The photograph differed little from any photograph Delia had seen before of a handsome, tough young man, not smiling, level eyes gray-blue, fixed in watchful, grave regard. And there, of course, lay the one difference. For this photograph, if it was a photograph, was colored. And the color was not a photographic water tint, but gleamed and sparkled from the paper itself.
“Somewhere,” Delia said to herself, “somewhere or other on earth there is a_i empire or federation a little in advance of us.”
The thought did not please her. Like any young woman with a scientific training, she was proud of her own Empire of Archon, believing in her own psychological work, only half believing in the tales of Demons. Moreover, she was conscious of an upward destiny for mankind that might end anywhere, or at any rate far beyond the walls that confined the human race now.
A slip of paper lay among the items, bright pink with heavy printing that had deeply indented the thick paper. Delia recognized it at once. These receipt forms had been issued by her many times when confiscating some item from a worker or cleric or Forager or Soldier; she flicked it around with one manicured fingernail and saw that it had been signed by Shardiloe.
“Funny,” she mused. “If he took this gadget which they believe to be an antigrav, why didn’t he take the gun? I’d have thought that to be more important. Oh, well.” She turned to the last item on the workbench.
This was a small box, again constructed from the unfamiliar material of the gun butt, with a slender but recognizable aerial telescoping out from one corner. A dial was set in the center, marked with weird hieroglyphs, and a couple of switches appeared to be the only controls. One end of the box was sadly broken in to reveal a myriad of tiny wires and glistening beads. Radio was a field somewhat outside Delia’s experience. But she knew, with a little moue of anticipatory unpleasantness, that Belle would be along to collect the radio soon.
A tiny secret satisfaction titillated her that Belle, too, would be in for a shock when she tried to fathom the mystery. This radio, along with the buttonless coverall, the gun, the printing and the missing antigrav, posed problems the scientists of Archon were not yet equipped to solve.
She turned away from the bench with a quick, decisive movement. These, after all, were mere artifacts, the outward symbols of a civilization. Her job was vastly more complicated, exciting and important: to pry into the mind of this strange man, strip away all the appurtenances of his way of life and reach down through the man’s mind to the core of his being. Once she knew that, the rest would follow inevitably.
Or so she thought.
Unfortunately, the stranger had received a severe head injury, a blow that had jolted all memory from him, to leave him as receptive to impression and as aware of the past as a newborn baby. Delia’s face became taut and unconsciously drew itself into a dedicated mask.
“I’ll teach him,” she said softly. “I’ll reach down to him, show him who he is and what he is, and then I’ll stretch past that new self and pluck his old self, his real self, out from its crippled skull and hold it up and know!”
The door opened. Delia turned, guiltily, as though caught pilfering. Belle stood there, laughing at her, hazel locks tumbled about her elfin, urchin face, her snub nose lifted defiantly, her merry eyes shining with the knowledge that here she trespassed on the sacred precincts of Delia’s laboratory.
“Hullo, Delia, dear,” Belle said, advancing with both hands outstretched. “You do look solemn!”
“Do I? I’d have said you looked as though you’d just come in from a tumble in a corner.”
“And suppose I had? Isn’t that fun?”
“For those who like it.” Delia took Belle’s hands, feeling the quick warmness of them, knowing that Belle was feeling the cool composure of her own hands.
“Well, I do. Now, where’s the body?”
“Next door. Simon is still making preliminary observations.”
“Is it true he can’t remember a thing?”
“Quite true.”
“My dear, how wonderful! He can meet me—us—without any prior complications.”
“Why, Belle dear, I didn’t know you were frightened of competition.”
“I was thinking of you, dear.”
“You came for the radio? Well, here it is.”
Delia fumed and kept a bright smile as Belle walked across to the bench. These cheerfully catty, insulting matches meant nothing to Belle, but Delia sometimes really meant what she said. And Belle could be so infuriating at times.
Delia topped Belle by a good head and so far Belle, in a world of Belle-sized women, hadn’t brought out her most crushing remark. Delia quivered inwardly as she awaited its inevitable occurrence.
Belle looked at the stranger’s radio. She bent closer and a frown knit her beautiful eyebrows. She glanced at Delia and a pink tongue wetted her beautiful lips. Taking all this in, Delia felt glee.
The words Belle and beautiful belonged together somehow, and they could never be separated by any act of rationalism. Belle said slowly, “This is a radio—of sorts—all right. But hardly any valves. In fact—what are all these beads? And some of the wiring joins up with circuit-directions printed on the— Or are they solid transparent blocks? This is going to be a tough one.”
“You’ll understand it well enough,” Delia said sweetly. “One day.”
“Thank you for that kind thought, Delia, dear.” Belle picked up the radio and stood, cradling it, looking hard at Delia. “But then, you always were such a big girl…”
Delia writhed all over the inside of her face at the way, this time, Belle had done it. But the smile rigidly adhering to her face did not slip; the pegs of her self-control had been well rammed home.
Simon walked in, breaking the blue haze of the moment. “Hullo, Belle! Come for your part of the loot?”
“Yes, Simon. And if you’re faced with a nut like this one, you’re welcome.”
“The stranger poses problems right enough. Care to have a peep at him?”
“Try to stop me.”
“I don’t think,” Simon said in his dry, deliberate way, “it would pay anyone to try.”
They all walked through the connecting door. Flora wiped the table where much of the stranger’s food had found its way and smiled at Belle. She picked up a pair of men’s undergarments and began methodically to put them on Stead. Belle stood, face attentive, her bosom moving a little faster than when she and Delia had slanged each other.
“But,” Belle said. “But he’s so masculine!”
For some obcure but vital reason, Delia let that go. She felt some indecorousness about scratching at Belle in the presence, however unconscious, of this man, when he was not aware. He was asleep now. When he woke up she might forget that momentary jab of inner conflict and understanding.
“You have your radio,” she said brusquely. “Simon and I have work to do, real work.”
“Tinkering about with people’s brains, and you call it work. Now if you had the problem of maintaining wireless communication with all this infernal new howling that’s hitting the air these days, you’d find that real work.”
Simon, ready to enter into a discussion of the interference that had so recently begun on the air, said, “But some wavebands are free of it, and that could mean—”
“We don’t want to keep Belle,” interrupted Delia, pushing the shorter girl to the door with a genteel controlling wave of her hand. “She is so busy.”