by Harry Bates
Allison turned away; there was no satisfaction to be had from her. She was a throwback, all right. He suddenly wanted very much to see the man called Jones. He had plenty of explanations coming to him, and it seemed to him he'd been treated rather shabbily so far. He turned back to the girl.
"Miss–Miss–" He came to a stop. "Pardon me–what is your name again?"
"Miss CB-301–"
"Ah, yes. May I call you Miss Brown? Uh–Miss Brown, will you go find Mr. Jones–the man who introduced us? I want to see him at once. "Or maybe I can go to him?" he quickly suggested.
"Oh, no, you can't do that. I'll go bring him here." She seemed a little afraid of her primitive. She added, more brightly: "I think I want to see him myself."
"Will you lend me that search-beam till you get back?"
She hesitated, as if she should not, then, pathetically eager to please him, she unstrapped and placed it about his left wrist. She's beautiful, all right, he thought, as she fastened it on. Hair, and plenty of it, nice and dark and tastefully drawn through that jeweled clasp at the nape of her neck. Those other women's!
She tapped on the door, and it was opened by a brown-robed figure outside. For a moment she looked softly into Allison's eyes, and then she was gone.
What had she meant by saying he had to marry "one of us"? Had to! Yes, Jones had plenty of explanations piling up.
The ethnologist sat on the edge of the cot and held up his wrist. What a marvel of ingenuity the little device was! Tentatively he turned the stem she had first touched. The dial glowed, then meaningless shadows appeared on it. The slightest movement of his body changed these shadows for new ones. He turned other stems and go through what seemed to be a wall. Delicately he manipulated in the attempt to probe beyond. The blurred figure of a man appeared, came clearer, and then Allison got a shock. The image that lay on the glowing round dial was point for point his own.
In his amazement, he moved, and the man was gone. Pulse throbbing, he fished him back. No doubt about it–the outlines were fuzzy, but the resemblance was there. All over–size, shoulders, head, proportions, clothing. Even the room he occupied was identical. He stood leaning against the wall, arms folded, looking in angry fashion straight ahead, and on his face was a short thatch of yellow beard.
Out of Allison's unconscious came the memory he had had before. Interminable rows of doll faces. Each face his own face, and each one, somehow, himself.
Mystery lay all around him. Jones, so strangely in out of the night. His extraordinary offer. The sudden unconscious journey. The unknown out-world civilization that hemmed him in. The rows of doll faces with their freight of fear. This man who looked so like himself. What devil's work could be under way?
There was a movement on the glowing dial. The door of the room opened, and the man known as Jones entered, followed by a surgeon-like figure in white smock and helmet who pushed before him a rubber-wheeled table. At sight of them the man left the wall and advanced menacingly. They talked, and Jones' manner was wholly conciliatory.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Jones stepped to the man's side and touched him lightly on the shoulder with the palm of his band. He slumped to the floor, from which in businesslike fashion he was picked up, laid on the table and wheeled out through the door.
Allison stared with amazement. It was the same trick that had been worked on him. The shoulder instead of the hand.
The men were gone from the dial. He set himself quickly to picking them up again. Angling his body slightly did it. They had paused outside the door.
They moved; grew blurred; he found a stem that brought them sharper again. He followed them down a square corridor into which many doors were set at equal distances on each side. As they progressed they dwindled to the size of match heads, but he found the way to make them larger. Other figures passed by, two in white smocks and helmets, others in colored gowns, their ugly beads fully exposed; and as Allison looked at them, his group was gone.
An anxious moment, then he found them. They were a little lower to one side, descending in an elevator. Lost them! Again his heart stood still while he felt them out. It was as if that unconscious man on the table–that man who so resembled him–were he himself. Where were they taking him? What was to be done with him, all unresisting?
There passed an interval during which a jumble of walls, shadows, people, strange apparatus, and blurs were all that came to his dial. Once, even, a conical green bush, or perhaps it was a tree. Then Allison by pure chance found his men again.
An imposing picture lay on the dial when he had brought them to size and clarity. They stood waiting behind a low railing at one end of a large auditorium. Behind them, the other side of the railing, half a hundred rows of seats, laced by aisles, rose upward to the ceiling, and every seat was occupied by men and women of the strange race whose prisoner he was. In front of them, the focal point of every eye in that vast gathering, was a glittering cage, within which rested two chairs, meshed by wires together, and placed in front of a complicated battery of scientific apparatus whose nature Allison didn't know.
Quickly, with perfect coordination, the ensuing scene took place. The table bearing the unconscious man was wheeled within the cage, and he was removed and made to sit upright in one of the chairs. At the same time a woman of the race, escorted by an official, entered the space within the railing from a doorway to the right and was conducted to the other chair. She was touched, palm on shoulder, by Jones, and immediately slumped back unconscious. Metallic headbands attached to the chairs were fastened about their foreheads. Then all left the cage and the door was closed.
Jones went to a large panel to one side and threw a switch, and for one instant a glow of varicolored light flooded the cage. When it had died he and the others reentered, freed the two subjects, and, in a way Allison could not catch, revived them. Then the handsome young man with the blond hair and the ugly woman with the fringed bald head and corrugated brow proceeded out of the cage to a small desk by the railing, where they stopped, looked deeply at each other, and in full view of the assembled thousands kissed each other ardently on the mouth.
Idols of Pluto! Allison was flabbergasted, but, more than that, he was nauseated. For that blond young man who so disturbingly resembled him was subtly, somehow, himself. He, too, felt he had kissed that woman.
For a moment he could not look, and when he did he found the actors gone. The audience, however, remained, and most of them were smiling. What could it all mean?
The ethnologist let his wrist fall, brushed his forehead, tried to consider. Should he confront Jones with this new knowledge when he saw him? If he were slated to figure in such proceedings himself, it would surely be as scientist rather than subject. And just as surely, in spite of his subconscious feeling of oppression, the man he had been following could have no relation to him.
Speaking out to Jones would get the girl in trouble.
As he was thinking, the man himself entered in his quick and quiet way. Allison rose, with care keeping his left wrist to his side.
"Doctor Allison," the out-worlder said without preamble, "may I ask if you feel any–uh–sentimental inclination toward the young lady I introduced you to?"
"It happens I do not," the ethnologist answered sharply. The question irritated him. "May I in turn ask when I'm to be allowed to leave this room?" he asked.
The other made an appealing gesture. "Please," he said, "you've only just regained consciousness." He made a promise. "I'll see to it that you leave within fifteen minutes."
"It would seem that my arrival is of not quite the importance you led me to anticipate," Allison said with bitterness.
The out-worlder smiled inscrutably. "On the contrary," he objected, "it is. You've caused a tremendous excitement. Thousands are now busy with the preparations to receive you."
Was he alluding to anything in connection with the scene in the auditorium? How could he sound him without betraying the girl? There seemed no way.
"E
xactly what is the nature of this service you've asked me to render?" he asked at last.
The other was at the door. "I'll tell you when I come back," Jones promised. "But I might say, for the time being, that it is of vital importance to the fecundity of our race."
And with these cryptic words, before Allison could recover, Jones was gone.
CHAPTER III
Sitting on the cot, Allison tried to bring to order his scattered thoughts. He felt his position grew moment by moment more dangerous, but why, it was difficult to discover. Jones had as yet made no overt act, nor had he done anything that might be construed as contrary to their agreement. The fellow was not very likable, but then he was an out-worlder, of unpleasant face and figure, and Allison well knew how wrong superficial estimates of such characters were apt to be. He had always acted friendly, even if he was a trifle–to him–high-handed and abrupt. The girl could not be charged against him, for she was acting largely on her own. Allison rather liked her, anyway. She was a credit.
What else was there? Well, the scene he had witnessed by means of the search-beam. But in itself that was only interesting and amusing, except, perhaps, to the blond chap concerned. It was just the confusion of the fellow's resemblance to himself that summoned those nameless fears. He could conclude that somebody, very much like himself, had simply undergone some sort of scientific ceremony ending with a kiss.
But that was not a ceremonial kiss–it was shamelessly ardent.
Could there be love-mating–between two such opposites? A wedding, perhaps, since it was public.
A wedding! Jones' last words, anent his "service," still rang in his cars. "It is of vital importance to the fecundity of our race." No forced marriage of his to one of those top-heavy heads–even to Miss Brown–would have any effect on that.
Another remark of Jones. His "service" had to do with "applied and very, very practical ethnology."
The worst was certainly those interminable rows of doll faces. He could never have actually seen them, surely; they would have to be symbols of the unconscious, standing for something else. But what else?
And why the resemblance of that young fellow to himself–and, therefore, to the doll faces? That could not be coincidence.
Allison gave it up. He knew only that a nameless oppression sat on his heart, and that he, who had seldom been afraid, was now afraid.
He was roused by a light knock on the door. He rose; Miss Brown entered; and some one in brown closed the door behind her. She was smiling radiantly and held in her hands a curious fruit something like a very large soft-skinned sapodilla.
"Eat it," she said. "It is very nourishing and very good."
Allison thanked her, broke it and gave her half. He found it good indeed. He had not realized he was so hungry. She watched him with an expression of joy that would not come off–
"Why do you smile so?" he asked. "You weren't feeling so cheerful when you left."
She laughed and shook her head, and would not tell him.
"You'll find out!" she promised.
Something occurred to Allison, and he sat on the cot and pulled the girl gently down by his side. The watch-like search-beam was still adjusted to the auditorium, and he turned his wrist delicately in various directions till he found it again.
"What is that place?" he asked.
She gave him a look of fright. "Please don't ask!" she begged. "I can't tell you! I–I'll get in awful trouble!"
"From Jones?"
She nodded. He debated whether to ask her the explanation of what he had witnessed and decided it was useless. He peered into the dial of the instrument. Her soft hand came to take it away, but he guarded it with his own and kept on looking.
He touched a stein, and the picture came clearer. The audience was there as before, and the space within the railing empty; but, as he watched, two familiar figures entered from a doorway on the left, and between them rolled a third on the wheeled table. Jones and his surgeon-like accessory were bringing in another victim.
The girl reached forth her hand again. "Please don't!" she pleaded softly. "I shouldn't have let you have it, only–only–"
"In a minute!" he cried irritably, keeping her hand away.
The figures had started for the cage. As before, the man was placed in one chair and a native woman, promptly entering, in the other. She was anesthetized, and both were fitted with the headbands. Then all left. Jones pulled the switch, and there was the expected burst of varicolored light.
Allison kept his eyes glued to the man, unable to make him out through the glass, fearful, deep down, of what he might see. Jones and the others reentered the cage. The man and woman were revived; freed, went out; and far away in his little room in the building Allison started with shock. The man who had emerged, the man who even then was kissing ardently that ugly woman–he, too, looked like himself.
Prickles of fear ran all over the Earthman's body. "Who was that man?" he demanded of the girl. "Who was it?" he repeated, roughly grasping her arms.
She shook her head and sobbed out she dared not tell. He let her go, rose and paced about the room.
After a little she came to him. "Don't be mad with me," she pleaded softly. "I'll tell you some of it–a little." She paused, gathering courage, then said: "That instrument's the way we make people fall in love with each other here. It does something in their heads."
Allison stood still, struck with amazement at her words. She pulled his sleeve; took his bands.
"Arthur," she said tenderly. "Arthur." He looked down at her. "Don't be mad," she went on, smiling a little, "but we will marry. You will love me. I just arranged it with Mr. Jones. He's coming up for us next. Though I didn't have to be made to fall in love with you. Arthur –aren't you listening? We'll be so happy, and then you won't have to marry one of those ugly other women, and then you'll never want to go back to your horrid Earth! Never!"
For some time Allison looked at her; then he freed his hands and turned toward the door. "Sister, I'm checking out!"
She suspected what he meant. "What are you going to do?" she cried. "You can't go away! Mr. Jones won't let you!"
"Miss 891-X, you've no idea how good I am at handling guys like that. I'm a primitive, you know."
He felt worlds better, already. It was the waiting, a helpless prisoner facing the unknown, that had got him so down before. Now he had made a decision, and the promise of action, even of conflict, tuned him to his old accustomed pitch.
But the girl would fight to keep him. She threw herself on his chest and begged and pleaded.
"But Arthur," she said, "you'll like it after you're changed. You'll never know any difference, except that you'll love me. Don't you see?"
He held her off. "Miss Brown, I'm sorry, but I don't want to like to be any other way than I am now. You go down to that damn machine; get 'em to make you fall in love with some nice local boy."
A noise was heard at the door. At once he jumped and wedged his body behind it. "Hide! Here they are!" he whispered. "Quick! Under the bed! There may be trouble."
Trembling, the girl obeyed. Allison stepped back. Jones entered, and his hooded assistant followed with the wheeled table and closed the door.
The ethnologist wasted no time. "Jones," he said, "it's all off. You will kindly arrange to send me back to Earth."
The out-worlder showed less surprise than Allison expected.
"But my dear Doctor Allison," he objected, "you can't mean to change your mind now. You are here; thousands of our scientists are assembled; we've come even now to conduct you to the place where your service is to begin."
He drew close. Allison turned a little, and watched him like a hawk. Jones continued, soothingly:
"Your trepidations are natural, but in a few minutes you'll be laughing at yourself for ever having entertained them. You just see."
He raised his right hand to clap Allison in good-fellow manner on the shoulder, but the pat never landed. Quick as a cat the Earthman wheeled and caught
his wrist. The man, surprised, persisted, and he was strong; but Allison was stronger, and, clasping his left arm about the other's body, putting all his power behind short, savage jabs, he forced the hand back in toward its owner's chest.
"Take–some of–your own–medicine–doctor!"
The hand turned, and without a word Jones slumped to the floor, unconscious.
At once Allison was leaping toward the assistant, and before the fellow knew what had happened he lay sprawling on the floor beside the other. Harmless as he had seemed, the ethnologist took no chances. He reached for the relaxed right arm of Jones and pressed its palm into the prone man's arm. He went limp immediately. Allison rose.
"Act two," he said. "And two curtains."
He looked under the cot and laughed to see the way the wide-eyed girl there was trembling.
"Come Out, Miss 23-PDQ," he said. "The war's over."
She pushed out and stood up. He went and knelt over Jones. "Ingenious little weapons you have hereabouts," he commented. A thin, rubberish sack lay flat in the man's palm, and from it led a tube to a short, hollow-tipped needle placed projecting from the lower end of the heel, just out of reach of the fingers. The instrument stuck there of itself. He pulled it off and placed it in his own right palm.
"They'll kill you!" the girl said, tears in her eyes.
"I hope not," he answered lightly. "I'll be moving pretty fast." He laughed. "You should know how I escaped from the Mutrantian Titans!"
"Is anybody outside that door?" he asked, pointing.
She nodded.
He went to it, took position on one side and knocked. The door opened slightly, and a hand, wrist, and sleeve showed. Allison touched the hand with the heel of his right palm–and pulled an unconscious, white-clad attendant into the room. He laid him neatly by the others and looked again at the needle.
"Aye, ingenious!" he said.
"How are you going to get away?" the girl asked.
For answer, he queried: "Where's your space port?"
"Oh, it's way over on the other side of the city. They'd catch you."
"Do you have air-cars?"
