Theories? No, facts. The truth, the ultimate truth of existence.
“What,” the Oracle said apprehensively, “are you going to do with the thought amplifier when it is rigged?”
“I’m going to contact Percy X,” Mekkis informed him.
“Then,” the Oracle said with resignation, “it is too late to turn back. The great darkness is upon us and nothing can stop it now.”
FOURTEEN
When the Toms perceived the angel of light descending from the heavens they fled in terror, leaving the warehouse unguarded.
“That got those superstitious rats moving,” Percy X shouted in truimph. “Now set up a wall of fire around the warehouse to keep them out while we load up with supplies.”
“Right,” Lincoln said, moving the dials of his mechanism and concentrating.
Almost at once the flames became so hot that it was hard for the two Neeg-parts to breathe. But the fire burned without consuming. Working quickly and efficiently the two men soon had their ionocraft so heavily loaded that they knew it would be reluctant to leave the ground.
As they worked, Percy sang—one of the wordless microtonal chants that had grown out of many cold nights in the mountains. It’s good to feel my muscles pull, he said to himself. Much better than to think when thought only leads to despair. A moment later the ionocraft, with its cargo and the two men inside it, glided away from the flame-surrounded warehouse and headed, unobserved, for the mountains.
As they flew, Percy became more and more aware of the sensation of being a bird and less and less aware of being a man flying an ionocraft. He had ceased to see the craft around him or its control panel; now he even ceased to feel the steering wheel and the pedals. He forgot, for an interval, that he had ever been a man. Nothing remained but air currents, which he could see by means of tiny distortions in the background of hills and trees. He was swimming in the air, feeling its currents as stresses on some sort of transparent plastic, feeling the different levels moving against each other like the different parts in a great choral hymn.
A voice called him from somewhere far away. He recognized it as the voice of Joan Hiashi and it said, “He knew you were listening. He’s a terrible ham.” For an instant he made out her face; then that face changed, the features moving, shifting about like moist plastic under the fingers of a sculptor, and it became Joan no longer; it became Lincoln Shaw, shouting at him, “Snap out of it! Snap out of it, Percy! We almost crashed!”
Gradually Percy returned to the ionocraft in which he sat. He looked out the window and saw the hills sweeping by on both sides of the craft. “I thought I was a bird,” he said unsteadily.
“Yeah, I know,” Lincoln said, shakily adjusting his battered horn-rimmed glasses. “I turned off the projector just in time.”
“I was singing to Joan. And Paul Rivers, he was there, too; I flew right up next to his face.”
“That’s what you think, man. That wasn’t Paul Rivers’ face you almost bumped into. That was the face of a solid rock cliff.”
“You’d better handle the controls until we get back to base camp,” Percy said, perspiring; his hands had begun to shake and the motion was communicated through the sensitive controls to the ionocraft itself.
“Now you’re talking,” Lincoln said, taking over.
For a time they skimmed along in silence and then Percy said, “The food will last better, now.”
“That’s one of the advantages,” Lincoln said caustically, “of having fewer mouths to feed.”
“How many will there be when we get back?”
Lincoln said, “Don’t ask me, man.”
“All I know anymore,” Percy said, “is that—” He broke off. Within his mind a voice had spoken. “I hear a voice,” he said.
“The projector,” Lincoln said. “Don’t pay any attention to it.”
“Is that you, Percy X?” the voice asked.
“Yes,” Percy answered. There was something naggingly familiar about the voice and about the vague emotional shapes that floated behind it. For a moment he thought it was Dr. Balkani and then he realized it was Mekkis, a terribly changed Mekkis—a far cry from the cool, self-assured administrator of power that Percy had faced the day of his capture. Mekkis now had strange, painful, sharp vibrations infused throughout him.
“I have a proposition for you,” Mekkis said jerkily.
“I’ve already heard your proposition,” Percy said, “and I’m not buying it.”
“This,” Mekkis said, “is different. Previously I asked you to join me; now I’d like to join you—against our mutual enemy, the Great Common of Ganymede.”
The prison of Ulvoya lay almost deserted under a gray, low, slow-moving overcast. The cell doors, even the entrances to the buildings, stood open, so that some of the bolder sea gulls found themselves able to enter and roam through the long dim hallways in search of food. The smell of their droppings had already begun to taint the chill air, and their cries echoed up and down the passageways like distant, despairing screams for help.
Hearing these cries the creeches of Marshal Koli clustered close around their master, shivering, telling themselves that no matter what happened their master would know what to do. Koli, as he lay on the analyst’s couch in what formerly had been Dr. Balkani’s office, paid no attention to his surroundings at all, but gave himself over wholeheartedly to the not unpleasant task of cross-examining Major Ringdahl, who sat behind Balkani’s desk, cold and miserable. The electric power had been turned off so they had been forced to make do with candles; the drafts that swept in under the door made the candleflames flicker and dance and constantly threaten to go out, at the same time casting demonic writhing shadows on the stone walls.
“Can you explain,” Marshal Koli demanded, nodding in the direction of the deactivated robot Percy X and what remained of the robot Joan Hiashi that lay side by side in the corner of the room, “how those two quaint contraptions got here?”
“No,” Major Ringdahl answered. “Unless Dr. Balkani—”
“And what about the doctor’s book, Major? What happened to it?”
“There’s a mail robot that goes around in the morning and picks up all outgoing mail. If Balkani put the manuscript of his book in his outgoing mail basket the robot would have received it and automatically sent it off.”
“Where was the manuscript sent?”
Ringdahl said huskily, “We have no way of determining that, sir.”
“You know where I think he sent it?” Koli arched himself into an S-curve of fury. “I think he sent it to his co-members of a vast and previously unsuspected underground movement. I don’t believe, Major Ringdahl, that you appreciate the gravity of this matter. It isn’t just a question of closing down the Ulvoya operation. We can no longer rely on any of the wiks conditioned here—and that includes the better part of the human portion of the governmental structure. Without this human buffer between the rulers and the ruled our plans for this planet will be effectively stalled. If we have to do all the ruling and policing of this planet ourselves, with no human assistance, it will simply be more trouble and expense than it’s worth.”
“What can you do about it?” Major Ringdahl asked.
“We can withdraw from this planet,” Koli said crisply. He signaled his carriers, and, with a sardonic nod to the major, left; his creeches trailed behind him in a straggling, scuttling procession.
Night was falling as they emerged from the building. As they made their way with difficulty to an awaiting ionocraft the Techman creech scampered up close to his master and asked, fearfully, “Are we actually pulling out? Giving up?”
“Of course not,” Koli said. “We will only be evacuating the planet to permit Operation Sterilization to begin. After all our Ganymedian forces are safely out in space, I will personally supervise the systematic extinction of all life on the Earth. It will be a careful, thorough job, I assure you, and after this planet has been wiped clean, we will return to re-populate the globe with reasonable Ganymedian life forms.”