Mekkis studied once more the faded and tattered military documents before him on the desk. Things did not look good.
“The weapons found by Gus Swenesgard,” he informed his precog creech, “are described here in the most vague terms, but appear to have some sort of effect on the mind. That might account for the strange reports we’ve been getting from the units assigned to the mopping-up operation against the Neeg-parts who still, in spite of the loss of their leader, unreasonably continue to hang on.”
“Invisible men,” muttered the precog. “Men turning into animals. Unnatural monsters that form and unform without warning and do not show up on radar. All part of the same thing—the coming darkness. Oh, sir; your time grows short. The Nowhere Girl will be born somewhere on this planet within the next few days. She is the first sign of the end.”
“Can you tell yet who she is?” Mekkis demanded, momentarily losing control of himself in his agitation. “Or where she is?”
“That I cannot say, but once she dwelt here in this bale. I no longer sense her close by.”
“She must have escaped into the hills,” Mekkis muttered. He returned, then, to the study of the documents before him. How could Gus Swenesgard, he asked himself, have been so stupid as to allow such deadly devices to fall into the hands of the Neeg-parts? That took more than ordinary dullness, the kind of stupidity that can only result from long practice and hard study.
And yet this same man had played an important part in the capture of Percy X.
“I must meet this Gus Swenesgard,” Mekkis said aloud. He had hoped to have some report from the Psychedelic Research people on Percy X long before now. What were they doing there in Norway, anyhow? Unless the Terran they called Balkani could deliver him a functioning and docile Percy X and soon, the mop-up operation against the Neeg-parts might drag on for years. Or might abruptly turn against the Gany occupation forces. Those weapons…
And this Balkani. It was he, it seemed, who had evolved the principles on which these mind-warping devices worked. And he who had worked out a technique for training the ordinarily feeble telepathic powers of certain gifted Terrans so that they almost equaled in power an experienced Ganymedian member of the Great Common.
And he to whom uncooperative Earthmen got routinely sent—to be turned into useful wiks.
“Balkani, too,” Mekkis mused aloud. “I must meet him.”
On impulse he pressed the key of his intercom with his tongue, sent an order out for a full search of nearby reference libraries for the works of this famous psychiatric figure; they might, he reflected, make highly interesting reading.
“You wished to see Gus Swenesgard?” the Oracle demanded, interrupting his meditations. “He is on his way; presently he will be here.”
Ten minutes later Gus indeed sat waiting in the outer office. He did not seem surprised when he received the command to enter; with a snappy salute he ambled in to face Mekkis, the picture of self-satisfied certitude.
“You can drop that saluting now, Mr. Swenesgard,” Mekkis greeted him caustically. “The military occupation of this bale has terminated.”
“Yes sir,” Gus said, with vigor. “What I’m here for is—” He coughed nervously. “I have some information, Mr. Administrator, sir.”
A quick scan of the man’s mind proved interesting; Mekkis found Gus to be shrewd and highly cunning—qualities nobody would ever have suspected on the basis of his outward, physical appearance. If Percy X did not come through, perhaps this individual might.
“I got spies, see, among the Neeg-parts,” Gus said, wiping his nose with the back of his arm. “And they tell me a lotta funny things are going on up in the hills. Those gadgets they got out of that cave; well, they are really humdingers, let me tell you.”
“What is a ‘humdinger’?” Mekkis asked, worried.
“Well, you know, Mr. Administrator, sir, they got some mighty funny effects on people’s minds. Makes people see things that ain’t there and not see things that are there, if you know what I mean, and they’re getting kind of cocky with them. Like one of them black devils walked into my front room, invisible, and painted a black cross on my wall, right in front of my very eyes. I thought I’d been hitting the bottle a little too heavy, sir, but it was still there the next day. So I guess it must have been real.”
“What does that mean, a black cross?”
“Means they’re going to kill me if I don’t do what they say; that’s what it means.” Gus looked unhappy.
“I’ll provide you with protection,” Mekkis said shortly.
“I always heard that the best defense is a good offense. Why don’t you provide me with a little tactical force?” The drawling, rustic accent had vanished, now; the man’s tone bristled with direct intent. “Some ionocraft bombers and autonomic darts and let me go up into those hills after those rascals.”
“I already have several units in the hills. What could you do that they aren’t already doing?”
“I could win,” Gus said quietly. “Where you fellers, no offense intended, are likely to just keep batting around up there ’till hell skids over with ice. I know the hills. I have spies. I understand how the Neeg mind works. I can locate where they got those weapons hidden, those mind-warping things.”
Routinely, Mekkis glanced into the man’s mind—and started in surprise at what he found there. Absolute deception: Gus intended to find the weapons, all right—but he would keep them for himself.
For a moment Mekkis pondered. Gus could of course be bugged and even provided with some variety of remote control instant-kill device. Even though his motives were impure perhaps he could locate the weapons and defeat the Neegs, where the Gany occupation forces had failed. Then, at the instant in which Gus believed he had everybody fooled, the remote control kill-unit, hidden somewhere on his body, would take him out and leave the weapons and the victory for Mekkis.
Mekkis could never resist a gamble.
“All right,” he said to Gus. “A unit of twenty-five creeches and their full war equipment will be placed at your disposal. Use them with wisdom.”
As Gus, amazed at his own success, turned to go, Mekkis called after him. “But if you come across something called a Nowhere Girl, destroy him, her or it immediately.”
“Yes sir,” Gus said, and saluted.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Ed Newkom anxiously.
Paul Rivers, lying on the couch in the fortune-telling parlor, with the telepathic amplifier on his head, had abruptly tensed with agitation. “My God,” he said, but he had become so absorbed in the thoughts which he received that he sounded, not like himself, but like Percy X. “She’s screaming!”
“What are they doing to her?” Ed asked.
A long silence followed. Outside, afternoon hung heavily. Ionocraft horns beeped. A churchbell tolled five o’clock, and a slight breeze moved the curtain at the window. “She’s in a restraining jacket,” Paul said at last, again in Percy X’s voice. “She’s lying on a table with wheels, going down a long, unlit hallway.” A pause; then he spoke again, this time, eerily, in the voice of Joan Hiashi. “Damn it, Balkani, this is absurd! Let me go!”
Ed leaned forward, moistening his lips nervously. “Now what’s happening?”
“She’s in a room with padded walls,” Paul answered, again in Percy X’s voice. Time passed and then he spoke again. Using the voice of Rudolph Balkani. “Robots one and two—take her out of the restraining jacket.” Then again in Joan’s voice. “Stop that. No! I won’t let you! It’s no use struggling, Miss Hiashi; these robots are at least ten times as strong as you are. That’s it. You see, it’s much easier on you when you cooperate. I’m not going to hurt you. After all, I am a doctor, Miss Hiashi. You’re certainly not the first unclad woman I’ve ever seen. Now, please, slip into this. No, I won’t!” The voices ebbed back and forth, as if tugging each other, conflicting in a counterpoint, with each struggling for dominance.
Ed Newkom listened with repugnance, almost unable to believ
e what he saw and heard; the personality of Paul Rivers had vanished completely.
Doctor Rudolph Balkani handed Joan Hiashi what looked to her like a pair of loose-fitting coveralls made from black plastic. She put them on and one of the robots zipped her up from the back. Only her head remained showing, she discovered. The coveralls had been lined on the inside with some material so soft that she could hardly feel it.
“You are no doubt familiar, Miss Hiashi,” Balkani said, “with the practices of certain mystic hermits; I refer specifically to the practice of sensory withdrawal. We possess now, thanks to contemporary science, and improved version of the hermit’s cave. It is called the sensory withdrawal tank.” He pressed a button and a sliding panel opened in the floor to reveal a pool of dark, still water. Balkani picked up a helmet with no windows in it.
“The most successful method of sense withdrawal is an immersion tank where the subject floats on water at blood temperature, with sound and light absent. When you put on this helmet and are lowered into the pool you will see nothing, smell nothing, touch nothing and, thanks to the sensory blocking drug with which we have injected you, there will not remain even the experience of your body, its pains and motions and chemical alterations. Put on the helmet, Miss Hiashi.”
She did not. The robots, however, did it for her.
Seemingly calm now, Joan said to Balkani, “Have you ever been in the tank yourself?”
“Not yet,” Balkani answered. At his command the two robots lowered her into the pool, uncoiling the air-hose that led to the helmet; watching, Balkani lit his pipe and puffed on it thoughtfully. “Give my regards to oblivion, Miss Hiashi,” he said softly.
A knock sounded on the door. Rudolph Balkani glanced up from his notebook, frowning, then ordered one of his robots to open the door. His superior, Major Ringdahl, stepped into the room, his eyes alert.
“Is she still in the tank?” Ringdahl inquired.
Wordlessly Balkani gestured toward the dark pool in the floor. The major peered down and saw the top of Joan Hiashi’s helmet just breaking surface and her body, distorted by ripples, floating motionless under the water. “Not so loud,” Balkani whispered.
“How long has she been in?”
Balkani examined his wristwatch. “About five and a half hours.”
“She’s so still; is she asleep, Doctor?”
“No.” Balkani removed the pair of headphones he had been wearing, detached one and handed it to Major Ringdahl.
“Sounds like she’s talking in her sleep,” Ringdahl said, after listening intently. “Can’t make out what she’s saying, though.”
“She’s not asleep,” Balkani repeated; he pointed to a rotating drum lodged within a bank of instruments; tiny pens traced irregular lines on graph paper. “Her brain wave pattern indicates exceptional activity, almost at the satori level.”
“The satori level?”
“That’s the state in which the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mind disappears; the focal point of consciousness opens out and grows tenuous and the entire mind functions as a unit, rather than being broken up into a multitude of secondary functional entities.”
Ringdahl said, “Is she suffering?”
“Why do you ask that?” The question surprised him.
“I believe that Percy X is continually following her thoughts. If he sees that she’s going through a period of discomfort maybe it’ll put a little more pressure on him to listen to our side of the story.”
“I thought you wanted a cure,” Balkani snapped. “I’m a doctor, not a torturer!”
“Answer my question,” Ringdahl said. “Is she suffering or not?”
“She may have been for a while. In a certain sense she passed through the experience of losing the outside world and then her body—an experience a great deal like death. Now, however, I would venture to say that she’s happy. Perhaps really happy for the first time in her life.”
Space did not exist.
Time did not exist.
Because Joan Hiashi had vanished; no infinitely small point where space and time could intersect remained. And yet the work of the mind continued. The memory still maintained itself. The near-perfect computers wandered over the problems which they had been studying before, even though a great many of these problems had become phrased in such a way as to be unsolvable. The emotions came and departed, though the earlier dizzy pendulum-swing between anguish and ecstasy had now ceased almost completely. Here and there a ghostly semi-personality half-formed, then faded out again. Her rôles in life hung empty in the simplicity of her mind, like costumes in a deserted theater. It had become night on the stage of the world and only one bank of worklights remained on, dimly illuminating the canvas-and-stick flats that only a short time earlier had stood for reality.
Balkani had been right, or at least half right. Happiness did exist here, the greatest happiness possible for a human being.
Unfortunately, no one remained to enjoy it.
VIII
ROBOTS LIFTED Joan gently from the pool and laid her with infinite care on a table nearby. Removing her helmet Balkani said, “Hello, Miss Hiashi.”
“Hello, Doctor.” Her voice echoed as if far away and he recognized the sound; after the therapy this often came about, this dreamlike aspect of speech and mentation.
“Looks like she’s in a trance,” Ringdahl said prosaically. “Let me see if she will react to a direct command.”
“If you must, go ahead,” Balkani said with irritation; he felt irked that his unprofessional military superior had intervened at this crucial stage.
“Miss Hiashi,” Ringdahl said, in what he obviously hoped constituted a properly hypnotic voice. “You are going to sleep, sleep, sleep. You’re falling into a deep trance.”
“Am I?” The girl’s voice lacked any trace of emotion.
Ringdahl said, “I am your friend. Do you understand that?”
“Every living being is my friend,” Joan answered in the same far-distant voice.
“What’s she mean by that?” Ringdahl asked Balkani.
“They often come up out of extended sense-deprivation spouting nonsense,” Balkani answered. “And she won’t do anything you tell her to, either. So you might as well not waste your valuable time.”
“But she’s hypnotized, isn’t she?” the major demanded with exasperation; clearly he did not understand.
Before Balkani could reply Joan spoke again. “It is you who are hypnotized.”
“Snap her out of it,” Ringdahl growled. “She gives me the creeps.”
“I can’t snap her out of anything,” Balkani said with a slight ironic smile; he felt mildly amused. “She’s as wide awake as we are, if not more so.”
“Are you just going to leave her like that?”
“Don’t worry.” Balkani patted his military superior patronizingly on the shoulder. “She’ll return to normal in a few hours all by herself, if she wants to.”
“If she wants to?” Clearly Ringdahl did not like the sound of that.
“She may decide she wants to stay this way.” Balkani turned and spoke softly to Joan. “Who are you, dear?”
“I am you,” she answered promptly.
Ringdahl cursed. “Kill her or cure her, Balkani, but don’t leave her like this.”
“There is no death,” Joan said, mostly to herself. She did not really seem inclined to communicate; she seemed, in fact, virtually unaware of the two of them.
“Listen, Balkani,” Ringdahl said angrily. “I thought you said you could cure her of political maladjustment. Now she’s worse than ever. Let me remind you that—”
“Major Ringdahl, allow me to remind you of three things. One, that I did not promise anything. Two, that the treatments have hardly begun. And three, that you are meddling where you lack the specialized training to know what you’re doing.”
Ringdahl had raised his finger skyward to make an angry pronouncement, but forgot what he intended to say when Joan sat up suddenly
and said, in the same detached voice, “I’m hungry.”
“Would you like a meal served in your room?” Balkani asked her, feeling sudden sympathy for her.
“Oh yes,” she said expressionlessly, then reached back and unzipped her cellophane coveralls. She slipped out of them without the slightest trace of embarrassment, but Major Ringdahl turned a mottled red and glanced the other way. Balkani watched her dress, a strange pain in his chest; it was a new feeling to him, one which he had never in his life felt before. Her body seemed so small and childlike and helpless; he wanted to protect her, to help her stay in her waking dream where everyone was her friend and death did not exist.
Joan led the way out of the room, a slight smile on her face, like a Mona Lisa or a Buddha, and as she passed Balkani he reached out and touched her arm. As if she had become a saint.
After she had eaten, Joan Hiashi moved to the window of her cell and looked out. The sun had sunk low; evening lay ahead and very close. Autumn came early here, and a leaf, its rusty red made all the more brilliant by the sun, hung from its branch a few feet from Joan’s barred window, twisting meagerly in the breeze. Joan studied the leaf.
The sun disappeared.
The leaf became a black silhouette against the fading sky, and stars appeared behind it, faint but distinct. The smell of the sea hung in the air, and the taste of salt.
Joan continued to watch the leaf while the breeze grew colder and stronger, rising and falling with a great rushing sound, like someone breathing in her ear. Still she stood motionless, one hand resting on the smooth metal sill of the window, the other by her side.
Still she watched the leaf as the last fragments of daylight departed and the wind, growing stronger with each moment, rushed in her face and played in her hair.
An hour passed.
Two.
The leaf danced wildly to unheard music, tossing, twisting, swirling its cape in the darkness, seeming to sense that it had an audience.
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