He saw no one. A wall clock told him it was near noon. He turned and hurried in the direction of the automat.
The others were all there. They looked up from their lunch, staring at him as if he was a ghost as he came into the room.
"Eli!" cried Tammy. And Howell jumped to his feet.
"What are you doing up?" he demanded. He came swiftly around the table in front of him and steered Eli to a chair.
"Why shouldn't I be up?" asked Eli. "What's wrong with all of you?"
"For one reason," said Howell grimly, "because you're full of nembutalline. You should be dead to the world for ten hours yet. And why ask us?" he checked himself, staring narrowly at Eli. "Don't you remember?"
"Remember what?" asked Eli.
"Mel," said Howell, turning his head.
The tall young medician got up from his table and came over to Eli, peering into his eyes.
"Look at that, Arthur," he said. "His pupils are normal."
"They couldn't be!" said Howell, stooping forward.
"Look for yourself."
"With that drug in him—"
"Never mind that," interrupted Eli, speaking slowly and clearly, and with a strange, furious calmness. "I don't remember what happened last night, or why you should give me nembutalline, and I want you to tell me."
They looked at each other. Howell spoke.
"About ten o'clock last night," he said, "we turned on a news broadcast. There was a report among other things that a number of leading Members had been arrested and would be tried for genocide. They read off some names and one of them was Seth Maguin."
"Seth…" white-faced, Eli swayed on his chair. The big hands of Mel caught him.
"Arthur," the young man turned on Howell, "I don't think you ought to tell him now."
"I'll handle this," said Howell, relentlessly, towering over Eli in the chair. "You collapsed, Eli. And when you came to, you were out of your head. You wanted to leave for Cable Island right away. Do you remember now?"
Eli shook his head.
"No," he said faintly.
Tammy brought him a glass of water. He drank gratefully, and a little color came back to his face. He straightened up in the chair.
"I gave you enough nembutalline to keep you out for twenty-four hours," said Howell. "And here you are, bright and awake without any signs of the drug on you."
"Something woke me," said Eli.
"What?" asked Ntoane. His dark face leaned forward between the shoulders of Howell and Mel Bruger. Eli stared back at him as if fascinated.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"
"What are you talking about?" broke in Howell sharply. "What could wake you? We were all in here."
Almost with an effort, Eli wrenched his gaze away from Ntoane. He looked over at the worried face of Tammy and smiled at her.
"It's all right," he said.
"All right, hell!" said Howell. "You couldn't come out from under the nembutalline unless somebody pumped a antiactant into you. And none of us here could do it. Is there somebody else in the station?"
"No," said Eli. He got up, suddenly. "What's the news?" he asked.
"Oh, no you don't," spoke up Howell. "You aren't going to listen to any news until we get to the bottom of this. I don't want you going off again the way you did last night."
"They're meeting this afternoon on Cable Island to dissolve the groups and set up Central Headquarters," said Tammy suddenly. "Is that what you wanted to know, Eli?"
"I don't know," answered Eli. "Thanks, Tammy." He sat down again suddenly. "Something's happened to me and I don't know what it is." He got up abruptly and began to walk around the room. The rest of them watched him. He stopped in front of Ntoane.
"You're a Member," he said calmly.
"Yes," said Ntoane.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You had to find out for yourself," answered Ntoane. "So Seth said."
"What woke me?"
A look of pain crossed Ntoane's sensitive, dark face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You still have to find out for yourself."
"What is this?" interrupted Howell. He looked at Ntoane, incredulously. "You're one of those crackpots?"
Ntoane smiled sadly. Tammy went to Eli and took hold of one of his hands with both of hers. He looked down at her and patted her comfortingly on the shoulder.
"I'm not going to leave you," he said. "But right now I'm going to have to work this out by myself." He raised his head and included the others in his gaze. "I'm going up to the solar. Please, don't any of you disturb me for a while."
He turned and went out of the room, feeling Tammy's hand slip despairingly from his. But he did not turn and look back.
He walked down the corridor and rose alone in the elevator. The solar, under the high, bright sun of noon, was still and hot. He walked across it and stood staring away across the level, rolling ocean, toward Cable Island.
—And now it was time to remember. It was time to bring back what he had buried and forgotten, what he had locked away by exercise of his own will. A point in time had been passed, a peak to which he had climbed, and now it was downhill, and the only way was forward. There was no alternate. And now that he had reached this point it was inevitable, so that while once he had known that it might not be and always he had struggled against it, now he knew that it had always had to be and therefore there was a sense of relief at last in facing it.
Remember, he said to himself. Do you remember? A man has eyes and he sees, a man has ears and he hears. And once a man—no, a boy—had something and he somethinged, and he could not bear it. And so he denied it, as a man will say, I will not see, I cannot see. I will not hear. I cannot hear, I will not…
For the anguish of it was very great. Day by day, from the time that the world was small, it had grown. For as the world grew, he saw more, he heard more. So, day by day, the load became more heavy in beauty and in pain. And he was only a boy, a young boy, alone. You cannot blame him. There was the world of which his widening perceptions showed him more and more every day. And there was this faculty of his which more and more revealed to him; until he could not bear it.
Was it my fault? O, cry in agony! I did not make the world. The boy alone and the night sky above Bermuda as he walked, a child, lonely and different. I did not make myself. Blessed are the blind for they shall not see tears. Blessed are the deaf, for they shall not hear the sound of weeping. And blessed are they who do not understand.
And he was a child, a child—a boy who should have played and fought and studied and struggled and grew. Instead he walked the level island by the sea in the dark night, under the many stars, hunting for peace. Peace, peace, in the name of mercy, a grown man is little enough and weak enough to face the hunt for peace! And even there, it followed him, the knowing and the feeling, until he could bear it no longer.
And so he denied it. By function of sharp will he amputated this greater-knowing section of himself, denied it utterly and put it from him, walled off the channel to it in his brain.
And now it was time to remember. For something terrible had wakened him from his sleep, something that left him no choice but to remember, and something that he would not know with clarity until he did remember. And now it was time. And now it was time. And now it was time…
He stood facing the ocean with his arms stiff at his sides, his fists clenched and the sweat streaming down his face.
And now it is time. Now is the time. Now. Now.
No.
Now!
Mentally, he reached out his strong hands to tear down the long-held barrier walls. And emotionally the weakling spirit within him cringed and cowered and the hands faltered.
You have no choice.
I can't!
You can handle it now.
I can't!
You are older, You are ready now.
I can't. I can't…Ican'tlcan'tlcan'tlcan't…
Out of swirling darkness he came back, a failure, wondering w
hat had roused him. And then, looking out through the glass with seeing eyes once more, he saw an airboat landing in a furious cloud of spray dashed high against the jetty.
The hatch swung back, a figure leaped out, came sprinting toward the solar. Moving automatically, Eli went to meet him and opened the transparent door in the dome wall.
It was Clyde.
Haggard face to haggard face, they stared at each other.
"Downstairs," said Clyde. "Downstairs quick and block the shaft. There're ships behind me."
Eli turned and together they ran for the elevator. The capsule was waiting for them and once in it, they plummeted down, the shaft to the fourth level. Howell, passing down the corridor, saw them explode from the capsule and swung about on his heel to face them.
"Arthur!" said Eli. "Where's the switch for the storm blocks?"
Howell stared. From the lounge entrance behind him, Ntoane came hurrying out, followed by Tammy and Mel.
"What's this?" cried Howell, annoyed.
Eli swung on Ntoane.
"The storm blocks!"
But the other man was already moving off down the corridor. At the midpoint of one corridor wall, he pressed an unobtrusive stud and a panel swung back. Within was a heavy, single-handled switch, and he pulled it, over and down.
In the silence that held them all, a faint metallic grating sound came from distant parts of the station and down the elevator shaft. The heavy blocks that scaled the station's weaker spots from anything an angry sea could do were now in place. They were sealed in now, by metal and concrete, nowhere less than half a foot in thickness.
"What is this?" Howell shouted again. Clyde answered.
"I'll show you," he said.
He looked around him, and Eli pointed toward the entrance of the lounge. Quickly, the younger man led the way to and into the room where the viewing screen sat, a bubble of blankness. He set it for exterior scan and switched it on.
The ocean above them ballooned into miniature reproduction within it, the solar as its central point.
"Look," said Clyde, pointing to the sky to the station's northeast.
They looked and saw, high and distant, dots approaching swiftly, dots dropping and swelling into flattened, individual shapes, five of them, growing into recognition as ten-man police airboats.
"They're after me," said Clyde. He swung on Eli. "And after you. And the rest of you because you're connected with Eli. They didn't expect me to come here."
"Why did you?" asked Ntoane.
Clyde grinned, a weary, but cheerful grin.
"They've got nothing but small arms," he said. "And they're all air and surface craft. While they sit around up there and wait for another boat to answer their call for heavy arms or explosive, we can get away in your underwater tender."
"Good work," said Eli, approvingly.
"Look here," said Howell, breaking in suddenly, "I don't understand this at all. Whose ships are those? Why should I run away? Perhaps this man's a criminal of some sort." He looked at Clyde unfavorably.
"Don't be a fool, Arthur!" said Eli.
"Don't call me a fool!" Howell turned on him. "I've got nothing to do with politics!"
"That's beside the point," broke in Clyde. "We're wasting precious time," he pointed to the screen in which they could see the ships now coming in for a landing at the jetty. "Let's get into the tender and out of range before they can trace us."
"You just sit tight," said Howell, "until we thresh this out. In the first place, you can't get away from here by tender. There isn't any tender."
Clyde stared at him.
^Are you crazy?" he demanded. "Nobody builds in the ocean without some kind of submersible for general use."
"Well there was one," said Howell. "But it developed some kind of warp in the hull so that its lock leaked. I told the university to haul it to the mainland for repairs."
"Good God, Arthur!" said Mel. "Didn't you requisition a replacement?"
"What am I supposed to be, a submarine polo enthusiast?" snapped Howell. "Of course I didn't requisition a replacement. What did we want an underwater runabout for?"
"Are you asking me that now?" asked Mel meaningfully.
Clyde let out a heavy breath and sat down suddenly on the arm of one of the big chairs.
"Sorry," he said, heavily, looking at all of them. "If I'd had any idea of this, of course I'd never have led them here."
"I still don't see what all the fuss is about," fumed Howell. "If those are Transportation ships up there, they've got no authority over the rest of us. We're Medical Group and Eli's Underseas."
Clyde stared at him.
"Where have you been these last few weeks?" he asked. "Jupiter?"
"Forgive him," put in Ntoane. "Arthur never has paid much attention to anything outside medicine." He turned to the older man. "Arthur," he said. "The groups are gone. Remember how we've been talking about it? That means the group rights are gone, too."
"It's Tony Sellars' world," added Clyde. "Those are his ships up there; and they'll take whatever he wants them to take, which in this case is us."
For a moment Howell glared around at the grim faces of the others. Then, gradually, the fire began to go out of him and be replaced by uncertainty. He shook his head and sat down without saying anything further. Suddenly he looked tired and very old.
Above them, the sudden slam of an explosion came echoing through the material of which the station was made, down to them. They listened but it was not repeated. In the silence Eli spoke to Clyde.
"What happened?"
"I woke up," answered Clyde. He looked at Eli. "Sit down," he said gently. "I've got some bad news for you."
"Bad news?" echoed Eli.
He stared at the younger man and his own words seemed to buzz in his ears. Abruptly he seemed to go away from Clyde and all the others, as if he was standing at the end of a long tunnel and they were at the far end, shouting at him.
"At first I thought I could work with Tony," Clyde's distant voice came to him. "Then something happened to make me realize that the way he was going was a road I couldn't follow…"
The tunnel was whirling about Eli. Thunder rolled in the back of his mind.
"I didn't think he would scrap all justice—"
The thunder was growing louder…
"—when they arrested the Member leaders and brought them to Cable Island…"
Eli could no longer see and the thunder drowned out the voice of Clyde.
"You needn't go on," he felt himself saying. "You needn't tell me any more now, because I know."
And out of the elemental fury that beat about him, out of the storm that tore and tossed him, came a pitch, a climax, a point beyond which nothing could endure—from the thunder, lightning, a single jagged streak that struck and split and broke and utterly destroyed that which had stood so long.
And then there was knowledge and an end. He came back to the land of the living and the room in the station where they stood about him.
"I remember now," he said. "Seth is dead. They shot him and the other Member leaders without a trial early this morning. I was with him; and it woke me.
"I know it all now," he said. He looked at the faces of those about him and smiled. "There are no more barriers between us."
9
Eli looked at them all; and it was as if he had never seen them before—had never seen any people before with such bright clarity. He was like a man who, after years of poor eyesight, had suddenly been fitted with glasses. And the room, and the people within it seemed suddenly shrunken, but hard and clear with a shocking minuteness of detail, like a picture seen through an artist's reducing glass that makes a scene smaller but more intense.
"Yes," he said, softly, "I understand you all, now."
"Eli!" Tammy ran to him, but stopped, suddenly uncertain, an arm's length from him. "Eli?" she said.
"It's all right," said Eli. "I'm all right," He turned slowly until he faced Ntoane. "It's all right, Ntoan
e," he said. "I know now. I know you've been guarding me for the Members. But it's all right, now."
Ntoane shook his head slowly. His eyes went past Eli. "I'm not so sure," he said.
Eli spun around to find himself facing Howell. Howell had a gun in his hand. It looked incongruous there, as out-of-place as a bongo drum or a paper hat. But the thin physician held it firmly enough.
"I can't believe it," said Eli softly.
"Back up, all of you," ordered Howell. He gestured with the gun and they retreated across the room before him. When they were well back, he walked to the communicator in the center of the room and punched buttons. There was a moment's hesitation and then the bubble screen cleared to show the figure of Hassan.
"And you!" said Eli to the image.
Hassan shrugged.
"You should know that much about me, Eli," he said. "Money I have and most things. But intrigue, that's my life. While you were in a position to use me, I played the game for you. But now there's only one man to play for—Sellars."
Eli glanced at the man with the gun.
"And Howell?" he said.
"Intrigue is my line." Hassan shrugged again. "Research is Howell's, isn't that right, Howell?"
Howell flushed, but said nothing.
"Sellars threatened to cut him off from his work, for life," said Hassan. "Everybody's for sale, one way or another."
"Shut your mouth!" said Howell suddenly and viciously,, but holding the gun steady on Eli. "My work will benefit millions in the long run."
"Arthur—" began Ntoane, and bit his lip.
"Kind of unnecessary, isn't it?" said Eli dryly, "with Sellar's armed men knocking on the door?"
"Oh, they don't have authority to do anything but arrest you," said Hassan. "Dr. Howell here is really just acting the part of a good citizen in holding you until they can be let in."
"Except that gun is just liable to go off accidentally, isn't it, before the men get in?" said Eli. He had been watching Howell, and there was sweat on the other's forehead, glistening there.
"No!" it was Tammy, crying out. She ran to Eli. The gun in Howell's hand wavered for a moment at her action and then centered once more on Eli's chest.
"Of course not! How can you think such a thing, Eli?" said Hassan smoothly. "Dr. Howell is a little nervous, it's true, but…"
Time To Teleport Page 9
