have anything to leave. Out!"