“Which I will be delighted to hear.”
“Sabotage. A new and very clever variety. Some of our friends on the other side of this world have managed to develop hypnotic technique to a new level of efficiency. Maybe they use some form of mechanical amplification. They’re trying to discredit us if they can’t drive us mad. That has to be it.”
Lane frowned. “If their technique is that good, why do it the hard way? Why not just take over Adamson and Bill Kornal and a few other key men and have them spend a few hours damaging the Beatty One?”
“You forget. They already took over Kornal. It gave them a few months of grace. Now they’re experimenting. Maybe they will try to talk us into leaving here and going to another country. You can’t tell what they have in mind. Bard, the one who calls himself Raul Kinson warned me that he was going to enter my mind. And then he did. It was … degrading and horrible. We’ve got to get in touch with our own people who might know something about this. Maybe some of the ESP men. And then there’s Lurdorff. He’s done some amazing things with hypnosis. Hemorrhage control. That sort of thing. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m trying to picture just how you’d state the problem without ending up on the receiving end of some fancy shock therapy, Sharan.”
She sat down slowly. “You’re right,” she said. “There’s no way we can warn them. No way in the world.”
TEN
Leesa, walking down one of the lower levels, saw Jord Orlan step off the moving ramp, glance at her and look quickly away. She lengthened her stride to catch him.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
He looked nervously down the corridor.
“It’s all right. Raul has gone up to the unused levels.”
“Come then,” he said. He led the way to his quarters, walked in ahead of her. When he turned around he saw that she was already seated. He frowned. The respectful ones waited to be asked.
“I have been expecting a report, Leesa Kinson.”
“Raul trusts me. Perhaps, too much. It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Remember, this is for his own good.”
“I’ve had to pretend to be very contrite for all the damage I’ve caused in the dream worlds to all those precious little people he thinks are actually alive.”
Jord Orlan forgot his annoyance with her. “Very good, child! And have you shared his dreams?”
“Yes. He explained how he found a space ship project by searching the mind of a certain colonel in Washington. He told me how to find the project. We met there, in host bodies. Raul seems very proud of the people who work there. He wants to protect the project against … us. Not long ago the project was damaged by one of us who came across it, probably by accident, and forced a technician to smash delicate equipment. Raul does not want that to happen again.”
“How does he hope to prevent it?”
“He has told two of them about the Watchers, and he has managed to prove to them that we exist.”
Jord Orlan gasped. “That is a paradox! To convince someone who does not exist of existence on the only true plane. Many of us have amused ourselves trying to tell the dream people about the Watchers. They invariably go mad.”
“These two did not. Possibly because the woman is an expert on madness and the man is … strong.”
He stared at her. “Do not fall into the trap in which your brother finds himself. When you spoke of the man you looked as though you might believe him to be real. He is merely a figment of the dream machine. That you know.”
“Then isn’t it pointless, Jord Orlan, to destroy what they build?”
“It is not pointless because it is the Law. You are absurd to argue. Come now. Tell me about the location. I shall organize a group. We will smash the project completely.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “That would spoil my game. I am beginning to find it amusing. Leesa reserves that pleasure for herself, thank you.”
“I can make that an order.”
“And I shall disobey it and you can thrust me out of this world and perhaps never find the project.”
He thought for a few moments. “It would be better were we to do it, a group of us. Then we should dream-kill the dream creatures with the greatest skills so as to lessen the danger of a new project for many years.”
“No!” she said sharply. Then her eyes widened with surprise at the force of her own objection. She raised her fingertips to her lips.
“Now I understand,” Jord Orlan said comfortably. “You find one of the dream creatures amusing, and you do not wish your sport to be denied you. Very well, then, but make certain that the destruction is complete. Report back to me.”
As she reached the doorway he spoke to her again. She turned and waited. He said, “Within the next few days, my dear, Ryd Talleth will seek you out. I have ordered him to. He is the one most inclined to favor you—but he will need encouragement.”
“He is a weak fool,” she said hotly. “Do you not remember your promise, Jord Orlan? If I did as you asked, you would not force me into any such—–”
“No one is forcing you. It is merely a suggestion,” he said.
She walked away without answering him. She was restless. She walked down to the corridor lined with the small rooms for games. She stood in the doorway of one of them. Three women, so young that their heads still bore the thinning shadow of their dusty hair, pursued a squat and agile old man who dodged with cat-quick reflexes. They shrieked with laughter. He wore a wide grin. She saw his game. He favored one and it was his purpose to allow her to make the capture, even though the others were quicker. At last she caught him, her hands fast on the shoulder piece of the toga. The others were disconsolate. As they filed out of the room, leaving the two alone, Leesa turned away also. Once again she touched her lips and she thought of a man’s heavy hands, square and bronzed against the whiteness of a hospital bed.
The next few rooms were empty. The following room was one with light controls. A mixed group was performing a stylized dance. They had turned the lights to blood red. It was a slow dance, with measured pauses. She thought of joining, but she knew that in some inexplicable way, her entrance would set up a tension that would remove some of their pleasure.
Restlessness was in her like slow spreading rot. On the next level she heard the sound of the small ones crying. She went and looked at them. Always, before, she had found a small pleasure in watching their unformed movements. She looked at them and their faces were like so many identical ciphers—circles of emptiness, signifying nothing.
She rode up to where the tracks no longer moved. She went halfway up to the twenty-first level, then dropped and curled like a child. She covered her face with her hands and wept. She did not know why she was weeping.
ELEVEN
Bard Lane heard his name called. He turned to see Major Tommy Leeber striding diagonally across the street from the mess hall to intercept him.
Major Leeber’s smile sat a shade stiffly on his lips and his eyes were narrowed.
“I hope you have a minute, Dr. Lane.”
“Not very much more than that, I’m afraid, Major. What seems to be the trouble?”
“According to the records, Dr. Lane, my loyalty check was tops. And my brain waves passed all Sharan’s witchdoctor techniques. So what’s with these two shadows I’ve picked up?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder toward the two guards who stood several paces behind him, obviously uncomfortable.
“Those men are assigned to you in accordance with new operating instructions, Major.”
“If you think you can chase me out of here by making me so uncomfortable that—–”
“Major, I don’t care for your tone, and I can’t say much for your powers of observation. Everyone with access to fabrication zones and lab areas is subject to the new orders. You will notice that I have a guard too. We are in a critical phase. If you start acting irrational, you’ll be grabbed and held until you can be examined. Me too. As
a matter of fact, you have it a bit easier than I do. Part of my job is to watch the guard while he watches me. We’re using this method as a defense against any … temporary insanity where Dr. Inly did not detect the susceptibility of the employee.”
“Look, how do I get rid of these boys?”
“Leave the project area, Major.”
Leeber knuckled his chin. “Look, Doc. I happen to know that you’re not getting new help in here. So where do the extra guards come from?”
“Other occupational classifications.”
“Which slows down the works plenty, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Already you are in plenty of hot water because of being so far behind schedule, Dr. Lane. Doesn’t delaying it further seem to be a funny thing to do right now?”
For a moment Bard wondered how his knuckles would feel against the dark military moustache, the full lips. It would be a pleasure to see Major Leeber on the seat of his pants in the street.
“You may report this new development to General Sachson, Major. You may tell him that if he cares to, he can reverse this security regulation of mine. But it will be made a matter of record. Then, if someone else should get as destructive as Kornal did, the blame will be in his lap.”
“For my money, Doc, the old man won’t be too upset. He has it figured that inside of sixty days there won’t be anybody here but a survey and salvage outfit, making chalk marks on whatever is worth keeping.”
“I don’t think you should have said that, Major Leeber,” Bard said in a low voice. “I don’t think it was smart.”
He watched Leeber carefully, saw the greased wheels turning over slickly. Leeber grinned in his most charming way. “Hell, Doc. Don’t mind me. I’m being nasty because these two boys tailing me have fouled up an operation that was all briefed out.”
“I don’t expect loyalty from you, Leeber. Just a reasonable cooperation.”
“Then I apologize. I’m all lined up with a little blond cookie who runs a computer in the chem lab. And all I could think of was these two boys looking over my shoulder.”
“Then take her out of the area, Leeber. When you report back in at the gate they’ll make you wait until guards can be assigned.”
Leeber scuffed the dust with the edge of his shoe. “A noble suggestion, Doc. Will you join me for a quick one?”
“I can’t spare the time, thanks.”
“Okay, I guess I don’t want these boys joining in on my date. Guess I better take her out of the area, eh?”
“Either that or there’ll be four of you. Five, when you count the guard assigned to her. A female guard.”
Leeber shrugged, gave a mock salute, and sauntered away.
Bard Lane went into the mess hall. He took one of the small tables against the wall where he could be alone. He was lifting the glass of tomato juice to his lips when he felt the familiar pressure against his mind. He made no attempt to fight it. He held the glass poised in mid-air, then raised it to his lips. The sensation in his mind made him remember the first science courses he had taken in college. A hot afternoon, when he stared into the microscope, delicately adjusting the binocular vision until the tiny creatures in the droplet of swamp water had seemed to leap up at him. There had been one with a fringe of long cilia. It had slowly enfolded a smaller, more globular organism, merging with it, digesting it as he watched. He had long remembered the silent, microscopic ferocity, the instinctive ruthlessness of that struggle.
And now his mind was slowly devoured while he sat calmly drinking the juice. He replaced the glass in the saucer. To the onlooker he was Dr. Bard Lane—the boss—the chief—the “old man.” But he knew that as far as free will was concerned he had ceased to be Bard Lane.
The alien prescience was quickly interlaced through his engram structure, much as a bobbin might shuttle back and forth in a textile machine. He sensed the fingering of his thoughts.
His new familiarity with the reception of the thoughts of the alien made those thoughts as clear as though they had been softly whispered in his ear.
“No, Bard Lane. No. You and Sharan Inly have come to the wrong conclusion. We are not of this planet. This is not a clever device to trick you. We are friendly to your purpose. I am glad to see that you have taken the precautions that were suggested to you. Please make it very clear to all your trusted people that they must move quickly whenever there is the slightest doubt. Any faint peculiarity—any unexpected word or movement—will be the basis on which to move. Delay may be fatal.”
Bard made his thoughts as clear as he could by mentally thinking each word, mentally underlining each syllable. “How do we know you are friendly?”
“You can’t know. There’s no way of proving it to you. All I can say is that our ancestors of twelve thousand years ago are mutual. I told you about the Plan. The Plan is failing because the people in my world have forgotten the original purpose. One world—Marith—lives in barbaric savagery. Another—Ormazd—has found the key to the search for happiness on their planet. We are inbred and decadent. Your project is hope for mankind.”
“What are your motives?”
There was a silence in his mind. “If I am to be honest with you, Bard Lane, I must mention boredom, the desire for change, the wish to do important things. And now there is another reason.”
“What?”
Their sympathetic emotional structure had been so carefully interleafed that Bard Lane was disconcerted to feel the hot blush on his cheeks and neck. “I want to be able to meet Sharan face to face. I want to touch her hand with mine, not with the hand of someone whom I could inhabit.”
The thought broke hurriedly to other matters. “I have wondered if there is any way that I can give you technical help. I do not understand the formulas behind the operation of your ship. All I know is that propulsion is dependent on alternating frames of temporal reference. That is the same formula that was used for our ships long, long ago. As I told you, six of them stand outside our world. I have discovered micro-book operation manuals, but they are beyond me. I could memorize wiring charts and control panels and then, using your hand, draw them for you.”
“There are problems we haven’t licked yet. You could try to do that.”
“What should I look for?”
“The manner in which astrogation charts were coordinated with the time jump. Our astronomers and mathematical physicists believe, at this point, that once the jump is made, it will take weeks to make observations and reorient the ship. They are working on some method which will extend the time jump as a hypothetical line through space from the starting point to the new time frame. Then the coordinates of that hypothetical line, using opposed star clusters for reference points, would eliminate starting from scratch on orientation in the new position. Can you follow that?”
“Yes. I will see if I can find out how it was done in the past.”
The guard stepped closer and took a startlingly firm grasp of Bard Lane’s arm just above the elbow. His expression was respectful, but his grasp was like iron.
“Sir, you have been talking aloud to yourself.”
The alien prescience slid off to a spectator’s cubicle within Bard’s mind.
Bard smiled up at the guard. “Glad you’re alert, Robinson. I’m doing some practice dictation on an important letter I have to write after lunch.”
Robinson looked uncertain. Bard put his napkin beside his plate. “I’ll be glad to go along to Dr. Inly’s office, Robinson, but—–”
“I think maybe you better, sir. The order was pretty strict.”
Heads turned as they walked out of the mess hall, the bruising grip still punishing Bard’s arm. He heard the buzz of conversation as the door swung shut behind them. The sunlight was a blow from a fist of gilt. They went down the street toward Sharan’s office.
And the alarm sirens began to shrill.
Bard ripped away from Robinson’s grasp and lifted his long legs into a hard run toward the communications center se
venty yards away. The sirens died into a moan as he burst through the door. The man at the master switchboard, gray-pale with strain, glanced at Bard, cut in a wall baffle onto the circuit and said, “From the ship, sir. Go ahead. It’ll be picked up.”
“Who is this?” Bard demanded.
The answering voice was metallic. “Shellwand. On the ship. We’ve just found a guard on G level, near the shielding, laid out cold, sir. We’re trying to get everyone out of the ship, sir.”
“Who did it?”
“We won’t know, sir, until we—– It’s beginning to tremble, sir! The whole—–”
The diaphragm in the baffle began to pick up resonance and bray. The man at the master board cut it off. They all heard it then. Once heard, it could never be forgotten. Bard Lane had heard it many times.
It was like the low roll of muted thunder behind distant hills, combined with a thousand roaring male voices, singing a sustained note in discord.
It was the song of men who try to reach the stars. It was the resonating fury of fission, held just short of instantaneous detonation. At Hiroshima it had been one thunderous whip-crack of fate that brought a new age to man. Now the whip-crack was harnessed, controlled, directed, guided.
Bard Lane turned and dived from the room. His shoulder caught the flimsy door and knocked it spinning from the torn hinges. He did not feel the pain. He ran out into an open space and stood with his feet planted, fists clenched, shoulders back, staring toward the Beatty One.
The thunder noise grew louder. Blue-white flame licked out around the fins. Heat cracked against his face and he turned his eyes from the unbearable glare. As the vast sound grew even greater the Beatty One nuzzled upwards at the camouflage tent. It rose with painful slowness, with the ponderousness of some unthinkable prehistoric beast. It ripped up through the tent, slowly gaining speed, profiling the tent to its ogive nose, tearing the tent from the towers, slipping through it, igniting it with the fierce tail flame. Now the blue-white unbearable flame was twice as tall as the ship had been. It reached from tail to earth, as though the Beatty One balanced on it.
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