“Like what?”
“They don’t have to talk to each other. Oh, they do, when somebody’s around. It isn’t necessary to them. I saw Laura glance at Elaine one day. Elaine was just walking in, not saying a word. Laura opened the desk drawer and took out a file and handed it to her.”
“Maybe there was some previous talk about that file?”
“No, because I had given it to Laura just fifteen minutes earlier and I hadn’t left the room. Elaine took it, said thank you, and left. I know that Laura sent for her somehow. And there’s a building there on the grounds that no one can go in but those four. The closer I’ve watched them, the more differences I’ve seen. Something about their wrists are funny. More — what’s the word — articulation. They bend back further than ours. But you seldom see them use them that way. As though they were imitating... us. And sometimes they’ll look terribly amused, all of them, without a word being spoken. They’re... just terribly, terribly odd. Oh, and another thing. There are little things Laura and Elaine don’t know that — goodness! — every girl knows. They always seem to be watching me for clues. Because of my work I’m with them more than the office girls downstairs. Laura had a little piece of costume jewelry. Any woman would have known how to wear it. She wore it way over on her shoulder, sort of. When I noticed it she left the room. When she came back it was in the right place. I left my lighter on the table. Just a plain old one. Everybody knows about those. Laura tried to use it and she kept spinning the wheel backward. Then suddenly she seemed to know how to work it.”
“What are you trying to get at?”
“Jeff, believe me. They come from someplace else!”
“Oh, come now! Martians, maybe?”
“Don’t act like that! They’re funny. They remind me of people in a zoo, looking around at the funny animals. They seem to have a good time, but there’s a coldness in them. A ruthlessness about them.”
“I’d like to get in that building you mentioned. Is it guarded?”
“No. Just locked. I went and tried the door once. It’s a thick door. Heavy. What are they trying to do, Jeff?”
“Whatever it is,” he said bitterly, “they seem to be doing it very effectively. You saw the cover story in Tempo last week? You know how Tempo takes the most exalted people and always lets that sour little edge of wit appear. The whole cover story sounded like it had been written by a Wellesley girl writing up the professor on whom she has a large crush. And how about the TV networks fighting to give him free time just to get a bigger audience on the preceding and following programs? And those darn buttons!”
“Twenty-four million of them have been distributed so far, Jeff. It’s... frightening.”
“Have you tried to talk to anybody else about this?”
She frowned. “Yes. And the funniest thing happened. There’s a really bright girl running the letter section. I hinted around. She began to catch on. We compared notes on the four... blond things. She began to get excited. And then one day she couldn’t remember anything about it. At least she pretended not to remember. I guess she thought I was missing a few marbles or something.”
He told her about his investigations. He told her of the odd losses of memory, of the tampering with the files. As he spoke, her eyes got rounder and rounder.
“Then — Myra! She really didn’t remember! They tampered with her somehow!”
He cupped her cheeks in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I can’t let you go back there, darling.”
“Think a moment, Jeff. Think hard. They seem to be able to do all sorts of things. If I run from them, I think they will find me.”
He cursed softly. “They might, at that.”
“I have to go back. I can’t let them guess that I’m suspicious. Honestly, Jeff, I won’t be frightened any more now that I know you’re on my side. I can do my work and watch them and maybe find out enough so that you can turn it over to the FBI or the UN or whoever you turn a thing like this over to.”
“Nothing must happen to you.”
“Nothing will. There’s no reason for them to... hurt me.”
“Be careful, baby. I’m going to take up his offer, you know. Then I’ll be on the inside, too. I’ll be able to watch over you.”
“I thought you once said that you didn’t want that responsibility, Mr. Rayden.”
He punched her very lightly on the point of her chin. “Touché, baby.”
They kissed and they talked of other things which had absolutely nothing to do with Means. In some odd way things had gone right for them again. Time passed. She glanced at her watch and jumped. “Goodness! They’ll get suspicious. Take me back, Jeff.”
“Weren’t you going after supplies?”
She opened her purse and held it so that he could look in. “All purchased. When I heard you were in with him, I went to my room and got this film. I never got around to unwrapping it after I bought it the other day.”
“Why do I trust you at all?” he said wonderingly.
He drove her back, watched her walk up to the front door, then turned around and drove back to San Ramon. He turned the car in at the garage where he had rented it. As he was paying his bill in the office the mechanic came in, gave him a surly look and said, “Come on out in the shop, bud. I want to show you something.”
Jeff, puzzled, followed the man out. The hood of the car was raised.
The man walked to the car, pointed inside the hood and said, in a sarcastic voice, “Now suppose you tell me just what kinda toy you had installed on ourБ" He stopped abruptly, looked more closely and then softly called himself a dirty word.
“What’s the matter?” Jeff asked.
“It was there a minute ago!” the mechanic protested weakly.
“What was?”
“Damn if I know what it was. A round gray thing. Fastened right there. Big as a grapefruit. Flattish. I figured it was some kind of trick horn you had put on.”
“I didn’t have anything put on the car, friend.”
“But I — hey! Look here!”
Jeff bent over beside him. Down beside the motor was a pile of grayish, metallic powder. The mechanic picked up a pinch of it. It was as fine as talc. Even as he held it in his hand it seemed to grow more fine. It diffused in the air. Soon his hand was empty and the grayish cloud dissipated. More grayness like smoke welled up out of the hood and was gone.
In a strained voice Jeff asked, “Did the thing look at all like a microphone? A pickup?”
“It could have been. Look, mister. I didn’t see anything. You didn’t see anything. It was never there. I work for a living. I don’t like things on my mind. Go and pay your bill. Don’t come back. Ever.”
At eight o’clock that night Jeff found his man in the beer joint where he had been told to look. The man’s name was Phil Sargo. He was as tall and broad as the average doorway, but with an indefinably cat-like way of moving. His brown hard face looked at though it couldn’t be hurt with an eight-pound sledge, and it also looked as though somebody had tested that theory a few times.
His voice had a rasp. “What you want, doc?”
Jeff sat down at the empty chair at the table for two. “I want to hire you.”
“Tonight I feel like drinking beer. So I come high.”