I sat down suddenly, in the dust that may once have been Jerry Cortland. I was remembering the sudden oblivion hat had briefly overtaken all of us who were duplicates of the sleepers in the cave as those original bodies fell apart.
“There would be no reason for you to go on to the World of the Face alone,” he said, “if you went alone. But you won’t. You can’t. You never have been alone, have you, in his era? Always Topaz—who is Dr. Essen, asleep—or Paynter, who is Murray, asleep, or I—who am De Kalb—were with you. None of us knew. All of us have been moving along the lines of some pattern vaster than we can guess. Only now it begins to emerge a little.”
As I drew a breath to speak, the sound of the opening panel startled us both. Only Paynter, standing motionless in be grip of his hypnosis, did not move. My quick start was futile but Belem’s two hands covered the crystal globe, ready, I think, to activate it and throw out the temporary force-field that would isolate us from attack—for awhile.
22. Reunion
We were both expecting soldiers to come pouring from the transmitter. But no one came through the open panel. Instead, a voice spoke. A woman’s voice, cool, clear, level.
“Ira?” it said. “Mr. Cortland? Colonel Murray, are you there?”
Dr. Essen! I thought. Letta Essen! An instant later Topaz came alone across the threshold.
It was Topaz and yet—it was Letta Essen too, more clearly than I had ever seen her before in the girl’s amazingly adaptable features.
“I expected this,” Belem said with perfect calm. “I didn’t even send for her, I was so sure she would have to come. It’s the pattern, Cortland. It’s working itself out faster and faster now, beyond our control, I think. Is she Letta Essen?”
I nodded in bewilderment. The voice was not Dr. Essen’s, of course, for it came from the vocal cords of Topaz, but it was not Topaz’s voice either. It was cool, emotionless, nobody’s voice. Dispassion speaking aloud. And the face was Topaz’s face but changed, different.
I had seen the almost fluid mobility with which every emotion altered those lovely features but I had not been prepared for a change like this. And the ego, the soul, of Topaz was submerged. A tight, wary blackness was all that showed now—that and a sort of bright alarm.
“The soldiers!” she was saying a little breathlessly now, as she hurried toward us across the dust which was her own disintegrated body. “They’re following me, Ira. It is Ira?” Her eyes were questioning on Belem’s face.
The Mechandroid nodded. “They’re following you?” he demanded. “How much do they know? Never mind—you can tell us later. Activate your machine—quickly!” And he gestured toward it.
She dropped to her knees beside the metal plate, hesitated, touched it doubtfully. “The connections have been changed,” she said. “I can put them back in order but”—she glanced up—“it may take time.”
“How long?”
“Too long.” She looked from face to face, a little of Topaz’s facile despair coming through the calm. “The soldiers—” Belem’s breath hissed through his teeth. We turned, seeing the panel in the wall opening again. Bright uniforms gleamed through the gap.
Belem’s hands flashed with blinding speed above the crystal egg. Then a tower of golden light shot up like a fountain and spread out above us. It thinned as it spread, came showering down again into an enclosing hemisphere. Its brightness faded until we were looking through amber glass at the soldiers who came swarming from the transmitter, more and more with every opening and closing of the panel. Their weapons spat fire at us.
A burst of starry light sparkled on the amber of our shield and died. Another nova flared and faded against the screen. And another.
“We’re safe,” Belem said calmly. “For a few days, until the power dies. By then the second-stage Mechandroid should waken. But meanwhile, Dr. Essen—you had better repair your machine if you can.”
She nodded, the bright curls tumbling. Then she rose and stepped carefully around the motionless, glittering tree toward the milky egg that was projecting our temporary salvation.
“I can’t remember—very clearly,” she said. “There was light—and then suddenly I knew I was myself—with some memories of a girl called Topaz.” She frowned. “Maybe it would be clearer if—may I see your projector, Ira? Belem? Which are you, now?” She looked searchingly into his face.
“I am Belem,” the Mechandroid said. “Do you know what it was that roused you out of the Topaz-state and reawakened the Essen mind? We are nearly sure now that, in the moment the time-axis shell and the sleeping bodies inside it crumbled, their sleeping minds merged with the minds of the physical duplicates. Why is not yet known. Why the minds of Paynter, Topaz and myself remained dominant while Cortland’s submerged the mind of his host is still—”
He paused. For Topaz—Dr. Essen—was bending above the luminous egg. Now she seized it, lifted it high, and with one smooth gesture smashed it against the rocky floor.
It was Topaz, of course—not Letta Essen, never Letta Essen.
The amber shell above us began to rift and shimmer into tatters. Beyond it the armed men pressed forward, shouting. A lance of hot white light shot past Belem’s head and spattered fire from the rocky wall behind him. Topaz laughed, a shrill, high sound of pure excitement.
Then Belem moved.
He fell to one knee beside the shattered globe from which amber light was dying swiftly. His hands settled down over it, heedless of the sharp, cutting edges of the broken crystal. And his body began to glow.
Swiftly the rifted light in the shell above us began to mend itself. The amber shining spread, met, joined. The armor strengthened, was solid again.
I could feel the tremendous energy pouring out of the Mechandroid’s mind and body. It made the air quiver inside the hemisphere. As a man may suicidally bridge a gap between two charged electric wires, so Belem was using himself now. I saw him shudder as that frightful energy poured through him.
Paynter, forgotten in the melee, suddenly stirred beside us. I saw him take an uncertain step forward, then another, the blankness fading from his face. Belem’s mind was losing control over his. Released from the hypnosis, active now, our enemy—he emerged from his paralysis.
From outside the shell that was our only hope the confused shouts of the soldiers came thinly. One voice rose above the rest, an officer’s voice, full of urgent command.
“Topaz!” it shouted. “Topaz—stop the Mechandroid!”
Her quick response made double clear what had been clear enough before. She was wholly their tool. She had never been Letta Essen. Their integrators had worked out the truth as quickly as the Mechandroids had fathomed it and Topaz was a ready instrument to their hands. She was still their most dangerous weapon and she had not failed yet.
I heard her high, clea laughter, in response to the call and I whirled in time to see her snatch out a tiny, glittering weapon exactly like that rubber-lipped paralyzer Paynter had once turned upon me. This was smaller and it glittered with jewels and the flexible ring of its muzzle was fantastically colored. But it was no toy. I saw the lips suck in as she pressed its trigger, ready to send out a web of paralyzing force upon Belem.
The Mechandroid neither saw nor heard. All his mind was concentrated on keeping the force-field active. He was depending wholly on me.
I flung out an arm just in time to throw Topaz off balance. The bright-lipped weapon spat out its web, which floated just clear of Belem and flared into violent oblivion against the amber shell around us. Topaz hissed savagely at me and fought to level her weapon again at Belem. She was lithe and astonishingly strong, a protean shape that writhed snake-like in my arms.