Part 2

She was barred from entry to the studioff. The electroscreen admitted Ray and Janet as usual but remained an invisible wall that refused her admittance. She was no longer keyed to the group-machine. Before she could try again a magnovox said, "Please report to Integration Chief on Floor Eighty. Please report to Integration Chief on...."

Ray looked scared. Disruption of a team during working hours was an emotional shock. Even Janet showed traces of fright. But she managed a grin and said, "Give him the old treatment, Lynne, and you can't lose." She accompanied the remark with a thoroughly carnal bump.

Lynne said nothing, being incapable of speech. She turned and made her way to the mobilramp, had a sudden vivid recollection of the older but far more efficient lift on the Martian tower in her dream. She felt sick to her stomach and her headache was thumping again.

She had never been on the eightieth floor before--it was reserved for guiding geniuses, who had no time for mere group-machine members except in case of trouble. Lynne wondered what she had done as she entered a room with walls of soft rolling colors.

The man on the couch, a tall lean saturnine man with dark eyes that seemed to read right through her from out of a long lined white face, didn't leave her long in doubt. He said, "Miss Fenlay, I'm afraid I have bad news for you. As a result of your amazing performance yesterday your usefulness as a group-machine worker is ended."

"But I was right," she protested. "I had the first zero-variation in integration history."

"You needn't be so frightened," he said more gently. "I know this must be a severe emotional shock. You were right--by the machine. We need human factors in cybernetics to show us where the machines are wrong, not where they are right. To come up with two successive zero-variant answers implies some sort of rapport with the machine itself. We can't afford to take further chances."

Lynne sat down abruptly on an empty couch. She felt empty inside, said, "What am I to do?"

The tall dark man's smile was a trifle frosty. He said, "We've been watching you, of course. About all I can tell you, Miss Fenlay, is that your--er--aberration is not exactly a surprise."

"You mean you've been spying on me?" Even though Lynne was thoroughly conditioned to accept her life as part of a complex mechano-social integration, she found the idea of being spied upon unpleasant.

"Not really," he told her. "And don't worry. We have no intention of letting your remarkable gifts go to waste." He paused, added, "I hope your headache is better soon."

"Thank you," she said. She was outside before the full implications of his parting shot sank home. How had he or anyone known she was suffering from headache? She had reported it to no one--and the helth-check booth machine was not geared to give confidential evidence or to retain personality keys for checking.

It was a puzzle. She worked on it until she was almost back at Mother Weedon's, then realised the Integration Chief had given her no hint of a new assignment--had only suggested she was to be used. She began to wonder if laboratory test-animals suffered from headaches like the one which seemed to have led to her undoing.

There was no escaping Mother Weedon, who was enjoying a tri-di vidarcast in full view of the front door as Lynne came in. Well, the girl thought, she was going to have to be told anyway--if she hadn't already got the news from the brain-station.

Evidently Mother Weedon had heard. She motioned the girl to sit beside her on her couch and said, "Don't worry, Lynne. You're going to be fine. The trouble with you is you've outgrown your job--yes, and Janet and Ray and me too. You can't help it. You're too good for us and that's that. They'll be moving you on."

"But I _like_ it here," cried Lynne. "I like you and Jan and Ray and our work with the group-machine. I don't want it to change."

"But it will--everything changes," said Mother Weedon gently. "I'm glad you've been happy here. But your happiness has meant Janet's unhappiness and, more lately, Ray's."

"I--see," Lynne said slowly. She hadn't thought of things in that light before. But of course it was true. The first real home she had ever known was about to be taken from her and the experience was too personal to allow much detached thinking.

Like most genetically-controlled children whose double-birth had been successful, she had been brought up with functional rather than sentimental care. Not having known her parents, not having known her twin brother on Mars, she had never missed them. The teachers and matrons at the seminary had been carefully selected for their warmth and competence. There had always been plenty of playmates, plenty of interesting things to learn.

Living at Mother Weedon's had been a new and emotionally opening experience, as had the blossoming of her romance with Ray Cornell, her now-fractured friendship with Janet Downes. It was not going to be easy to leave, to tear up only recently established roots, to set down new ones which might in time be as ruthlessly sundered.

She felt frightened and very much alone, as if she were again in the Martian tower of her nightmare with only alien and disembodied voices speaking to her. Mars--she wondered a little about it. Somewhere on Mars was her twin, Revere Fenlay, the brother she could not remember. She wondered if he too were having troubles. There were stories floating about of twins whose rapport spanned lifetimes separated by the distance between the planets. But she knew nothing of Mars.

She watched a vidarcast with Mother Weedon, an unreal historical romance of love and adventure in one of the vast sprawling industrial empires of the mid-twentieth century. There was, for twenty-second-century folk, a vast emotional appeal in the job-competition, the hard compulsory physical toil, the dangers of that exciting era. But Lynne was too wrapped up in her own problem to react as usual.

While she and Mother Weedon were lunching on pineapple soup and Bermudasteak with shadbacon and lacticola, Ray and Janet came in. They pretended concern at what had happened to Lynne and the team but were obviously excited with one another and the prospect of integrating a new member of the team in Lynne's place.

After the meal Janet and Lynne were briefly alone in the vidaroom. Janet eyed Lynne covertly and Lynne said, "It's all right, Jan. I'm not going to put up a fight for Ray. Under the circumstances it's only fair. I don't know what's going to happen to me and you and him--"

"Damn you, Lynne Fenlay!" Janet's sudden flare of hot emotion was almost frightening. "You _would_ be like this. Don't you realise that by being noble you'll leave both of us with a guilt complex we'll never be able to shake?"

"Sorry," said Lynne sincerely. "I can't help it."

Janet regarded her narrowly, shook her head. "Hasn't anything ever touched you, Lynne?" she asked. "Haven't you ever wanted Ray or anyone as I want him? Haven't you ever hated anyone as I'm beginning to hate you? Haven't you ever been human?"

"_Jan!_" Lynne was shocked, then vaguely frightened. "I don't know--I guess maybe not," she said. "But Jan, I can't help it. That's the way I am."

Janet sighed and said, "In that case I'm sorry for you." She changed the subject quickly as Ray came wandering in, gave Lynne an unhappy look, then crossed the room and turned on the vidarscreen. Peace of an uneasy sort reigned for the next hour.

"When are they assigning your new member?" Lynne asked as the picture, a documentary about solar heat, came to an end.

"Not for a day or so," said Ray. He looked at her piteously. "We--we're going to miss you, Lynne. I wish I understood...."

"You're going to be too busy," Lynne told him. "And don't worry about me, Ray. I've already talked to Jan."

"You mean you're not angry about _us_?"

Lynne shook her head, glanced at Janet, was again startled by the blazing hatred that was beamed her way. She wondered what it must feel like to hate in such thorough fashion. She was relieved when she heard Mother Weedon talking to someone at the door.

A moment later the widow entered and said, "This is Rolf Marcein, kids. He's going to be staying with us a little while." She introduced the three of them to the newcomer.

Lynne barely acknowledged the greeting. She was too startled. The most recent addition to Mother Weedon's charmed circle appeared, in the semi-dark room, to be the man who had given her her walking papers that morning on the eightieth floor of the brain-station tower.

He was tall, dark, lanky, saturnine. His name was Marcein. At least that was something Lynne hadn't known before. And then she noticed that this Marcein's face was not so pale, that his eyes were brighter, his manner and movements more athletically poised than the man on the eightieth floor. Mother Weedon pressed the polarizer to let more light into the room, since the vidarbox was not on. The stranger's tan, seen in the light, was startling, especially to Lynne, who had seen his pale double so recently.

* * * * *

His double--that meant his twin, she thought. And if his twin worked in the brain-station, then _this_ man must be a Martian. Certainly that would account for his tan, caused by living under the thin atmosphere of the red planet--as it would account for an athletic poise acquired during the hardships of Martian existence.

_You're right, of course. I am Dolf's twin and I am from Mars._

It took her almost a full second to realise the thoughts had not been spoken. She was telepathic again, aware not only of the newcomer's thoughts but of those of the others in the room--though not as much aware of theirs as of Rolf Marcein's.

She looked at him with something like panic, saw his brilliant dark eyes upon her, noted that he wore his clothes well, that there was something almost lupine in his grace, something almost overpowering....

_You must know you're beautiful yourself, Lynne Fenlay--if soft and unawakened. I have an idea I could turn the trick...._

It was like a blow. Not only could she read _his_ thoughts, Lynne realised--but he could read _hers_. She felt her face flame and a sudden surge of resentment toward his arrogance that forced her to leave the room lest she reveal the weakness it caused. And as she left his soft laughter rang like hailstones in her ears.

III

The days that followed Rolf Marcein's arrival at Mother Weedon's became, to Lynne, a period of waiting. It was a period of waiting games as well. No summons came from the eightieth floor of the brain-station to give her a clue as to the nature of her next assignment. For the first time in her life she found herself hung in a vacuum with nothing definite to do or to look forward to.

Naturally she wondered whether Rolf Marcein might not be the answer to this facet of her problem. But not even her growing telepathic abilities could pry a response out of his mind. He seemed to be visiting the home planet on the vaguest sort of business--something to do with development and transport of specially-bred plant and animal stock for the red planet.

It seemed absurd on the face of it that such an obviously able adjustee should be returned to Earth on such a mission, especially with every gram of interplanetary ship-space at a premium. Yet either it was truth or Rolf had developed some method of screening his thoughts against telepathic probing--a frightening idea in itself.

He hung around Mother Weedon's most of the time. As a result Lynne saw a lot of him throughout the days and evenings, a fact which both pleased and alarmed her unreasonably. It was during the third night of his stay that he invaded, or tried to invade, her nights as well.

Before drifting off to sleep she found herself dwelling on him with relaxed reverie. Ray and Janet had had some sort of quarrel and the atmosphere that evening had been far from pleasant. It was a relief to lie alone, to let her thoughts roam and quest as they would.

Rolf had talked of Mars during a stroll to the bazaar-mart during the afternoon. He had described a boar-hunt on Earth's sister-planet during a night when both Deimos and Phobos were describing their rapid orbits across the cloudless sky.

The pig, as man's most adaptable food-animal, had been the first livestock imported to Mars less than three decades earlier. Now, according to Rolf, the animals had in large measure reverted to their feral state and constituted a menace to man and his works alike.

"We used flashlights and small-arms paralyzers on that hunt," Rolf said. "We flushed a whole herd of them in an erosion-gully along the border of the Great Southern Canal--didn't get so much as a smell of the brutes until we were right on top of them.

"At that we managed to nab a baker's dozen for de-tusking and redomestication. _Ferkab_, it was touch and go for a bit! One big brute slipped under my ray and if I hadn't been lucky enough to jam my flashlight tube into his mouth he'd have taken my leg off."

"What does _ferkab_ mean?" Lynne asked, a little annoyed at feeling an atavistic thrill from the account of the primitive hunt.

To her delight Rolf actually blushed beneath his tan. He began with, "I don't think you'd appreciate its meaning," then recalled her telepathic powers and shut up and blushed more deeply.

At which it had been Lynne's turn to feel her face grow hot. The meaning of _ferkab_, an approximate translation of certain graphically illustrated ancient Martian runes, was explicit to the point of bawdiness. Yet on Mars, apparently, it was used in mixed company.

So, lying half asleep, Lynne not surprisingly visualised the boar hunt as Rolf had described it. She could see his weatherproof aluminum clothing gleaming in the pale light of the swift tiny moons, shining in the occasional ray of a flashlight as he and his shadowy companions worked their way along the eroded bank of the canal.

Then the sudden rustle and thump and grunting of the beasts as they came charging out of their threatened shelter, their vast menacing shapes with huge tusks and little red eyes glittering in the confused crisscross of flashlight rays. She saw the paralyzers' brief glow, heard the thud of falling animal bodies, saw the sudden rush of one furious beast inside the protective sweep of Rolf's hand-weapon, saw his quick graceful evasive movement, heard the champ of savage tusks crushing the hard alloy of the metal tube.

* * * * *

Once, on the vidarscreen, she had watched a toreador do his dance of death with a furious bull, in an historical show. Rolf, she thought, was slim as a toreador, slim and graceful and equally accustomed to facing danger and death as an accepted part of life.

Then, she told herself scornfully, she was reverting to the primitive as if she were a Martian sow herself. She thought of the word _ferkab_ and what it meant and felt her face grow hot in the darkness. For she could visualise Rolf and--herself--in a way she had never been able to think of herself with Ray Cornell.

_It's not confined to Mars, darling_, came the sudden probe of Rolf's thought over hers. _But it takes a Martian to be the best._

Reverie was obliterated by rage. She sent back a string of thoughts that should have blistered Rolf's brains--if he had any decency. He withdrew before her counterattack and she wondered if he really did have any decency--or if her rage were all she had pretended.

She was cool to him the next day--and the arrival of the new member of the group-machine gave her opportunity to avoid him. Her replacement was a dark stocky quiet young man named Alan Waters and he seemed quite smitten with her--a fact which made Janet visibly jealous. Lynne found herself quite enjoying her triumph.

But the day after, when the other three reported for work at the brain-station and Mother Weedon visited the bazaar-mart for some needed household supplies, Lynne found herself looking at a mischievously contrite Rolf across the breakfast table.

He said, "I'm sorry if I've offended you, Lynne. Apparently I made the mistake of thinking you had blood in your veins."

Lynne acted without volition for the first time since early babyhood. She picked up the plastisaucer in front of her and flung it across the neoplast tabletop at him. He ducked and for a moment his dark eyes blazed with laughter and then he sensed her distress and helped her with the atocleaner.

She tried to apologize but the words refused to come. And he never mentioned the incident afterward. Instead he took her for a walk through the park and talked to her of the more feral beauties of his own planet. "It's far wilder than this," he told her, gesturing at the neat clusters of trees and flowers, the perfectly clipped hedges about them. "Wilder and deadlier and far more beautiful."

"This is perfection," she told him.

"And perfection is death," was his reply.

"I thought Mars pretty much a dead planet," she said.

"It's a vast mausoleum," he said, his eyes lighting. "A mausoleum visited by new life, a mausoleum in which the very souls of the dead themselves seem beginning to stir. It's raw new life burgeoning on the old."

He talked on and she felt the beginnings of small responses stir within her and frighten her. For she had been conditioned to Earth and to wish for Mars was wrong. Finally he stopped and faced her and captured both her hands in his incredibly strong ones.

"Lynne," he said. "I haven't much longer here. I want to take you back home with me. Will you come?"

"Home--on _Mars_?" she countered. The idea was impossible. Yet, somewhere within herself, she wanted to go. Then the reasons, the millions of reasons why she couldn't say yes, came flooding up within her. Surely Rolf knew them--or did he?

"You know the system and the reasons behind it," she reminded him. "You have a twin right here in the city. I've talked to him--it was he who gave me my walking papers from the group-machine."

"He told me," said Rolf quietly. "He told me a lot about you. Enough so I wanted to see you and get to know you. Now that I do know you I want you to go back with me. Can't you see, darling? There's little use for telepaths on Earth. On Mars we need them desperately. I think I can arrange a transfer."

"But my brother is already there," she told him a little desperately. "I--we--they can't leave two of us on one planet. And what right have I to ask him to come to Earth? He's not conditioned."

"But maybe he'd like to come back," Rolf suggested. "Maybe he's not happy on Mars."

"It's not just that," she said miserably. Nor was it. For the first time the entire system by which the Mars project was functioning seemed to her vastly unfair. Until that moment she had accepted it, considered it as immutable as the need for the sun itself.

The Earth Government, which was what the U.N. had evolved into after its first tortured half-century of birth, was determined not to repeat upon alien planets the mistakes of imperialism and colonization that had caused the home planet all but to tear itself to pieces during the twentieth century.

No convicts, no misfits, no refugee cultists were to be sent out to settle the newly-opened red planet--instead, the cream of Earth's best trained, most gifted and strongest young men and women were to do the preliminary settling. For it would still be many years before the arid world would be able to support much humanity.

There had been protests--chief among them a group of eugenicists who felt that loss of such a large group of qualified young folk would cost the home planet more genetically and socially than it could afford. The answer had been genetically-induced twins on the part of parents qualified to pass a wide variety of mental, physical and psychiatric tests, open to all who wished to join the project.

* * * * *

One of each set of such induced identical twins was early selected to go to Mars, the other to remain on Earth. Thus Earth lost nothing, yet had its potential Martians, ready for conditioning and training in special seminaries for lifetime work on the red planet. When one of a pair of twins was a girl, the other a boy, the boy was the one sent out--since life on Mars was still a rugged affair. Thus it was that Lynne had been reared for an Earth-career while her brother, Revere, had been educated and coached for a Mars-life.

Lynne's entire twenty-four years had been passed for the purpose of integration into and work for the improvement of humanity on her native planet. The very idea of Mars was terrifying, as was the idea of traveling there through space. She simply _couldn't_ endure the wrench of the trip, the separation from all that mattered.

Rolf stood there quietly, letting her thoughts flow without interruption. Then he said, "I see--but it's not as bad as all that, darling. After all, _I_ made the trip in reverse."

"But that's different--you're a man!" she protested.

"Nor is being a man as bad as you seem to think," he said and she sensed that he was teasing her and was grateful for the change in mood. Before she realized what she was doing she called him mentally a thoroughly bawdy Martian word.

"Where did you learn that?" he asked, startled.

"Where do you think?" she countered--and enjoyed seeing him blush again. They had a pleasantly innocuous time together the remainder of that day and evening.

The following morning Lynne awoke from another horrible nightmare of alien worlds to find her headache back in full force. So bad was it, in fact, that after making a half-hearted effort to get up she fell back on her plastomat, actually moaning a little. She felt as if she were undergoing some long-forgotten sort of Inquisition torture.

Rolf walked into her room within the hour and so sick was Lynne that she didn't even protest his presence. He said, "Lynne, darling, you've got to get over this. Believe it or not you're killing me."

"Then stay in your own mind." She managed a whisper of a smile.

"You're like a bad tooth," he said inelegantly. "You know it's going to hurt if you touch it but you can't stop running your tongue over it."

"Oh, shut up," she said rudely. "So now I'm an ulcerated tooth. I've never had one so I wouldn't know."

"Nor have I," he replied promptly. "But I've read about them. Come on. I'm going to take you to Centromed and get you fixed up."

"I'm too ill to move," she quavered, alarmed at the prospect.

But he simply moved in and took over, virtually forcing Lynne firmly but gently into her clothes, getting her downstairs and onto a moving strip, escorting her through the prophylactic entrance of the huge vertical cross of the Centromed, giving her in charge of a stern-faced but kindly physician in white, who put her in turn in the hands of a giant red-headed nurse in steropants and white cap.

Lynne never did find out what they did with her. She recalled lying down and looking up at a hypnotic ceiling, drifting quickly into merciful unconsciousness. When she recovered her headache was gone and she had a sense of having undergone an important experience.

"Miss Fenlay," the doctor said, "you're undergoing a period of mental growth and change that in your case seems to make such suffering periodic."

"What can I do about it?" she asked in panic.

"I believe your trouble is one of environment," he replied. "During this period of readjustment you find familiar surroundings unsufferable. In plain English, you need a change."

"But how am I to get it?" she asked.

"That is hardly our department," he told her. "You'll have to take it up with your Integration Chief, I'm afraid. Naturally we'll be glad to make a recommendation for transfer on medical grounds."