The door had been sealed shut. Amro lay on his back on the cot in the tiny windowless room, trying to amuse himself by opening his mind to the most extreme limits of receptivity. Through the thickness of the walls he could catch random fleeting impressions. Somewhere far above him there was tension. It took him a long time to find out that it was the concentrated emotion of a whole phalanx of clerks working against a report deadline.
A tangle of thoughts and emotions moved slowly closer and he knew that someone was walking down the corridor, passing the sealed door. The thoughts were vaguely of strategy and intrigue, of move and countermove, and he guessed that it was one of the monitors. He tried to find out who and felt the mind snap shut against his probe, exuding an acid aura of indignation and outraged privacy.
A bit later there was an agent passing and Amro sensed the blood-thirst in that mind, the direct and uncomplicated pleasure in anticipating the job for which the organism had been trained.
And it made him feel the extent of the change in himself. It made him think of Martha Kaynan.
They had taken the Earth clothes from him, had given him back the short kilt but with weapons pockets empty. He thought of Martha and what they might do to her and he paced back and forth by the sealed door, his fingernails biting into his palms, a sound oddly like a growl in his throat.
But even as he paced he knew his own helplessness. Even if he could force the door with his hands the doorway co the twin world was five levels below him. He would have to get by the normal complement of corridor guards, probably three between him and the steep ramp. Two guards on each level at the ramp landings. That would make eleven.
Then probably five more at intervals along the corridor leading to the area where the negative matter, the pattern of unreality, provided the exit to the twin world. There were two agents on duty at that place, controlling the switch. Sixteen guards and two agents. Eighteen armed men. No combination of luck and agility could carry him that far.
He went back to the cot and forced relaxation on his muscles. It was odd, he thought, about the Chief. The strange attitude he had taken. And equally odd that he had not yet been taken away for the test.
Maybe when they came for him... It was hard to break the established pattern of obedience to the Center, of dedication. They would expect cooperation when they came for him. And it was possible that he could provide them with a surprise.
The house was very still. She lay and listened for a long time and all she could hear was the soft sighs of the sea, sometimes the thin crackling of sand blown against the side of the house.
Quinn had not come back. No, it was a mistake to keep thinking of him as Quinn. Quinn French was dead. The three of them had told her he was dead. And Fran was dead.
It made it worse that Quinn hadn’t come back, even though she knew that he was one of them — one of the dreadful aliens. How stupid not to have seen it from the beginning! But what chance did a human have of detecting the nonhuman?
She guessed that a small child would have known almost immediately. Children are quick to feel strangeness. It is the adults, trained in skepticism, who see with blind eyes. Adults search for reasons. Children merely know.
Why be afraid because the creature horridly masquerading as Quinn has gone? Maybe because it was possible to sense the growth of compassion in him.
They looked like humans. They could make themselves look like humans. She knew that they would continue to fool the humans until they had won. And then probably it would be safe for them to resume their own guise. How would they look? Dreadful slimed sea-depths things? Or scaled, and coiled? Alien, anyway — alien and horrible.
She wondered if it were some trick of light that made them able to look like people. No, not the light alone. There had been that moment on the beach when the thing calling itself Quinn had kissed her. They had felt like human lips and his arms like human arms. But too strong, of course. So strong that her mouth was bruised and her ribs ached afterward.
Now? No, not quite yet. She felt his name on her lips. “Quinn!”
They had admitted it. They had told her!
Or was all this another facet of madness. The family had always spoken in careful casual ways about Aunt Harriet. No, Aunt Harriet hadn’t been a blood relative. No point in thinking along those lines. But remember Alice at school? What was her name?
Alice Masters, Masterson, Mathews, Mathewson — Mathers! That was it — Alice Mathers. Perfectly all right and then they found her all curled up in the fireplace with the ashes she had rubbed into her hair and all over her face, laughing and talking up the chimney, answering questions they couldn’t hear.
No, this wasn’t like that at all. It couldn’t be! But didn’t all the crazy people claim they are perfectly sane. It’s only when you recognize the possibility of your being a bit whacked that you aren’t.
Now? Try now, Martha — carefully, slowly, three steps to the door. Stand and wait. No moon tonight. Dress? Don’t take the time. Breathe softly, slowly. The pounding of the heart will wake them surely. A Congo drum. Slowly — There! Now you can see the door, that dim oblong. One, two, three, four steps. Reach out. Touch the screen. Now all you have to do is push it open slowly and...
“Go back to your bed!” Fran said.
Martha held both hands tightly against her mouth. She turned without a word and went back to her bed.
The Chief stood once again with his arms crossed and looked across the black void to the misty dot of light that was Strada. After he had listened to that agent, Amro, he had felt that it was time to be alone, to think long careful thoughts. And so he had come at once to the asteroid.
Back on Strada the problem was too close. It surrounded and smothered him. It echoed in the corridors, chattered in the billion upon billion of electronic relays in the calculators and computers. Five hundred and sixty-one planets dependent on Strada. Ceaseless flow of orders. Move the exploration crews to sector fourteen hundred ten.
Eight hundred tons of Compound Seven to Planet 6003-11 — Emergency. Two hundred thousand Stradai awaiting passage to 6118-?b. Conduct search for missing freighter in sector thirteen hundred seventy. Send specialists to 6202-?c to determine cause of resistance to atmospheric envelope. Send food at once. Send hate. Send envy. Send death.
Strada — nerve center. Brain and head — record center of plans, inventories, census, secret agents of League and Center. Loyalty records.
And what if the beast was headless? No food, no specialists, no transportation for those who waited. Five hundred and sixty-one orphaned planet Children, rapidly growing unkempt, thrust into freedom.
“What then?” he said aloud.
One could guess. Endless and crippling confusion as each planet slowly strove for self-sufficiency, staggering under the continually increasing burden of population. The ancient adjustments — famine, disease and war. Each planet busily scrubbing its own laundry, then at last, home task completed, turning to stare with avidity at a neighbor world.
In the struggle some of them would lose the knack, the skill, for space travel. They might go for generations, never visited. The language slowly changing, even the physical form of the Stradai changing, once limited to the specific planet, to a specific set of environmental influences. Then vast combines and wars and empires rising and falling.
An enormous setback to the unified efficient Stradian civilization. Or, he thought, could it really be called a setback. It was rumored that there had once been a golden age before the Stradai had lifted themselves from the surface of their home planet. But the histories had been lost, of course. What had the Stradai believed in then?