"In," Scoti said, gesturing with his pistol as the door opened.
Ducking down, almost on my hands and knees, I entered the dark opening that immediately became lighted as my presence triggered some kind of mechanism. A staircase led downward from the door to a landing fifteen or so feet below. Beyond the landing I could see nothing.
"Go on," Scoti said, "but not too fast."
I went down the stairs, straightening up as soon as the ceiling got to a decent height, and at the bottom waited for Scoti and the other man.
Now I was standing at one end of a pale-green corridor that extended as far as I could see, finally dwindling in the distance to a vanishing point. Every few feet a bluish-white light burned in the ceiling, more than sufficient to illuminate the corridor. Off in the distance I heard or felt the operation of machinery, but what kind I could not even guess.
There was a door every fifteen or twenty feet on both the right and left, each carefully labeled with characters of an alphabet that I had never before come across in all my cross-Line travels, and I was struck again by the fact that I was dealing with people whose existence was not even suspected by Timeliners and Kriths. If I ever got out of it, wouldn't I have a report to turn in!
"Move," Scoti said, "straight ahead."
Since Scoti's gun looked as mean and ugly as ever, and since my head still hurt like hell and since I didn't know what else to do anyway, I moved as I was told, down the corridor to whatever it was that Scoti and Mica had in mind for me.
At regular intervals, which I guessed to be about a hundred feet apart, other corridors branched off this one to the right and left at 90 degrees. These other corridors were painted the same pale, hospital green and seemed to extend to the underground horizon. This was an enormous place here under the earth.
When we came to the third intersection, Scoti told me to turn left and keep going. I did, counting my paces as I walked.
At first we seemed to be the only ones in the vast, subterranean burrow, but when we had gone a hundred feet or so down the branch tunnel, a door opened before us. A pale blond young man stepped out, nodded to Scoti and the other man, and walked down the corridor in the direction from which we had just come. The fact that he was stark naked except for a wide green belt and a cap of the same color on his head aroused no comment from my captors and seemed to cause the young man no embarrassment. I shrugged.
We stopped for traffic at the next intersection. A man and a woman, both blacks, were coming down the corridor that crossed ours. They wore short, white, sleeveless gowns that reached to their knees. They stopped when they saw us, raised their hands in greeting.
"Good morning, Sol-Jodala," Scoti said.
"Good morning to you, Scoti, and to you, Nardi," the man said with a clipped accent that sounded British but wasn't. "A prisoner?"
"Yes," my captor said. "A Krithian Timeliner working with the British."
"Not the man who kidnapped Sally and the count?" the woman asked, her voice almost identical to the man's.
They all seemed to act as if I weren't there or at least couldn't understand them even though they were speaking English.
"The same," Scoti answered.
The two peered at me for a moment with an animal-in-the-zoo-behind-bars look, then seemed to realize that I was a human being who was aware of them, nodded abruptly and turned back to Scoti.
"How is Sally?" the man asked.
"The poor girl's exhausted," he said, "but other than that she's okay. A few hours' rest will fix her up."
"We just looked in on the count," the woman said. "We believe that he will pull through. The crisis seems to be past."
"I'm glad to hear that," Scoti replied.
"Excuse us, please," the man said. "Morning meditations, you know." Again that pseudo-British accent, but it seemed natural.
"Of course," Scoti said. "Good day, Sol-Jodala."
"Good day," they answered together.
As they turned and started down the corridor, the oddness of it all struck me. The whole time they had not looked at each other or even seemed to recognize the existence of each other, yet they had alternated in speaking, first one, then the other, and now as they walked away I saw that their steps, the swinging of their arms, every motion was perfectly synchronized. Odd, I thought.
"Let's go," Scoti said. "It's not much farther."
Two intersections or so later we finally stopped. The door before which Scoti told me to halt was no different from any of the others and labeled in the same unintelligible alphabet.
Scoti fished a small metal cylinder out of his pocket, peered at one end of it while he twisted a movable band, then seemed to be satisfied and pressed the cylinder against a small white disk on the door. The door hummed and began to swing open.
For half an instant I had my chance. When Scoti stepped back to allow the door to open, it came between us. I stood more beside than in front of the other man and he was watching the door, not me, his gun lax in his hand. Augmentation or no, I'm sure that I could have grabbed the gun from him, shot Scoti before he realized what was happening and then the second man. But what if I did? Killing or escaping from these two just wouldn't have done me a whole hell of a lot of good. In less time than it took to think of it, I decided to play along with my original plan. I'd do as they said and pretend to accept whatever they wanted me to accept, and with my Krithian training and conditioning I believed that I could fool any lie-detection equipment anyone ever made or ever would make. Okay. Play it safe.
"In," Scoti said to me. Then to the other man, "Nardi, you keep an eye on him. I'll go tell G'lendal he's here, and then I'm going to get some rest. I don't think I've slept in three days."
To my surprise Nardi spoke. I had almost come to think he was mute. "Okay," he said. "You look beat."
"I am," Scoti said. "See you later." Then he turned to me. "Watch it, Mathers. I know you're no fool, but don't even think about acting like one."
"Thanks for the advice," I said and stepped through the open doorway, wondering just what was waiting for me inside.
The room was not small and ill-lighted and fitted out with torture devices as I had expected. Just the opposite. The room was a good twenty by twenty feet, pleasant and comfortable-looking. The furniture consisted of a bed, two easy chairs, a sofa, two unusual-looking lamps, two low tables, three landscapes on the wall, and a device that looked like some kind of intercom. Off to the left a door opened into what appeared to be a bathroom and another door led into a closet. A rather comfortable dungeon, I thought.
"Sit down, Mathers," Nardi said, gesturing toward the chairs and sofa. "Just take a load off your feet until G'lendal gets here."
I did as he said, realizing that despite the sleep I had got in the skudder, I was still pretty well worn out.
"You wouldn't have a cigarette on you, would you?" I asked.
Nardi, still standing in the center of the room, reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a partially crumpled pack of cigarettes, Players, local origin, and a book of matches. He tossed them on the sofa beside me.
"Go ahead," he said.
"Thanks. You want one?"
"No," he answered, sitting down on the bed, keeping his eyes on me.
"Who's this G'lendal, anyway?" I asked.
"She's our chief interrogator."
"Interrogator?"
Nardi smiled. "Oh, don't worry. We don't use rubber hoses and thumbscrews. She'll just ask you a few questions and see how you react to them."
"And if I don't react right?"
"Look, fella, Scoti didn't bring you here to torture you. Tomorrow, I guess, Mica will explain the whole setup to you. If you listen to reason and if G'lendal believes you, then you'll probably be put on probation. If not . . . well, if you're too damned hardheaded to see the truth when it's shown to you, that's your tough luck." He paused. "But as for right now all G'lendal's going to do is feel you out."
On the table beside the sofa where I sat was an ashtray and
three worn books stacked on top of each other. I picked them up and glanced at their paper covers. The top one showed the picture of a Krith, a particularly ugly and unpleasant-looking Kirth at that, and the book's title was The Greatest Lie, by Martin Latham, subtitled How Uncounted Human Beings Have Been Duped by the Kirths into Assisting Them in Their Conquest of Paratime. The back cover, embellished with a full-length portrait of a naked Krith standing over a huddled man, went on to say something like: "Here, for the first time in a single volume, is Martin Latham's full story of the Krithian plot to conquer humanity. How their lies are created and how men are led to believe them. How Krithian lies are reinforced by distortions of reality. What some men will do in the name of Krithian domination . . ." and so on like that.
The second book was smaller than the first and not as badly worn. On its cover were only four words in letters at least an inch and a half high: What Is a Krith?
Good question. I'd like to know the answer to that one myself.
The final volume showed a full-color holograph of a beautiful nude woman standing against a background of Eden-like surroundings. It was called Paradise in Paratime and was subtitled Rewards for the Ultimate Treason.
Propaganda, all of it. And I realized that I was just beginning to encounter it. These people obviously believed, or wanted to believe, that the Kriths -- and we Timeliners too -- were a menace, and I knew that I was going to be pelted with it until I yielded or at least appeared to yield. I supposed that reading these books would be a part of my indoctrination. Okay, I'd read them.
Even though the cover of Paradise in Paratime intrigued me the most, I put it aside for The Greatest Lie. That one looked like the chief propaganda work -- and as I later found out it was virtually the bible of the Paratimers -- so I figured I'd better read it first and try to get my own lies in order.
I hadn't got beyond the title page when the door opened.
G'lendal, too, was a very pleasant surprise. I had expected a middle-aged, stocky, hard-faced policewoman type. She was anything but that.
At least twenty years old, but certainly no older than twenty-five, G'lendal was a diminutive ebony statue of Aphrodite straight from one of the more sensual cults of my own Line. About five feet tall, skin the color of black satin, hair long and black as interstellar space, a figure only partially hidden by the shimmering gown she wore, a figure whose proportions would have been impressive on a woman a foot taller than she was.
God, she's beautiful, I thought. Maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life.
In her hand she carried a black case about the size and shape of a large overnight case.
"Good morning, Nardi," she said smiling.
"Hello, G'lendal," he replied, stumbling over his words as if he were as stunned by her as I was. "This is Eric Mathers."
I stood up.
"Good morning, Eric Mathers," she said, smiling, setting the case on the floor beside one of the chairs. "That's not your real name, is it?" There was no trace of an accent in the American English she spoke.
"No," I said as she sat down in the chair and I returned to the sofa.
"That's a name the Kriths gave you," she said. "There aren't any Kriths here. You can be honest with me. In fact, you must."
I looked at her for a long while without speaking.
"You know why I'm here, don't you?"
"I think so."
"Then let's be honest. You can start by telling me your real name."
Why not? I asked myself. There wasn't much point in pretending to be a British colonial when everybody knew I wasn't.
"Thimbron Parnassos," I said at last, and it was the truth.
"I think I shall call you Eric. It is easier to say."
"It's up to you."
"Now listen to me, Eric," she said earnestly. "We're not your enemies here unless you make us be. I only want to help you. Your whole life has been a series of lies and you had no way of knowing that you were being told lies. If you'll merely be open-minded about it, you'll see the truth."
"And what is this truth you want me to see?"
"That the Kriths are monsters determined to enslave the human race," she said slowly.
"That's kind of hard for me to swallow," I told her. "I've only seen them helping us."
"In due time it will all be explained to you. All I ask, all that any of us asks, is that you listen."
"Okay," I said. "I've been given to understand that if I don't, I'll probably get my head blown off."
"Probably," she said and smiled. "Now I'd like to run a few tests on you just to establish some reference points."
"Tests?"
"To establish truth indices, you might say. Will you cooperate?"
"Would it matter if I didn't?"
"I would prefer to use as few drugs as possible."
"Okay, let's get on with it."
G'lendal smiled again. "Very good, Eric."
She rose from the chair, placed her case on the table beside the sofa. "First I'd like for you to take your clothes off and give them to Nardi," she said. "Then you may go into the bathroom and shave and shower, if you like. I'm sure it would make you feel better."
Nardi had a gun in case I didn't do as she said, so I undressed.
"Everything," she said, smiliing when I got down to my shorts and paused for a moment. "I'm sorry if it embarrasses you, but it's necessary."
I nodded, unsnapped the shorts, and let them drop to the floor. I stood there as bare-naked as the day I was born, and it didn't seem to bother anyone but me. I suppose I'd been around the British too long.
"Roll them up and hand them to Nardi, please," G'lendal said, neither looking at me nor ignoring me as she opened her case and reached inside. "Your personal possessions -- if you have any left -- will be inspected and returned to you." She glanced over her shoulder at Nardi. "I assume that Scoti checked him," she said.
Nardi nodded. "He got all the dangerous stuff off him while he was unconscious." Nardi didn't look at me while he spoke. "He's an Augie, of course."
"Of course," G'lendal replied.
She had taken several small objects from her case and now held them in her hands.
"I assume that your augmentation control center is located between your shoulder blades?" she asked.
I nodded. I thought she could have found it easily enough even if I denied it.
"Hold still for a moment, please," she said. "This won't hurt at all, but it will render your augmentation controls useless."
She approached my naked back and pressed cold metal against it. There was a short shrill buzzing, and I felt something dying within me, electrobiological circuits being killed. As she said, it didn't hurt -- at least not physically. I felt as though I had lost a part of me.
"That's all there is to it," she said, stepping away. "You're an ordinary man now, Eric. Try to remember that."
I didn't speak.
"You may go shave and shower now," she said. "The bathroom is fully equipped."
When I came back into the room, my body still damp and my face still tingling from the odd shaver that seemed to dissolve my whiskers, a wet towel wrapped around my waist, G'lendal was assembling something on the table that I took to be a lie detector of some sort.
"Feel better?" she asked.
"Yes, some," I said, "but I could use some sleep." Though my senses were dulled from lack of sleep, G'lendal had dulled them even more by removing my augmentation. As she said, I was an ordinary man now, though I didn't resent her having done it. I would have done the same to an augmented captive.
"This won't take long," she said. "Then you can sleep as long as you like. Please take off that towel and sit down in this chair." She pointed with a long-nailed finger.
"You need any help?" Nardi asked.
"No, just stay where you are," G'lendal answered. Then to me, "Your wounds need attending to."
"I wouldn't object," I told her, feeling the tingling along my side from the bullet graze and the ache i
n the back of my head where Scoti had slugged me.
"Very well," the black girl said, fishing another kit from her case. "Hold still."
She sprinkled a bluish powder on the graze wound on my side and then covered it with a transparent adhesive bandage that seemed to melt into my flesh. I suppose that she did about the same to the back of my head, though I was unable to observe.
"That feel better?" she asked.
"Yes, I think so."
"Good," she said. "Now I'm going to tape some electrodes to your body. Don't be alarmed. They won't hurt."
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