"I hope you know what you're doing," Shaw caressed his bruised head and scowled in sympathy. "Like I said, I don't want to take sides, but it's no more than fair to warn you that you're heading into a bomb, going back to the domes. If you are Taylor, you've been missing a hell of a long time, and there's been seventeen different kinds of panic-call about you, and the dame. The top committee is fit to do murder, and not fussy about whom they pick."
Anthony hid his chagrin. This was an aspect he had overlooked in his nebulous plans. He had so long been accustomed to think of himself as a nonentity that it had never occurred to him he would be missed, or that the missing would be an occasion for uproar. The germ of a notion tried to get rooted in his mind but was swamped by the thought that this was just one more complication to the deadlock.
"Deadlock!" He said it aloud. Shaw eyed him curiously, and Anthony smiled a sour smile. "My people have been abused, exploited, treated as animals and worse. And yet, if we try to take action to correct the mistaken impression
122 it will immediately be construed" as a threat, a menace. I don't want that. None of us wants it." "What do you want, anyway?"
"Immediately? That the present state of affairs should stop, that the green people be accepted as equals. Different in many ways, but equal. This is OUT planet!"
"I wish you luck." Shaw sounded sincere but troubled. "I can't see how you're going to do it. You're bothering me, even, just sitting there and talking like a white man, when I can see you're not. Maybe if I shut my eyes it would be different. I could be wrong, but my guess is the only way you will do it is by force. That's something we humans understand."
"And the result? You know what would be the outcome of that, only too well."
"Dead right," Shaw muttered, his eyes going appreciatively to Lovely, and nicking away again every time she rewarded him with a smile. "One thing we humans are very good at, and that's force. Look, I'd better move up front with Hoby, keep an eye on him. I don't want to know what scheme you're planning. It's better that way, I reckon."
As he staggered away, Anthony leaned across to her to murmur, "The others are still in touch?"
"Yes. They follow. What are you thinking?"
"It would be better if you didn't know until I've worked it out more. In the meantime there's something that can be done." And he put his head close to hers to explain exactly what he wanted. Lurching along in the powerful car, surrounded by the sophistication of human technology, it was eerie to realize that as fast as he could formulate the designs, hundreds of thousands of distant green people were responding, moving, preparing to carry out his wishes.
Her eyes widened as she absorbed what he was saying. "It is so huge?" she wondered. "And yet so easily destroyed as you say? That no more than a breath holds it up?"
"Like a bubble on the surface of water." he nodded. "Natural forces like this are understood by humans, and used by them. This car, the cool feeling, the lights, all are natural things which the humans have taken and used for their own wishes."
"They are wonderful beings. I am glad we will not be
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against them. This is 'cool,' this feeling of being in water, but dry?"
"Right. You like it?" He watched her face, and could share her pleasure in this utterly foreign but exciting sensation. "Inside the domes it is like this all the time. On Earth, most of the places on Earth, it is like this, also. That is one of the reasons why Earth people wear clothing, and why they dislike our climate."
"Cool. Dry. Clothing. So many new and exciting things the humans have. And we have so little."
He frowned at that, his memory telling him of the sad fate of the primitive savage who leams to yeam for the superficial sparkle of civilized life. But, he corrected himself quickly, these people were not primitive, not mentally. And they did have something, something very valuable to certain other people.
The car roared on, dipping and plunging, tearing blindly through the pearly mist, warned of obstructions by its sonar, and led as if on a string by the beacon-marker. Anthony schooled himself to be patient, to avoid worrying about troubles before they came. From time to time he set himself to "play" selected pieces of music for the unseen and ant-like throng out there. They liked marching melodies and dancing rhythms, and no performer was ever so eagerly listened to, or so keenly aware of audience reaction.
After a while Shaw took over at the controls to let Wilson come back and sit and light a smoke for himself. His face was a gruesome sight, what with the puffing around his eyes from the blow, dried streaks of blood, and the gobs of antiseptic and soothing jelly Shaw had smeared on him as temporary medication. He was in pain, too, as Anthony could tell without having to make the effort to "contact" him.
"Should be sighting the dome in about an hour," he growled. "You'll get yours then, Greenie. That's what I'm waiting for. You'll get yours."
"Why do you hate us so much?" Lovely asked, and the simple question seemed to infuriate the injured man.
"Damned uppity animals trying to act like humans. You've got the edge right now, all right, but just wait till we get in I" His senseless anger was an ugly thing, but it prompted Anthony to reflect again on his tentative plans.
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He went to sit by Shaw. "You've probably guessed that I'm planning to get into the dome," he murmured. "And I'm going to. But where will that leave you? Will you raise the alarm? I can't expect you to try to pass us in."
Shaw frowned at his instrument board, struggling with a decision. "You want a hell of a lot of trust from me, Taylor. I don't know. You could fasten us up with something, give us an alibi in case you flop. I reckon you will. Flop, I mean. But suppose you do rope us, and then go ahead and slaughter a couple hundred humans? How am I going to feel, afterwards?"
"I'm sorry for you. I can't help, except to say that it is not my intention to kill anyone unless I am compelled to."
"Doesn't every revolutionary say that?"
"I suppose so," Anthony sighed. It was true. This was a revolution. But if he had any say in the matter, it was going to be different from all the others that had ever been known.
He left Shaw and went to the rear of the vehicle, searching among the equipment for enough stout plastic line to serve. Then he nodded to Lovely, who had been watching him. By this time the need for detailed explanation between them was slight. Wilson never had chance to make a sound. Only his eyes betrayed his rage, and fear, as the invisible bonds held him long enough for Anthony to rope him securely. Then the car was run to a halt long enough to make Shaw similarly helpless, and Anthony took over the controls. The marker pulse was very strong now, flooding the whole of the indicator quadrant with each beat, and the sonar picture was plain. In a little while the milky headlights gave back a reflection that could only be an artificial surface, a huge plane of smoothness, rearing up.
"This is it," Anthony breathed, and Lovely crouched by his side to peer through the viewfinder screen. She was shivering, and for the first time in his experiences with her, the rapport was broken. She had shut herself off from him. Intuition told him why. She was afraid. It was one thing to contemplate this alien environment from a distance, but something quite other to be confronted by the reality of it. She was afraid!
He wasted no time in reproach, or anger. Instead, with pressing urgency, he asked her, "When you hunt, out in
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the mist among dangers, do you ever try to make yourself unseen, to make suggestions in the mind of the animal threatening you such that it cannot see you?"
The question caught her attention away from the picture of out there, made her pretty brow wrinkle in thought. "What does this mean? How can it not see what is there?"
"You made the worm think it was pursuing food. You made it see what was not there. Can you not do the same now? We will be going inside, to pass among many humans. You know how to touch them, now. Can you make them not see us?"
She rejected the idea at once, as he could tell by her face. Sn
atching a glance ahead, and at the panel, he knew there was an entrance-lock quite close now. Once again desperation drove him to inspirations he would never have contemplated in saner moments.
"Never mind," he said. "Leave it to me. Just give me the power, as I need it, and let me channel it."
He cut the motor to a crawl, and then to a stop as he saw the entrance-port begin to cycle open in response to the built-in signal from the car.
"Come on, out," he said, "and follow me. Do as I do. You are a white human woman, returning from a short journey. Think that. Believe it. Believe it strongly!"
He scrambled out into the suddenly oppressive heat and headed for the slowly-opening door, knowing that she was at his heels. In his mind, as strongly assured as he could make it, was a personal image of himself as he had been the last time he had gone in by such a door. White, human, clothed, and with a white woman. Believe it! he ordered himself. Believe it, project it, assume that everyone within eye-shot accepts it! He strode into the space between the walls, into the harsh glare and the grumble of busy machinery. A small knot of technicians some distance away gave him an indifferendy curious glance and returned to their work. He bit down on a sudden elation. It worked, but it had to be kept working. He took her hand, halting her for a moment.
"See this," he urged. "See it well, and pass it to the others." In brief gestures, augmented with mental pictures, still struggling to maintain the illusion of human appearance, he explained to her the double-wall arrangement and the
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purpose of the machines, gave her a clear mental image of the great ballooning wall of plastic which rose from this space. Not so far away now a horde of green people, each armed with a razor-edged sword-leaf, absorbed the information as fast as it was passed, and began to arrange themselves in a certain order. Smothering his doubts, Anthony led her now to the inner door.
"Do not be distracted by anything that you see. Just follow. Do as I do, and do not break the flow of power, whatever happens."
She seized his hand. "Anthony ... I am afraid. It is so huge!"
"I know. Be afraid all you want, there's no shame in that. But believe in me; believe that you have every right to be here; believe that everything is going to be fine; believe! Remember that three hundred million of your people are depending on you, and through you and me, at this moment."
The door hummed open and he stepped over the sill, leading her in. He felt again that sudden shiver as the cool dry atmosphere leached away the thin film of moisture from his skin. Then he heard her gasp, and felt sympathy. The first look at this fairyland had shaken him. How much more would it stagger her, who had never known anything remotely resembling it?
"It is so beautiful," she breathed. "So beautiful. And real? It is not a sleeping-picture?"
"A dream, you mean?" It had never occurred to him to think that she dreamed, and the small astonishment threatened his mental control for a moment. Then he put it aside for some other time. "This is another thing Earth people do. They take dreams and try to make them real. But they seldom succeed so well as this." He left it at that, not wishing to point up the fact that this sweet-cake-and-icing picture was more illusion than anything else. He led her to a nearby floater and was handing her aboard when a startled roar made him swing round, stomach knotting in sudden panic.
"Hey! Taylor! Where the hell have you been?" It was the forthright and red-headed Barney Lyons, staring-eyed and indignant. Anthony met his eye, torn between elation at this confirmation of the effectiveness of his illusion, and sinking
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chagrin that of all the many people in this dome they had to run right into someone who knew them. Them? Lyons came close, nodded to Lovely.
"Am I glad to see you two safe! And is there going to be one hell of a stink about this! No, never mind the explanations right now. Just hang on." He climbed up on the floater beside Anthony. "I'm taking you to Bord Harper, right away. And M'Grath. This, I want to seel" He spun the car and sent it skimming along a wide lane, a route Anthony recognized only too well.
He felt Lovely's clutch on his arm and put his hand on hers in reassurance. "He believes me to be as I was," he whispered. "And is taking you for the woman who was with me before. Don't bother about it now. I had not meant it this way, but it is all to the good. Is the other operation all ready?"
"Not yet," she breathed, "but very soon now."
"Good! Just be confident. All is going to come out fine. You'll see."
He heard Lyons mumbling into a communicator, but he was much more engrossed in trying to guess just what awaited them as they slid to a halt before the great central assembly building. As they reached the top of the great flight of stairs he cast a quick glance backward and saw the first wave of scurrying float-cars in hot pursuit.
M'Grath was as massive, and as thunderously impassive, as ever. By his side Borden Harper stood angrily, containing himself with an obvious effort. He repeated the question Lyons had asked, as the trio hurried down the ramp-stairs to the central ampitheater.
"Where the hell have you two been? You'll have to bear with my language, Miss MerrilL but I feel it's justified. Talk, Taylor. Four weeks ago, in the middle of Harvest, you vanished. We turned the entire colony inside out to look for you. We've had cars out combing the local area, even though we knew it was pretty futile. We've had the damnedest communications from home. Your colleague, Willers, shipped out three days ago, and what hell say when he reaches Earth I shudder to think. So, by God, you're going to talk, and it had better be good, or you'll regret the day you ever were born. That I can promise you."
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"I've done that a few times already," Anthony said, feeling a sudden wave of savage elation, a surge of confidence. "Your threat doesn't scare me one bit, Harper. Nor anything else you can do. Not anythingl"
"One momentl" M'Grath put a massive hand on Harper's arm to still his angry retort. "I sense something different about our errant piano-player, a new arrogance. What did you find, out there, Taylor?"
"What have I found? Myself. And three hundred million green people. Not animals, Harper. People I People who know why you're here, what you're doing and why. Work it out for yourself how they feel about it. I'm saying no more now. I see you've sent out a call, and that the crowd is gathering. When I do talk, it will be to all of them, not just you."
"You're out of your mind," Harper snarled. "You couldn't have lasted a day out there, not on your own. Somebody put you up to this. Somebody's using you as a tooll" He swiveled his gaze to Lovely. "Are you in on this too, Miss Merrill?"
"She is with me in everything," Anthony said, taking her hand.
"Call it my conceit," M'Grath rumbled, "but I pride myself I can detect the sound of sincerity, and that, while no guarantee of accuracy, should give us reason to pause and be cautious. The figure intrigues me, too. Three hundred million! Taylor, are you saying that you have succeeded where our best scientists have failed, that you can communicate with these sub-human—"
"Your best scientists?" Anthony interrupted, raising his voice over the growing hubbub of the gathering crowd as they settled around the tiered seats of the great hall. "Biologists, perhaps? But you're a psychologist. You should be aware that even the cleverest scientist cannot communicate with an imbecile, an idiot, or a mental defective. How would an alien judge human beings, if all he ever met were the inmates of an institution for the sub-normal?"
M'Grath's jowly face grew a sudden perplexity and he would have spoken, but Harper was too impatient to wait. "Whoever's using you to drive a wedge in between us is due for a big shock," he said. "I know only too well just how the majority of people back home hate our guts—
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how they'd like to see us broken. And this little stunt hasn't helped any. But we've got a card to play, the sensible ones among us. We'll find out just who cooked up this notion, and smash him. And Earth will have to lump it. Because without us—no beans!"
Anthony felt Lovely's hand twitch
in his. All unwittingly, Harper had said the one thing needed to make her determination assert itself again. He turned to see that the auditorium was almost full, that there were more here than there had been for his music recital, so long ago it seemed. This time none of them wanted to view by device. They wanted to see this in person. Even the sober-clad technical staff had come in droves.
Harper stepped to the fore, raising his hands. "You've all heard, that's obvious. Here are the precious couple all the fuss was about. Safe and sound. Unharmed. I assume that, like me, you are all glad nothing has happened to them. But, getting that out of the way, you'll want to know just what did happen? I think I know. I think this was a put-up job by somebody, or some group, right here in our midst. Somebody with funny ideas about shaking up the present arrangements. That's what I think. If that turns out to be true, we'll know what to do, I reckon." He paused to smile savagely at the many-voiced growl of anger that grew out of the crowd. Anthony pressed the trembling fingers that lay in his own.
"Now, as never before," he whispered, "I need your belief, your trust, your power. Just give it, all of it, and let me channel it as I decide."
'There will be no killing?"
"No. That I promise. Some may die of fright or folly. For them, I cannot be responsible. But there will be no killing."
"All right!" Harper waved a hand. "Let's hear what they have to say, first of all. Let's play this thing fair. Taylor, you have the floor."
Anthony went forward two paces, leading Lovely with him. To Harper, he said quiedy, "I presume the other domes are watching this? By land-lines of some kind?"
"You can bet on it. You've got your audience. It had better be good!" Harper said, stepping away to one side.
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Anthony turned to face the eager throng. "I am Anthony Taylor," he said, "King of the Greenies."
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