“You may be surprised before I’m finished how foolish I can be!” Peter retorted.
The scientist inclined his shiny dark head. “As you wish, Excellence. I am sure nothing further can be gained by discussion at this late hour. I will bid you good night....”
He retreated a few pace, then turned and stalked from the room.
Peter sat biting his underlip for a while then rose and went into his bedroom. When he had got into bed, the most comfortable one he had ever known, he did not fall asleep immediately. Too many thoughts were crowding his mind.
He lay watching the restful, subdued colours playing on the walls, especially projected to ensure gradual lapse into sleep.
“They heard it, but I didn’t,” he muttered. “Why, for Heaven’s sake? They’re only human beings like me. Seven hundred years ahead, true, but what difference can that make?”
There might be a difference, he decided presently. He lay trying to figure it out, but by no twist of reasoning could he picture an explanation for a multitude hearing what he could not. And certainly his ears were perfectly normal.
“I wonder,” he said, half aloud, “if evolution has anything to do with it? If in seven hundred years something had happened to auditory nerves, and I haven’t got it? Evolution! Evo...lution....”
He yawned prodigiously over the word, and before he could follow this glimmering of an idea he was fast asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY METHODS
It was full daylight when Peter awoke. Immediately the robots took charge of him and he had simply nothing to do until he was deposited, shaved, bathed, and dressed, before the breakfast table with its usual perfect offerings. By the window, impassive as ever, stood the inevitable First Scientist of the Western Federation.
“Morning, Lanning,” Peter greeted curtly, deliberately dropping the prefix. He felt, in the position he occupied, it was high time that he did.
“Your Excellence slept well?” Lanning inquired, crossing the room and pausing by the table.
“Well enough; and I did some thinking before I fell asleep, too. I was wondering whether evolution might be the cause of my not hearing Ijax speak last night.”
“As long as your wonder is confined to the abstract nothing harmful can befall you, Excellence.” The Adviser-Elect drew himself up and smiled frigidly. “And I warn you—purely as a friend and confident—to question none of the mysteries you may encounter, or have encountered in Metropolita.”
“Why not?” Peter demanded.
“Because everything has a purpose, believe me.”
“So have I!” Peter began to eat hungrily. “Anyway, what am I supposed to be? A hidden personality who never shows himself? That won’t do for me!”
“Show yourself by all means—in the places and at the times I shall direct. Otherwise, please curb your natural curiosity.”
Peter said nothing, so after a moment Lanning gave his little bow.
“I must leave you now, Excellence, to attend to my duties. I delayed only to offer a word in season....”
He went out and Peter continued his breakfast in thoughtful silence. When he had finished and the robot had cleared the table, he pressed the ‘Secretary’ button on the panel. Dressed in a flame-coloured robe, Alza Holmes entered in a moment or two, a smile of greeting on her brightly intelligent face.
“Good morning, Peter....” And for a moment the easy familiarity of the phrasing made him grin. Still he had brought it on himself.
“Take a seat, Alza,” he said, motioning. “I’ve something to ask you. About that business with Ijax last night,” he added as she sat down.
“Yes?”
“Did it seem to you that the idol spoke, in so many words?”
“Definitely!” the girl replied frankly.
“And the voice was soothing and pleasant?”
“It always is, Peter. It makes one feel—how shall I say?—dreamy while listening to it.”
Peter plunged his hands in the pockets of his robe and paced about thoughtfully for a moment or two.
“I’ve been putting two and two together, Alza,” he said at length, “and one or two facts seem to fit in. First, everybody looks vague and preoccupied as if they’re miles from their actual surroundings; second, everybody works for one thing with an almost uncanny willingness; and third, the orders which are obeyed are of such a nature that I cannot hear them or sense them. To me that suggests only one thing—hypnotism!”
Alza frowned a little. “Hypnotism? But that’s an ancient art—the control of one mind by another, and anyway it couldn’t possibly apply to everybody in the world! Could it?” she added, with a trace of uneasiness.
Peter came back across the room and faced her seriously.
“Listen, Alza, I am trying to apply logic—just as an ordinary man of my time looks at it. Everybody in the world understands and heard Ijax, except me—because, I think, everybody in the world is different from me! I am seven hundred years behind you in evolution. In my day mass-hypnosis was impossible, though there was one man, Adolf Hitler, who mastered a nation by the hypnosis in his voice—or so some scientists said. But in these days evolution may have done something to everybody.”
“In what way?” the girl questioned, puzzled.
Peter gestured, then made a sheer guess in the dark.
“It seems to me that people who’ve had everything done for them, who’ve achieved the ultimate perfection, must thereby have become soft both mentally and physically. The physical side doesn’t matter much, but the mental does. It’s my guess that in seven centuries brains have altered, and because of it have become so intensely refined that they’re instantly susceptible to hypnosis. Constant refinement of anything always makes it malleable, and a brain in particular. In a word, human beings today are but one stage removed from actual thought transference from person to person, which is of course the ultimate method of communication foreseen by scientists long ago.”
“Then you mean that you stand apart because your brain has not undergone this evolutionary change?” Alza asked.
“That’s how it appears to me,” Peter agreed. “It’s the only explanation. What you and everyone else hears is not so many spoken words, because if that were so I’d hear them too, but mental commands which sound like words to you and everybody in the world, except me. And they produce, as do some forms of hypnotism, a post-hypnotic state in your brain under which you follow out the orders given. Then, four weeks later, before the effect can wear off, the process is repeated.”
“Supposing you are right,” Alza mused. “Where’s the sense of it? Who can be behind it all?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. That’ll take finding out. I had thought of Mark Lanning himself being up to something, but apparently he is as absorbed by Ijax as the rest of you—and I don’t think he’s playing a part. At the moment I don’t know who’s responsible, but I’m going to try and see if my hypnosis theory is right. In short, I intend taking a thorough look at that Ijax we saw last night.”
Alza sprang to her feet, sheer horror on her face. “But you can’t! It’s desecration!”
“It’s necessity!” Peter answered grimly. “There’s something wrong with all of you people, and as your friend and figurehead it’s my duty to find out what it is. I’m going to look at Ijax this very morning—smash it to bits, if need be—but I’ll certainly find out what makes it tick.”
The girl shifted helplessly, staring at him. Plain fear was in every line of her face.
“You don’t have to come with me....” Peter gripped her arm and smiled. “I can find my way. And I’m going as His Excellence this time, not as an ordinary civilian. It’s time I used my authority around here.”
“I’d rather come with you,” Alza said, recovering herself. “I might be able to hold off any devotees who find you upsetting the idol.... But Peter, you’re taking your life in your hands. You don’t understand just how much power Ijax has over us all, how we all re
vere him.”
“I think I do, Alza, and I’ll risk what’s coming.”
Peter turned to the robots and settled in one calmly, motioning to the girl to do likewise. He had to rely on her to give the directions, but this time he was not the dizzy, inexperienced man of yesterday. He sat grim and determined as the helicoptered automatons went through the open window and then began to descend gently in the chasm of street, drifting left towards the Escalator Junction, then on and down until the deserted Temple of Ijax on the Twenty-Third Intersection loomed up.
The robots settled finally at the base of the granite steps.
“At least you’ll have no trouble getting in,” the girl said. “The doors are always left open in case anybody wishes to go in and spend a few minutes in devotion.”
“Damned paganism!” Peter snapped, standing up and drawing his official robe more tightly about him. “Come on!”
Together they hurried up the steps and into the great empty hall. Sunlight streaming through the windows gave the place a less sepulchral aspect than on the night before. That vague sense of sinister shadows was absent.
Without pause Peter hurried down the central aisle with Alza following fearfully behind him. When he reached the raised platform where the pot-bellied Ijax squatted, gazing down with blank eyes, Peter stopped, hands on hips, staring up at it intently. Alza, however, moved to a nearby chair and settled on the edge of it nervously, afraid to go any nearer.
“Infernal bunk!” Peter commented, with refreshing candour; then he climbed up on the platform and examined Ijax at close quarters. It was made of some kind of plastic with a glazed surface, nor did it take him long to discover that flap in the back of the bald head was on a hinge. Wrenching the flap open he peered into the hollow interior of the thing. Almost immediately he beheld neat electrical apparatus contained in a metallic box perhaps a foot square. He stared at it fascinatedly, then glanced across to Alza.
“Come and look!” he called, but she shook her head quickly; and realizing the nameless dread that held her at arm’s length, Peter did not persist. Instead he reached inside the idol, seized the box in both hands and gave a mighty upward wrench. It came away from its supports and he staggered backwards with the thing in his hands, regaining his balance just in time. When Alza saw the contrivance of chips, transformers, resistances, and other equipment she jumped her feet in amazement,
“Rather knocks the stuffing out of your god, doesn’t it?” Peter asked dryly, setting the apparatus down carefully beside him on the platform. “We’ll have a closer look at it later on. Now, let’s see....”
He surveyed the idol pensively, his gaze settling finally on the delicate fingers interlocking across the bulging middle. Kicking up his foot he snapped a little finger clean off, picked it up and then studied it. Finally he put it in his robe pocket, jumped down to the floor once more and drew the electric equipment forward into his arms. Alza stood looking at him with wide grey eyes as he cam towards her.
“It looks like...radio apparatus,” the said incredulously.
“That’s what I think—and believe it or not the idol is hollow inside except for this equipment. It’s just an empty plastic statue. In a word, Alza, you am everybody else is the victim of a gigantic hoax, and if you don’t intend to find out the reason for it, I do! Come along.”
Hiding the apparatus under the folds of his robe Peter hurried outside again and settled in the robot arms. Alza followed him with a troubled frown and during the ascending journey back to the Governing Building he seemed lost in thought. They were in Peter’s suite again before she made comment.
“I...I feel like somebody who’s been asleep and has just awakened,” the girl said, pressing a hand to her eyes. “I...I suppose nothing destroy one’s faith quite so completely as utter disillusionment.”
“You mean, the spell’s broken?” Peter asked her quietly, as he set the instrument down on the table. “That you no longer believe in Ijax?”
“I realise that I have been held down by a monstrous mass-belief—hypnosis, if you like—but now you’ve found this, I somehow feel that the Task and the voice of Ijax have no meaning any more.”
“If you feel like that, so may others,” Peter said, thoughtfully, but the girl shook her head.
“Not the mass of the people, Peter. Remember that I belong to a higher scale of intelligence, and therefore I have the power to reason things out more quickly than most. The vast majority will go on believing and obeying, even in the face of disillusionment. Only a terrific shock, or some obvious impossibility, will bring them to their senses, I’m afraid.”
Peter scratched his head. “Yes, you’re probably right. Surprising sometimes what a lot it takes to uproot a cast-iron faith. Anyway, let’s see what we’ve got.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE INVESTIGATION PROCEEDS
Pulling up a chair, Peter sat down before the apparatus, the girl standing beside him. The more they studied it the more they both realized that it was an exquisitely designed transmitter-receiver, though it was not intended for radio.
“I think it’s meant to pick up vibrations of some kind,” Alza said at last. “As near as I can judge, I’d say it is intended to pick up extremely slight impulses, transform them, and then retransmit them at high amplification.”
“But not radio impulses?” Peter asked.
“No—though something of that order.”
“Then how about thought waves? We’re dealing with hypnosis, or so we believe. The brain sends out tiny impulses, Could this instrument pick up thought impulses, transform them back into their original state, and then retransmit them at high amplification?”
The girl examined the apparatus again more carefully, her slender fingers probing in and out of the delicately constructed workings.
“Yes,” she admitted finally, “I don’t see why not. There’s one way to make sure....”
Peter grinned. “You mean try it?”
“Exactly. Apparently it is self-powered by this small atomic battery in the base. The energy from that lasts close on two hundred years.”
“Could have done with one of those in my car back home,” Peter reflected; then, brisking up, “All right, let’s see what happens. I’ll concentrate and you tell me if you feel anything.”
The girl nodded, and waited. Peter hesitated a moment, thinking of a command—then finally he mentally ordered the girl to go to the centre window and look outside. His amazement was complete when colour flowed into her cheeks, her breathing quickened, then she turned and walked deliberately to the window in question, and stood gazing out of it upon the mountainous grey buildings.
“It works!” Peter yelled, jumping up. “That’s it! We’ve got it, Alza!”
He raced over to the girl, caught her arms and swung her round to face him. His action seemed to dash the hypnosis from her brain and she looked at him strangely.
“Did...did it...?” She hesitated and he nodded vigorously.
“You did just as I ordered! That proved two things: your brain, like the brain of everybody else, is receptive to hypnosis to an amazing degree—and mine is not. Now!” Peter rubbed his chin. “What do we do next? Trace the person responsible for these amplifying gadgets, I suppose? I imagine there must be a similar instrument in the idol of every Temple in the world.”
The girl reflected for a moment, then a thought seemed to strike her. Hurrying back to the apparatus she picked it up and turned it over. A delightful little cry escaped her.
“This was made by a man named Swanson!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining. “See the die-stamp on the metal base?” She pointed to a registration number. “I remember issuing credit notes for this number and therefore this metal, about four years ago.”
“You can remember a number after all that time?” Peter asked in astonishment.
“I told you I had intelligence,” she shrugged. “Yes, Swanson is the owner of this metal, even if he didn’t make the actual instrument. Though, being a radio en
gineer, he probably did.”
Peter gave an emphatic nod. “Swanson, eh? Good! That brings us a whole lot nearer. We’ll have a word with him.... Since you know that much, what about the idol itself? Any idea who might be connected with it?”
He took Ijax’s little finger from his pocket and dropped it in the girl’s palm.
“I can’t identify this plastic,” she said finally, “but the sculpturing of this finger is reminiscent of the work of Halsen Barnet, one of the greatest artists of our century. He did all the murals and quadrants for the Museum you saw yesterday, and he also sketched out the original design for the Ijax Temples.”
“He did, eh?” Peter’s blue eyes narrowed. “Is he still alive?”
“Oh, yes. He lives in an old world studio outside the city. He’s something of a hermit, really.”
Peter rubbed his hands gently together. “I think, Alza, we’ll tackle him first since he seems to have a more personal connection than Swanson. All right, let’s be on our way. If we can find out from whom he got his orders we’ll be well on our way to discovering the person behind this spot of hypnotic intrigue.”
He turned to the robots and within a few moments the girl and he were once again on their way. Alza directed the robots to the airport, and from here they flew out from Metropolita’s vast reaches to the open countryside beyond. Ten minutes of bullet-like flight brought them to a rambling residence in its own grounds, remarkably like the country houses of southern England, which Peter had never expected to see again.
It was the insignia on his sleeve that caused the servant to grant ready admission. Inwardly proud of his authority, Peter followed the servant through a wide, somewhat gloomy hall, Alza close behind him, and then into a long, skylighted studio where there was all the brilliance of sunshine.
“His Excellence,” the servant announced, and a tall figure with a mane of grey hair swung round from a shapeless mass of modelling clay. He looked in every sense the typical artist—besmocked, a flowing silk bow at his neck, velvet trousers, his face lean and clever with sharp blue eyes.
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