When they were apart he traced the gentle edge of bone before her left hip with his fingers and said, “You know, I didn’t really expect this, but I’m awfully glad about it.” Their eyes were only inches apart, and she looked into his carefully, then kissed him, shook her head, sat up and glanced at her watch.
“Take your aspirin,” she said, “and then let’s talk. I’ve got twenty-five minutes left to turn you.”
“Turn me into what?” he asked, swallowing obediently.
“Turn you into a double agent, Horny,” she said.
He slid to the edge of the bunk and sat next to her. He brushed her bare shoulder with his lips thoughtfully. “Oh, yes,” he said. “My little problem.”
“It’s actually our problem, Horny. But that’s the deal they’ll give you. If you’ll work with them they’ll let you go. They’ve got a plan. They’re going to ransom you— exchange you for somebody the Team’s got hidden out in Texas. Don’t ask me who; I don’t know.”
Hake said consideringly, “I don’t really know how high a price the Team puts on me.”
She said, “Well, to be frank, Horny, the twins don’t really think it’s very high. They’ll let themselves be bargained down—of course, assuming that you go along. Otherwise there’s no deal for you. Or maybe for me, either,” she added. “If they, ah, dispose of you I really don’t think they will want me to be around as a possible witness to murder.”
That was a new thought, and a soberingly unwelcome one to Hake. He put his arm around her warm, damp waist, but she did not yield. “So we have to talk, Horny. I don’t think there ought to be any moral question for you. I can’t believe that you want to be loyal to a bunch of destructive lunatics. It’s not just the PCP, or bribing half the disk jockeys in Europe to play narco music, or counterfeiting the pound, or jiggering everybody’s computer nets. Or spreading disease, or insect pests, or allergenic weeds, or—”
“I didn’t know about the narco music,” Hake said. “And what’s that about the computers?”
“All the time, Horny. How do you think they finance themselves? Or, for that matter,” she added honestly, “how do you think I do? I’m not saying I really like the way my side operates. They spy on you, we spy on you. They trick you, I trick you.”
“I like the way you do it better,” he observed. “What do you mean, you spy on me? Is that how you knew I was going to the Team in the first place?”
“Certainly. We don’t have the resources the Team does,” she said bitterly, “but we do what we can. I have an old school friend who—no, never mind who she is. We don’t have time. I have to persuade you to turn around.”
“Oh,” said Hake, “I thought you knew that. I’m turned.”
She looked at him. “You’re sure?”
“Sure?” He laughed. “What I’m sure of is that I’m getting real tired of being used. But I’m willing to try it your way.”
She studied him carefully, then shook her head. “All right,” she said. “Now all we have to do is hope the Reddis don’t change their mind. And—” she glanced at her watch— “we still have twenty minutes.”
He pulled her toward him, but he had misunderstood her meaning. She resisted. “Wait a minute, Horny. Now it’s time for me to ask you the question.”
“What question?”
“The one I told you I was going to ask: Why did you do all this?”
He said peevishly, “I thought we’d just been over all that. I don’t know.”
“But maybe I do. I have a theory. Don’t laugh—”
He was a long way from laughing.
“I have to start from the beginning. What do you know about hypnotism?”
Hake took his arm away from her and said, “Leota, I’m not an impatient man, but if you’ve got a point I wish you’d get to it.”
“Well, that is the point. You act hypnotized. Do you understand what I’m saying? Whatever anybody tells you to do, you do. You’re suggestible. Just like someone in a hypnotic trance state.”
“Oh, hell.” He was exasperated. “I can’t be hypnotized to do things I wouldn’t do otherwise—that’s a fact! Everybody knows that.”
“They do? How do you know it? Have you made a study of hypnotism?”
“No, but—”
“No, but you sure as hell act as if you were! Don’t give me knee-jerks, Horny. Think about it.”
“Well—” He thought for a moment, and then said cautiously, “I admit that I don’t altogether understand what I’ve been doing the last couple of months. I’ve wondered about it. I went along with any lousy thing they suggested quick enough—as you point out.”
“I don’t mean it critically, Horny. The opposite of that. You couldn’t help yourself, if you were hypnotized.”
He looked at her. “How sure are you of any of this?”
“Well, not very,” she admitted. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Is there any other way to explain it? You can’t even call it reflex patriotism. You went along with me, too, when I told you not to report me.”
He looked up with a spasm of hope. “But—that was against the Team!”
Leota shook her head. “Men! That’s male ego for you. You’d rather believe you were a skunk of your own free will than a helpless dupe. But the fact is, that’s a strong sign of the trance state. It’s called a tolerance of incongruities. It means you act as though mutually conflicting things are both right, or both true.”
He protested, “It’s all impossible! They couldn’t hypnotize me without my remembering it!”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t, but—”
She said, “It could have been a post-hypnotic suggestion to forget. Or you might not have been aware of it in the first place. They could have slipped you a drug. Planted a tape under your pillow. I don’t know. All I’m sure of—”
She was interrupted by the sound of the door being unlocked. The Reddi with the scar over his brow looked in on them, his right hand resting on the holster of a pistol. He smiled.
“Ah, I see you are making good progress, sweetie,” he observed as Leota grabbed for her beach dress and held it before her.
She said coldly: “We’ve made the deal, Rama. Now it’s up to you to work out an arrangement for a trade.”
“I see,” he said, studying them in amusement. “Yes, perhaps something can be done. When my brother returns we will speak further. But how can we know that Reverend Hake will keep his word to us?”
Neither Hake nor Leota answered; there was no obvious answer to give. The Indian nodded. “Yes, that is a difficulty. Well, I had thought that you might wish to come on deck, my dear, but perhaps you prefer to remain here?”
He smiled—it was almost a friendly smile, at least a tolerant one, Hake was astonished to discover—and closed the door behind him.