by Various
Her hair was very thick, intensely black and long, cut squarely off just below the lowest points of her shoulder blades. Heavy brows and long lashes--eyes too--were all intensely, vividly black. Her skin was tanned to a deep and glowing almost-but-not-quite-brown.
"Murchison's Dark Lady!" Hilton gasped. "Larry! You've--we've--I've got that painting here?"
"Oh, yes, sir." The newcomer spoke before Larry could. "At the other end--your part--of the room. You will look now, sir, please?" Her voice was low, rich and as smooth as cream.
Putting her tray down carefully on the end-table, she led him toward the other fireplace. Past the piano, past the tri-di pit; past a towering grillwork holding art treasures by the score. Over to the left, against the wall, there was a big, business-like desk. On the wall, over the desk, hung the painting; a copy of which had been in Hilton's room for over eight years.
He stared at it for at least a minute. He glanced around: at the other priceless duplicates so prodigally present, at his own guns arrayed above the mantel and on each side of the fireplace. Then, without a word, he started back to join Karns. She walked springily beside him.
"What's your name, Miss?" he asked, finally.
"I haven't earned any as yet, sir. My number is ..."
"Never mind that. Your name is 'Dark Lady'."
"Oh, thank you, sir; that is truly wonderful!" And Dark Lady sat cross-legged on the rug at Hilton's feet and busied herself with the esoteric rites of Old Avignon.
Hilton took a deep inhalation and a small sip, then stared at Karns. Karns, over the rim of his glass, stared back.
"I can see where this would be habit-forming," Hilton said, "and very deadly. Extremely deadly."
"Every wish granted. Surrounded by all this." Karns swept his arm through three-quarters of a circle. "Waited on hand and foot by powerful men and by the materializations of the dreams of the greatest, finest artists who ever lived. Fatal? I don't know...."
* * * * *
"My solid hope is that we never have to find out. And when you add in Innocent and Dark Lady.... They look to be about seventeen, but the thought that they're older than the hills of Rome and powered by everlasting atomic engines--" He broke off suddenly and blushed. "Excuse me, please, girls. I know better than to talk about people that way, right in front of them; I really do."
"Do you really think we're people?" Innocent and Dark Lady squealed, as one.
That set Hilton back onto his heels. "I don't know.... I've wondered. Are you?"
Both girls, silent, looked at Larry.
"We don't know, either," Larry said. "At first, of course, there were crude, non-thinking machines. But when the Guide attained its present status, the Masters themselves could not agree. They divided about half and half on the point. They never did settle it any closer than that."
"I certainly won't try to, then. But for my money, you are people," Hilton said, and Karns agreed.
That, of course, touched off a near-riot of joy; after which the two men made an inch-by-inch study of their tremendous living-room. Then, long after bedtime, Larry and Dark Lady escorted Hilton to his bedroom.
"Do you mind, sir, if we sleep on the floor at the sides of your bed?" Larry asked. "Or must we go out into the hall?"
"Sleep? I didn't know you could sleep."
"It is not essential. However, when round-the-clock work is not necessary, and we have opportunity to sleep near a human being, we derive a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from it. You see, sir, we also serve during sleep."
"Okay, I'll try anything once. Sleep wherever you please."
Hilton began to peel, but before he had his shirt off both Larry and Dark Lady were stretched out flat, sound asleep, one almost under each edge of his bed. He slid in between the sheets--it was the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in--and went to sleep as though sandbagged.
He had time to wonder foggily whether the Omans were in fact helping him go to sleep--and then he was asleep.
* * * * *
A month passed. Eight couples had married, the Navy chaplain officiating--in the Perseus, of course, since the warship was, always and everywhere, an integral part of Terra.
Sandra had dropped in one evening to see Hilton about a bit of business. She was now sitting, long dancer's legs out-stretched toward the fire, with a cigarette in her left hand and a tall, cold drink on a coaster at her right.
"This is a wonderful room, Jarvis. It'd be perfect if it weren't quite so ... so mannish."
"What do you expect of Bachelors' Hall--a boudoir? Don't tell me you're going domestic, Sandy, just because you've got a house?"
"Not just that, no. But of course it helped it along."
"Alex is a mighty good man. One of the finest I have ever known."
She eyed him for a moment in silence. "Jarvis Hilton, you are one of the keenest, most intelligent men who ever lived. And yet ..." She broke off and studied him for a good half minute. "Say, if I let my hair clear down, will you?"
"Scout's Oath. That 'and yet' requires elucidation at any cost."
"I know. But first, yes, it's Alex. I never would have believed that any man ever born could hit me so hard. Soon. I didn't want to be the first, but I won't be anywhere near the last. But tell me. You were really in love with Temple, weren't you, when I asked you?"
"Yes."
"Ha! You are letting your hair down! That makes me feel better."
"Huh? Why should it?"
"It elucidates the 'and yet' no end. You were insulated from all other female charms by ye brazen Bells. You see, most of us assistants made a kind of game out of seeing which of us could make you break the Executives' Code. And none of us made it. Teddy and Temple said you didn't know what was going on; Bev and I said nobody as smart as you are could possibly be that stupid."
"You aren't the type to leak or name names--oh, I see. You are merely reporting a conversation. The game had interested, but non-participating, observers. Temple and Teddy, at least."
"At least," she agreed. "But damn it, you aren't stupid. There isn't a stupid bone in your head. So it must be love. And if so, what about marriage? Why don't you and Temple make it a double with Alex and me?"
"That's the most cogent thought you ever had, but setting the date is the bride's business." He glanced at his Oman wristwatch. "It's early yet; let's skip over. I wouldn't mind seeing her a minute or two."
"Thy statement ringeth with truth, friend. Bill's there with Teddy?"
"I imagine so."
"So we'll talk to them about making it a triple. Oh, nice--let's go!"
They left the house and, her hand tucked under his elbow, walked up the street.
* * * * *
Next morning, on her way to the Hall of Records, Sandra stopped off as usual at the office. The Omans were all standing motionless. Hilton was leaning far back in his chair, feet on desk, hands clasped behind head, eyes closed. Knowing what that meant, she turned and started back out on tiptoe.
However, he had heard her. "Can you spare a couple of minutes to think at me, Sandy?"
"Minutes or hours, chief." Tuly placed a chair for her and she sat down, facing him across his desk.
"Thanks, gal. This time it's the Stretts. Sawtelle's been having nightmares, you know, ever since we emerged, about being attacked, and I've been pooh-poohing the idea. But now it's a statistic that the soup is getting thicker, and I can't figure out why. Why in all the hells of space should a stasis that has lasted for over a quarter of a million years be broken at this exact time? The only possible explanation is that we caused the break. And any way I look at that concept, it's plain idiocy."
Both were silent for minutes; and then it was demonstrated again that Terra's Advisory Board had done better than it knew in choosing Sandra Cummings to be Jarvis Hilton's working mate.
"We did cause it, Jarve," she said, finally. "They knew we were coming, even before we got to Fuel Bin. They knew we were human and tried to wipe out the Omans before we got there. Preventive warfar
e, you know."
"They couldn't have known!" he snorted. "Strett detectors are no better than Oman, and you know what Sam Bryant had to say about them."
"I know." Sandra grinned appreciatively. "It's becoming a classic. But it couldn't have been any other way. Besides, I know they did."
He stared at her helplessly, then swung on Larry. "Does that make sense to you?"
"Yes, sir. The Stretts could peyondire as well as the old Masters could, and they undoubtedly still can and do."
"Okay, it does make sense, then." He absented himself in thought, then came to life with a snap. "Okay! The next thing on the agenda is a crash-priority try at a peyondix team. Tuly, you organized a team to generate sathura. Can you do the same for peyondix?"
"If we can find the ingredients, yes, sir."
* * * * *
"I had a hunch. Larry, please ask Teddy Blake's Oman to bring her in here...."
"I'll be running along, then." Sandra started to get up.
"I hope to kiss a green pig you won't!" Hilton snapped. "You're one of the biggest wheels. Larry, we'll want Temple Bells and Beverly Bell--for a start."
"Chief, you positively amaze me," Sandra said then. "Every time you get one of these attacks of genius--or whatever it is--you have me gasping like a fish. Just what can you possibly want of Bev Bell?"
"Whatever it was that enabled her to hit the target against odds of almost infinity to one; not just once, but time after time. By definition, intuition. What quality did you use just now in getting me off the hook? Intuition. What makes Teddy Blake such an unerring performer? Intuition again. My hunches--they're intuition, too. Intuition, hell! Labels--based on utterly abysmal damned dumb ignorance of our own basic frames of reference. Do you think those four kinds of intuition are alike, by seven thousand rows of apple trees?"
"Of course not. I see what you're getting at.... Oh! This'll be fun!"
The others came in and, one by one, Tuly examined each of the four women and the man. Each felt the probing, questioning feelers of her thought prying into the deepest recesses of his mind.
"There is not quite enough of each of three components, all of which are usually associated with the male. You, sir, have much of each, but not enough. I know your men quite well, and I think we will need the doctors Kincaid and Karns and Poynter. But such deep probing is felt. Have I permission, sir?"
"Yes. Tell 'em I said so."
Tuly scanned. "Yes, sir, we should have all three."
"Get 'em, Larry." Then, in the pause that followed: "Sandy, remember yowling about too many sweeties on a team? What do you think of this business of all sweeties?"
"All that proves is that nobody can be wrong all the time," she replied flippantly.
The three men arrived and were instructed. Tuly said: "The great trouble is that each of you must use a portion of your mind that you do not know you have. You, this one. You, that one." Tuly probed mercilessly; so poignantly that each in turn flinched under brand-new and almost unbearable pain. "With you, Doctor Hilton, it will be by far the worst. For you must learn to use almost all the portions of both your minds, the conscious and the unconscious. This must be, because you are the actual peyondixer. The others merely supply energies in which you yourself are deficient. Are you ready for a terrible shock, sir?"
"Shoot."
* * * * *
He thought for a second that he had been shot; that his brain had blown up.
He couldn't stand it--he knew he was going to die--he wished he could die--anything, anything whatever, to end this unbearable agony....
It ended.
Writhing, white and sweating, Hilton opened his eyes. "Ouch," he remarked, conversationally. "What next?"
"You will seize hold of the energies your friends offer. You will bind them to yours and shape the whole into a dimensionless sphere of pure controlled, dirigible energy. And, as well as being the binding force, the cohesiveness, you must also be the captain and the pilot and the astrogator and the ultimately complex computer itself."
"But how can I.... Okay, damn it. I will!"
"Of course you will, sir. Remember also that once the joinings are made I can be of very little more assistance, for my peyondix is as nothing compared to that of your fusion of eight. Now, to assemble the energies and join them you will, all together, deny the existence of the sum total of reality as you know it. Distance does not exist--every point in the reachable universe coincides with every other point and that common point is the focus of your attention. You can be and actually are anywhere you please or everywhere at once. Time does not exist. Space does not exist. There is no such thing as opacity; everything is perfectly transparent, yet every molecule of substance is perceptible in its relationship to every other molecule in the cosmos. Senses do not exist. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, sathura, endovix--all are parts of the one great sense of peyondix. I am guiding each of you seven--closer! Tighter! There! Seize it, sir--and when you work the Stretts you must fix it clearly that time does not exist. You must work in millionths of microseconds instead of in minutes, for they have minds of tremendous power. Reality does not exist! Compress it more, sir. Tighter! Smaller! Rounder! There! Hold it! Reality does not exist--distance does not exist--all possible points are.... Wonderful!"
Tuly screamed the word and the thought: "Good-by! Good luck!"
VIII
Hilton did not have to drive the peyondix-beam to the planet Strett; it was already there. And there was the monstrous First Lord Thinker Zoyar.
Into that mind his multi-mind flashed, its every member as responsive to his will as his own fingers--almost infinitely more so, in fact, because of the tremendous lengths of time required to send messages along nerves.
That horrid mind was scanned cell by cell. Then, after what seemed like a few hours, when a shield began sluggishly to form, Hilton transferred his probe to the mind of the Second Thinker, one Lord Ynos, and absorbed everything she knew. Then, the minds of all the other Thinkers being screened, he studied the whole Strett planet, foot by foot, and everything that was on it.
Then, mission accomplished, Hilton snapped his attention back to his office and the multi-mind fell apart. As he opened his eyes he heard Tuly scream: "... Luck!"
"Oh--you still here, Tuly? How long have we been gone?"
"Approximately one and one-tenth seconds, sir."
"WHAT!"
Beverly Bell, in the haven of Franklin Poynter's arms, fainted quietly. Sandra shrieked piercingly. The four men stared, goggle-eyed. Temple and Teddy, as though by common thought, burrowed their faces into brawny shoulders.
Hilton recovered first. "So that's what peyondix is."
"Yes, sir--I mean no, sir. No, I mean yes, but ..." Tuly paused, licking her lips in that peculiarly human-female gesture of uncertainty.
"Well, what do you mean? It either is or isn't. Or is that necessarily so?"
"Not exactly, sir. That is, it started as peyondix. But it became something else. Not even the most powerful of the old Masters--nobody--ever did or ever could possibly generate such a force as that. Or handle it so fast."
"Well, with seven of the best minds of Terra and a ..."
"Chip-chop the chit-chat!" Karns said, harshly. "What I want to know is whether I was having a nightmare. Can there possibly be a race such as I thought I saw? So utterly savage--ruthless--merciless! So devoid of every human trace and so hell-bent determined on the extermination of every other race in the Galaxy? God damn it, it simply doesn't make sense!"
* * * * *
Eyes went from eyes to eyes to eyes.
All had seen the same indescribably horrible, abysmally atrocious, things. Qualities and quantities and urges and drives that no words in any language could even begin to portray.
"It doesn't seem to, but there it is." Teddy Blake shook her head hopelessly.
Big Bill Karns, hands still shaking, lit a cigarette before he spoke again. "Well, I've never been a proponent of genocide. But it's my considere
d opinion that the Stretts are one race the galaxy can get along without."
"A hell of a lot better without," Poynter said, and all agreed.
"The point is, what can we do about it?" Kincaid asked. "The first thing, I would say, is to see whether we can do this--whatever it is--without Tuly's help. Shall we try it? Although I, for one, don't feel like doing it right away."
"Not I, either." Beverly Bell held up her right hand, which was shaking uncontrollably. "I feel as though I'd been bucking waves, wind and tide for forty-eight straight hours without food, water or touch. Maybe in about a week I'll be ready for another try at it. But today--not a chance!"
"Okay. Scat, all of you," Hilton ordered. "Take the rest of the day off and rest up. Put on your thought-screens and don't take them off for a second from now on. Those Stretts are tough hombres."
Sandra was the last to leave. "And you, boss?" she asked pointedly.
"I've got some thinking to do."
"I'll stay and help you think?"
"Not yet." He shook his head, frowned and then grinned. "You see, chick, I don't even know yet what it is I'm going to have to think about."
"A bit unclear, but I know what you mean--I think. Luck, chief."
* * * * *
In their subterranean sanctum turn on distant Strett, two of the deepest thinkers of that horribly unhuman race were in coldly intent conference via thought.
"My mind has been plundered, Ynos," First Lord Thinker Zoyar radiated, harshly. "Despite the extremely high reactivity of my shield some information--I do not know how much--was taken. The operator was one of the humans of that ship."
"I, too, felt a plucking at my mind. But those humans could not peyondire, First Lord."
"Be logical, fool! At that contact, in the matter of which you erred in not following up continuously, they succeeded in concealing their real abilities from you."
"That could be the truth. Our ancestors erred, then, in recording that all those weak and timid humans had been slain. These offenders are probably their descendants, returning to reclaim their former world."
"The probability must be evaluated and considered. Was it or was it not through human aid that the Omans destroyed most of our task-force?"
