As though this thought freed him, Thurlow found he could move his legs. He began backing away, dragging Ruth with him. She was a heavy, unmoving weight. Her feet scraped against the gravel in the tank's surface.
His movement set off a flurry of activity among the creatures beneath the green dome. They buzzed and fussed over their square machine. A painful constriction seized Thurlow's chest. Each breath took a laboring concentration. Still, he continued backing away dragging Ruth with him. She sagged in his arms now. His foot encountered a step and he almost fell. Slowly, he began inching backward up the steps. Ruth was a dead weight.
"Andy," she gasped. "Can't . . . breathe."
"Hold . . . on," he rasped.
They were at the top of the steps now, then back through the gap in the stone wall. Movement became somewhat easier, although he could still see the domed object hovering beyond the water storage tank. The glowing antennae remained pointed at him.
Ruth began to move her legs. She turned, and they hobbled together onto the bridle path. Each step grew easier. Thurlow could hear her taking deep, sighing breaths. Abruptly, as though a weight had been lifted from them, they regained full use of their muscles.
They turned.
"It's gone," Thurlow said.
She reacted with an anger that astonished him. "What were you trying to pull back there, Andy Thurlow? Frightening me half out of my wits!"
"I saw what I told you I saw," he said. "You may not've seen it, but you certainly felt it."
"Hysterical paralysis," she said.
"It gripped us both at the same instant and left us both at the same instant," he said.
"Why not?"
"Ruth, I saw exactly what I described."
"Flying saucers!" she sneered.
"No . . . well, maybe. But it was there!" He was angry now, defensive. A rational part of him saw how insane the past few minutes had been. Could it have been illusion? No! He shook his head. "Honey, I saw . . ."
"Don't you honey me!"
He grabbed her shoulders, shook her. "Ruth! Two minutes ago you were saying you love me. Can you turn it off just like that?"
"I . . ."
"Does somebody want you to hate me?"
"What?" She stared up at him, her face dim in the tree lights.
"Back there . . ." He nodded toward the tank. "I felt myself angry with you . . . hating you. I told myself I couldn't hate you. I love you. That's when I found I could move. But when I felt the . . . hate, the instant I felt it, that was exactly when they pointed their machine at us."
"What machine?"
"Some kind of box with glowing rods or antennae sticking out of it."
"Are you trying to tell me that those nutty . . . whatever could make you feel hate . . . or . . ."
"That's how it felt."
"That's the craziest thing I ever heard!" She backed away from him.
"I know it's crazy, but that's how it felt." He reached for her arm. "Let's get back to the car."
Ruth pulled away. "I'm not going a step with you until you explain what happened out there."
"I can't explain it."
"How could you see it when I couldn't?"
"Maybe the accident . . . my eyes, the polarizing glasses."
"Are you sure that accident at the radlab didn't injure more than your eyes?"
He suppressed a surge of anger. It was so easy to feel angry. With some difficulty, he held his voice level. "They had me on the artificial kidney for a week and with every test known to God and man. The burst altered the ion exchange system in the cones of my retinas. That's all. And it isn't permanent. But I think whatever happened to my eyes, that's why I can see these things. I'm not supposed to see them, but I can."
Again, he reached for her, captured her arm. Half dragging her, he set off down the path. She fell into step beside him.
"But what could they be?" she asked.
"I don't know, but they're real. Trust me, Ruth. Trust that much. They're real." He knew he was begging and hated himself for it, but Ruth moved closer, tucked her arm under his.
"All right, darling, I trust you. You saw what you saw. What're you going to do about it?"
They came off the trail and into the eucalyptus grove. The car was a darker shape among shadows. Thurlow drew her to a stop beside it.
"How hard is it to believe me?" he asked.
She was silent for a moment, then: "It's . . . difficult."
"Okay," he said. "Kiss me."
"What?"
"Kiss me. Let's see if you really hate me."
"Andy, you're being . . ."
"Are you afraid to kiss me?"
"Of course not!"
"Okay then." He pulled her to him. Their lips met. For an instant, he sensed resistance, then she melted into his embrace, her arms creeping behind his neck.
Presently, he drew away.
"If that's hate, I want lots of it," he said.
"Me, too."
Again, she pressed herself against him.
Thurlow felt his blood pounding. He pulled away with an abrupt, defensive motion.
"Sometimes I wish you weren't so damned Victorian," she said. "But maybe I wouldn't love you then." He brushed a strand of the red hair away from her cheek. How faintly glowing her face looked in the light from the bridle trail lamps behind him. "I think I'd better take you home . . . to Sarah."
"I don't want you to take me home."
"I don't want you to go home."
"But I'd better?"
"You'd better."
She put her hands against his chest, pushed away.
They got into the car, moving with a sudden swift embarrassment. Thurlow started the engine, concentrated on backing to the turn-around. The headlights picked out lines of crusty brown bark on the trees. Abruptly, the headlights went dark. The engine died with a gasping cough. A breathless, oppressive sensation seized him.
"Andy!" Ruth said. "What's happening?"
Thurlow forced himself to turn to the left, wondering how he knew where to look. There were four rainbow glows close to the ground, the tubular legs and the green dome just outside the grove. The thing hovered there, silent, menacing.
"They're back," he whispered. "Right there." He pointed.
"Andy . . . Andy, I'm frightened." She huddled against him.
"No matter what happens, you don't hate me," he said. "You love me. Remember that. You love me. Keep it in your mind."
"I love you." Her voice was faint.
A directionless sense of anger began to fill Thurlow. It had no object at first. Just anger. Then he could actually feel it trying to point at Ruth.
"I . . . want to . . . hate you," she whispered.
"You love me," he said. "Don't forget that."
"I love you. Oh, Andy, I love you. I don't want to hate you . . . I love you."
Thurlow lifted a fist, shook it at the green dome. "Hate them," he rasped. "Hate bastards who'd try to manipulate us that way."
He could feel her shaking and trembling against his shoulder. "I . . . hate . . . them," she said.
"Now, do you believe me?"
"Yes! Yes, I believe you!"
"Could the car have hysterical paralysis?"
"No. Oh, Andy, I couldn't just turn on hate against you. I couldn't." His arm ached where she clutched it. "What are they? My God! What is it?"
"I don't think they're human," Thurlow said.
"What're we going to do?"
"Anything we can."
The rainbow circles beneath the dome shifted into the blue, then violet and into the red. The thing began to lift away from the grove. It receded into the darkness. With it went the sense of oppression.
"It's gone, isn't it?" Ruth whispered.
"It's gone."
"Your lights are on," she said.
He looked down at the dash lights, out at the twin cones of the headlights stabbing into the grove.
He recalled the shape of the thing then -- like a giant spider ready to
pounce on them. He shuddered. What were the creatures in that ominous machine?
Like a giant spider.
His mind dredged up a memory out of childhood: Oberorn's palace has walls of spider's legs.
Were they faerie, the huldu-folk?
Where did the myths originate? he wondered. He could feel his mind questing down old paths and he remembered a verse from those days of innocence.
"See ye not yon bonny road
That winds about yon fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland.
Where thou and I this night maun gae."
"Hadn't we better go?" Ruth asked.
He started the engine, his hands moving automatically through the kinesthetic pattern.
"It stopped the motor and turned off the lights," Ruth said. "Why would they do that?"
They! he thought. No doubts now.
He headed the car out of the grove down the hill toward Moreno Drive.
"What're we going to do?" Ruth asked.
"Can we do anything?"
"If we talk about it, people'll say we're crazy. Besides . . . the two of us . . . up here . . ."
We're neatly boxed, he thought. And he imagined what Whelye would say to a recountal of this night's experiences. "You were with another man's wife, you say? Could guilt feelings have brought on this shared delusion?" And if this met with protests and further suggestions, "Faerie folk? My dear Thurlow, do you feel well?"
Ruth leaned against him. "Andy, if they could make us hate, could they make us love?"
He swerved the car over to the shoulder of the road, turned off the motor, set the handbrake, extinguished the lights. "They're not here right now."
"How do we know?"
He stared around at the night -- blackness, not even starlight under those clouds . . . no glow of weird object -- but beyond the trees bordering the road . . . what?
Could they make us love?
Damn her for asking such a question!
No! I mustn't damn her. I must love her . . . I . . . must.
"Andy? What're you doing?"
"Thinking."
"Andy, I still find this whole thing so unreal. Couldn't there be some other explanation? I mean, your motor stopping . . . Motors do stop; lights go out. Don't they?"
"What do you want from me?" he asked. "Do you want me to say yes, I'm nuts, I'm deluded. I'm . . ."
She put a hand over his mouth. "What I want is for you to make love to me and never stop."
He started to put an arm around her, but she pushed him away. "No. When that happens, I want to know it's us making love, not someone forcing us."
Damn her practicality! he thought. Then: No! I love her . . . but is it me loving her? Is it my own doing?
"Andy? There is something you can do for me."
"What?"
"The house on Manchester Avenue . . . where Nev and I were living -- there're some things I want from there, but I've been afraid to go over there alone. Would you take me?"
"Now?"
"It's early yet. Nev may still be down at the plant. My . . . father made him assistant manager, you know. Hasn't anyone told you that's why he married me? To get the business."
Thurlow put a hand on her arm. "You want him to know . . . about us?"
"What's there to know?"
He returned his hand to the steering wheel. "Okay, darling. As you say."
Again, he started the motor, pulled the car onto the road. They drove in silence. The tires hissed against wet pavement. Other cars passed, their lights glaring. Thurlow adjusted the polarizing lenses. It was a delicate thing -- to give him enough visibility but prevent the pain of sudden light.
Presently, Ruth said: "I don't want any trouble, a fight. You wait for me in the car. If I need help, I'll call."
"You're sure you don't want me to go in with you?"
"He won't try anything if he knows you're there."
He shrugged. She was probably right. Certainly, she must know Nev Hudson's character by now. But Thurlow still felt a nagging sensation of suspended judgment. He suspected the events of the past few days, even the menacing encounter of this night, made some odd kind of sense.
"Why did I marry him?" Ruth asked. "I keep asking myself. God knows. I don't. It just seemed to come to the point where . . ." She shrugged. "After tonight, I wonder if any of us knows why we do what we do."
She looked up at Thurlow. "Why is this happening, darling?"
That's it, Thurlow thought. There's the sixty-four dollar question. It's not who are these creatures? It's . . . what do they want? Why are they interfering in our lives?
8
Fraffin glared at the image projected above his desk. It was Lutt, his Master-of-Craft, a broad-faced Chem, steely skinned, harsh and abrupt in his decisions, lacking subtlety. He combined all the best qualities for one who supervised the mechanical end of this work, but those very qualities interfered with his present assignment. He obviously equated subtlety with caution.
A moment of silence served to acquaint Lutt with the Director's displeasure. Fraffin felt the contour pressures of his chair, glanced at the silvery web of the pantovive across the salon. Yes, Lutt was like that instrument. He had to be activated correctly.
Fraffin ran a finger along his jaw, said: "I didn't tell you to spare the immune. You were directed to bring the female here -- at once!"
"If I have erred, I abase myself," Lutt said. "But I acted on the basis of past directives concerning this immune. The way you gave his female to another, the way you . . ."
"He was an amusing diversion, no more," Fraffin said. "Kelexel has asked to examine a native and he has mentioned this female specifically by name. She is to be brought here at once, unharmed. That proviso doesn't apply to any other native who tries to interfere or delay you in the execution of this order. Am I understood?"
"The Director is understood," Lutt said. There was fear in his voice. Lutt knew the possible consequences of Fraffin's displeasure: dismissal from a position of unlimited delights and diversions, from a life that never bored. He lived in a Chem paradise from which he could easily be shunted to some tertiary post and with no recourse because they shared the same guilt, he and Fraffin, the same guilt with its certain terrible punishment if they were ever discovered,
"Without delay," Fraffin said.
"She will be here before this shift is half spent," Lutt said. "I go to obey."
Lutt's image faded, disappeared.
Fraffin leaned back. It was going fairly well . . . in spite of this delay. Imagine that Lutt trying to separate the lovers by manipulating their emotions! The clod must know the danger of trying that on an immune. Well, the female would be here soon and Kelexel could examine her as he wished. Every tool and device to bend the native's will would be provided, of course -- as a matter of courtesy. Let no one question the hospitality of Fraffin the Director Fraffin chuckled.
Let the stupid investigator try the pleasures of this native. Let him impregnate the female. His flesh would know it when it was done. Accomplished breeding would accelerate his need for rejuvenation and where could he turn? Could he go back to the Primacy and say: "Rejuvenate me; I've produced an unlicensed child?" His flesh wouldn't permit that -- no more than would the Primacy with its hidebound absolutes.
Oh, no. Kelexel would know the storyship had its own Rejuvenators, its own surgeon. He'd come begging, his mind telling him: "I can have as many children as I wish and damn the Primacy!" Once he'd been rejuvenated, the storyship would own him.
Again, Fraffin chuckled.
They might even get back to the lovely little war in time to make a complete production out of it.
9
Ruth was surprised to find herself enjoying the anger that condensed the room around her. The frustrated emotion that had built up in her out there in the night with Andy had an outlet at last. She watched the nervous twisting of Nev's pink hands with their baby-skin creases at the knuckles. She knew how his hands betrayed his feel
ings no matter what the masked rest of him revealed. Eight months of living with the man had given her considerable knowledge. Words came out of her full lips now like slivers of bamboo to be inserted beneath Nev's manicured soul.
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