He brought the car down on the strip of grass at the void edge. The car landed, bounced, landed again. At what he judged was the proper moment, Matt pushed in all four fan levers. The car dropped jarringly. The levers tried to come out again, and Matt held them in with his hand, looking despairingly at Hood for help.
“Gyroscope,” said Hood.
Matt forced his numb right arm to cross his torso and flick the Gyroscope switch.
“You need a little training in how to fly,” Harry Kane said with admirable restraint. “You finished your story?” He had insisted that Matt talk without interruption.
“I may have forgotten some things.”
“We can save the question-and-answer period until we get established. Matt, Laney, Lydia, get me out of here and move Jay in front of the dashboard. Jay, can you move your arms?”
“Yah. The stunner’s pretty well worn off.”
They piled out, Matt and the two women. Harry came out on his feet, moving in jerks and twitches but managing to stay upright. He brushed away offers of help and stood watching Hood. Hood had opened a panel in the dash and was doing things inside.
“Matt!” Laney called over her shoulder. She was standing inches from the void.
“Get back from there!”
“No! Come here!”
Matt went. So did Mrs. Hancock. The three of them stood at the edge of the grass, looking down into their shadows.
The sun was at their backs, shining down at forty-five degrees. The water-vapor mist which had covered the southern end of the Plateau that morning now lay just beyond the void edge, almost at their feet. And they looked into their shadows—three shadows reaching down into infinity, three contoured black tunnels growing smaller and narrower as they bored through the lighted mist, until they reached their blurred vanishing points. But for each of the three it seemed that only his own shadow was surrounded by a small, vivid, perfectly circular rainbow.
A fourth shadow joined them, moving slowly and painfully. “Oh, for a camera,” mourned Harry Kane.
“I never saw it like that before,” said Matt.
“I did, once, a long time ago. It was like I’d had a vision. Myself, the representative of Man, standing at the edge of the world with a rainbow about his head. I joined the Sons of Earth that night.”
A muted whirr sounded behind them. Matt turned to see the car slide toward him across the lawn, pause at the edge, go over. It hovered over the mist and then settled into it, fading like a porpoise submerging.
Harry turned and called, “All set?”
Hood knelt on the grass where the car had rested. “Right. It’ll come back at midnight, wait fifteen minutes, then go back down. It’ll do that for the next three nights. Would someone help me into the house?”
Matt half carried him through the formal garden. Hood was heavy; his legs would move, but they would not carry him. As they walked, he lowered his voice to ask, “Matt, what was that thing you drew on the door?”
“A bleeding heart.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I’m not really sure. When I saw what they’d done to the guard, it was like being back in the organ banks. I remembered my Uncle Matt.” His grip tightened in reflex on Hood’s arm. “They took him away when I was eight. I never found out why. I had to leave something to show I was there—me, Matt Keller, walking in alone and out with an army. One for Uncle Matt! I was a little crazy, Hood; I saw something in the organ banks that would shake anyone’s mind. I didn’t know your symbol, so I had to make up my own.”
“Not a bad one. I’ll show you ours later. Was it bad, the organ banks?”
“Horrible. But the worst was those, tiny hearts and livers. Children, Jay! I never knew they took children.”
Hood looked up questioningly. Then Lydia Hancock pushed the big front door open for them, and they had to concentrate on getting up the steps.
Jesus Pietro was furious.
He’d spent some time in his office, knowing he would be most useful there, but he’d felt cramped. Now he was at the edge of the carport watching the last of the sonic victims being carried away. He wore a beltphone; his secretary could reach him through that.
He’d never hated colonists before.
To Jesus Pietro, human beings came in two varieties: crew and colonist. On other worlds other conditions might apply, but other worlds did not intrude on Mount Lookitthat. The crew were masters, wise and benevolent, at least in the aggregate. The colonists were ordained to serve.
Both groups had exceptions. There were crew who were in no way wise and who did not work at being benevolent, who accepted the benefits of their world and ignored the responsibilities. There were colonists who would overthrow the established order of things and others who preferred to turn criminal rather than serve. When brought into contact with crew he did not admire, Jesus Pietro treated them with the respect due their station. The renegade colonists he hunted down and punished.
But he didn’t hate them, any more than Matt Keller really hated mining worms. The renegades were part of his job, part of his working day. They behaved as they did because they were colonists, and Jesus Pietro studied them as biology students studied bacteria. When his working day ended, so did his interest in colonists, unless something unusual was going on.
Now that was over. In running amok through the Hospital, the rebels had spilled over from his working day into his very home. He couldn’t have been angrier if they’d been in his house, smashing furniture and killing servants and setting poison for the housecleaners and pouring salt on the rugs.
The intercom buzzed. Jesus Pietro unhooked it from his belt and said, “Castro.”
“Jansen, sir. I’m call’ from the vivarium.”
“Well?”
“There are six rebels missing. Do you want their names?”
Jesus Pietro glanced around him. They’d carried the last unconscious colonist away ten minutes ago. These last stretcher passengers were carport personnel.
“You should have them all. Have you checked with the operating room? I saw at least one dead under a door.”
“I’ll check, sir.”
The carport was back to normal. The rebels hadn’t had time to mess it up as they’d messed up the halls’ and the electricians’ rec room. Jesus Pietro debated whether to return to his office or to trace the rebels’ charge back through the rec room. Then he happened to notice two men arguing by the garages. He strolled over.
“You had no right to send Bessie out!” one was shouting. He wore a raider’s uniform, and he was tall, very dark, enlistment-poster handsome.
“You bloody raiders think you own these cars,” the mechanic said contemptuously.
Jesus Pietro smiled, for the mechanics felt exactly the same. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“This idiot can’t find my car! Sorry, sir.”
“And which car is yours, Captain?”
“Bessie. I’ve been using Bessie for three years, and this morning some idiot took it out to spray the woods. Now look! They’ve lost her, sir!” The man’s voice turned plaintive.
Jesus Pietro turned cold blue eyes on the mechanic. “You’ve lost a car?”
“No sir. I just don’t happen to know where they’ve put it.”
“Where are the cars that came back from spraying the woods?”
“That’s one of them.” The mechanic pointed across the carport. “We were half finished unloading her when those fiends came at us. Matter of fact we were unloading both of them.” The mechanic scratched his head. He met Jesus Pietro’s eyes with the utmost reluctance. “I haven’t seen the other one since.”
“There are prisoners missing. You know that?” He didn’t wait for the mechanic’s answer. “Find Bessie’s serial number and description and give them to my secretary. If you find Bessie, call my office. For the moment I’m going to assume the car is stolen.”
The mechanic turned and ran toward an office. Jesus Pietro used his handphone to issue instructions regardin
g a possible stolen car.
Jansen came back on the line. “One rebel dead, sir. That leaves five missing.” He listed them.
“All right. It’s beginning to look like they took a car. See if the wall guards saw one leaving.”
“They’d have reported it, sir.”
“I’m not so certain. Find out.”
“Sir, the carport was attacked. The guards had to report five prisoners stealing an aircar during a mob attack!”
“Jansen, I think they might have forgotten to. You understand me?” There was steel in his voice. Jansen signed off without further protest.
Jesus Pietro looked up at the sky, rubbing his moustache with two fingers. A stolen car would be easy to find. There were no crew pleasure-cars abroad now, not in the middle of Millard Parlette’s speech. But they might have landed it. And if a car had been stolen in full view of the wall guards, it had been stolen by ghosts.
That would fit admirably with the other things that had been happening at the Hospital.
Polly’s Eyes
VIIIGeoffrey Eustace Parlette’s house was different inside. The rooms were big and comfortable, furnished in soft good taste. They were innumerable. Toward the back were a pool table, a small bowling alley, an auditorium and stage with pull-down movie screen. The kitchen was the size of Harry Kane’s living-room. Matt and Laney and Lydia Hancock had moved through the entire house with stun guns at the ready. They had found no living thing, barring the rugs and the no-less-than-six house-cleaner nests.
Lydia had threatened force to get Matt to return to the living room. He wanted to explore. He’d seen incredible bedrooms. Hobbyists’ bedrooms…
In a living room two stories tall, before a vast false fireplace whose stone logs showed red electrical heat where they touched, the five survivors dropped into couches. Harry Kane still moved carefully, but he seemed almost recovered from the stunner that had caught him in the Hospital. Hood had his voice back, but not his strength.
Matt slumped in the couch. He wriggled, adjusting his position, and finally put his feet up. It was good to feel safe.
“Tiny hearts and livers,” said Hood.
“Yah,” said Matt.
“That’s impossible.”
Harry Kane made a questioning noise.
“I saw them,” said Matt. “The rest of it was pretty horrible, but that was the worst.”
Harry Kane was sitting upright. “In the organ banks?”
“Yes, dammit, in the organ banks. Don’t you believe me? They were in special tanks of their own, makeshift-looking, with the motors sitting in the water next to the organs. The glass was warm.”
“Stasis tanks aren’t warm,” said Hood.
“And Implementation doesn’t take children,” said Harry Kane. “If they did, I’d know it.”
Matt merely glared.
“Hearts and livers,” said Harry. “Just those? Nothing else?”
“Nothing I noticed,” said Matt. “No, wait. There were a couple of tanks just like them. One was empty. One looked…polluted, I think.”
“How long were you in there?”
“Just long enough to get sick to my stomach. Mist Demons, I wasn’t investigating anything! I was looking for a map!”
“In the organ banks?”
“Lay off,” said Laney. “Relax, Matt. It doesn’t matter.”
Mrs. Hancock had gone to find the kitchen. She returned now, with a pitcher and five glasses. “Found this. No reason we shouldn’t mess up the place, is there?”
They assured her there wasn’t, and she poured for them.
Hood said, “I’m more interested in your alleged psychic powers. I’ve never read of anything like you’ve got. It must be something new.”
Matt grunted.
“I should tell you that anyone who believes in the so-called psi powers at all usually thinks he’s psychic himself.” Hood’s tone was dry, professional. “We may find nothing at all.”
“Then how did we get here?”
“We may never know. Some new Implementation policy? Or maybe the Mist Demons love you, Matt.”
“I thought of that, too.”
Mrs. Hancock returned to the kitchen.
“When you tried to sneak up to the Hospital,” Hood continued, “you were spotted right away. You must have run through the electric-eye net. You didn’t attempt to run?”
“They had four spotlights on me. I just stood up,”
“Then they ignored you? They let you walk away?”
“That’s right. I kept looking back, waiting for that loudspeaker to say something. It never did. Then I ran.”
“And the man who took you into the Hospital. Did anything happen just before he went insane and ran back to the gatehouse?”
“Like what?”
“Anything involving light.”
“No.”
Hood looked disappointed. Laney said, “People seem to forget about you.”
“Yah. It’s been like that all my life. In school the teacher wouldn’t call on me unless I knew the answer. Bullies never bothered me.”
“I should have been so lucky,” said Hood.
Laney wore the abstracted look of one tracing an idea.
“The eyes,” said Harry Kane, and paused for thought. He had been listening without comment, in the attitude of The Thinker, jaw on fist, elbow on knee. “You said there was something strange about the guards’ eyes.”
“Yah, I don’t know what. I’ve seen that look before, I think, but I can’t remember—”
“What about the one who finally shot you? Anything odd about his eyes?”
“No.”
Laney came out of her abstraction with a startled look. “Matt. Do you think Polly would have gone home with you?”
“What the Mist Demons does that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t get mad, Matt. I’ve got a reason for asking.”
“I can’t imagine—”
“That’s why you called in the experts.”
“All right, yes. I thought she was going home with me.”
“Then she suddenly turned and walked away.”
“Yah. The bitch just—” Matt swallowed the rest of it. Not until now, when he could feel his pain and rage and humiliation in bearable retrospect, did he realize how badly she’d stung him. “She walked away like she’d remembered something. Something more important than me, but not particularly important for all that. Laney, could it have been her hearing aid?”
“The radio?…No, not that early. Harry, did you tell Polly anything by radio that you didn’t tell the rest of us?”
“I told her I’d call for her speech at midnight, after everyone had gone home. They could hear it through the radios. Otherwise, nothing.”
“So she had no reason to drop me,” said Matt. “I still don’t see why we have to dig into this.”
“It’s strange,” said Hood. “It can’t hurt to look at anything strange in your young life.”
Laney said, “Did you resent it?”
“Damn right I did. I hate being left flat like that, toyed with and then dropped.”
“You didn’t offend her?”
“I don’t see how I could have. I didn’t get drunk till afterward.”
“You told me it’s happened before like that.”
“Every time. Every damn time, until you. I was virgin until Friday night.” Matt looked belligerently around him. Nobody said anything. “That’s why I can’t see how it helps to talk about it. Dammit, it isn’t unusual in my young life.”
Hood said, “It’s unusual in Polly’s young life. Polly’s not a tease. Am I wrong, Laney?”
“No. She takes her sex seriously. She wouldn’t make a play for someone she didn’t want. I wonder…”
“I don’t think I was kidding myself, Laney.”
“Neither do I. You keep saying something was strange about the guards’ eyes. Was there anything strange about Polly’s eyes?”
“What are you getting at?
”
“You claim every time you’re getting ready to lose your virginity to a girl, she drops you. Why? You aren’t ugly. You probably don’t have the habit of being grossly impolite. You weren’t with me. You bathe often enough. Was there something about Polly’s eyes?”
“Dammit, Laney…Eyes.” Something changed in Polly’s face. She seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. She certainly wasn’t looking at anything; her eyes went past him and through, him, and they looked blind…
“She looked abstracted. What do you want me to say? She looked like she was thinking of something else, and then she walked away.”
“Was it sudden, this loss of interest? Did she—”
“Laney, what do you think? I drove her away deliberately?” Matt jumped to his feet. He couldn’t take any more; he was wires stretched on a bone frame, every wire about to break. Nobody had ever so assaulted his privacy! He had never imagined that a woman could share his bed, listen in sympathy to all the agony of the secrets that had shaped his soul, and then spill everything she knew into a detailed, clinical roundtable discussion! He felt like one who has been disassembled for the organ banks, who, still aware, watches a host of doctors probing and prodding his separated innards with none-too-clean hands, hears them making ribald comments about his probable medical and social history.
And he was about to say so, in no mild terms, when he saw that nobody was looking at him.
Nobody was looking at him.
Laney was staring into the artificial fire; Hood was looking at Laney; Harry Kane was in his Thinker position. None of them were really seeing anything, at least not anything there in the room. Each wore an abstracted look.
“One problem,” Harry Kane said dreamily. “How the blazes are we going to free the rest of us, when only four of us escaped?” He glanced around at his inattentive audience, then went back to contemplating his navel from the inside.
Matt felt the hair stir on his head. Harry Kane had looked right at him, but he certainly hadn’t seen Matt Keller. And there was something very peculiar about his eyes.
Like a man in a wax museum, Matt bent to look into Harry Kane’s eyes.
Harry jumped as if he’d been shot. “Where the blazes did you come from?” He stared as if Matt had dropped from the ceiling. Then he said, “Umm…oh! You did it.”