He continued to talk to her, soothingly but insistently. Mary quieted down, seemed to sink almost into a lethargy, but I could hear that she answered him. After a while she was talking in the monotonous logorrhea of emotional release. Only occasionally did the Old Man prompt her.
I heard something crawling along the passage behind me. I turned and drew my gun, with a wild feeling that we were trapped. I almost shot him before I realized that it was the ubiquitous young officer we had left outside. "Come on out!" he said urgently. He pushed on past me out into the chamber and repeated the demand to the Old Man.
The Old Man looked exasperated beyond endurance. "Shut up and don't bother me," he said.
"You've got to, sir," the youngster insisted. "The commander says that you must come out at once. We're falling back; the commander says he may have to use demolition at any moment. If we are still inside-blooie! That's it."
"Very well," the Old Man agreed in unhurried tones. "We're coming. You go out and tell your commander that he must hold off until we get out; I have vitally important information. Son, help me with Mary."
"Aye, aye, sir!" the youngster acknowledged. "But hurry!" He scrambled away. I picked up Mary and carried her to where the chamber narrowed into a tube; she seemed almost unconscious. I put her down.
"We'll have to drag her," the Old Man said. "She may not come out of this soon. Here-let me get her up on your back, you can crawl with her."
I paid no attention but shook her. "Mary," I shouted, "Mary! Can you hear me?"
Her eyes opened. "Yes, Sam?"
"Darling-we've got to get out of here, fast! Can you crawl?"
"Yes, Sam." She closed her eyes again. I shook her again. "Mary!"
"Yes, darling? What is it? I'm so tired."
"Listen, Mary-you've got to crawl out of here. If you don't the slugs will get us-do you understand?"
"All right, darling." Her eyes stayed open this time but were vacant. I got her headed up the tube and came along after her. Whenever she faltered or slowed I slapped at her. I lifted and dragged her through the chamber of the slugs and again through the control room, if that is what it was. When we came to the place where the tube was partly blocked by the dead elfin creature she stopped; I wormed my way past her and moved it, stuffing it into the branching tube. There was no doubt, this time, that its slug was dead; I gagged at the job. Again I had to slap her into cooperation.
After an endless nightmare of leaden-limbed striving we reached the outer door and the young officer was there to help us lift her out, him pulling and the Old Man and me lifting and pushing. I gave the Old Man a leg up, jumped out myself, and took her away from the youngster. It was quite dark.
We went back the long way past the crushed house, avoiding the jungle like brake, and thence down to the beach road. Our car was no longer there; it did not matter for we found ourselves hurried into a "mud turtle" tank-none too soon, for the fighting was almost on top of us. The tank commander buttoned up and the craft lumbered off the stepped-back seawall and into the water. Fifteen minutes later we were inside the Fulton.
And an hour later we disembarked at the Mobile base. The Old Man and I had bad coffee and sandwiches in the wardroom of the Fulton, some of the Wave officers had taken Mary and cared for her in the women's quarters. She joined us as we left and seemed entirely normal. I said, "Mary, are you all right?"
She smiled at me. "Of course, darling. Why shouldn't I be?"
A small command ship and an escort took us out of there. I had supposed that we were headed back to the Section offices, or more likely to Washington. I had not asked; the Old Man was in no mood to talk and I was satisfied simply to hold Mary's hand and feel relieved.
The pilot put us into a mountainside hangar in one of those egg-on-a-plate maneuvers that no civilian craft can accomplish-in the sky at high speed, then in a cave and stationary. Like that. "Where are we?" I asked.
The Old Man did not answer but got out; Mary and I followed. The hangar was small, just parking space for about a dozen craft, an arresting platform, and a single launching rack; it contained only two other ships besides ours. Guards met us and directed us on back to a door set in the living rock; we went through and found ourselves in an anteroom. An unseen metallic voice told us to strip off what little we wore. I did not mind being naked but I hated to part with my gun and phone.
We went on inside and were met by a young fellow whose total clothing was an armband showing three chevrons and crossed retorts. He turned us over to a girl who was wearing even less, as her armband had only two chevrons. Both of them noticed Mary, each with typical gender response. I think the corporal was glad to pass us on to the captain who received us.
"We got your message," the captain said. "Dr. Steelton is waiting."
"Thank you, ma'am," the Old Man answered. "The sooner, the better. Where?"
"Just a moment," she said, went to Mary and felt through her hair. "We have to be sure, you know," she said apologetically. If she was aware of the falseness of much of Mary's hair, she did not mention it and Mary did not flinch. "All right," she decided, "let's go." Her own hair was cut mannishly short, in crisp gray waves.
"Right," agreed the Old Man. "No, son, this is as far as you go."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you dam near loused up the first try," he explained briefly. "Now pipe down."
The captain said, "The officers' mess is straight down the first passageway to the left. Why don't you wait there?"
So I did. On the way I passed a door decorated primly in large red skull-and-crossbones and stenciled with: WARNING-LIVE PARASITES BEYOND THIS DOOR; in smaller letters it added Qualified Personnel Only-Use Procedure "A".
I gave the door a wide berth.
The officers' mess was the usual clubroom and there were three or four men and two women lounging in it. No one seemed interested in my presence, so I found an unoccupied chair, sat down, and wondered just who you had to be to get a drink around this joint. After a time I was joined by a large male extrovert wearing a colonel's insignia on a chain around his neck; with it was a Saint Christopher's medal and an I.D. dog tag. "Newcomer?" he asked.
I admitted it. "Civilian expert?" he went on.
"I don't know about 'expert'," I replied. "I'm a field operative."
"Name? Sorry to be officious," he apologized, "but I'm alleged to be the security officer around here. My name's Kelly."
I told him mine. He nodded. "Matter of fact I saw your party coming in. Mine was the voice of conscience, coming out of the wall. Now, Mr. Nivens, how about a drink? From the brief we had on you, you could use one."
I stood up. "Whom do I have to kill to get it?"
"-though as far as I can see," Kelly went on sometime later, "this place needs a security officer the way a horse needs roller skates. We should publish our results as fast as we get them. This isn't like fighting a human enemy."
I commented that he did not sound like the ordinary brass hat. He laughed and did not take offense. "Believe me, son, not all brass hats are as they are pictured-they just seem to be."
I remarked that Air Marshal Rexton struck me as a pretty sharp citizen.
"You know him?" the colonel asked.
"I don't know him exactly, but my work on this job has thrown me in his company a good bit-I last saw him earlier today."
"Hmm-" said the colonel. "I've never met the gentleman. You move in more rarefied strata than I do, sir."
I explained that it was mere happenstance, but from then on he showed me more respect. Presently he was telling me about the work the laboratory did. "By now we know more about those foul creatures than does Old Nick himself. But do we know how to kill them without killing their hosts? We do not.
"Of course," he went on, "if we could lure them one at a time into a small room and douse them with anesthetics, we could save the hosts-but that is like the old saw about how to catch a bird: naturally it's no trouble if you can sneak up close enough to put salt on its tai
l. I'm not a scientist myself-just the son of a cop and a cop myself under a different tag-but I've talked to the scientists here and I know what we need. This is a biological war and it will be won by biological warfare. What we need is a bug, one that will bite the slug and not the host. Doesn't sound too hard, does it? It is. We know a hundred things that will kill the slug-smallpox, typhus, syphilis, encephalitis lethargica, Obermeyer's virus, plague, yellow fever, and so on. But they kill the host, too."
"Couldn't they use something that everyone is immune to?" I asked. "Take typhoid-everybody has typhoid shots. And almost everybody is vaccinated for smallpox."
"No good-if the host is immune, the parasite doesn't get exposed to it. Now that the slugs have developed this outer cuticle the parasite's environment is the host. No, we need something the host will catch and that will kill the slug, but won't give the host more than a mild fever or a splitting headache."
I started to answer with some no-doubt brilliant thought when I saw the Old Man standing in the doorway. I excused myself and went to him. "What was Kelly grilling you about?" he asked.
"He wasn't grilling me," I answered.
"That's what you think. Don't you know what Kelly that is?"
"Should I?"
"You should. Or perhaps you shouldn't; he never lets his picture be taken. That's B. J. Kelly, the greatest scientific criminologist of our generation."
"That Kelly! But he's not in the army."
"Reserve, probably. But you can guess how important this laboratory is. Come on."
"Where's Mary?"
"You can't see her now. She's recuperating."
"Is she-hurt?"
"I promised you she would not be hurt. Steelton is the best in his line. But we had to go down deep, against a great deal of resistance. That's always rough on the subject."
I thought about it. "Did you get what you were after?"
"Yes and no. We got a great deal, but we aren't through."
"What were you after?"
We had been walking along one of the endless underground passageways of which the place was made. Now he turned us into a small, empty office and we sat down. The Old Man touched the communicator on the desk and said, "Private conference."
"Yes, sir," a voice answered. "We will not record." A green light came on in the ceiling.
"Not that I believe them," the Old Man complained, "but it may keep anyone but Kelly from playing it back. Now, son, about what you want to know; I'm not sure you are entitled to it. You are married to the girl, but that does not mean that you own her soul-and this stuff comes from down so deep that she did not know she had it herself."
I said nothing; there was nothing to say. He went on presently in worried tones, "Still-it might be better to tell you enough so that you will understand. Otherwise you would be bothering her to find out. That I don't want to happen, I don't ever want that to happen. You might throw her into a bad wingding. I doubt if she'll remember anything herself-Steelton is a very gentle operator-but you could stir up things."
I took a deep breath. "You'll have to judge. I can't."
"Yes, I suppose so. Well, I'll tell you a bit and answer your questions-some of them-in exchange for a solemn promise never to bother your wife with it. You don't have the skill."
"Very well, sir. I promise."
"Well-there was a group of people, a cult you might call them, that got into disrepute."
"I know-the Whitmanites."
"Eh? How did you know? From Mary? No, she couldn't have; she didn't know herself."
"No, not from Mary. I just figured it out."
He looked at me with odd respect. "Maybe I've been underestimating you, son. As you say, the Whitmanites. Mary was one of them, as a kid in Antarctica."
"Wait a minute!" I said. "They left Antarctica in-" The wheels buzzed in my mind and the number came up. "-in 1974."
"Surely. What about it?"
"But that would make Mary around forty years old. She can't be."
"Do you care?"
"Huh? Why, no-but she can't be."
"She is and she isn't. Just listen. Chronologically her age is about forty. Biologically she is in her middle twenties. Subjectively she is even younger, because she doesn't remember anything, not to know it, earlier than about 1990."
"What do you mean? That she doesn't remember I can understand-she never wants to remember. But what do you mean by the rest?"
"Just what I said. She is no older than she is because-you know that room where she started to remember? She spent ten years and probably more floating in suspended animation in just such a tank as that."
Chapter 28
Time was when I was immune to emotional shocks. But as I get older, I don't get tougher; I get softer. Being in love has a lot to do with it, too. The thought of Mary, my beloved Mary, swimming in that artificial womb, neither dead nor alive but preserved like a pickled grasshopper, was too much for me.
I heard the Old Man saying, "Take it easy, son. She's all right."
I said, "Go ahead."
Mary's overt history was simple, although mystifying. She had been found in the swamps near Kaiserville at the North Pole of Venus-a little girl who could give no account of herself and who knew only her name-Allucquere. Nobody spotted the significance of the name and a child of her (apparent) age could not be associated with the Whitmanites debacle in any case; the 1980 supply ship had not been able to find any survivor of their "New Zion" colony. Its plantations had returned to the swamp; the dwellings were ruptured shells, hidden in rank growth. More than ten years of time and more than two hundred miles of jungle separated the little waif of Kaiserville from the God-struck colonists of New Zion.
At that time, an unaccounted-for Earth child on Venus was little short of incredible. Like finding the cat locked in the icebox, it called for explanation. But there was no one around with the intellectual curiosity to push the matter. Kaiserville still does not have a sweet reputation; in those days it was made up of miners, doxies, company representatives of the Two Planets Corporation-and nothing else. I don't suppose that shoveling radioactive mud in the swamps leaves much energy for wonder.
Apparently she grew up using poker chips for toys and calling every woman in crib row "mother" or "auntie". In turn they shortened her name to "Lucky". The Old Man did not go into detail about who paid her way back to Earth and why, and he avoided my questions. The real question was where she had been from the time New Zion was eaten up by the Venerian jungle and just what had happened to the colony.
The only record of those things was buried in Mary's mind, locked tight with terror and despair.
Sometime before 1980-about the same time as the flying saucer reports from Russo-Siberia, or a year or so earlier-the titans had discovered the New Zion colony. If you place it one Saturn year earlier than the invasion of Earth, the times fit fairly well. It does not seem likely that the titans were looking for Earthmen on Venus; more probably they were scouting Venus as they had long scouted Earth. Or they may have known just where to look; we know that they kidnapped Earthmen at intervals over the course of two or more centuries; they may have captured someone on Earth whose brain could tell them where to find the New Zion colony. Mary's dark memories could contain no clue to that.
Mary saw the colony captured, saw her parents turned into zombies who no longer cared for her. Apparently she herself was not possessed, or she may have been possessed and turned loose, the titans finding a weak and ignorant young girl an unsuitable slave. In any case, for what was to her baby mind an endlessly long time, she hung around the slave colony, unwanted, uncared for, but unmolested, scavenging like a mouse for her living. On Venus the slugs were moving in to stay; their principal slaves were Venerians and the New Zion colonists were only incidental. It is sure that Mary saw her parents being placed in suspended animation-for later use in the invasion of Earth? Probable, but not certain.
In due course she herself was grabbed and placed in the tanks. Inside a titan ship? At
a titan base on Venus itself? More probably the latter, as when she awoke, she was still on Venus. There are many such gaps. Were the slugs that rode the Venerians identical with the slugs which rode the colonists? Possible-since both Earth and Venus have oxy-carbon economy. The slugs seem to be endlessly protean but they surely have to adapt themselves to the biochemistry of their hosts. Had Venus an oxy-silicon economy like Mars, or a fluorine economy, the same parasite type could not possibly have fed on both.
But the gist of the matter lay in the situation as it was when Mary was removed from the artificial incubator. The titan invasion of Venus had failed, or was failing. Almost certainly she was possessed as soon as they removed her from the tank-but Mary had outlived the slug that possessed her.
Why had the slugs died? Why had the invasion of Venus failed? It was for clues to these that the Old Man and Dr. Steelton had gone fishing in Mary's brain.
I said, "Is that all?"
He answered, "Isn't that enough?"
"It raises as many questions as it answers," I complained.
"Of course there is more," he told me, "a great deal more. But you aren't a Venerian expert of any sort, nor a psychologist, so you won't be called on to evaluate it. I've told you what I have so that you will know why we have to work on Mary and so that you won't question her about it. Be good to her, boy; she's had more than her share of grief."
I ignored the advice; I can get along or not get along with my own wife without help, thank you. "What I can't figure out," I answered, "is why you ever had Mary linked up with flying saucers in the first place? I can see now that you took her along on that first trip to Iowa on purpose. You were right, granted-but why? And don't give me any malarkey."
The Old Man himself looked puzzled. "Son, do you ever have hunches?"
"Lord, yes!"
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