Paraworlds, she thought to herself. They, the two THL agents, had said that. Silver, White, The Clock . . . and finally Blue.
Am I in a paraworld now? she wondered. Whatever they are. Perhaps that would explain the twisted, strained wrongness which the world around her now seemed to possess throughout. She shivered. Which one is this? she asked herself, assuming it’s any of them? But even if it is, she realized, that still doesn’t tell me what they are, or how I got into this one, or—how I manage to scramble back. Again she shivered.
“We’ll be touching ships with Mr. Ferry at 003.5,” the taller of the two THL agents informed her conventionally; he seemed amused, now, as if her discomfort were quaint and charming. “So be prepared,” he added. “Last chance to—”
“May I see that book again?” she blurted. “The one you have there; the book about me and Rachmael.”
The taller of the two agents passed her the volume; at once she turned to the index and sought out her own name. Two citations in the first part of the book; three later on. She selected the next to last one, on page two-ninety-eight; a moment later she had begun rapidly to read.
No doubt could exist in her mind, now; it had been abundantly demonstrated. With renewed courage Freya faced Theodoric Ferry, the most powerful man in either the Sol or the Fomalhaut system and perhaps even beyond, and said,
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ferry.” Her voice, in her own ears, was cool, as calm as she might have hoped for. “I failed to realize what you are. You’ll have to excuse my hysteria on that basis.” With a slight—but unnoticed—tremor she adjusted the right strap of her half-bra, drawing it back up onto her smooth, bare, slightly tanned shoulder. “I now—”
“Yes, Miss Holm?” Ferry’s tone was dark, mocking. “Exactly what do you realize about me, now? Say it.” He chuckled.
Freya said, “You’re an aquatic cephalopod, a Mazdast. And you’ve always been. A long time ago, when Telpor first linked the Sol system with the Fomalhaut system, when the first Terran field-team crossed over and returned—”
“That’s correct,” Theodoric Ferry agreed, and once more chuckled . . . although now his—or rather its—tone consisted of a wet, wailing hiss. “I infiltrated your race decades ago. I’ve been in your midst
“Better get the book back from her again,” the smaller of the two THL agents said warningly to his companion. “I still think she’s reading too damn much.” He then, without further consultation, snatched the book back from her numbed hands, this time put it away in a locked briefcase which, after an indecisive pause he then laboriously chained to his wrist—just in case.
“Yes,” the other agent agreed absently; he had become completely involved in landing the flapple on the flattened roof-indentation of Theo Ferry’s huge ship. “She probably read too much. But—” He spun the unusually elaborate controls “—it doesn’t much matter, at this point; I fail to see what effective difference it makes.” From beneath them a low scraping noise sounded; the flapple jiggled.
They had landed.
Doesn’t it matter? she thought, dazed. That Theo Ferry is another life-form entirely, not human at all? That has invaded our System a long time back? Don’t you two men care?
Did you know it all this time?
Our enemy, she realized, is far more ominous than any of us had at any time glimpsed. Ironic, she thought; one of the sales pitches they gave us—THL gave us—was the need to fight with and subdue the hostile native life-forms of the Fomalhaut system . . . and it turns out to be true after all, true in the most awful sense. I wonder, she thought, how many of THL’s employees know it? I wonder—
She thought, I wonder how many more of these monsters exist on Terra. Imitating human life-forms. Is Theodoric Ferry the only one? Probably not; probably most of THL is staffed by them, including Sepp von Einem.
The ability to mingle with human beings, to appear like them . . . undoubtedly it’s due to a device compounded either by von Einem or that hideous thing who works with him, that Greg Gloch.
Of all of them, she thought, none is really less human than Gloch.
The door of the flapple swung open; the two THL agents at once stood at attention. Reluctantly, she turned her unwilling eyes toward the now fully open door.
In the entrance way stood Theodoric Ferry.
She screamed.
“I beg your pardon,” Ferry said, and lifted an eyebrow archly. He turned questioningly to the two THL agents. “What’s the matter with Miss Holm? She seems out of control.”
“Sorry, Mr. Ferry,” the taller of the two agents said briskly. “I would guess that she’s not well; she appears to have hallucinated one or more of what is called ‘paraworlds.’ On her arrival here she experienced the particular delusional world dealing with the garrison state . . . although now, from what she’s told us, that delusion seems to have evaporated.”
“But something,” Ferry said with a frown, “has replaced it. Perhaps an alternate paraworld . . . possibly even a more severe one. Well, Miss Holm has turned out as predicted.” He chuckled, walked several cautious steps toward Freya, who stood frozen and trembling, unable even to retreat. “As with her paramour, Rachmael von Applebaum—”
“Ben,” the taller of the two THL agents corrected tactfully.
“Ah yes.” Ferry nodded amiably. “I am more accustomed to the prefix designating a high-born German than the rather—” He grimaced offensively “—low-class name-structure employed by, ah, individuals of Mr. Applebaum’s shall I say type. ” He grimaced distastefully, then once more moved toward Freya Holm.
They didn’t search me, she said to herself. A spasm of fierceness filled her as she realized that—realized, too, its meaning. Within the tied tails of superior fabric caught in a bun at her midsection lay a tiny but effective self-defense instrument, provided by the wep-x people at Lies, Incorporated. Now, if ever, the time had come to employ it. True, it had a limited range; only one person could be taken out by it, and if she moved to take out Theo Ferry both of the THL agents—armed and furious—would remain. She could readily picture the following moments, once she had managed to wound or destroy Ferry. But—it appeared well worth it. Even if she had not learned of Ferry’s actual physiological origin . . .
Her fingers touched the bun of cloth at her midriff; an instant later she had found the safety of the weapon, had switched it to off.
“Drot,” Ferry said, regarding her uneasily.
“ ‘Drat,’ sir,” the taller of the two agents corrected him, as if routinely accustomed to doing so. “ ‘Drat’ is the Terran ejaculative term of dismay, if I may call your attention at a time like this to something so trivial. Still, we all know how important it is—how vital you rightly feel it to be—to maintain strict verisimilitude and accuracy in your speech patterns.”
“Thank you, Frank,” Theo Ferry agreed; he did not take his eyes from Freya. “Was this woman searched?”
“Well, sir,” the THL agent named Frank said uncomfortably, “we had in mind your overweening desire to obtain a female of this—”
“Blurb!” Theodoric Ferry quivered in agitation. “She has on some variety of—”
“Sorry sir,” the agent named Frank broke in with utter tact. “The term of immediate and dismayed concern which you’re reaching for is the word ‘blast.’ The term you’ve employed, ‘blurb,’ deals with a sensational ad for some form of entertainment; generally a notice on a book cover or flap as to—”
All at once Freya became aware, shockingly, of the meaning of the THL agent’s remarks; everything which she suspected, everything which she had read in Dr. Bloode’s book, now had been validated.
Theodoric Ferry had to be reminded, constantly, of the most commonplace Terran linguistic patterns. Of course; these patterns were to him a totally alien structure. So it was true. And, because of what had up to this instant seemed an absurd, pointless exchange of remarks, no doubt could exist in her mind, now; it had been abundantly demonstrated. With renewed courage Freya face
d Theodoric Ferry, the most powerful man in either the Sol or the Fomalhaut system and perhaps even beyond, and said,
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ferry.” Her voice, in her own ears, was cool, as calm as she might have hoped for. “I failed to realize what you are. You’ll have to excuse my hysteria on that basis.” With a slight—but unnoticed—tremor she adjusted the right strap of her half-bra, drawing it back up onto her smooth, bare, slightly tanned shoulder. “I now—”
“Yes, Miss Holm?” Ferry’s tone was dark, mocking. “Exactly what do you realize about me, now? Say it.” He chuckled.
Freya said, “You’re an aquatic cephalopod, a Mazdast. And you’ve always been. A long time ago, when Telpor first linked the Sol system with the Fomalhaut system, when the first Terran fieldteam crossed over and returned—”
“That’s correct,” Theodoric Ferry agreed, and once more chuckled . . . although now his—or rather its—tone consisted of a wet, wailing hiss. “I infiltrated your race decades ago. I’ve been in your midst before Lies, Incorporated was founded; I’ve been with your people before you, Miss Holm, were even born.” Studying her intently he smiled; his eyes shone bleakly, and then, to her horror, the eyes began to migrate. Faster and faster they moved toward the center of the forehead; there they joined, fused, became one vast compound eye whose many lenses reflected her own image back at her, as in a thousand warped black mirrors, again and again.
Within the bun of cloth slightly beneath her ribcase, Freya Holm compressed the activating assembly of the defense-gun.
“Shloonk,” Theodoric Ferry wheezed. His single eye rattled and spun as his body rocked back and forth; then, without warning, the great dark orb popped from his bulging forehead and hung dangling from a spring of steel. At the same time his entire head burst; screaming, Freya ducked as bits of gears, rods, wiring, components of power systems, cogs, amplifying surge-gates, all failing to remain within the shattered structure, bounced here and there in the flapple. The two THL agents ducked, grunted and then retreated as the rain of hot, destroyed metal pieces condensed about them both. She, too, reflexively drew back; staring, she saw a mainshaft and an intricate cog mechanism . . . like a clock, she thought dazedly. He’s not a deformed, non-Terran water-creature; he’s a mechanical assembly— I don’t understand. She shut her eyes, moaned in despair, the flapple, now, had faded momentarily into obscurity, so intense was the hailstorm of metal and plastic parts from the bursting entity which had posed as Theodoric Ferry just a moment before—had posed, more accurately, as an aquatic horror masquerading as Theodoric Ferry.
“One of those damn simulacrums,” the THL agent who was not Frank said in disgust.
“ ‘Simulacra,’ ” Frank corrected, his teeth grinding in outrage as a major transformer from the power-supply struck him on the temple and sent him flailing backward, off-balance; he fell against the wall of the flapple, groaned and then slid to a sitting position, where he remained, his eyes empty. The other THL agent, arms windmilling, fought his way through the still-exploding debris of the simulacrum toward Freya; his fingers groped for her ineffectually— and then he gave up, abandoned whatever he had had in his mind; turning, he hunched forward, lurched blindly off, in the general direction of the entrance hatch of the flapple. And then, with a clatter, disappeared. She remained with the disintegrating simulacrum and the unconscious THL agent Frank; the only sound was the metallic thump of components as they continued to pelt against the walls and floor of the flapple.
Good lord, she thought indistinctly, her mind in a state of almost deranged confusion. That book they showed me—it was wrong! Or else I failed to read far enough . . .
Desperately, she searched about in the rubbish-heaped flapple for the book; then all at once she remembered what had happened to it. The smaller THL agent had escaped with it locked in a briefcase chained to his wrist; the book had, so to speak, departed with him—in any case, both the agent and the volume were gone, now. So she would never know what had come next in the printed text; had it corrected its own evident misperception, as she had hers? Or—did the text of Dr. Bloode’s book continue on, manfully declaring that Theodoric Ferry was an aquatic—what was the term it—and she—had used? Mazdast; that was it. She wondered, now, precisely what it meant; until she had read the word in the text she had never before encountered it. But there was something else. Something at the rim of consciousness, crowding forward, attempting to enter her mind; it could not be thrust back, odious as it was.
The Clock. That term, referring to one of the so-called paraworlds. Had this been—The Clock? And if so—
Then the original encounter between the black space-pilot, Rachmael ben Applebaum and the sim of Theodoric Ferry—that, back in the Sol system, had been a manifestation—not a Ferry-simulacrum at all—but, like this, of the paraworld called The Clock.
The delusional worlds somehow active here at Whale’s Mouth had already spread to and penetrated Terra. It had already been experienced—experienced, yes; but not recognized.
She shuddered.
FOURTEEN
For more than thirty minutes nothing had emanated from the anti-prolepsis chamber of Gregory Gloch, and by now Sepp von Einem realized with full acuity that something dreadful had gone wrong.
Taking a calculated risk—Gloch in the past had ranted against this as an illegal invasion of his privacy, of his very psyche, in fact— Dr. von Einem clicked to on the audio monitoring mechanism which tapped the input circuit of the chamber. Shortly, he found himself receiving via a three-inch speaker mounted on the wall the same signals which passed to his protégé.
The first rush of impulses almost unhinged him.
“Pun, there,” a jovial masculine—somewhat elderly—voice was in the process of intoning. “Life of you, life lived over . . . see?” It then chuckled loudly in a comical but distinctly vulgar fashion. “Heh-heh,” it gloated. “How you doin’, ol’ boy, Gloch there, ol’ fella?”
“Fine,” Greg Gloch’s retort came. But to von Einem it had a very distinctive weak quality about it, a vivid loss of surgency which chilled him deeply, caused him to hang on each following word of the exchange. Who was this person addressing Gloch? he asked himself. And got no response; the voice was new to him. And yet—
At the same time it acutely resembled a voice he knew. A voice he could however not identify, to save his life. He had the intuition, then, that this voice had deliberately been disguised; he would need a video breakdown by which to identify it. And that would take time, precious time which no one, at this moment in the struggle over Whale’s Mouth, could afford to spare—least of all he.
Pressing a command key, von Einem said, “Emergency call. I want an immediate trace put on the audio signal reaching Herr Gloch. Notify me of the origin-point, then if you must, obtain a video pic of the voice-pattern and inform me of the caller’s identity. ” He paused, pondering; it was, to say the least, a decision of gravity which he now entertained. “Once you have the locus detailed,” he said slowly, “run a homotropic foil along the line. We can obtain the voice-indent afterwards.”
The microscopic feedback circuit within his ear spluttered, “Herr Doktor—you mean take out the caller before identification? Das ist gar unmöglich—gar!”
Von Einem rasped, “It is distinctly not out of the question; in fact it is essential.” For, underneath, he had an intuition as to who the disguised voice consisted of. It could only be one person.
Jaimé Weiss. The enfant terrible of the UN, probably operating in conjunction with his brother-in-law, the ’wash psychiatrist Lupov. Thinking that, von Einem felt nausea rise like a gray tide within him. Them, he reflected bitingly; the worst pair extant. Probably in orbit in a sealed sat at Whale’s Mouth . . . transmitting either at faster-than-light directly to our system or worse still: feeding their lines during routine traffic through one of our town Telpor stations.
Savagely, he said to the technician brought into contact by means of the command key at his disposal, “There is an
exceedingly meager latitude for the performance of successful action against this party, mein Herr; or don’t you believe me? You suppose I am mistaken? I know who has infiltrated the anti-prolepsis tank of poor Herr Gloch; mach’ snell! ” And you had damn well better be successful, he said to himself as he released his command key and walked moodily to the chamber to look directly at his protégé, to discern Gloch’s difficulty with his own eyes.
I wonder, he thought to himself as he watched the youth’s face twist with discomfort, if I shouldn’t obliterate the alien audio signal that’s so successfully jamming the orderly process within the chamber. Or at least reroute it so that I receive it but Gloch does not.
However, it appeared to von Einem that the interloping audio transmission had already done its job; Greg Gloch’s face was a mass of confusion and turbulence. Whatever ideas Gloch had entertained for a counter-weapon against Bertold had long since evaporated. Zum Teufel, von Einem said to himself in a near-frenzied spasm of disappointment—as well as an ever-expanding sense that the Augenblick, the essential instant, had somehow managed to elude him. Somehow? Again he listened to the disruptive voice plaguing Gregory Gloch. Here it was; this was the malefactionary disturbance. This: Jaimé Weiss himself, wherever in the galaxy he had now located himself and his fawning sycophantic retinue.
Can Gloch hear me now? he wondered. Can he hear anything beyond that damned voice?
As an experiment, he cautiously addressed Gloch—by means of the customary time-rephasing constructs built into the chamber. “Greg! Kannst hör’?” He listened, waited; after a time he heard his words reeled off to the man within the chamber at appropriate velocity. Then the lips of the man moved, and then, to his relief, a sentence by Gloch was spewed out by the transmitter of the chamber.