‘If I were to grant,’ said Nicer, ‘that such a method existed, I might reason that some of the still-aggressive space powers like the Sleeles and the Deeans are taking control of remote planetary groups so long in advance because, when they get rapid flight, then they’ll already have bits and pieces of an interstellar empire waiting for them.’
‘All we Sleeles are interested in,’ said Abe, ‘are earth women. Look at Metnov—that Russian beauty, Helen, is just about driving him out of his mind; she keeps not wanting to tolerate those other females he keeps going after.’ Abe shrugged. ‘I solved all that by seeking out a woman who had other men. That way I taught myself not to be jealous.’
With that, he headed rapidly for the door; and Nicer went as quickly over to Jameston. ‘When a Sleele first holds you with a set of delaying questions, and then leaves in haste, he may think he’s accomplished something. What does the computer show?’
The slender man was studying the tiny TV set on his wrist. ‘It’s coming over now.’ Pause, then grimly, ‘He flicked his finger the last time he offered to shake your hand, and threw something in your face.’
Nicer reached the bar in two strides, grabbed his glass of water, and whipped it up to his face. Swiftly wiped it off with a napkin. Then more water, more wiping.
‘Those Sleeles,’ he said, with a strained smile, ‘and that Metnov—’
He stopped. He fell to the floor like a collapsed sack. Or rather, he would have fallen except that Jameston grabbed at him. And another man leaped forward, and was somehow very quick about it. The two men held Nicer from crashing out of control, and presently carried him out of the bar and lifted him into the back seat of one of the parked cars. Bendley came over.
‘I got your message,’ he said, ‘and we’re holding the Sleele.’ He pointed to where several agents had Abe in handcuffs. ‘What happened?’
‘A new drug? A new poison?’ said Jameston. He beckoned to the men who held Abe. ‘Bring him closer.’
And when the faintly smiling Abe had been brought over, James ton said grimly, ‘If he’s dead, this is one time we’ll break our rule against retaliation.’
‘He’s not dead,’ was the cool reply. ‘After all, murder could endanger me. Metnov merely wants Nicer out of the way during the next few days. Take him home to bed, give him intravenous feeding. He’ll wake up in four days.’
‘You’ll be around,’ said Jameston. ‘We’re not as sold as you seem to be on Metnov’s brotherly spirit.’
‘I’m grateful to Nicer,’ said Abe. ‘He gave me some good advice about my girl friend; and I trust a Luind on things like that more than a Sleele. Metnov says to drop Joanie, but Nicer said I should marry her. So—’ he concluded—‘a few minutes after nine I’d like to phone her and propose to her. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Jameston.
Chapter Eleven
A SECRET ENTRANCE OPENS
Carl was in a room, which he identified without difficulty as the library in a large home.
He had been brought to this—for him in his immobile state—prison in the wee hours, and left with a guard. And then after a while Paul Gannott came in. The two men—the alienoid from Deea and the bodiless brain of what had been a human being—had a conversation, mostly lies on Carl’s part. But there had been that automatic growing interest in Gannott’s purpose with him. The very first mention of the fifty year voyage with Marie as his companion, did something. His mind seemed to float free of all the tensions of the past year. Some part of him recognized the total irrationality of his reaction. But the excitement over-rode good sense.
The early morning phone call to Marie took place while he was in the over-stimulated condition. Then Paul Gannott departed. And once more only he and the guard remained.
Carl suppressed a strong impulse to test immediately what he could still do with his equipment. His cautioning thought to himself was: wait! Maybe these people could detect anything electronic he did. And were hoping that he would try something, so they could cut him off now, at once, from even those minor abilities.
He waited.
From where he had been wheeled, he could see a stretch of carpeted floor. Could see all three of the walls that had the book shelves right up to the ceiling. Could see the other wall, which was paneled, and chairs, two gleaming desks, settees, lamps, and the single long window. Unfortunately, the window was at the far end of the paneled wall, so he couldn’t look outside. But he could see by the way the light came through it that it was daylight. In fact, he could even determine by the slant of the sunlight when it was noon and when mid-afternoon, and so on until finally there was twilight dimness. And night.
During that passage of time, the guard was changed every four hours. They were always men, well-dressed, educated, and capable-looking; and they, each in turn, found a comfortable location on a settee, and settled down with a book, glancing up occasionally at Carl.
The day was that uneventful. But he had had many such in the twelve months since his disaster; and he was resigned.
He kept recalling the immediate past. He had a memory of being taken from the blank interior of a truck into a large house. There was not much to see. The vehicle had been backed up close to a door, and so he had had only a glimpse of a tree-lined driveway as he was eased down a ramp. Views of hallways, several of them, all quite long, came later, suggesting that the house was large indeed.
Carl had his own internal time system, so he needed no window light to inform him of the time of night or day. But, nevertheless, it was seeing how dark it was outside that finally stimulated a decision.
He should know his situation. He should test.
At once, he activated what was potentially his only contact with Marie.
Marie had offered no objection to having a one-way TV-radio connection to what had once been his apartment in the house. ‘It will be a familiar thing for me to look at,’ he had said to her, ‘whenever I feel depressed.’
At the lime that he had conned her into acquiescing to that, his sly thought had been to sort of get one eye and one ear into the place. Eventually he hoped she would let him expand his connection.
That part hadn’t worked out too well. ‘Thank you, no—’ Marie had said coldly, when he had suggested that a TV eye be put into her living room wall, also. And, when he had become mobile a few days before, she had made it equally dear that she would not welcome visits from him.
What she had allowed him was one-way in the sense that he could see and hear what went on in the part of the house that had formerly been his living quarters. However, he couldn’t talk to anyone who might be there.
It was this limited connection that Carl now tried to activate. To his somewhat excessive delight, the view came through instantly.
The first impression was of a deserted room. There was the familiar furniture: the bed perpetually made, the gleaming expensive desk, and a partially visible big chair to the left and half a clothes closet door to the right … was the limit of his vision. Faint sounds came through the wall of the residence from the street: three cars went by and two motorcycles. Except for that, silence: the silence of a night city and of an unoccupied house.
Frustrating. He could watch and hear, but he could not speak. Nor could he project an image of himself or of where he was. Theoretically, it would be possible for an observant Marie to notice that the equipment was on. At which time, the two of them as capable physicists could undoubtedly work out a method of two-way communication. Unfortunately, the chance of Marie entering this part of the house was remote. Still—
Carl’s thought was:—I’ll make my other test. And just switch back here for the next twenty-four hours, in case she does come and does observe. (The other test had to do with control of the van.)
He was about to disconnect when—a sound. A door opened out of his line of vision. Moments later, Marie in her pajamas and robe came into view. Her expression—what the startled Carl could see of it—was intent, even grim. She walked out of his sight. He heard a dr
awer open—and shut. Then she came in view again. Now she was carrying a small, red, leather-covered book. She walked past. And once again the door opened and shut.
The instantly bemused Carl had recognized the volume. It was his unpublished, bound manuscript of Women Are Doomed: the Aphorisms of Dr. Carl Hazzard.
For God’s sake, thought Carl. Marie! Interested in that.
Before his accident she had refused even to hold the book in her hands. And had always immediately left the room when he started to quote from it.
Suddenly, thinking about that, it was a bad moment … If she’s interested in what I have to say about the man-woman thing, it must be because—
Because why?
It seemed to the abruptly suspicious Carl that some male was on her mind. And she wanted to understand the truth of the matter. And, in her need, was willing to consider possibilities even from the abhorred Carl Hazzard.
Suddenly, his mind swam with fantasies of Marie being made love to by other men. So many of them that the very number of imagined lovers finally brought a return of calm. At which time he reminded himself that, really, it was none of his business what Marie did … after the way he had treated her. But he also remembered that after all Marie was the good-woman type described in his book. And that it was a sad scientist who did not accept his own systematic thought.
And, he argued with himself, nothing has happened except maybe that business with Walter Drexel that could have put sufficient pressure on Marie to break her out of that particular uncriticizable position …
His thought in that moment of rationality was that close to the truth. Thus, he missed the disaster he had caused because he could not grasp what a fantastic pressure it had been on everyone involved.
His attention drifted. What bothered him was that Marie might return to replace the book. Therefore, he mustn’t disconnect. The second test (with the van) accordingly would have to wait.
Ten minutes and twenty-three seconds went by according to the exact clock inside him. He had already had time to think wearily:—Okay, so I’m going to stay connected here until I’m sure she’s asleep. Some time around midnight. And then …
The thought suffered a pregnant pause. For there was a sound.
Different.
The secret entrance! He was instantly excited. He had had the special door and hallway constructed during one of the times Marie was visiting her parents. So Marie never did find out how his mistresses reached his bedroom, or even that they came there at all.
Carl, watching electrified from a distance, had no doubt who this mistress must be. At this hour.
Silver.
As he waited, a beautiful young woman with long platinum tresses entered from behind a screen. She stood looking around uncertainly. Then spoke softly, ‘Carl, are you there?’
He had never seen her before. That had been her stipulation: the room must be dark. But the wonderful voice—unmistakable.
Viewed now for the first time, she was fabulously good-looking.
Suddenly, Carl was shaken. It was not the first time, of course, but … This is what I lost—What she and he had done was one more of an incredible number of infidelities against Marie. Yet seeing Silver now for the first time, for the very first time, somehow brought a keener awareness of the disaster he had suffered a year ago. At that moment if he had had eyes tears would have flowed.
As Carl watched, helpless to say, or do, or interfere, the woman walked hurriedly to the door of the library-office that made up the second principal part of his apartment. For at least a minute she gazed inside. And obviously there was no one there, for she was visibly indecisive. Finally, a little uncertain, she came back past the eye of the camera through which Carl was watching, and headed out of his line of sight in the same direction as Marie had gone nearly fifteen minutes earlier. The same sound came of a door opening and shutting.
Carl thought, startled:—Good God, she’s gone to talk to Marie …
Silence—that lengthened. He kept thinking that, surely, she would presently return this way.
But she didn’t.
Chapter Twelve
EMERGENCE OF THE SHADOW SHIP
The main shock was over and accepted.
Marie sat in her marvelous bed, propped up by pillow’s. Her face felt flushed, and body tense. Carl’s vicious little book, Women Are Doomed, lay open on her lap.
A sudden memory about one of the aphorisms had prompted her to go into what had formerly been his apartment. There, she had dug down into a certain drawer, where, a year before, she had first located the unpublished but neatly bound volume. Lips pursed now, she glared down at the item she had looked up:
‘A large part of a woman’s brainwashing (Carl had written) includes a set of assumptions that men do the risky things that have to be done in this world. In a woman’s mind it is proper that men face garage mechanics, phone complaint departments, face bayonets, and shoot criminals. These unconscious assumptions lead automatically to a thousand lesser male-female relations, particularly those having to do with protection, security, and being cared for in emergencies. So long as a woman, or women, permit such attitudes to control them, she will deliver sex as payment and never as a gift. And both parties will accept that the price is right.’
It was such an exact description of what she had done with MacKerrie, that Marie had to agree:—Okay, that’s where I am … And, furthermore, that was what she had intended to do with Nicer. She had desperately needed a couple of male lions—or at least (she corrected herself) she had thought she did, and, in the case of MacKerrie, thought she had. Instead, her phone call to Nicer had brought the startling response that he would not be available for several days. And her calls to the brave surgeon had all through the day triggered a tape answering system.
Marie grew aware that she was bracing herself. That her lips were pressed together. And her feeling was that it was time to make her final, once-and-for-all stand against such ideas.
Her thought:—All these years I’ve been trying to do what’s fair and just. Trying to be—how was it Carl defined it in this damned little book of his on women?—in an uncriticizable position … Which really meant, striving to live a faultless life. (And what, please, was wrong with that?)
Yet everything had gone wrong.
The first dim realization of how she had contributed to that wrongness was finally penetrating. But her new understanding did not absolve the male. In fact, more and more he was visible as the villain. After all, there was a difference between a naive and trusting person (the woman) and the swindler (the man) who took advantage of that trust.
The solution which now began to surface inside her was not an objective, scientifically thought-out thought. Indeed, its principle ingredient was outrage—which she observed but considered an appropriate emotion. And so, what came into view was actually another Great Big Automatic Process as unnoticed for what it was as the earlier naiveté. To Marie it had the look of, at last, rationality.
The thought implicit in that process was:—By God, if that’s the way the world is, if a person can spend an entire lifetime trying to do the right thing; and the first consequence is that she marries a Carl Hazzard; and the second consequence is that she has no normal life; and the third is that she is suddenly in danger of being falsely accused by that self-same Carl Hazzard of having participated in his murder; and in order to avoid that she has to permit herself to be, in effect, raped three times a week by Dr. MacKerrie. And then—
Because that same Carl never stopped causing trouble, suddenly this same woman had to have the protection of Colonel Philip Nicer; and in exchange therefore she was expected to provide him with sex four times a week; or else he wouldn’t protect her—
Pause.
First decision:—Okay, life, you’re a villain and not worth the paper you’re printed on for a woman; so—
Inversion:
Therefore, it doesn’t matter anymore what happens to me … At the visceral level, that was th
e feeling-thought.
Final conclusion:—I will take all necessary risks (so help me) so that I shall never again be at the mercy of a man … regardless of consequences.
It was the famous decision, the implications of which have always been unnoticed by the maker. When made by a male, it creates that strange, intense being, the Real Man. And, when made by a female … has to be seen in action to be believed. Fantastic is often the only word for the consequent behavior of a woman who has hitherto been in an uncriticizable position.
In this instance, Marie being who she was, the melodramatic decision, given a chance, might have presently been re-examined, and smiled out of existence. But at that precise moment, Marie heard a sound.
She looked up, startled.
A woman stood in her bedroom doorway. She had platinum blonde hair that streamed down past her shoulders, past her breasts. Her face, inframed in that almost silvery cascade, was the face of an angel. She was quite tall, almost five feet eight inches—taller than Marie by about two inches.
She said in a thrillingly musical voice, ‘Carl is not in his room—again. I can’t delay any longer. I had to come in and talk to somebody here. Don’t be afraid.’
That last was spoken quickly, as Marie reached down with a convulsive gesture, and picked up the gas capsule discharger which she always had by her bedside as a protection.
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Marie, lioness. ‘Who are you?’
‘Silver.’
Pause. Silence. An of-course-I-should-have-known-feeling. And something else: enough shock to shut off certain reasoning portions of her brain.
The marvelous voice trilled, ‘Dr. Marie, the ship is here. Tonight, we can still do something. You must come with me—unless we can locate Carl at once. You’re a scientist. I’ll show you where and what. I—’
Marie heard none of these words. And so, at that point she shot the apparition in the doorway with the gas capsule discharger.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Silver, ‘you shouldn’t have done that.’ She began to sag, to crumple. From the floor, moments later, she moaned, ‘The two of us together might have—might have—’
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