“You know the take-out routine, Rachel. Here are your ear-plugs—don’t put them in till I say. Now, what we want most of all are your entirely subjective reactions. Absolutely everything you experience from the moment the machinery starts up to the moment you step down from the platform after reentry. Nothing is unimportant, nothing too small to be noted.”
The girl looked up. “We’ve been practicing that sort of thing for more than a year,” she said. “Vill. Psych.’s come up with some very useful tricks.”
There were voices and sounds of movement from the front of the laboratory. By shading her eyes from the lights, as if on a stage, Liza was able to see two new arrivals: David Silberstein and Dr. Meyer. The Founder remained on his chair by the window and Professor Kravchensky was inevitably scuttling from console to console and back again. Liza hoped he wouldn’t actually touch anything: the controls were all set, checked and double-checked. She turned back to Rachel.
“I must leave you now. I have to set up the closed- circuit TV, so that your friends in the crew room can see you. If I don’t get another chance for a word with you, good luck. And remember, there’s nothing to worry about. The technique’s well tested.” Well tested? Barely tested. Untested. “So there’s nothing to worry about.” Surprising herself—was there really a good clinical
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reason for such an action?—she gave Rachel Moser a little hug. Above them the wall clock struck nine with a fanfare of improbable car horns. The real time was three minutes to three.
“Worried?” Rachel Moser spoke softly. “I’m not worried. I trust you, Liza. The Founder’s paranoid, the professor’s an obsessive neurotic, the O.S. is just plain wet. But I trust you, Liza. You wouldn’t let me be here if it wasn’t safe.”
Not today, girl. Last week perhaps, but not today. Not after Roses. Trust nobody, Rachel Moser. They’ll all take you, sooner or later, and chew you up. . . . Liza smiled down at the girl. All that education, all that training, all that foolish trust.
She stepped down off the take-out platform, moved to the TV camera and adjusted it. Cheerfully she turned up the microphone for the viewers across in the crew room. Then she crossed to Dr. Meyer, wishing to incorporate him too, to soil his outsider’s stance by the door.
“There she is, doctor. All yours for a final medical.” “I don’t think so, Miss Simmons. The training staff examined her very carefully before sending her over here.” He spoke softly. “My job here is to pick up the pieces afterwards. If there are any.”
“You have so little faith in the professor?”
“I have some scientific training, Miss Simmons. I know when research is being rushed as well as you do.” And so he remained outside, for further conversation was interrupted by the sudden sound of distant small- arms fire. Liza went to the window. A small civilian hovercraft was approaching rapidly up the Pill. As it neared the quay it put down a heavy smoke screen. “The idiots.” Liza found the O.S. was standing close
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behind her. “Can’t they wait? Don’t they know we’re being closed down anyway?”
“I expect they’re getting in while they can,” said Liza. “Scientist-baiting being the latest national pastime.”
He stared at her for a second, the tension between them momentarily obscured, thinking how young she was to be so bitter. Or were not the young always bitter? What intelligent person wasn’t bitter? He turned away, went quickly to the telephone, rang Color Sergeant Cole.
“Operation 3f I imagine, Color Sergeant. Standard procedure. I’m in the laboratory should you want me. And keep it as quiet as you can—we’ve something rather special on up here. Tell the men. Tell them if everything goes well up here this afternoon they’ll all be safely out of here under the original planned evacuation scheme. Tomorrow evening, perhaps. Before the Ministry moves in.”
He switched off and glanced across at the Founder, seeking permission after the act. The Founder nodded slightly and glanced at his watch. David did the same, saw it was one minute to three. Liza had left the window and was going around the people in the laboratory, handing out ear-plugs. David delayed putting his in— he wanted to be able to hear the progress of the fight down on the quay. The view from the laboratory window was poor, the quay itself being out of sight behind a group of small trees and the roof of the police station.
The hovercraft’s smoke screen drifted, thinning, up Fore Street, and through it David could see the shapes of gas-masked security men at work on the emergency electrified barrier. The hovercraft must be one of the charter vessels owned by a group of cheerful adventurers down at Mevagissy. They were used primarily for evading excise duty on imported drugs, and he had heard that teenagers paid their owners for the privilege
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of working them. It was a new sort of thrill, a new sort of adventure holiday. To them scientist-baiting would be just another item on the prospectus, costing a little more, but well worth it. He hoped Color Sergeant Cole would make sure they got value for their money.
Behind him the elctronic machinery began to whine. He turned from the window to watch the now-familiar routine. He knew he should be experiencing a special tension, as everyone else was: Rachel Moser was the first chrononaut, the first human being to enter chron- omic unity. Such a pretty girl, in her neat red outfit. And all he could feel was dispirited, almost bored. His mind wandered to Roses, to the scratches on his arms that he claimed were done by a cat. Some animal—it must have been mad to attack him like that. The marks were far more likely to have been done by Liza, in the wildness of her passion. The whine increased, and David Silberstein put in his ear-plugs.
Rachel Moser flickered, as countless chairs and coffee pots and embroidered slippers and fine Victorian clocks had flickered before her. As eight dogs, two cats and one sheep had flickered also. In the moment of flickering there was no change in the expression on her face, no sign of pain or pleasure or surprise. She simply flickered and, predictably, as was intended, disappeared. First they saw her and then they didn’t. And the implosion- she caused was enough to rattle the laboratory window even above the noise of the accelerators, the de-buffering equipment, the pulse generators and the occasional grenade lobbed from the hovercraft. The take-out platform was suddenly very empty. The equipment programmed itself down to silence. A small illuminated slot on the main computer console showed the message + takout aok +.
Manny Littlejohn saw it from where he was sitting,
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grieved that nobody had yet taught the thing to spell, and removed his ear-plugs. In the laboratory he was the first to move, and creaking of his joints seemed to him to resound in the utter, frightened silence. He was also, as befitted his position, the first to speak.
“At least the first stage,” he said mildly, “seems to have passed off most excellently well But I shall delay any really gushing congratulations until later. For how long shall we have to contain ourselves until reentry?” “Five minutes.” Although not addressed, it was Liza who answered. The Founder turned his head attentively in her direction: if she was registering any kind of protest he was thankful that, typically, she had waited till now, when it was too late. “Five minutes, sir. It will be very exact. We’ve used nucleic pacing, on account of its greater precision.
The Founder didn’t miss, could hardly have missed, the shape of her inflection. “You sound as if you don’t approve, Miss Simmons.” He was mildly interested, and there were five minutes to be got through. “Greater precision, you say. Greater than what?”
Professor Kravchensky forced himself in front of T .faa. “Take no notice, Founder.” He was angrier than the circumstances seemed to warrant Manny Littlejohn’s interest grew. “She’s got some theory about nucleic pacing putting too much strain on cell structures. It’s pure intuition. There’s no evidence for this whatsoever.”
> “My dear Igor, what we call intuition is often very broadly-based reasoning, but carried out on the subconscious level. I respect it." Manny Littlejohn paused, not quite long enough for the professor to think of a suitable reply. “Tell me, Igor, the experiment you peformed on the sheep—what timing method did you use?”
“There’s my proof, Founder. We used the nucleic
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method. And the sheep suffered no ill effects whatsoever.”
Manny Littlejohn shrugged his shoulders, spread his hand smoothly. “You’re in charge, Igor. Naturally you must do what you think best.”
It was a counterattack, snatching victory from defeat. But the effect of his words, which should have hung menacingly in the still air, heightened by the sounds of fighting from the Village outside, was spoiled by the sudden arrival of Roses, backward, carrying a large dead cat.
“Bloody maniacs,” he said. “Who’d they think they’m shooting at?” Gingerly he felt himself. His fingers found a neat hole in his shirt, mercifully in the baggiest part “Bloody maniacs,” he said again.
He turned, gradually sensing an atmosphere in the room behind him. At the sight of the high-powered wax- work assembly, Liza, David Silberstein, Dr. Meyer, Professor Kravchensky, Manny Littlejohn, his indignation withered.
“Didn’ know there was something on. Wanted to see the professor. Didn’ know there was something on. . . .”
He looked at all the people looking at him, and shuffled his worn blue sneakers.
Liza’s first reaction to his arrival (she had, with care, avoided even seeing him since the night in the hospital) was one of nausea and loathing. Why did he so often have to come into her life carrying something dead? Why did he have to seem so hurt? Her attention was drawn unavoidably down to the cat in his arms. A black cat. Well, a black cat was a black cat. And a dead black cat was flat, all angles, a travesty of what it might alive have been. She had no reason, no reason at all to think it might be the same black cat, the same black cat that she had strapped, protesting, writhing, into its frame not
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two days before. But she knew it was. She had no
reason, but she knew it was. And now it was dead.
“Why have you brought that cat?” she said. “We don’t want it here. Take it away at once.”
“You does things to animals. Then they dies. Tidn’ right.”
“Nonsense. That’s not one of our subjects. The cat we used is alive and well. Go up to the vet’s and see, if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’ you remember how your cat got away? Don’ you remember the do round and round the garden? Don’ you remember the way—?”
“Get out.” David Silbeistein could stand him no longer. “You’re a troublemaker. Get out and stay out.” There were things he didn’t want to hear, things that made him responsible for . . . “Get out, I said. Get back to your filthy hovel.”
But from the Founder, “No. Wait.”
Two words, quiet, unemphatic, asserting total authority. Nobody moved. The Founder, rested now, rose from his seat and, remembering almost with surprise how to do so, walked across the laboratory to where Roses was standing. He examined the small dull corpse.
“A fine young animal. Seemingly unmarked and in his prime.” Then, over his shoulder, without turning, “A victim of nucleic pacing, Igor?”
“Certainly not, Founder. You heard Liza. All our experimental subjects are—”
“Can we not leave out a stage or two in this dreary argument, Igor?” The Founder sighed. “Otherwise you insult me.”
He glanced at his watch. Outside the laboratory the sounds of battle were fading. The security machine had contained the attack, then squeezed it firmly back to the beach. With any luck it would ping, like a lemon
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pip, back onto the hovercraft and depart. The single armed attacker who had penetrated nearly to the laboratory was now dead. The whole operation had taken scarcely five minutes. The Founder turned to confirm the time with the small clock on the master computer. It was counting down the last thirty of Rachel Mosers seconds in chronomic unity.
“A historic moment, Igor. I wish I thought it was the sort of history we were going to be proud of.”
In a timeless somewhere (somewhen?) the nucleic pacers in Rachel Mosers cell structure began to stir. They reactivated the natural buffering mechanism so that Rachel Moser slowed, resisted the chronomic flow, was wrenched back into temporal equilibrium. At the moment when the thrust of her molecular structure against the relentless chronocules exactly matched that of the known universe, she reentered, punctual to within one hundredth of a second.
She sat neatly on her chair, demure in her wisely- chosen red, the expression on her face precisely continuous, still without sign of pain or pleasure or surprise, aware of no interval since for her none had elapsed. She was—though it might be a mixed blessing —five minutes younger than the rest of creation.
The instant passed, as now it had to. It was succeeded by other instants, bringing bewilderment. Bringing pain.
“Head.” She frowned, brought up her palms up to press her temples, closed her eyes, then opened them very wide. “Aches and . . . oh, it aches and . . .” The doctor went to her. Still nobody else moved. He took her wrist and squatted in front of her, staring into her eyes. She recognized him, and tried to smile.
“Doctor, I . . . I gardle and pallit . . . but it’s so . . .” “Don’t try to talk. Just close your eyes and relax. It doesn’t matter. Don’t try to talk.”
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“But it’s better. Twinge. No more . . .” She struggled to get up, but failed. “I just gardle—gardle make always to pallit. You must hing doliber—no, not hing. You must, must doliber always carrapin efton baker on the gardle. That’s not right You muss, muss . . . muss . . .”
Her speech slipped into total shapelessness. The doctor helped her up, and she fell silent. She smiled at him, smiled at everybody in the laboratory. She pointed at her mouth and shook her head, still smiling.
“Gardle,” she said. “Gardle?”
It was a question without an answer. David Silber- stein found himself crying. If only Rachel Moser wouldn’t smile so. She shrugged her shoulders. Moving clumsily she stepped down off the take-out platform, holding out her hand to help the doctor as he followed. The telephone rang.
Manny Littlejohn reached it first “Founder speaking.”
“Mr. Littlejohn?” It was the vet’s voice. Manny Littlejohn turned the loudspeaker down till only he could hear it. “Mr. Littlejohn, I’ve been performing the autopsy on that sheep. I suspected brain damage from the very outset, so—”
“I know,” said Manny Littlejohn. “I know.”
“Severe deterioration in all the centers of higher—”
“I know. We know. Just let me have it in writing, will you?”
“But Founder, there’s evidence of progressive breakdown in all the—”
“In writing if you please, young man.” He sighed, steeling himself for a painful necessity. “And you should have told us sooner. Yes. As soon as the animal died. You’re too late now.” He wondered if he was being clear. “I don’t yet know how best to handle it, but don’t worry—I’ll keep your name out of things if I can.”
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He rang off, and turned slowly back to the others. He met Liza’s questioning gaze unwaveringly. Behind her the doctor was supporting Rachel Moser, a worried, mumbling smile still on her face, out of the laboratory. “It was the vet,” the Founder said. “He tells me the sheep has died.
Nothing more was necessary. And there was the after- math to be considered. He watched Rachel Moser, stumbling now, go through the door.
“Speaking offhand,” he said, “it seems to me that an adequate case for nucleic pacing has still to b
e made. Wouldn’t you agree with me, Igor old friend?”
While Rachel Moser, whom nobody in the laboratory had known as other than a pretty little face and a ~ demure red dress, went away down the stairs. She felt the sun on her face, and in her head the beginnings of a shapeless fear. She held the doctor’s arm more tightly, and smiled at him. At the dark world. Smiled and nodded, her head now a little on one side.
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Boses Varco possessed the rare human quality of being expendable. He was not like others: he did not know what others knew, he did not feel what others felt. And, if worse came to worse (though of course it wouldn’t), none would grieve his passing.
As a human guinea pig for peripheral pacing he would be performing his first, and probably his only, great service to mankind. It was a considerable privilege.
He sat, not in the least sure why or even how, quietly on the take-out platform. He had been on his way there as inevitably as the sun rises in the morning,, ever since Manny Littlejohn first decided on Penheniot as the ideal place for his research center. And now that he had finally made it, nobody, not even he himself, was seriously astonished. His function was at last disclosed, the reason for which he had been bom.
Weighed, examined by Dr. Meyer and pronounced of sound constitution, he now sat on the take-out platform chair and listened with interest to the strange noises his pulse made in his ear-plugged ears. He swallowed saliva, and listened to that also. He could see his reflection in half a dozen different lenses. And everybody was being very kind to him, which was nice.
In the minds of the people around him there was already a reassuring uncertainty about which one of them it was who had first suggested using him. No doubt it
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had been genuinely a group decision, democratic in the deepest sense, the result of an emotional consensus, unspoken, growing unavoidably out of the given situation. Not that it mattered. Often in life a need and a means of satisfying it came hand-in-hand. . . . And (to be practical for a moment), since the main danger seemed to be the possibility of brain damage during reentry, what was more reasonable than to use Roses Varco, a man hardly an asset to society even at the best of times?
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