‘Shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t it have been destroyed long ago?’
‘Something keeps me from doing it.’
‘Why?’ Barnes said.
Presently Gram said, ‘I worked there, once. Before I rose in the Civil Service. I was a spy. I know almost everyone there; they were onetime friends. They never found out about me… I didn’t look like I do now. I had an artificial head.’
‘Christ,’ Barnes said.
‘What’s the matter with that?’
‘It’s just so – absurd. We don’t do that any more; we haven’t done that since I took office.’
‘Well, this was before you took office.’
‘So they still don’t know.’
‘I’ll give you the authority to break down the wall of the place and arrest all of them,’ Gram said. ‘But I won’t give you permission to bomb them. But you’ll see I’m right; it won’t make any difference; they’ll have the news of Provoni on the air. In two minutes, they’ll blanket the Earth – two minutes!’
‘The second their transmitter goes on the air—’
‘Two minutes. Anyhow.’
Presently Barnes nodded.
‘So you know I’m right. Anyhow, go ahead with the execution of Cordon; I want it done by six o’clock tonight, our time.’
‘And the business about the sharpshooter and Irma—’
‘Forget that. Just get Cordon. We’ll snuff her later. May-be one of the nonhumanoid life forms could smother her with its sack-like, protoplasmic body.’
Barnes laughed.
‘I’m serious,’ Gram said.
‘You have a lurid idea of what the nonhumanoids are going to turn out to look like.’
‘Blimps,’ Gram said. ‘They’ll look like blimps. Only with tails. It’s the tails you have to watch for, that’s where the poison is.’
Barnes rose. ‘May I leave now and start the procedure re Cordon’s execution? And the attack on the 16th Avenue Under Men printing plant?’
‘Yes,’ Gram said.
Lingering at the door, Barnes asked, ‘Would you like to attend the execution?’
‘No.’
‘I could have a special box made up for you from which you could see but into which no one—’
‘I’ll watch it on closed-circuit TV.’
Barnes blinked. ‘Then you don’t want it telecast over the regular planet-web system? For everybody to see?’
‘Oh, yeah, Gram said, glumly nodding. ‘Of course; that’s half of it, isn’t it? All right, I’ll simply watch it like everyone else does. That’s good enough for me.’
‘As to the 16th Avenue printing plant… I’ll have a list made up of everyone we catch there, and you can go over the list—’
‘And see how many old friends are on it,’ Gram finished.
‘You might want to visit them in prison.’
‘Prison! Does everything have to end there or end as an execution? Is that right?’
‘If you mean, Is that what happens? then the answer is yes. But if you mean—’
‘You know what I mean.’
Barnes, reflecting, said, ‘This is a civil war we’re fighting. During his time, Abraham Lincoln imprisoned hundreds upon hundreds of men, without due process, and still he’s remembered as the greatest of the U.S. presidents.’
‘But he was always pardoning people.’
‘You can do that.’
‘Okay,’ Gram said cannily. ‘I’ll free everyone from the 16th Avenue printing plant that I knew. And they’ll never find out why.’
‘You’re a good man, Council Chairman,’ Barnes said. ‘To extend your loyalties even to those who are now actively working against you.’
‘I’m a slimy bastard,’ Gram grated. ‘You know it; I know it. It’s just that – well, hell. We had a lot of good times together; we used to get a million laughs out of what we printed. Laughs, because we put funny stuff into it. Now it’s all solemn and stodgy. But when I was there, we – aw, the hell with it.’ He lapsed into silence. What am I doing here? he asked himself. How did I get into a position like this, with all this authority? I never was meant for it.
On the other hand, he thought, maybe I was.
Thors Provoni awoke. And saw nothing, only depth of blackness surrounding him. I’m inside it, he realized.
‘That is true,’ the Frolixan said. ‘It upset me when you went to sleep – as you call it.’
‘Morgo Rahn Wilc,’ Provoni said, into the darkness. ‘You’re a worrier. We sleep every twenty-four hours; we sleep from eight to—’
‘I know that,’ Morgo said. ‘But consider how it appears: you gradually lose your personality, your heart beat drops, your pulse slows… it looks very much like death.’
‘But you know it isn’t,’ Provoni pointed out.
‘It’s the mental functioning that changes so much, that makes us uneasy. You’re not aware of it, but unusual and violent mental activity takes place while you sleep. First, you enter a world that to some extent is familiar to you… in your mind you are where genuine personal friends, enemies, and socially-contacted figures speak and act.’
‘In other words,’ Provoni said, ‘dreams.’
‘This sort of dreaming forms a kind of recapitulation of the day, of what you’ve done, whom you’ve thought about, talked with. That does not alarm us. It is the next phase. You fall into a deeper interior level; you encounter personages you never knew, situations you’ve never been in. A disintegration of your self, of you as such, begins; you merge with primordial entities of a god-like type, possessing enormous power; while you are there you are in danger of—’
‘The collective unconsciousness,’ Provoni said. ‘That the greatest of the human thinkers Carl Jung discovered. Abreaction past the moment of birth, back into other lives, other places… and populated by archetypes, as Jung—’
‘Did Jung stress the point that one of these archetypes could, at any time, absorb you? And a reformation of your self would never reoccur? You would be only a talking, walking extension of the archetype?’
‘Of course he stressed it. But it’s not at night in sleep that the archetype takes over, it’s during the day. When they appear during the day – that’s when you’re destroyed.’
‘In other words when you sleep while awake.’
Grudgingly, he said, ‘True.’
‘So, when you are asleep we must protect you. Why do you object to my enfolding of you during this period? I am concerned for your life; you are so made that you would throw it away in a single gamble. Your trip to our world – a terrible gamble, one you should not have made, statistically speaking.’
‘But I made it,’ Provoni said.
The darkness had begun to withdraw as the Frolixan left him. He made out the metal wall of the ship, the large hamper used as a hammock, the half-closed hatch to the control room. His ship, the Gray Dinosaur: his world for so long. His cocoon, within which he slept a good part of the time.
They would wonder at the fanatic now, he thought, if they could see him stretched out in his hammock, a week of beard on his face, his hair down to his shoulders, his body grimy, his clothing rancid and grimier still. Here he is, the savior of man. Or rather of some part of mankind. The part which had not been suppressed until – he wondered what it was like, now. Had the Under Men gotten any support? Or were most Old Men resigned to their meager status? And Cordon, he thought. What if the great speaker and writer is dead? Then probably it all died with him.
But now they know – my friends anyhow, know – that I found the help we need and that I am returning. Assuming they got my message. And assuming they could decode it.
I, the traitor, he thought. The caller upon the unhuman for support. Opening up Earth to an invasion by creatures which otherwise would never have noticed it. Will I go down in history as the most evil of men – or savior? Or perhaps something less extreme, down there in the middle. The subject of a quarter page entry in the Britannica.
‘How can you call y
ourself a traitor, Mr. Provoni?’ Morgo asked.
‘How indeed.’
‘You have been called a traitor. You have been called a savior. I have examined every particle of your conscious self, and there is no lusting after the vainglory of greatness; you have made a difficult voyage, with virtually no hope of success, and you have done it for one motive only: to help your friends. Isn’t it said in one of your books of wisdom, “If a man give up his life for his friend—”’
‘You can’t complete that quotation,’ Provoni, said, amused.
‘No, because you don’t know it, and all we have ever had to go on is your mind – on its contents, down to the collective level, which worries us so at night’
‘Pavor nocturnus,’ Provoni said. ‘Fear at night; you have a phobia.’ He got shakily from his hammock, stood dizzily swaying, then shuffled to the food-supply compartment. He pressed a button, but nothing emerged. He pressed a second button. Still nothing emerged. He felt, then, panic; he pressed buttons at random… and at last a cube of R-ration slid into the receptacle.
‘There is enough to get you back to Earth, Mr. Provoni,’ the Frolixman assured him.
‘But,’ he said savagely, grinding his teeth, ‘just barely enough. I know the calculations; I may have to go through the last few days with no food at all. And you’re worried about my sleep; Christ, if you’re going to worry, worry about my gut.’
‘But we know you’ll be all right.’
‘Okay,’ Provoni said. He opened the cube of food, ate it, drank a cup of redistilled water, shuddered, wondered about brushing his teeth. I stink, he thought. All of me. They’ll be appalled. I’ll look like someone trapped in a submarine for four weeks.
‘They’ll understand why,’ Morgo said.
‘I want,’ Provoni said, ‘to take a shower.’
‘There is not enough water.’
‘Can’t you – get me some? Somehow?’ On a number of times in the past, the Frolixan had provided him with chemical constituents, building blocks he needed for more complicated entities. Surely, if it could do this it could synthesize water… there, around the Gray Dinosaur, where it had placed itself.
‘My own somatic system is short on water, too,’ Morgo said. ‘I was thinking of asking you for some.’
He laughed.
‘What is funny?’ the Frolixan asked.
‘Here we are, out here between Proxima and Sol, on our way to save Earth from the tyranny of its oligarchy of elite rulers, and we’re busy trying to cadge a few quarts of water from each other. How are we going to save Earth if we can’t even synthesize water?’
‘Let me tell you a legend about God,’ Morgo said. ‘In the beginning he created an egg, a huge egg, with a creature inside it. God tried to break the eggshell open to let the creature – the original living creature – out. He couldn’t. But the creature which He had made had a sharp beak, constructed for just such a task, and it chipped its way out of the egg. And hence – all living creatures have free will, now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we broke the egg, not He.’
‘Why does that give us free will?’
‘Because, dammit, we can do what He can’t.’
‘Oh.’ Provoni nodded, grinned, then, in amusement at the Frolixan’s idiomatic English, learned, of course, from himself. It knew Terran language, only to the extent that he knew them: a reasonably adequate span of English – but not what Cordon possessed – plus a little Latin, German, Italian. It could say ‘goodbye’ in Italian, and seemed to enjoy doing so; it always signed off with a solemn ciao. He himself preferred ‘Biz you later,’ but evidently the Frolixans considered that substandard… and by his own standards. It was an idiom from the Service which he couldn’t get rid of. It was, like much else in his mind, a clutter of fleas: hopping fragments of thoughts and ideas, memories and fears, that had taken up residence evidently for good. It was up to the Frolixans to sort it all out, and they had so done, it would seem.
‘You know,’ Provoni said, ‘when we get to Earth, I’m going to find, somewhere, a bottle of brandy. And sit down on the steps—’
‘What steps?’
‘I just see a big gray public building, with no windows, like the Internal Revenue Service, something really dreadful, and I see myself sitting on the steps, wearing an old dark-blue coat, drinking brandy. Right out in the open. And people will come by and they will mutter, “Look, that man’s drinking in public.” And I’ll say, “I’m Thors Provoni.” And then they’ll say, “He deserves it. We won’t turn him in.” And they won’t.’
‘There will be no arrest made of you, Mr. Provoni,’ Morgo said. ‘Then or any other time. We’ll be with you from the moment you land. Not merely me, as we have here now, but my brothers. The brotherhood. And they—’
‘They’ll take over Earth. And then spit me out to die.’
‘No, no. We have shaken hands on it. Don’t you remember?’
‘Maybe you lied.’
‘We can’t lie, Mr. Provoni. I explained that to you, and so did my supervisor, Gran Ce Wanh. If you don’t believe me, and you don’t believe him, an entity over six million years old—’ The Frolixan sounded exasperated.
‘When I see it,’ Provoni said, ‘I’ll believe it.’ He grimly drank a second cup of reconstituted water, even though the red light above the water-source was on… and had been on for a week.
TWELVE
The special courier saluted Willis Gram and said, ‘This came in marked Code One. For you to read immediately, if you will, with all respect, Council Chairman.’
Grunting, Willis Gram opened the envelope. Typewritten on a single sheet of ordinary sixteen-weight paper ran one sentence.
Our agent at the 16th Ave printing plant reports a second call from Provoni, and that he has been successful.
My mother’s broken back, Gram said to himself. Successful. He glanced up at the courier and said, ‘Bring me some straight methamphetamine hydrochloride. I’ll take it orally in a capsule; make sure it’s a capsule.’
A little surprised, the courier saluted again and said, ‘Yes, Council Chairman.’ He left the bedroom-office, and Gram found himself alone. I’ll kill myself, he said to himself. Depression filled him, bursting him until he sagged like a popped balloon. Even before Cordon is dead, he thought. Well, let’s get Cordon.
He pressed a button on his intercom. ‘Send in a commissioned occifer; anyone – it doesn’t matter.’
“Yes sir.’
‘Have him bring his side arm with him.’
Five minutes later, a nattily dressed major entered the room, snapped a polished and professional salute. ‘Yes, Council Chairman.’
‘I want you to go to Eric Cordon’s jail cell at the Long Beach facilities,’ Gram said, ‘and I want you personally, with your own gun, the gun I see at your belt, there, to shoot Cordon until he is dead.’ He held out a slip of paper. ‘This gives you my authorization.’
‘Are you sure—’ the occifer began.
‘I am sure,’ Gram said.
‘I mean sir, are you sure—’
‘If you won’t, I’ll go myself,’ Gram said. ‘Go.’ He made a curt, abrupt gesture toward the main doors of his office.
The major departed.
No TV coverage, Gram said to himself. No audience. Just two men in a cell. Well, Provoni has forced me to do it; I can’t have both of them around at the same time. It’s really – in a sense – Provoni who is killing Cordon.
I wonder what kind of life forms they are? he asked himself. That Provoni found?
The bastard, he said to himself.
He flicked switches, cursed, managed to find the one which lit the camera monitoring Cordon’s cell. The thin, ascetic face, the gray glasses, grayer – and thinning – hair… the college professor who writes, Gram said to himself. Well, I am going to personally watch as that major – whoever he is – shoots him.
On the screen, Cordon sat as if asleep… but obviously he was dictating, probably to
the 16th Avenue plant. Emanate your pontifications, Gram thought grimly, and waited.
A quarter of an hour passed. Nothing happened; Cordon continued to emanate. And then, all at once, surprising both Cordon and Willis Gram, the cell door slid back. The natty, spick-and-span major entered, briskly.
‘Are you Cordon, Eric?’ the major asked.
‘Yes,’ Cordon said, standing.
The major – a young man, really, with pinched, sharply-cut features – reached for his weapon. He lifted the gun up and said, ‘Under the authorization of the Council Chairman I have been instructed to come here to this place and snuff you. Do you wish to read the authorization?’ He dug into his pocket.
‘No,’ Cordon said.
The major fired his gun. Cordon fell backward, forced by the beam of destructive power back in a sliding motion that brought him against the far wall of the cell. Then, by degrees, he slid down, until he sat like some abandoned doll – its legs apart, its head down, arms lifeless.
Speaking into the proper microphone before him, Gram said, ‘Thank you, major. You can leave now. You have nothing else to do. By the way – what is your name?’
‘Wade Ellis,’ the major said.
‘A citation will be made up for you,’ Gram said, and broke the circuit. Wade Ellis, he thought. It’s done. He felt… what? Relief? Obviously. God, he thought; how simple it was. You order a soldier, who you’ve never seen before, whose name you didn’t even know, to go snuff one of the most influential men on Earth. And he does!
It created, in his brain, an appalling imaginary conversation. The interchange would go like this:
Person A: Hi, my name’s Willis Gram.
Person B: My name’s Jack Kvetck.
Person A: I see you’re a major in the army.
Person B: You bet your bird.
Person A: Say, Major Kvetck, would you snuff someone for me? I forget his name… wait I’ll look through this stack of papers.
And so forth.
The door of the room flew open; Police Director Lloyd Barnes rushed in, red-faced with anger and disbelief. ‘You just now—’
‘I know,’ Gram said. ‘Do you have to tell me? Do you think I don’t know?’