Don obeyed. He went to the table and picked up the doll.
Her eyes were closed and her wings were folded. She weighed less than he had remembered, and she no longer felt faintly warm to the touch. She was still beautiful, but Don saw that the miraculous life had gone out of her. She was Vulcan's doll no longer. She was a masterpiece of art, an extremely beautiful statuette.
"Don said, "What's happened? She's dead."
"No," Vulcan corrected. "She is asleep. If there is need of her, an impasse, a time at which she could help, she will wake again. Until then, humanity will shape its future for itself."
Vulcan's assurance had carried conviction. Don replied thoughtfully, "Yes. But isn't there danger from another side? The changes of which you speak—will the SSP let us make them, after all?"
"The SSP is no longer a danger," Vulcan answered. "Mulciber was a man with a genius for organization, and a man of great personal force. He left no successor. The struggle for power among his lieutenants has already begun.
"The SSP will ruin itself in dynastic contests. In the end, its force will be completely dissipated. Did you know that three prisoners escaped from Phlegethon yesterday? When such a thing as that can happen, in the SSP's own inviolable citadel, the collapse has already begun."
Don put the statuette down on the table. "One thing more," he said. "Mulciber spoke of struggles between the new species of men. Is that true? Will there be—war?"
"I do not think so," Vulcan answered. His voice had taken on a profoundly weary note. "I think humanity has learned the lesson of its unity too deeply ever to forget it. There may be cross-currents for a time in the great river. But in the end it will again flow as one great stream.
"Perhaps the new differences will only emphasize the basic unity. Perhaps humanity has warred so bitterly with itself in the past because it was ripe for change and could not make the change. I believe—I hope—that mankind will be too occupied with its limitless new horizons to have room for hate.
"What is not yet born is always dangerous. The future is a challenge. But no society can refuse to face it and survive. You cannot go back to the day before yesterday, or put back the clock.
"You said that I thought of all humanity as my puppets. I hope I have shown you that that is not true. For the rest, I have sometimes wondered ... if Vulcan himself, even Vulcan, might be no more than some mightier Vulcan's doll.
"Well, I have won. Mulciber has been destroyed." For a moment the artificer's face wore an expression of triumph. "But winning has tired me. I have lived so long; my life is measured not by years, but by centuries. You don't know how weary ... Now I want to sleep.
"I am going back to my workshop, the workshop they say is at the end of the galaxy. There, with my dolls around me, I shall sleep. The years will go by, and the centuries, and I shall go on sleeping. I think I shall sleep for a thousand years."
Vulcan held out his hand. "Come with me, Don," he said. "You are tired, you have been wounded. But even the deepest wound will heal if one sleeps long enough. Come with me and sleep."
Don fingered his lips. He went over to the hatch and looked out. From the position of the sun, it must be almost noon. The durastone of the island was one white glare. He came back and stood in front of the table, blinking as his eyes once more grew used to the subdued light.
"No," he said. "I don't know what the future has for me. As you say, I've been hurt. I don't feel as if there really were a future. But I don't want to sleep. I slept enough when I was on the beach, before you called me. I think your long sleep would be like that. Neither dead nor alive, half numb for centuries—how would that help me? I don't want that."
Vulcan got up from his chair and went over to where the younger man was standing. He laid one hand very gently on his arm. "Don," he said, "I hoped I could spare you." His voice was full of pity. "Don't you understand yet? Don—you are one of my dolls."
For a moment the words rang in Haig's ears and had no meaning. Then he turned a white face on the artificer. "No," he said.
"Yes," Vulcan answered gently. "One of my dolls."
"A robot?" Don Haig tried to laugh, but his lips were shaking pitifully. "It can't be true. Of course I'm a man.
"I eat, I drink, I go to the latrine. I've had women"—for a moment he thought of Phyllis—"and given them pleasure. How else can I prove I'm a man? You're lying. This is another of your lies."
"You are well made," Vulcan conceded. "Very far indeed from being a robot. But you spoke of women. Tell me, did you ever have a child?"
"No. But of course we never tried for that."
"It would have made no difference if you had," Vulcan said evenly. "My dolls are sterile, you see."
"I'm not—it isn't true."
"Oh, yes. I can prove it, Don."
There was a silence. Then Vulcan said, "Why do you think you cannot remember back beyond your fourteenth year? It is because you were that age, physically, when I made you, and I was unable to provide you with a synthetic memory.
"You spoke of a dim memory of a big room. That was my workshop, where you first saw the light. It covers half a planetoid.
"How do you think you were able to keep the doll so closely with you for so long? Ordinary human flesh would have been rotting in half the time. But your flesh is not quite like that of mankind, and I had made you so that you could without damage keep the doll."
"You made me so I could get the doll for you?" Haig asked tonelessly.
"Yes. Perhaps you wouldn't consider the feelings of alienation and difference that have plagued you since you were made as any sort of proof. Human beings do suffer the same things, though not so painfully. Or that it would have been impossible for a tie to be formed between an ordinary human being and the doll, with her half-life, or that I couldn't have called an ordinary human being to my ship here on the island, as I did you. But there is one last item of proof. Look at your left arm."
Don half raised his elbow, and then dropped it. "It's a birthmark. It doesn't mean anything. I've always had it."
"It is not a birthmark," Vulcan contradicted gently. "It is my signature. It is Vulcan's sign.
"Don, now you know. Come back to my workshop, to the place where I made you. I and my creations—we shall both sleep." Vulcan's voice held soft persuasion. "Come with me and sleep until your wounds are healed and you forget."
Incredulity, and hope, had died in Don when Vulcan had mentioned the birthmark. He held his hands out in front of him and turned them over and over, looking at them impersonally, trying to see where their artificiality lay ... Oh, it was true. A V is nothing but a lambda upside down.
At last he raised his eyes to Vulcan's face. The craftsman had not moved. On his lips there was a faint, faint smile.
" 'Old father, old artificier—' " Don said. His voice broke.
"You read that somewhere," Vulcan observed gently. "You were always fond of reading, weren't you, Don?"
Once more Don said, "old father ..." and faltered. Then he continued in a stronger voice, "You offered me a long sleep. But what is sleep to me? If I slept for a thousand years, I should still not be human. I have no future. I am one of your dolls.
"Give me what I would rather have."
"And that is—?"
"You know," Don answered almost casually. "Death."
Vulcan inclined his head for a moment. He let out his breath in a long sigh. He said, "Yes."
He went to a cupboard, opened it, and fumbled for an instant. Then he gave Don a flask. The liquid it contained was clear, but it had a deadly glitter. "Here," he said.
Don said politely and a little absently, "Thank you." He took the bottle in his left hand. It felt cold.
"You'll be going now, won't you?" Don continued. "Back to your workshop, which is not quite at the end of the galaxy, but near there. I'd better say good-by."
"Yes, I'll be going," Vulcan said soberly. He held out his hand to Don, and Don took it. The palm was smooth and strong and firm.
"Good-by, Don," Vulcan said. For a moment he laid his arm around Haig's shoulder in what was almost an embrace. Don saw that his eyes were very bright. "Good-by," he repeated. "My poor doll."
He went with Don to the hatch. Don, when he had descended, saw him standing in the opening for an instant, his hand raised in salute. Then the hatch closed.
The copper-colored ship lifted noiselessly from the white durastone of the loading area. There was no blast of rockets, no fuel explosions, only a noiseless lifting.
The ship hovered a meter or so above the rock. Then, while Don watched it, its outlines wavered and grew hazy. Momentarily it came into an extraordinarily sharp focus, as if it were seen through the wrong side of a lens. Then it disappeared.
Vulcan had gone. Don turned from the loading area and began to walk down toward the service wharf. He carried the bottle carefully in both hands. It was more precious to him now than the doll had ever been.
He reached the landing and sat down on it beside the glossy red cabin cruiser, his legs dangling over the side. He uncorked the bottle and smelled the liquid in it. It was almost odorless, but it had a faint, dim smell like that of flowers.
Very far overhead he heard the pounding of a rocket. It must be a space needle, going down to Shapley, the other settlement on the artificial planetoid. He thought of the people in the needle briefly and with a touch of wonder. What would their future be like, that future that Vulcan could not even imagine? He thought, If I could hear their voices, they would have strange new notes.
It didn't matter, really. He did not envy them their future. He was impatient for his rest.
He raised the bottle and drank.
The liquid was bitter and a little spicy, so that it stung his lips and tongue with a not-unpleasant warmth.
When he had finished it, he sat waiting. In a little while a wonderful warm blackness began to move from his feet along his limbs. It crept higher, and it was a black swan's-down deliciousness, utter delicousness, quiet, all-embracing, and tender. It moved toward his heart. It was like the warmth of the womb he had never known.
His body slid forward limply from the wharf into the water. His last thought before the black feathers covered him completely was a trivial curiosity whether the hotel would ever find the cabin cruiser, a trivial hope that his body would not be caught in the machinery that caused Fyon's tides.
The End
* * * * * *
Book information
CAST OF CHARACTERS
DON HAIG
He was bound by cosmic forces to the loveliest—and most dangerous—woman in all space.
KUNITZ
Don had to decide in a hurry whether this man was to be trusted implicitly or feared intensely.
FRANCINE
She handed out strange medicine for even stranger illnesses.
PHYLLIS
Her kind of loving help was no help at all.
BENDEL
If he could not have Don's puppet, then he had to destroy it.
MULCIBER
His philosophy of government was that of a benevolent sadism.
AGENT
OF THE UNKNOWN
MARGARET ST. CLAIR
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
agent of the unknown
Copyright ©, 1956, by Margaret St. Clair
All Rights Reserved
Magazine version for Startling Stories, copyright, 1951, by Margaret St. Clair.
Printed in U.S.A.
* * * * * *
Back cover
AGENT OF THE UNKNOWN
Don Haig had been content to lie around and drink in the synthetic beauty of the pleasure planetoid Fyon, until a woman came into his life. A woman more beautiful and more perfect than any other female in the galaxy. A woman who brought about a curious change in Don.
For she was a pocket-sized doll—a very strange and miraculous puppet who shed constant tears and held powers that Don never even dreamed of.
But what Don did know was that dangerous alien forces were swiftly focussing on him and his living puppet ... and that he had to discover the doll's super-scientific secret before his own life was smashed to atoms!
Agent of the Unknown Page 12
