Part 5
It was very quiet. There was only the humming of some bees in the flower garden, up from which sweet, heavy odors drifted sluggishly and curled across the deck. The sun beat down. On all sides without a break, the trees--solid masses of burnished leaves--pressed in.
Clawly crossed quietly to the dilated doorway in the cream-colored wall. He did not remove his flying togs. His visor he had thrown open during flight.
Raising his hand, he twice broke the invisible beam spanning the doorway. A low musical drone sounded, was repeated.
There was no answering sound, no footsteps. Clawly waited.
The general quiet, the feeling of lifelessness, made his abused nerves twitch. Forest homes like this, reached only by flying, were devilishly lonely and isolated.
Then he became aware of another faint, rhythmic sound, which the humming of the bees had masked. It came from inside the house. Throaty breathing. The intervals between breaths seemed abnormally long.
Clawly hesitated. Then he smoothly ducked under the beam.
He walked softly down a dark, cool corridor. The breathing grew steadily louder, though there was no change in its labored, sighing monotony. Opposite the third opened doorway the increase in volume was abrupt.
As his eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness, he made out a low couch and the figure of a man sprawled on it, on his back, arms dropped to either side, pale blob of bald head thrown limply back. At intervals the vague face quivered with the slow-paced breathing.
Clawly fumbled sideways, switched on a window, went over to the couch.
On the floor, under Conjerly's hand, was a deflated elastoid bag. Clawly picked it up, sniffed, quickly averted his head from the faintly pungent soporific odor.
He shook the bulky sleeper, less gently after a moment.
It did not interrupt the measured snores.
The first impression of Conjerly's face was one of utter emptiness, the deep-grooved wrinkles of character and emotion a network of disused roads. But on closer examination, hints of personality became dimly apparent, as if glimpsed at the bottom of a smudgy pool.
The longer Clawly studied them, the surer he became that the suspicions he had clutched at so eagerly in Oktav's office were groundless. This was the Conjerly he had known. Unimaginative perhaps, stubborn and blunt, a little too inclined to conservatism, a little too fond of curling down those deep furrows at the corners of the mouth--but nothing alien, nothing malign.
The rhythm of the breathing changed. The sleeper stirred. One hand came slowly up, brushed blindly at the chest.
Clawly watched motionlessly. From all sides the heavy summery silence pressed in.
The rhythm of the breathing continued to change. The sleeper tossed. The hand fumbled restlessly at the neck of the loose house robe.
And something else changed. It seemed to Clawly as if the face of the Conjerly he knew were sinking downward into a narrow bottomless pit, becoming tiny as a cameo, vanishing utterly, leaving only a hollow mask. And then, as if another face were rising to fill the mask--and in this second face, if not malignity, at least grim and unswervingly hostile purpose.
The sleeper mumbled, murmured. Clawly bent low, caught words. Words with a shuddery, unplacable quality of distance to them, as if they came from another cosmos.
"... transtime machine ... invasion ... three days ... we ... prevent action ... until--"
Then, from the silence behind him, a different sound--a faint crunch.
Clawly whirled. Standing in the doorway, filling half its width and all its height, was Tempelmar.
And in Tempelmar's lean, horse-like face the vanishing flicker of a look in which suspicion, alarm, and a more active emotion were blended--a lethal look.
But by the time Clawly was looking straight at him, it had been replaced by an urbane, condescending, eyebrow-raising "Well?"
Again a sound from behind. Turning, backing a little so that he could take in both men at once, Clawly saw that Conjerly was sitting up, rubbing his face. He took away his hands and his small eyes stared at Clawly--blankly at first. Then his expression changed too, became a "Well?"--though more angry, indignant, less urbane. It was an expression that did not belong to the man who had lain there drugged.
The words Clawly had barely caught were still humming in his ears.
Even as he phrased his excuse--"... came to talk with you about the program ... heard sounds of distressed breathing ... alarmed ... walked in ..."--even as he considered the possibility of immediate physical attack and the best way to meet it, he came to a decision.
He would see Firemoor.
VIII.
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
_The Duchess of Malfi_, John Webster.
With bent shoulders, sunken head, paralyzed arm still dangling at his side, Thorn crouched uncomfortably in his lightless cell, as if the whole actual weight of the Black Star--up to the cold, cloud-piercing pinnacle where "they" held council--were upon him. His mind was tired to the breaking point, oppressed by the twisted, tyrannous world into which he had blundered, by the aching body not his own, by the brain which refused to think his thoughts in the way he wanted to think them.
And yet, in a sense, the human mind is tireless--an instrument built for weary decades of uninterrupted thinking and dreaming. And so Thorn continued to work on, revolving miseries, regrets, and fears, striving to unlock the stubborn memory chambers of the unfamiliar brain, turning from that to equally hopeless efforts to make plans. Mostly it struggled nightmarishly with the problem of escape back to his own world, and with the paradoxical riddles which that problem involved. He must, Thorn told himself, still be making partial use of his brain back in World I--to give it a name--just as Thorn II--to give him a name--must be making use of these locked memory chambers. All thought had to be based on a physical brain; it couldn't go on in emptiness. Also, since Universes I and II--to give them names--were independent, self-contained space-time set-ups, they couldn't have an ordinary spatial relationship--they couldn't be far from or near to each other. The only linkage between them seemed to be the mental ones between quasi-duplicate brains, and such linkages would not involve distance in any common sense of the term. His transition into World II had seemed to take place instantaneously; hence, pragmatically speaking, the two universes could be considered as super-imposed on each other. Whether he was in one or the other was just a matter of viewpoint.
So near and yet so far. So diabolically similar to attempts to wake from a nightmare--and the blackness of his cell increased the similarity. All he had to do was summon up enough mental energy, find sufficient impetus, to force a re-exchange of viewpoints between himself and Thorn II. And yet as he struggled and strained through seeming eternities in the dark, as he strove to sink, to plunge, down the dark channels of the subconscious and found them closed, as he felt out the iron resistances of that other Thorn, he began to think the effort impossible--even began to wonder if World I were not just the wishful dream of a scarred, hunted, memoryless man in a world where invisible tyrants plotted un-understandable invasions, commanded the building of inexplicable machines, and bent millions to their wholly cryptic will.
At least, whatever the sufficient impetus was, he could not find it.
A vertical slit of light appeared, widened to a square, revealed a long corridor. And in it, flanked by two black-uniformed guards, the other Clawly.
So similar was the dapper figure to the Clawly he knew--rigged out in a strange costume and acting in a play--that it was all he could do not to spring up with a friendly greeting.
And then, to think that this Clawly's mind was linked to the other's, that somewhere, just across its subconscious, his friend's thoughts moved--Dizzying. He stared at the trim, ironic face with a terrible fascination.
Clawly II spoke. "Consider yourself flattered. I'm going to deliver you personally to the Servants of the People. They'll want to be the ones to decide, in your case, between immediate self-sacrifice, assisted confession, or what not." He chuckled without personal malice. "The Servants have devised quite amusing euphemisms for Death and Torture, haven't they? The odd thing is, they seem to take them seriously--the euphemisms, I mean."
The uniformed guards, in whose stolid faces were written years of unquestioning obedience to incomprehensible orders, did not laugh. If anything, they looked shocked.
* * * * *
Thorn staggered up and stepped slowly forward, feeling that by that action he was accepting a destiny not of his own making but as inescapable as all destinies are, that he was making his entrance, on an unknown stage, into an unknown play. They started down the corridor, the guards bringing up the rear.
"You make rather a poorer assassin than I'd have imagined, if you'll pardon the criticism," Clawly II remarked after a moment. "That screaming my name to get me off guard--a very ill-advised dodge. And then dropping your weapon in the streambed. No--you can't exactly call it competent. I'm afraid you didn't live up to your reputation of being the most dangerous of the Recalcitrants. But then, of course, you were fagged."
Thorn sensed something more in the remarks than courteous knife-twisting. Undeniably, Clawly II was vaguely aware of something off-key, and was probing for it. Thorn tightened his guard, for he had decided on at least one thing in the dark--that he would not reveal that he was a displaced mind, except to escape some immediate doom. It might be all right if they would consider him insane. But he was reasonably certain they would not.
Clawly II looked up at him curiously. "Rather silent, aren't you? Last time we met, as I recall, you denounced me--or was it the things I stood for?--in the most bitter language, though with admirable restraint. Can it be that you're beginning to reconsider the wisdom of recalcitrance? Rather late for that, I'm afraid."
He waited a while. Then, "It's you that hates me, you know. I hate no one." He caught Thorn's involuntary grimace, the twitch of the shoulder from which hung the paralyzed right arm. "Oh, I sometimes hurt people, but that's mainly adjustment to circumstances--quite another thing. My ideal, which I've pretty well achieved, is to become so perfectly adjusted to circumstances that I float freely on the stream of life, unannoyed by any tugs of hate, love, fear, caution, guilt, responsibility, and so forth--all the while enjoying the spectacle and occasionally poking in a finger."
Thorn winced--Clawly II's remarks were so similar to those which Clawly I sometimes made when he was in a banteringly bitter mood. Certainly the man must have some sort of suspicions and be trying to draw him out--he'd never talk so revealingly otherwise. Beyond that, there was the suggestion that Clawly II was bothered by certain unaccustomed feelings of sympathy and was trying to get to the bottom of them. Perhaps the independence of quasi-duplicate minds wasn't as complete as it had at first appeared. Perhaps Clawly I's emotions were obscurely filtering through to Clawly II. It was all very confusing, unnervingly so, and Thorn was relieved when their entry into a large room postponed the moment when he would have to decide on a line of answers.
* * * * *
It was an arresting room, chiefly because it was divided into two areas in which two separate ways of life held sway, as clearly as if there had been a broad white line extending across the middle, with the notice, "Thou shalt not pass." On this side was quite a crowd of people, most of them sitting around on benches, a few in black uniforms, the rest in servile gray. They were all obviously waiting--for orders, permissions, judgments, interviews. They displayed, to an exaggerated degree, that mixture of uneasiness and boredom characteristic of people who must wait. Four words sprang to Thorn's mind, summing them up. _They did not know._
On the other side were fewer people--a bare half dozen, seated at various desks. Their superiority was not obviously displayed. Their clothing was, if anything, drabber and more severe, and the furnishings they used were in no way luxurious. But something in their manner, something in the way they glanced speculatively up from their work, put gulfs between them and those who uneasily waited. This time only two words were needed. _They knew._
Clawly II's arrival seemed to cause an increase in the uneasiness. At least, Thorn caught several frightened glances, and sensed a general relaxing of tension when it became obvious that Clawly II's mission did not concern anyone here. He also noted that the two guards seemed relieved when Clawly dismissed them.
One other glance he thought he caught was of a perplexingly different sort. It was directed at him rather than Clawly II. It came from an elderly, gray-clad man, whose face awoke no sense of recognition either in this world or his own. It conveyed, if he was not mistaken, sympathy, anxiety, and--strangest of all--_loyalty_. Still, if Thorn II had been some sort of rebel leader, the incident was understandable. Thorn quailed, wondering if he had put himself into the position of betraying a worthy movement in this world as well as his own.
Clawly II seemed to be a person of reputation on the other side of the room as well, for his clipped, "To the Servants' Hall, with a person for the Servants," passed them through without a question.
They entered another corridor, and their surroundings began to change very rapidly. A few paces brought them to a subtronic tube. Thorn was glad that he was startled into moving jerkily when the upward-surging current gripped them, for a glance at Clawly II warned him that it would not be well to show much familiarity with this form of transportation.
And now, for the first time since his plunge into World II, Thorn's mind began to work with clarity. It may have been the soothing familiarity of the current.
Obviously, in World II subtronic power was the closely-guarded possession of a ruling elite. There had been no evidence at all of its employment on the other side of the dividing line. Moreover, that would explain why the workers and soldiers on the other side were kept ignorant of the true nature and theory of at least some of the instruments they constructed or used. It would also explain the need for the vast amount of work--there were two ways of life, based on entirely different power-systems, to be maintained.
Then as to the relationship between Worlds I and II. For closely related they must be--it was unthinkable that two eternally independent universes could have produced two near-identical Opal Crosses, Gray Twins, Clawlys, Thorn, and an uncounted host of other similars; if one granted that possibility, one would have to grant anything. No--Worlds I and II must be the results of a split in the time-stream, however caused, and a fairly recent split at that, for the two worlds contained duplicate individuals and it was again unthinkable that, if the split had occurred as much as a hundred years ago, the same individuals would have been born in the two worlds--the same gametes, under different circumstances, still uniting to form the same zygotes.
The split must--of course!--have occurred when the nightmare-increase began in World I. About thirty years ago.
But--Thorn's credulity almost rebelled--would it have been possible for two worlds to become so different in a short time? Freedom in one, tyranny in the other. Decent people in one, emotional monsters and cringing, embittered underlings in the other. It was horrible to think that human nature, especially the nature of people you loved and respected, could be so much the toy of circumstance.
And yet--the modern world was keyed for change. Wars could, had, come overnight. Sweeping technological changes had been accomplished in a few months. And granting such an immense initial difference as the decision to keep subtronic power a government secret in World II, to make it public property in World I--
Moreover, there was a way of testing. Without pausing to consider, Thorn said, "Remember when we were children? We used to play together. Once we swore an oath of undying friendship."
* * * * *
Clawly II twisted toward him in the current, which was now taking them up past winking corridor entries.
"You _are_ breaking," he remarked in surprise. "I never expected a play for sympathy. Yes, of course I remember."
"And then about two years later," Thorn plunged on, "when our glider dropped in the lake and I was knocked out, you towed me ashore."
Clawly II laughed, but the puzzled look around his eyes deepened. "Did you really believe I saved you? It hardly fits with your behavior toward me afterwards. No, as I think you know, I swam ashore. That was the day on which I first realized that I was I, and that everything and everybody else was circumstances."
Thorn shivered, as much in horror of this changeling beside him as in satisfaction at having checked the date of the time-split. Then he felt revulsion rising in him, more from the body he occupied than from his own thoughts.
"There isn't room in the world for even two people with that attitude," he heard himself challenge bitterly.
"Yes, but there is room for one," Clawly II replied laughingly. Then he frowned and continued hesitatingly, as if against his better judgment. "Look, why don't you try the same thing? Your only chance with the Servants is to make yourself useful to them. Remember, they too are just something to be adjusted to."
For a moment it seemed to Thorn as if Clawly I were striving to look through the eyes of Clawly II. As he tried to gain control of the baffling jumble of emotions this sensation produced, Clawly II took him by the arm and steered them into the slower periphery of the current, then into a dead-current area before the mouth of a short pedestrian corridor.
"No talk from here on," he warned Thorn. "But remember my advice."
There were calculatingly-eyed guards inside the corridor mouth, but again a mere "With a person for the Servants" passed them in.
A low, gray door, without numeral or insignia, blocked the end of the corridor. Some yards short of it was a narrow side-door. Clawly II touched something and the side-door opened. Thorn followed him through it. After a few paces down a dim, curving passageway, they came to a large room, but Clawly II stopped them just short of it. Again he touched something. A door slid silently out of the wall behind them, changing the end of the passageway into a dark niche in the room ahead. Signing to Thorn that they were to wait and watch, Clawly II leaned back with a slow speculative smile.
IX.
Black Star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
_John Keats_ (_with an ironic alteration_)
It was a notably bare room, smaller and lower-ceilinged than he had expected. It was furnished with ostentatious simplicity, and nothing broke the gray monotony of the walls.
Around the longer side of a kidney-shaped table, eleven men sat on stools. Their gray tunics, though clean, were like those of beggars. They were all old, some bald, some capped with close-cropped white or gray. They all sat very erect.
The first thing that struck Thorn--with surprise, he realized--was that the Servants of the People looked in no way malignant, villainous, or evil.
But looking at them a second time, Thorn began to wonder if there was not something worse. A puritanic grimness that knew no humor. A suffocating consciousness of responsibility, as if all the troubles of the world rested on their shoulders alone. A paternal aloofness, as if everyone else were an irresponsible child. A selflessness swollen to such bounds as to become supreme selfishness. An intolerable sense of personal importance that their beggarly clothes and surroundings only emphasized.
But Thorn had barely gleaned this impression, had had no time to survey the faces in detail, except to note that one of two seemed vaguely familiar, when his attention became rivetted on the man who was standing on the other side of the table, the focus of their converging eyes.
That man was obviously one of them. His manner and general appearance were the same.
But that man was also Conjerly.
He was speaking. "I must return at once. The soporific I inhaled into my other body will wear off shortly, and if the other mind becomes conscious, exchange will be difficult. True, Tempelmar is on guard there and could administer another dose. But that is dangerous. Understand, we will attempt no further exchanges unless it becomes necessary to transmit to you information of vital importance. The process is too risky. There is always the possibility of the mental channels being blocked, and one or both of us being marooned here."
"You are wise," observed the midmost of the Servants, apparently their chairman, a tall thin man with wrinkle-puckered lips. "No further exchanges should be necessary. I anticipate no emergencies."
"And so I take my leave," Conjerly continued, "assured that the transtime machine is ready and that the invasion will begin in three days, at the hour agreed. We will prevent the World Executive Committee from taking any significant action until then."
Thorn leaned forward, half guessing what was coming. Clawly II's hand touched his sleeve.
Conjerly bowed his head, stood there rigid. Two black-uniformed guards appeared and took up positions close to him, one on either side.
For a full half minute nothing happened.
Then a great shiver went through Conjerly. He slumped forward, would have fallen except for the two guards. He hung in their arms, breathing heavily.
When he raised his face, Thorn saw that it had a different expression, was that of a different man. A man who looked dazed and sick.
"Where--? Who?" he mumbled thickly. The guards began to lead him out. Then his eyes cleared. He seemed to recognize the situation. "Don't lock me up. Let me explain," he cried out, his voice racked by a desperate yet hopeless urgency. "My name's Conjerly. I'm a member of the World Executive Committee." His face, twisted back over his shoulder, was a white, uncomprehending mask. "Who are you? What do you want out of me? Why am I drugged? What have you done to my body? What are you trying to do to my mind? What--"
The guards dragged him out.
The wrinkle-lipped chairman lowered his eyes. "A distressing occurrence. But, of course, strictly necessary. It is good to think that, when we have things under control in the other world, no such confinements and withholdings of permissible information will have to be practiced--except, of course, in the case of hopeless Recalcitrants."
The others nodded silently. Then Thorn started, for from beside him came an amused, incredulous snicker--not a polite or pleasant sound, and certainly unexpected.
All eyes were turned in their direction.
* * * * *
Clawly II strode out leisurely.
"What did your laughter signify?" The chairman asked sharply, without preliminaries, a look of displeasure settling on his face. "And who is that you have smuggled into our council, without informing us? Let me tell you, some day you will go too far in your disregard of regulations."