Those Who Watch

by Robert Silverberg

  She used a damp cloth to wipe away the blood on his face. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. Hesitantly she put her hands to the broken leg, trying to guide it into place even though she knew she had no business setting a broken bone. To her amazement the limb yielded easily to pressure, as though it were nothing more than modeling clay, and with the slightest prod she succeeded in realigning it. The man on the bed grimaced; but now his leg was straight again, and Kathryn suspected that the two halves of the snapped bone were in line. He was breathing more easily, with his mouth open. Kathryn picked up the bottle of paindamp and allowed a few drops of the all-purpose anesthetic to slide between his lips. He swallowed.

  He’d feel better now . . . assuming that a body like his responded to paindamp at all.

  She realized that she had done about as much as she could do for him, just now. There were no external wounds that needed bandaging. He had stopped moaning, and appeared merely to be asleep. She looked worriedly at him. Sooner or later he would wake, and then what?

  Kathryn brushed all those fears away. He would be more comfortable, she decided, without that old rubbery loincloth. He’d need to pass wastes, and he couldn’t very well do that with his middle encased in rubber. Nor did she see any kind of opening in the garment, which puzzled her all the more. He did pass wastes, didn’t he? She had to get it off him.

  At the thought of it, that curious sexual throbbing surged through her again. Kathryn quirked her lips in anger. Before her marriage, as a nurse, she had handled male patients the way a nurse was supposed to handle them, as so much live meat, with no concern for their bodies. Yet now she utterly failed to recapture that dispassionate attitude. Had a year of chaste widowhood made her so eager to see a man’s body, she wondered? Or was it something else, a powerful attraction exerted only by this man in particular? Perhaps it was mere snoopiness, the desire to find out what was under there. If he did come from some other world—

  Kathryn seized the scissors, placed them against his right thigh, slid them under the fabric, and tried to cut. She did not succeed. The undergarment was as tough as his spacesuit, and the blade bounded away from the resilient material.

  She was sure she could roll the garment down, but she did not want to subject his injured leg to that much jouncing about. Perplexed, she searched for a hidden catch such as the outer garment had had, and as her hands slid up and down his hips she became so involved in what she was doing that she failed to notice he had returned to consciousness.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a pleasantly resonant voice.

  Kathryn leaped back, panicky. “Oh — you’re awake!”

  “More or less. Where am I?”

  “In my house. Near Bernalillo. About twenty miles from Albuquerque. Does any of that mean anything to you?”

  “A little.” He looked down at his leg. “Have I been unconscious long?”

  “I found you about an hour ago. You were just outside my house. You… landed there.”

  “Yes. I landed.” He smiled. His eyes were lively, probing, ironical. He was implausibly handsome with the artificial good looks of a movie star. Kathryn kept her distance. She was uncomfortably aware of the whiteness of his skin, of her own light nightgown and wrap, of the sleeping child in the next room. She began to wish she had not yielded to this wild impulse to bring him into her house. He said, “Where is the rest of your sexual group?”

  “My sexual group?” — blankly.

  He laughed. “Sorry. My stupidity. I mean, your mate. Your— husband.”

  “He’s dead,” Kathryn murmured. “He was killed last year’ I live with my child.”

  “I see.” He tried to get up, but clenched his teeth as soon as he moved his left leg. Kathryn went toward him and held out her hand.”

  “No. Lie there. Your leg’s broken.”

  “So it seems.” He forced a grin. “Are you a doctor?”

  “I’ve had medical training. I was a nurse before I was married. Your leg will be all right, but you mustn’t put any weight on it for a while. In the morning I’ll phone a doctor and he’ll put it in a cast.”

  The amiability left the stranger’s face. “Do you have to do that?”

  “What?”

  “Get a doctor. Can’t you take care of me?”

  “Me? But I-you-”

  “Is it forbidden morally? The formerly married woman accepting a strange man in her dwelling? I can pay you. There’s money in my suit. Just let me stay here until my leg is better. I’ll be no trouble for you, I promise that. I—” A spasm of sudden pain racked him. He knotted his hands together, interlocking the fingertips and pulling outward from the center.

  “Drink some of this,” Kathryn said, holding out the paindamp.

  “It won’t do any good. I can— deal with it—”

  She watched, mystified, as he went through some silent inner process. Whatever he was doing, it seemed to work. The strain lines left his face; he relaxed again; the expression of detached irony returned.

  “May I stay here?” he asked.

  “Perhaps. For a while.” She did not dare to ask now where he had come from or who he was. “Does your leg hurt you very badly?”

  “I’ll manage. I think the real injuries may be inside. I took a bad jolt when I— when I came down.” He seemed very calm about it, she thought. He went on, “You won’t have to do much for me. I need rest, food, a little help. I’ll burden you only for a few weeks. Why were you taking off my waistband?”

  Color stippled her cheeks. “To make you more comfortable. And— and in case you had to go to the bathroom. But I couldn’t get it off. It wouldn’t open, and I wasn’t able to cut it. And then you woke up.”

  His hand went to his left hip and did something Kathryn could not follow, and the yellow garment snapped open and fell away, all so swiftly that she put her hand to her lips in sudden surprise. Oddly, there was nothing strange about his nakedness. She did not know what she had expected to see some alien organ, perhaps, or more likely a smoothly sexless expanse of doll-like skin — but he was quite conventionally constructed. Kathryn looked, and looked away.

  “You have a strong nudity taboo?” he asked.

  “Not really. It’s just that — oh, all of this is so peculiar! I ought to be afraid of you, but I’m not, and I should be calling the police, but I won’t, and—” She checked herself. “I’ll give you a bedpan. Do you want me to cook something for you to eat? Some soup, some toast, maybe? And here, let me try to get that suit out from under you. You’ll be able to sleep better without it there.”

  He showed a flicker of pain as she eased the suit off the bed, but he said nothing. She drew the waistband out the same way. Lying slim and nude on her bed, he smiled gratefully up at her. Kathryn covered him. He was keeping very calm, but surely he was in greater pain that he was letting her know about.

  He said, “Will you put the suit in a safe place? A place where no one is likely to discover it?”

  “Is the back of my closet all right?”

  “For now,” he said. “I would not want anyone but you to come upon it.”

  She hid the suit behind her summer clothes. His eyes did not leave her. Pulling the coverlet up over him, she said, “Now, how about something to eat?”

  “In the morning, I think.” His hand touched hers briefly. “What’s your name?”

  “Kathryn. Kathryn Mason.”

  He did not offer his own name, and she could not bring herself to ask for it.

  “Can I trust you, Kathryn?”

  “In what way?”

  “To keep my presence here a secret.”

  She chuckled thinly. “I’m not looking for a neighborhood scandal. No one’s going to find out you’re here.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I’ll get you the bedpan now.”

  She felt a certain relief at escaping from him. He frightened her, and her fear was growing, rather than lessening, as the moment passed. His very calmness was the most terrifying thi
ng of all. He seemed unreal, synthetic; everything about him struck a false note, from his too-pretty face to his too-smooth voice with its too-bland accentless tones. And to recover from delirious unconsciousness to rationality within fifteen minutes, that way, was even weirder. It was as if he had thrown a switch inside himself that shunted the pain impulses elsewhere.

  Kathryn trembled. She drew the bedpan from the kitchen closet and rinsed it out.

  There was a strange man in her house, which was upsetting.

  There was a stranger in her house who might not be a man, and that was far more upsetting.

  She returned to him, and he smiled as she slipped the bedpan under the sheets. Trying to regain her old nursely objectivity, Kathryn said, “Is there anything else I can do for you now?”

  “You could give me some information.”

  “Of course.”

  “On the radio, the television, tonight. Was there any unusual news in this neighborhood?”

  “The meteor,” she said. “I saw it. The big ball of fire in the sky.”

  “It was a meteor, then?”

  “That’s what they said on television.”

  He digested that for a moment. She waited, hoping for some revelation, waiting for the blunt admission of his origin. But he was giving nothing away. He regarded her in silence.

  “Would you like me to turn out the light?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She darkened the room. Only then did she realize she had left herself no place to sleep. He had the bed, and she could hardly climb in alongside him.

  She curled up on the living-room couch. But she did not sleep at all, and when she returned to his room, several hours before dawn, she saw that his eyes were open too. Once again his face was fixed in the rigid lines of pain.

  “Glair?” he asked.

  “Kathryn. What can I do for you?”

  “Just hold my hand in yours,” he whispered, and she took it, and they remained that way until morning.

  Six

  The spectacular destruction of the Dirnan watcher ship was observed by many eyes that night, not all of them human. At the instant the generator in the ship went critical and exploded, a Kranazoi scout was swinging through its assigned surveillance arc above Montana, bound on an eastward route. The first flaring light of the blowup impinged on the sensors of the Kranazoi vessel, and only moments later the event came to the awareness of the pilot, who swung quickly into action.

  The pilot’s genetic designation was Bar-48-Codon-adf. For the purposes of this mission he cloaked the angular, rough-skinned Kranazoi body with which he had been born in a mass of plump Earthman flesh, giving him a jolly, roly-poly appearance hardly in keeping with his inner nature. He shared his ship with three other members of his current mating unit, two of whom were asleep. The third, whose genetic designation was Bar-51-Codon-bgt, was processing data when the explosion came. She-it — that was her-its ambivalent role in the mating unit — looked up instantly at Bar-48-Codon-adf and said, “The Dirnan ship just blew up!”

  “I know. The photon screens are going crazy.” Bar-48-Codon-adf ran his fingers over the Kranazoi ship’s sensor inputs, while Bar-51-Codon-bgt began to check the roster of known Dirnan watcher ships in the vicinity. By the time she-it had identified the particular ship on the master chart, he had found the bit of information he most feared to find: three shapes of approximately Dirnan mass, bailing out and dropping Earthward.

  This is some kind of trick,” he muttered. “They’re staging a landing. Three of them just dropped from that ship before it blew!”

  “Are you sure they’re alive?” Bar-51-Codon-bgt asked.

  He scowled at her-it. “They got away moments before the explosion. It’s a deliberate landing! They’re violating all the covenants! We’ve got to get after them and trace them, or we’re in the stew!”

  Calmly, calmly. You aren’t making sense. If they were pulling a deliberate landing, why would they let their ship explode? That splash might be registered on every screen the Earthmen have. If you’d been ordered to land on Earth, would you do it so publicly?”

  Bar-48-Codon-adf subsided. “Even so, deliberate or not, they’ve landed.”

  “Dead on landing, possibly.”

  “Possibly. Possibly not. You want to risk it? I wouldn’t. They’ll brainburn us at Headquarters if we mess this up. We’ve got to land and track those damned Dirnans, and find out what they’re up to!”

  Bar-51-Coden-bgt looked horrified. “Land? On Earth? We’re watchers!”

  “The covenants permit landing in case of questionable behavior by the other side. If a couple of Kranazoi happened to drop down on Earth like that, don’t you think the Dirnans would have a swarm of their watchers following us right away? We can’t afford to let them get a jump on us. At least, I can’t. Wake the others up.”

  She-it objected. The other two had had a successful mating a few hours earlier; they were entitled to their sleep. But Bar-48-Codon-adf was insistent, and when he got into a mood like that, there was no refusing him. Shortly, the remaining two members of the mating unit came stumbling from their sleep compartments, looking disgruntled and resentful, and not at all perturbed by the apparent landing of three members of the rival power on the neutral territory of Earth. It perturbed them much more that Bar-48-Codon-adf had intruded on their sleep, and they let him know about it. The bickering continued for several minutes, during which time Bar-48-Codon-adf altered the ship’s course to take it south toward the site of the Dirnan landing. He allowed the others to purge themselves of their hostilities.

  When they were reasonably rational again he said, “We’ll bring the ship down to cruising altitude and I make a jump. Notify Headquarters of what we’re doing, and stay within pickup range until you hear from me again.”

  “You’re going down there alone?” Bar-51-Codon-bgt asked fearfully.

  “I won’t get into trouble. No one harms a fat man. I’ll look around, track the Dirnans, try to get some angle on what they’re up to. When I know something, I’ll have you come and get me.”

  Bar-79-Codon-zzz said scornfully, “Hero! Medal-hunter!”

  “Cut it out. Where’s your sense of responsibility? Where’s your patriotism?”

  Bar-79-Codon-zzz, who was a total-female in the mating unit and also wore the disguise of a female Earthman, glowered at him. “Don’t talk to me of patriotism, will you? We’re a long way from home, doing a dull, pointless, idiotic assignment for purely ritualistic reasons, and I’ll be fried if I’ll take it as seriously as you do. Cops-and-robbers! Skimming around over this hideous planet like filthy snoops! Why don’t we just let the Dirnans have it, and—”

  Bar-51-Codon-bgt gave her a nudge. “Save it,” she-it mur-mured. “His mind’s made up. Anyway, it might just be important. Let him go down there, if he wants/

  The matter was settled. The Kranazoi ship dipped Earthward, slicing through the night sky on full opaquers. Bar-48-Codon-adf was annoyed by the attitude of his shipmates, but he had no wish to get into a prolonged argument with them now. Duty was duty. They were posted here not only to keep watch over Earth, but over the activities of their rivals, the Dirnans, as well. Duty required him to land and pursue — and, if necessary, to arrest the three on violation of the covenants.

  With the ship at an altitude of thirty-thousand feet, Bar-48-Codon-adf filed a formal notice of his intent to land, and his reasons for so doing. At an altitude of twenty-thousand feet he donned his drop equipment, which he had never expected to use. At an altitude of ten-thousand feet he stepped through the hatch with supreme confidence and let himself fall.

  The landing was bumpy, but not really bad. Bar-48-Codon-adf removed his drop gear and twisted the self-destruct stud. It ignited satisfyingly and moments later was wholly atomized. Now he wore the garments as well as the body of a heavy-set Earthman of middle years. He activated his identity training and discovered that his Earthman name was David Bridger, that he was forty-six years old, unmarried, a
native of Circleville, Ohio, and a resident of San Francisco, California. He had landed several miles from the city limits of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dawn was still four or five hours away; he would be safely within the city by morning, and he could begin his quest.

  If those three Dirnans were up to anything illegal, he vowed, they’d pay for this. He’d get them before the Covenant Commission and denounce them as meddlers! He’d have them brainburned! Who did they think they were, landing on Earth as though the planet belonged to them?

  Scowling, David Bridger of San Francisco — until recently the Kranazoi agent and watcher Bar-48-Codon-adf — trudged briskly toward nearby Albuquerque, thinking dark thoughts about the planet Dirna and all its misbegotten citizens.

  Seven

  For three days Glair hovered on the threshold of consciousness. Her limbs throbbed with fiery pain; her entire body felt bloated and puffy. She knew she was hideous now, and that appalled her. That was harder to take than the pain itself.

  A kind of feedback oscillation kept her moving along the border of awareness. When she was awake, the pain was severe, and she began to use her conscious control to knock out any nerve ganglion that she could dispense with. When she had knocked out enough, she began to relax and slide into the non-pain of unconsciousness. But she did not trust herself to go under with her nervous system shut down, and so when she felt herself sliding she would open the ganglia again, and draw back from the gray haze of nothingness in renewed pain. The pain brought a kind of unconsciousness of its own, when she allowed it to go unchecked. Not only the nerves of her outer housing but the nerves of her Dirnan body within were affected by the impulses, which at times were so strong that the neural channels tended to overload.