Part 12

"I need something." Maybe cold water would help. "I think I'll take a shower while you fix the drinks. It's awfully hot."

"Help yourself. The folded towel is the dry one."

I took off my jacket and dropped it on the couch. In the bathroom I noticed that Joy squeezed her toothpaste tube from the middle, just like Mae. She had various wispy nylon things drying on racks and used a perfume called _Suivez-moi_. I picked up the bottle and sniffed it. Throb-throb.

I turned on the shower full cold, undressed and stood under it. The pounding in my head eased. Shivering, I turned the handle toward hot and soaped.

When I emerged, Joy had put my jacket away and two tall drinks stood on the coffee table in front of the couch.

"Feel better?" she asked.

"Much." I sat down beside her and took a big swallow. She handed me a lit cigarette. It had lipstick traces on the filter end. Throb-throb.

"I prefer my lipstick firsthand," I said. I put the cigarette down and pulled her toward me. Her eyes looked into mine, then closed. I kissed her. The scent of _Suivez-moi_ and the softness of her lips and body made the room tilt.

Her nails dug through my shirt into my back. Her lips went to my ear and she whispered, "Oh, Sam. I've wanted this for so long!"

Throb-throb. I was torn between two desires. This enchanting woman, whispering in my ear, her single garment--for that's all she wore--slipping off her shoulders, was a temptation that Sam Kent, Earthman, could not have resisted.

But the throbbing inside my skull reminded me that I was more than that. I was pseudo-Sam, the Monolithian man, bent on a greater mission. Duty and dedication were mine. I was no mere single entity. I was one of a group--one of many, all devoted to the same ideal. The distractions of Earth were nothing to me and easy to deny. I pushed Joy away from me. The throbs had become stabbing pains.

"A typewriter," I said flatly. "I require a typewriter."

Joy sat up, pulling her wrapper around her. Her eyes, which a moment ago were melting, had grown cold.

"You want _what_?" she said icily.

"You heard me, Earthwoman," I said. "A typewriter. At once!"

Joy stood up. She gave me a look of hatred and went to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

I found Joy's portable in its case on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I set it up on the coffee table, rolled a sheet into it and thought for a moment.

Then, spurred by pain, I typed:

"Now here on Earth do I declare myself, racked and driven by motives outside my understanding, to be not what I seem, nor yet entirely what I am. Blessed is he who knows himself wholly--"

I stopped typing. I wasn't saying it. I opened the window wide and shouted toward the Capitol:

"Hear this! The hour approaches! Mend your ways lest the evil consequences overtake you! Hear me, Earthlings! You are all a part of the greater scheme and each must take the responsibility. Hark, before it is too late!"

"Shut up, you drunk," said a voice from below.

I slammed the window and picked up the phone. "Give me Western Union, I want to send a telegram.... Take this down and send it to the FBI and the CIA: This is bigger than your spies and your communist agents. Let me put you wise to an interstellar conspiracy. Drop everything else and arrest the President of the United States.... Who? The supervisor? Get off the line, I'm dictating a vital telegram.... I'll tell you who I am when I get to the signature.... Well, nuts to you, Madam."

I hung up and ran into the kitchen. I turned on the cold water and stuck my head under the faucet. It eased the pain. I picked up the bottle of Scotch and swallowed three times, then ran gasping back to the telephone.

I dialed the _Washington Post_'s number and asked for the city desk.

"Hello? Stop the presses! Tear out the front page! I've got a scoop for you. SCOOP. Take this down:

"I, Joe Spaceman, have defected from the Monolithians. You can quote me on that. You got that so far?... What the hell do you mean, put it in a letter? You think I'm crazy?... Listen, you imbecile, if you don't know an exclusive when you hear it, you'd better go back to journalism school."

I hung up on him, the jerk, and went back to the typewriter.

"Dear Drew Pearson: Maybe you can wake up the world. It's sleeping on the brink. The vastest most incredible conspiracy in history is being perpetrated under the noses of the decent folk...."

There was a knock at the hall door. As I turned to tell whoever it was to go away, Joy flew out of her bedroom and opened it.

Spookie Masters came in, patted Joy on the shoulder and strode over to me. I got up.

"You can tell them, Spookie!" I said. "Go on television and tell them all. There's no time to lose. Tell them how--"

Spookie pulled back his arm and I saw his fist coming at my chin.

24 (AUG. 14, THURS.)

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice?

--Wordsworth

4:45 A.M. My head was no longer throbbing when I came to, but my jaw ached and my mouth tasted of old blood.

I was lying on the couch, my arms tied behind me and my feet fastened together at the ankles with my own belt.

I could hear Spookie and Joy talking in the tiny kitchen. It was dark outside, with just a tinge of dawn in the sky.

I wasn't gagged, so I said "Hey."

"Aha," Spookie said, looking around the doorway. "Our sleeper awakes. Who do you think you are now, Sam? Our old pal Kent or the King of the Outer Planets?"

"Damn you," I said. "Untie me."

"Maybe later. You're too much for us Earthlings to take chances with. You were really way out, little chum."

"I'm sorry," I said, beginning to remember.

"You'd better be," Joy said from around the corner. "You were absolutely outrageous. I'm making coffee. Want some?"

"Yes, please. How did Spookie get here? I thought he was still on Ultra."

"They've got a very efficient shuttle service," Spookie said. "They decided it'd be better to ship me back than to get themselves bad publicity by keeping me prisoner."

"Tell Sam how you threatened them," Joy said.

"With the undying wrath of the Spookie Masters Fan Club," Spookie said. "Three and a half million anti-Monolithians was more than they were willing to risk--especially teen-agers, who are inclined to be extreme."

"What an ego," I said. "Did Rod Harris come back with you?"

"He did. I left him at the AP, busting to file a story."

"How come they let him go?"

"My influence, I think," Spookie said. "You're sure full of questions for a reporter without a notebook."

"How did you get here? You didn't answer that one."

"I was anxious about Joy, naturally. I called her up and she told me she had a madman in her living room. Maidens in distress are my specialty."

"You did not call up," I said. "The phone never rang."

Joy answered that: "I happen to have another phone in my bedroom, with a private number. A good thing, too, the way you were carrying on. And if you want to know where Spookie got the number," she added defiantly, "I gave it to him. Any objections, _Mister_ Kent?"

"No," I mumbled, considerably deflated. "I'm sorry, Joy--about lots of things."

"Forget it," she said. "How about some scrambled eggs?"

"You'll have to feed me."

Spookie said, "No. I think we'll risk untying your arms and see whose side you're on."

* * * * *

5:30 A.M. We had eaten--I politely, free-armed, with no trouble to my captors--and the sun was peeping through the morning haze when WGMS interrupted its music with a news bulletin.

"More coffee?" Joy said.

"Shh," I said, and the radio said:

"Bulletin from our newsroom. President Allison has just issued the following statement. Uh--one moment, please. Is this on the lev--"

The announcer hadn't hit the cough button quite soon enough. He was back after a moment of dead air, saying:

"We have now verified that this statement is actually from the President. According to all three American wire services, he called them personally before dawn. Here is President Allison's statement, exactly as he dictated it:

"'My dear fellow citizens. During the next few days you may hear a number of rumors which I wish to nip in the bud right now.

"'I hasten to assure you now, before these vicious lies spread, that they are fabrications designed to split your loyalties.

"'You will hear it said that I have been kidnapped and that an impersonator has taken my place in the White House. You will be asked to believe that all Earth's leaders have been abducted and that Monolithian duplicates have been substituted for them.

"'Let me repeat that this will be pernicious propaganda, spread by your enemies and mine, designed to undermine confidence in the great interstellar alliance for peace we have lately forged on Ultra.

"'Later today I will record, on tape and film, a similar message to you, my fellow citizens, to banish any lingering doubts you may have. I have asked our great radio and television networks to broadcast my message hourly throughout the day, so that you will both see and hear me give the lie to this outrageous plot to delude you and undermine your faith in your government and your President, who remains sincerely and genuinely yours--Gouverneur "Gov" Allison.'"

* * * * *

6:47 A.M. Telephone. The one in the living room. Joy, yawning, answered it.

"Yes, this is Joy Linx.... Well, yes, sir--he does happen to be here...."

She said to me, "It's for you, Sam. I--I think it's the President."

"Or the man who sounds like him," Spookie said.

I took the phone. "Sam Kent speaking." I listened, rubbing one tingling leg against the other. I nodded. I said "Yes, sir" several times. I hung up.

"I've got to go to the White House," I said to Joy and Spookie. To Joy I said, "Sorry about--"

"Never mind. You go on."

To Spookie I said, "Any objections, muscles?"

"Go on," he said. "If you think you know what you're doing. But if you want my advice----"

"I don't." I got my jacket and went out. Joy came to the door.

"Will you be all right--with him?" I asked.

She said, "Sure. Don't worry. I'm not worried about them."

It wasn't till I was down in the street, looking for a cab, that I realized she'd said "them," not "him."

I didn't take the first cab that came along, nor the second. And when I hailed the third I said nothing about the White House. I told the driver to take me to a bus that would get me to Baltimore.

* * * * *

9 A.M. Railroad station, Baltimore. Television. Image of Gov: "My dear fellow citizens...."

* * * * *

1 P.M. Pennsylvania Station, New York. Loudspeaker: "My dear fellow citizens...."

* * * * *

1:15 P.M. IRT 7th Avenue Subway. Newspaper headlines.

_Post_: "GOV TELLS NATION: I'M ME; BEWARE RUMORS."

_World-Telegram_: "PRESIDENT SPIKES KIDNAP FEARS; HITS 'ENEMY LIES.'"

_Journal-American_: "WHO'S IN WHITE HOUSE? 'GOV' SAYS HE IS."

* * * * *

2:20 P.M. I got off the subway in Brooklyn, bypassed the St. George as being too well known, and registered at the Towers down the street as Edward Lang.

* * * * *

3:40 P.M. Hotel switchboard operator: "I'm sorry, sir, that number still doesn't answer. Shall I keep trying?"

"No, thanks. Get me room service, will you?"

* * * * *

4:45 P.M. Having eaten and sent my clothes to be pressed, I arranged to buy a white shirt and rent an electric shaver. I left a call for midnight and went to bed. The last voice I heard on the five o'clock news on WNBC was that of the man in the White House, whoever he was, saying "... the great interstellar alliance for peace we have lately forged on Ultra...."

25 (AUG. 15, FRI.)

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

--Matthew, XV, 14

The phone rang. It was the desk clerk saying it was 12:15 A.M.

I thanked him and asked him to get me the number I'd been unable to reach the previous afternoon. There was a reluctant answer on the eleventh ring.

"Hello?" a male voice said. To my surprise it was one I recognized.

"Is this Mr. Avery?"

"It should be," the voice said cautiously. "Who is this?"

"Sam Kent," I said.

"I thought so. Have you been trying to reach me? I've been out."

"I know. But now I'd like to see you. When can we meet?"

"Not now. It's after midnight."

"I know; but it's important."

"I suppose it is. Where are you?"

"Brooklyn," I said. "But not very deep. I can make it in half an hour."

"All right. But be careful."

"Of course."

My clean clothes were ready by then and I dressed. I made sure I had all the flat black boxes I'd swiped from Ultra.

When I was halfway to the subway I realized I was being followed. At the same instant my head began to throb, for the first time since I'd gone berserk in Joy's apartment. That seemed to mean my shadow was a Monolithian. I continued on toward the subway, walking a little faster. There were half a dozen people on the street behind me and I couldn't be sure which one of them was after me.

I bought some tokens at the change booth and asked the attendant a series of complicated questions about how to get to a fictitious address in Queens. Two men came down the stairs a few seconds apart and went onto the subway platform. Neither one looked at me, nor did I recognize either of them.

I prolonged my conversation at the change booth until a Manhattan-bound train came in. Both men boarded it. But the throb in my head continued. It was annoying but not painful.

I thanked the attendant and went through the turnstile. There was a long wait for the next train. Just as I'd gone in and sat down, a man came running through the turnstile and got into my nearly empty car a second before the doors closed.

He took a seat opposite and looked at me with a little smile. It could have been no more than the smile one stranger gives another at his small success in triumphing over a machine, but when the throbbing in my head intensified I knew it was more than that. This was my Monolithian shadow.

He was neatly dressed in a brown gabardine suit. He was sixtyish, hatless and wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He had a big, retired-English-officer type of mustache and looked vaguely familiar.

The train went through the East River tunnel and at the Wall Street station I got up as if to get out. My friend in gabardine stood up casually and strolled to the same door. I had thought of waiting till just before the doors closed, then stepping out, but he would have been right behind me. I walked down the car and picked up a _Daily News_ someone had discarded.

My friend meanwhile pretended to study the subway map near the door, then sat down again, not quite opposite me.

The tabloid's headline reflected a non-Monolithian development in an international romance. PRINCE'S 'DREAM GIRL' SHUNS YACHT TRYST, it said, making it clear that the _Daily News_ was getting bored with interstellar intrigue. I looked in vain for the Rod Harris-Sam Kent exposé.

I got out at Times Square, waiting till the last second. But my shadow was too quick to be fooled. He was right at my heels as the doors shut, then dropped back a few paces.

I went up the stairs and into a phone booth. I dialed the number of the man who called himself Mr. Avery while my shadow stood a dozen feet away, buying himself a cup of soda from an automatic vending machine and drinking it slowly.

"Hello?" Avery said.

"I'm at Times Square but I'm being followed," I said.

Instead of telling me to go back to my hotel, as I expected him to, Avery said, "Good!"

"That's good?"

"Perfect," Avery said. "You come right on up--and be sure not to lose him. We want him. How's your head?"

"Throbbing," I said. "What makes you ask?"

"Never mind. Just bring your friend. One thing--there's a little delicatessen on the corner just before you get to the apartment-house entrance. Pick up half a dozen cans of frozen orange juice on your way, will you?"

"Sure. Will it be open?"

"It's open till 3. Six cans. Don't forget."

"Okay."

I went back down to the subway platform. My gabardine friend followed me. I took an uptown local and got off at 91st Street, at not quite the last second. My shadow made it safely to the platform.

At the corner of Columbus Avenue I went into the delicatessen. The man behind the counter was a big Negro. He looked familiar, somehow. There were no other customers.

"Any frozen orange juice?" I asked.

My shadow came in and put coins into the cigarette machine.

"Yes, sir," the Negro said. "How many?"

"Six."

The Negro came out from behind the counter. He took six cans out of the freezer chest and put them in a heavy ice-cream bag. To the Monolithian he said, "Pardon me." Then he hit him over the head with the six cans of frozen orange juice. My shadow crumpled to the floor.

The Negro pulled the shade down over the door and locked it. He put out most of the lights.

"I guess we can close up now, Mr. Kent," he said. "We'll go the back way, through the building."

My head had stopped throbbing.

* * * * *

I recognized the Negro as we went up in the freight elevator with the unconscious Monolithian.

"You're Timmie Johnson, aren't you?"

"That's right, Mr. Kent."

Timmie was Gov's valet--and probably much more than that, I now realized.

The elevator doors opened at the top of the apartment house and Gov Allison stood there waiting. Half a dozen men were with him.

"Well done, Timmie," the President of the United States said. "You, too, Sam."

26 (AUG. 16, SAT.)

This is no time to get out the crying towel or to throw in the sponge.

--Richard M. Nixon

We'd been hearing about it all day. The papers delivered to the top floor of the apartment house--the midtown-Manhattan hideout of Gov Allison, alias Mr. Avery, and his small band of anti-Monolithian guerrillas--were full of ads:

"Giant Rally at Madison Square Garden Tomorrow Night! Come One, Come All! Admission Free! Entertainment! Music! Souvenirs! Master of Ceremonies: Spookie Masters, Star of Stage, Screen and Television! Sponsored by the Monolithian-American Friendship Society."

There were spot announcements on radio and television, saying those who couldn't go to the rally would be able to watch it on the All-Network Telecast.

"Listen, Gov," I said. It was the first chance I'd had to ask him. "How did you get back to Earth? The last I heard, you and the other VIP's were being sent off to space somewhere while your Monolithian duplicates came back down."

Gov was drinking a screwdriver--possibly made from one of the six cans Timmie had used to knock out the Monolithian in the delicatessen.

"That's easy," Gov said. "I never went to Ultra."

"But I _saw_ you go. So did everybody else."

"No," Gov said. "You saw my stand-in. I told you some time ago, Sam, when we first got into this Alien rat race, that I was a tired old President. Only a few people know that for the last eighteen months I haven't attended a single cornerstone laying or warship launching or one of those rose garden jobs with the Lion's Club or the Boy Scouts. My double--a retired actor you've probably never heard of--officiated at them all. And he's the one, poor fellow, who's out there in space now. I hope he's all right. Fix me another one of these, will you, Sam?"

* * * * *

"Listen, Josh," I said to Joshua Holcomb, the original and now undercover White House Press Secretary whose job I had publicly taken, "if Gov is so all-fired lazy and ineffectual, what's he doing leading the underground? Frankly, I'm confused."

"Don't worry about a thing, Sam," Josh said. "You've done a great job, in your own way. I wouldn't be surprised if you got the Medal of Merit out of this, one day."

That's all I got out of _him_.

* * * * *

"Listen, Timmie," I said to the sometime White House valet, Timmie Johnson, "where'd they hide that Monolithian you conked with the orange juice? Who is he? And just what the hell is going on, anyway?"

"Mr. Kent," he said, "I think you'd just better wait and see. Oh--Mr. Gov asked me to ask you: have you got those boxes you took from Ultra? The CW boys want to have a look at them."

They'd been in my pocket ever since I broke out of the plush cell I'd shared with Rod and Joy. I handed them over gladly. Timmie went out.

* * * * *

They were all as busy as birds at nest-building time. I was the only one in the place who had nothing to do. That gave me time to think, which I didn't want. My thoughts always ended with Mae, my wife, and the impossibility of my returning to her while my Monolithian duplicate was with her. I couldn't risk confronting Mae, especially now, in her pregnancy, with the shock of realizing there were two Sam Kents and that she had been swapped between us in a sort of game of musical beds.

I couldn't think about this very hard, either, without getting fairly unstable and wanting to put my fist through something. My only comfort was Joy Linx's stray thought that the Monolithians might be homosexuals.

I had various other thoughts during the time nobody was talking to me and I was feeling useless.

The thoughts, mostly unanswered questions, were roughly as follows:

How big was Gov's organization? Did it consist of anyone besides the handful of men in this apartment? What did it hope to accomplish?

What caused the throbbing in my head? It seemed to occur only when I was close to a Monolithian--my duplicate on Ultra and the man who'd shadowed me here, for example. Were any of the other duplicated Earthmen similarly affected? Gov, for instance? I'd have to ask him.

And what did it signify--a form of Monolithian control? Point to remember: the throbbing stopped when the Monolithian lost consciousness.

Why was Spookie Masters m.c.-ing the big Sunday night rally? I'd got the impression that he'd lost his enchantment with the aliens after his experience as their captive on Ultra. But it was possible that the rally had been arranged before that incident, and there was no time to change the plans for it. It would be interesting to see what Spookie's attitude would be when he got up in front of the mike at the Garden.

I wondered if Joy would be there. I also wondered, with a twinge of what I tried to assure myself was not jealousy, whether Spookie was still in her apartment in Washington and whether she'd succumbed by now to his well-known charm.

* * * * *

Gov Allison wandered in, looking unhappy.

I started to get up, but he waved me back on the couch. He dropped himself at the other end of it and put his head back, rubbing his forehead.

"My head hurts," he said. "Must be the late hours. Not used to them. What time is it, anyway?"

It was about 2 P.M., I told him. "How does it hurt, Mr. President? I mean, is it a sharp pain, or--"

"It's a dull throb," he said. "Maybe a screwdriver would help. Would you mind looking in that cabinet over there, Sam, and seeing if there are any fixings?"

"Sure." I made myself one, too, then told him about my own headaches and my theory that they were caused by the proximity of Monolithians. It was interesting that Gov was experiencing the throbbing now and I was not.

"Where's the Monolithian we captured?" I asked. "I'll bet he's the one behind your headache."

"They've been working over him all day," Gov said. "In a thoroughly humane way, of course," he added quickly. "With drugs and things. We can't afford to cast the first stone in this situation."

"Have you found out why he was tailing me?"

"They haven't told me what they've found out, if anything. I think they want to get it all sorted out and translated into layman's terms first. Then we'll do something about it, when they've worked out a few ideas. I'm a decider, you know, not a planner."