He could see no sign of any aircraft from his present position. It would be sensible to make a circuit of the buildings, staying out of sight in the trees, until he found wherever planes were parked. There was just a chance that coming in during the small hours of the night as it had, their craft had not been noticed or examined yet, and Gaby might be free somewhere near it—or even still asleep on the seat as he had last seen her.
Rafe began to move through the trees and other cover fringing the lawns and buildings. The circuit he made was not a short one. Once he came across what seemed to be a half-size golf course and rather than go around, he took the risk of crossing it in the open, though he kept close to the ground and made the crossing keeping whenever possible a rise of ground between himself and the buildings.
He came at last to the air park he had been hunting. It was a gray platform of concrete, perhaps half an acre in width, with twelve aircraft of varying middle sizes on it. Only one five-place plane was among these, and it was either the craft in which they had come to Havn or that craft’s twin.
Rafe paused to catch his breath. He was wet with sweat again, in the rising temperature of day. Abruptly, the inhibiting broadcast effect that had driven him to his under-mind disappeared. He was suddenly clearheaded. Gratefully he moved back into his upper mind. There was a rustle of tree branches behind him, and he whirled about.
“Lucas—” he said, and broke off.
Facing him was not Lucas, but a large German shepherd, wearing the harness of a guard dog. It stood less than a dozen feet from him, its upper lip lifted above its teeth. As he faced it, it snarled softly, and came slowly forward, stiff step by stiff step, its eyes fixed on him.
Rafe stood with his legs together and his arms at his side. He did not move. If the dog was one with guard instinct and properly trained, it could be almost as deadly as Lucas to an unarmed man. Those half-parted jaws facing him now were capable of exerting three hundred pounds and more of pressure behind the gleaming teeth—enough to snap the bones of his forearm or slash the muscle of one of his legs and hamstring him. In its own way, the guard dog was as much a professional as Rafe himself. His only hope was that the animal would come within reach before its handler showed up. Then, if Rafe wanted to sacrifice a left arm, he would stand at least a fair chance of getting to some vulnerable spot on the dog with a hand edge or toe, as the dog’s teeth locked in the arm.
But the animal’s snarls had been rising in pitch, and while it was still a wary six feet or so from Rafe, a man carrying a machine pistol pushed through the trees behind it.
“What’ve you got, King?” the dog’s handler said. “Somebody from the kitchen again? Oh, oh—stand still, friend.”
“I am still,” said Rafe.
“Seen dogs like this before, have you?” said the handler. “You’re a wise man.” He was short and broad, with a stubble of reddish hair on the back of an otherwise bald head. He snapped a leash to the harness of the guard dog and motioned with his machine pistol. “All right. We go that way—up to the place.”
Rafe turned and walked off. The guard dog had fallen silent, but he could hear the sound of the handler’s footsteps behind him on the grass. They crossed the lawn and went in through a doorway, down a small hall, and into what seemed to be a very large kitchen.
“Take a chair—there!” ordered the guard. Rafe sat down gratefully and heavily in the straight-backed chair at the metal table the handler had indicated. He had covered some distance, mainly over rough country and through loose sandy soil in the last couple of hours, and to sit down felt good.
“Knocked out?” said the handler unexpectedly. “Want some coffee and something to eat?”
Rafe nodded.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said.
“We’ll get you something. Stay where you are now. I’m going to call in about you. Hold, King!”
The dog, which had sat down on the clean tile floor of the kitchen, was abruptly on all four feet again, staring at Rafe. He did not snarl now, but he was obviously ready for action.
Rafe sat still. After a few minutes the handler came back with a cup of black coffee and a plate with some scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast on it. He put the cup and plate down with a knife and fork before Rafe.
“Help yourself,” the man said. “Just don’t try to get up from the chair or make any sudden move. King’s watching.”
“Don’t worry,” said Rafe.
He dug into the food. He was just finishing it when a big young man appeared, wearing yellow boots, a green shirt, and green slacks.
“Bring him along,” the newcomer told the handler.
“Where?” asked the handler, getting up from the chair in which he had been sitting.
“The big room,” said the other, turning and leading off.
“Come on,” said the handler to Rafe.
Rafe rose. Trailed by the handler and King, he followed the yellow boots out of the kitchen, along a series of halls, and both up and down several escalator flights. They came at last to a hall wider than the ones they had passed through earlier. Its high, cream-marble walls were bare except for an occasional tapestry or large, heavy-framed painting.
They came at last to a wide-open pair of ornate metal doors reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling. Instead of leading Rafe through those doors, however, the young man in the yellow boots stopped and motioned Rafe through on his own.
“Go ahead,” he said. “They’re expecting you. Let him go on alone, Jafer.”
Rafe paused a moment, then turned and went through the doors, hearing his boots sound alone on the stonelike floor, without the echo of other boots or dog’s toenails clicking behind him.
As he stepped through the entrance he felt the light touch of some other version of the power broadcast. Automatically this time, he went to his under-mind without hesitation and without breaking step as he entered the room.
Within the long, lofty, ballroomlike chamber were perhaps a dozen people standing or sitting in a group near its far end, where there was a small group of armchairs and sofas clustered to one side below a platform. On the platform was a thronelike chair very similar to Shaitan’s. They turned to look at Rafe as he came close, and he recognized almost half of them.
Pao Gallot was there. So was Willet Forebringer, stiffly upright in a massively overstuffed armchair. Standing almost beside Forebringer was a man named Elowa Ehouka, who was a member of Pao Gallot’s Power Broadcast Control Board, and several other well-known Earth politicians. But what caught Rafe’s attention and held it was the sight of Abner Leesing seated in one of the big armchairs, with Martin Pu-Li and Gaby standing beside him.
Rafe looked at these two, and they looked back as his legs carried him down the length of the room until he stopped before them.
“Here you are,” said Rafe.
“Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?” Gaby smiled at him. “Martin was right, Rafe. Ab is the one who’s in charge of everything, after all, and it’s all wonderful—only people just don’t realize it yet.”
* * *
16
Rafe looked down at Ab, who smiled up at him, but stayed seated in the armchair. Here, side by side with his sister, he showed the family relationship. He was slim and long-boned, like Gaby, with brown eyes and brown hair that was beginning to recede from his temples. His mouth was cheerfully wide, and his gaze was frank and open.
“So you’re the Old Man of the Mountain?” Rafe said.
“I’m afraid so,” answered Ab. He did not get up from the chair, but continued to sit as if he belonged where he was. “Sorry we had to put you and Gaby through it like this, but we’d reached a tricky stage in managing things. My original idea was that Gaby would be safer not knowing what was going on, and then by the time you decided to mix in it, the fight was already on.”
“The fight was with Shaitan, Rafe,” Gaby said. “He was trying to take over control from Ab.”
“That’s right,” said Ab. “I had—we had to work
with him at first when the power broadcasts went on. He had influence over a good number of zombies who saw their chance to do what they wanted during the night hours when the broadcasts were on. But he was bright—dawn bright, Rafe. It was just a matter of time until he worked out the whole picture of what we were doing, and got himself in a position where he could try to knock us out and use the organization for himself.”
“And what was it exactly you were doing?” Rafe asked.
Ab lifted a hand modestly and grinned.
“Trying to ride the tiger,” he said. “You were right about what you told Gaby. I should’ve known someone like you, Rafe, would be halfway to figuring things out as soon as you had a couple of clues. As you told her, the side effects of the power broadcasts have turned out to be the important ones. They tap an area of—well, I suppose you’d have to call it psychic power. Power we can use to move civilization forward a thousand years overnight. The only trouble’s been that when we went to use it we ran into the old problem—people who saw it as something they could use for themselves. But we’ve got those people stopped now.”
“That’s good to hear,” said Rafe. “Only, why didn’t you trust Gaby or me from the beginning?”
As he spoke, he was carefully examining the room around him. Halfway up the walls on either side were great open windows, unglassed and unscreened, with the tips of some large Dieffenbachia leaves just showing over their sills. From other, unseen bushes or flowers below these man-high plants, there wafted into the room a perfume of blossoms or fruit. It was a little heavy in its sweetness, as if what produced it was overripe or past its bloom. The new power-broadcast effect Rafe had felt on entering this room was still exerting its pressure on his upper mind. His consciousness felt it, from down below in the safety of his under-mind. Why a power broadcast if Ab was now being completely frank?
“I’m sorry, Rafe,” Ab was saying. “I trusted you. But I wasn’t alone in this—I’m not now. We have to think as a group and that means not taking chances—even now. I did what I could by first trying to put you in protective custody in Duluth, with Bill Forebringer’s help—” He looked across at the stiffly-sitting UN Marshal. “And when that didn’t work, I sent Martin ahead to the mountain headquarters to help look out for both of you.”
“Thanks,” said Rafe dryly.
“I know,” said Martin, wincing, “it turned out you were the one who had to look after me—as well as Gaby. Shaitan hit the place there faster than we thought. He must’ve already been suspecting Ab was ready to move, and he probably thought you were one of us—an instrument of Ab’s, maybe—sent to get rid of him. Anyway, since Ab’s apologized I ought to apologize, too, for treating you like someone who didn’t deserve to know what was going on—when it was you who sent Ab to me in the first place. But we had to think of protecting our whole effort.”
“So it was you who made the decision not to use Ab on the Project after all, was it?” Rafe asked.
“Not by myself,” said Martin quickly. “Actually, I was part of a group we’d formed early, when we began to find out just what the power broadcasts were capable of doing. We were just hunting around in the dark, those days—that was five years ago—but one of the things we did was to put a few people like Ab into jobs where they could carry on research into the power-broadcast effects without attracting public attention. When you recommended Ab for the Project, though, that almost let the cat out of the bag. I was the one who rigged the decision not to use him—but it did give me a chance to have an interview with him. We hadn’t met before. As a result, he and I, with Bill Forebringer, Pao, and a few others, were able to form a special secret clique inside the original group—a special clique that made it possible for us to set up quietly the machinery to get rid of Shaitan before he got rid of us.”
“I thought,” said Rafe, “I was the one who got rid of Shaitan for you?”
“You did. Of course,” said Martin. “It’s just that we were ready to move, ourselves, when you and Lucas and Gaby killed him—”
“I—” Gaby looked unhappy for a second; then her face smoothed out. “That’s silly of me. I was going to say I hadn’t anything to do with killing. But of course that doesn’t matter. The main thing is that we’re free of Shaitan now. And I’m no more or less guilty because he’s dead than anyone else in the world.”
She looked down at her brother.
“Am I, Ab?”
“No.” Ab smiled up at her. “You’re not. He was a creature—a creature slated for necessary extermination, so we can get on to making a new world for people.”
“Only one new world?” asked Rafe.
Ab looked from Gaby back up at him.
“You hate to see the Far-Star Project set aside,” Ab said. “I don’t blame you. But part of the reason for having it was to solve a lot of the problems here on Earth—overpopulation, disease, mental distortions. All the effects of overcrowding. But now we’ll be able to start solving problems like that directly with the side effects of the power broadcast, used therapeutically.”
“That’s what this group of yours was after?” asked Rafe.
“That, and a lot more,” said Ab. His face lit up. “There’s something else you came close to guessing when you talked to Gaby. There’s an enabling effect as one of the side benefits of the power broadcasts. It’s a different version of the effect that allows people like those thugs of Shaitan’s to project themselves as what looks like two-dimensional shadows. But this effect simply gives the individual power over his own physical and mental processes. People are going to be able to cure themselves of anything, just by ordering their bodies to reject the disease. We’ll be able to cancel out pain, or adapt ourselves to breathing under water. We’ll be able to read pages at a glance and remember everything we read. Sleep when we want or go without sleep as long as we need to—anything!”
Ab bounced to his feet as if the energy in him had finally conquered the strength of will that had kept him sitting this long.
“And it’s all waiting for us, now—now that Shaitan’s out of the way!” He shoved his hand out toward Rafe. “Welcome to the group, Rafe. We’ve got a big job ahead of us, rebuilding the world together.”
Rafe ignored the hand. He took two quick steps backward.
“No ‘we’ to it,” he said. “There’s a lot of truth to the story you’re giving me. But you’re a liar all the same, Ab. All of you here are lying to me, right at this moment. It’s all right. I know you can’t help it.”
He continued to back. He was in the center of the open space of the long room now, turning as he went, watching every door and window.
“All right,” he said, raising his voice. “Wherever you are—you ought to know by this time I’m not going to be stopped that easily. That explanation Ab just gave me’s got holes in it you could march an army through—and I wouldn’t doubt that’s exactly what you’ve been planning to do. Let’s get done with the fun and games. Don’t you think it’s about time you showed yourself?”
The sound of a whistle—something like the single birdlike shrilling of a bo’sun’s pipe—fluted in a single note through the room. Abruptly, a power broadcast attempted to clamp a simple, but massive, paralyzing effect upon Rafe. Safe in the bastion of his under-mind, Rafe managed to deny its effect. But at the same time the air seemed to ripple, distort, and thicken about them all.
This time the distortion was worse than it had ever been before. It hid both ends of the room from Rafe’s view, and even the group around Ab and Gaby were distorted and obscured. At a shorter distance, however, Rafe saw panels open in the walls of the room, and three guard dogs came out to station themselves—one between him and the entrance, the other two between him and the opposite end of the room, where the thronelike chair was now hidden in the distortion.
The distortion cleared. The paralysis broadcast continued. The two guard dogs stood alertly on their feet, their eyes concentrating on Rafe alone. But beyond them the throne was now occupied.
br /> The man sitting in it was gray-haired and dark-skinned, though his features were Cau-casoid. He wore trousers and shirt made of black cloth thickly patterned with geometric figures in silver, and over both these garments, a long coat of unrelieved silver. There was nothing on his head. His gray hair was brushed straight back, and his face was unlined—but the way he sat suggested great age.
“Yes,” said Rafe at the sight of him.
Rafe turned toward the group around Ab, who were now staring back at him with something like horror on their faces, as if they were watching a criminal being escorted to some ghastly but deserved punishment.
“Ab,” said Rafe. “All the effects of broadcast power work only the conscious, intellectual centers of the mind. Behind and below that, if you can locate it, you’ll find you’ve got a semi-instinctive level where thinking’s still possible, in nonsymbolic terms. Try to reach back the way I have, and break loose of the broadcast effect holding you now.”
Ab stared at him. Ab’s lips slowly parted and his throat worked. He looked as if he was trying to talk, but no sound came out. His lips closed again.
“Keep trying,” said Rafe.
He looked back at the man on the throne.
“The Old Man,” Rafe said. “The real Old Man.”
“Old enough.” The voice of the man on the throne was husky and deep as if his throat had dried out long since. “But why do you fight me?”
“That’s a foolish question,” said Rafe. “I was born to fight you—or anyone like you. I’m the result of the human race’s blind instinct to balance its parts. I couldn’t be what I am without being anti-you.”
“You pretend to believe in good and evil?” said the Old Man. “Why? You have to know they’re both illusions. You can’t be as capable as you are and cling to nursery tales.”