“I don’t remember anything, Garner.”
“But—”
“You old fool! Do you think I want to choke to death? Every time I start to think about what happened I start strangling! I start thinking funny too; everything looks strange. I feel surrounded by enemies. But worst of all, I get so depressed! No. I don’t remember anything. Get out.”
Garner sighed and ostentatiously put his hands on the chair controls. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t. So there’s no need to come back.”
“I won’t be able to. I’m going after them.”
“In a spaceship? You?”
“I’ve got to,” said Garner. Nevertheless he glanced involuntarily at his crossed legs—crossed this morning, by hand. “I’ve got to,” he repeated. “There’s no telling what they want, but it must be something worthwhile. They’re going to too much trouble to get it. It could be a weapon, or a signal device to call their planet.”
The travel chair whirred.
“Half a minute,” said Diller.
Garner turned off the motor and waited. Diller leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. His face began to change. It was no longer an expression he wore, a mirror of his personality, but a random dispersal of muscle tension. His breathing was ragged.
Finally he looked up. He started to speak and failed. He cleared his throat and tried again. “An amplifier. The—the bastard has an amplifier buried on the eighth planet.”
“Fine! What does it amplify?”
Diller started to choke.
“Never mind,” said Garner. “I think I know.” His chair left the room, going much too fast.
“They’re both runnin’ scared,” said Luke. “Headed for Neptune at one gee, with your husband an hour and a half behind.”
“But aren’t you sending someone after him?” Judy begged. “He isn’t responsible, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
“Sure. We’re sending me. He’s got my partner, you know.” Seeing Mrs. Greenberg’s reaction, he quickly added, “They’re in one ship. We can’t protect Lloyd without protecting your husband.”
They sat in Judy’s hotel room sipping Tom Collinses. It was eleven hundred of a blazing August morning.
“Do you know how he got away?” Judy asked.
“Yah. The ET knocked everybody crosseyed when he threw that tantrum at the port. Everybody but Greenberg. Your husband simply picked out a ship that was on standby and had Lloyd take it up. Lloyd knows how to fly a Navy ship, worse luck.”
“Why would Mr. Masney be taking Larry’s orders?”
“Because Larry hypnotized him. I remember the whole performance.”
Judy looked down at her lap. The corners of her mouth began to twitch. She began to giggle, and then to laugh. Just as the laughter threatened to become sobs, she clenched her teeth hard, held the pose for a moment, then sagged back in her chair.
“I’m all right now,” she said. Her face held no laughter, only exhaustion.
“What was that all about?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why would they be going to Neptune?”
“I don’t know. We’re not even sure that’s where they’re going. Don’t you have some sort of telepathic link with your husband?”
“Not any more. Since he went into Dr. Jansky’s time field I can’t feel anything any more.”
“Well, it wouldn’t feel like him anyway. Do you remember how you felt at twenty hours night before last?”
“At twenty? Let me see.” She closed her eyes. “Wasn’t I asleep…? Oh. Something woke me up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Monsters in the shadows. I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. Especially if it was Larry’s mind you felt.” He gave that a moment to sink in. “And since then?”
“Nothing.” Her small hand tapped rhythmically on the chair arm. “Nothing! Except that I want to find him. Find him! That’s all I’ve wanted since he took the ship! Find him before he…”
Find it! But there was no question of finding it, he told himself for the hundredth time. He had to find it first! He had to find it before Kzanol, the real Kzanol, did. And for the hundredth time he wondered if he could.
The Earth had been invisible for hours. Kzanol/Greenberg and Masney sat speechless in the control bubble, speechless and motionless. The control bubble was three quarters of the ship’s living space. One could stand upright only in the airlock.
There weren’t many distractions for Kzanol/Greenberg.
True, he had to keep an eye on Masney. He had to do more than that. He had to know when Masney was uncomfortable, and he had to know it before Masney knew it. If Masney ever came out of hypnosis it might be difficult to get him back. So Kzanol/Greenberg had to send Masney to the lavatory; had to give him water before he was thirsty; had to exercise him before his muscles could cramp from sitting. Masney was not like the usual slave, who could take care of himself when not needed.
Other than that, the self-styled ptavv was dead weight.
He spent hours at a time just sitting and thinking. Not planning, for there was nothing to plan. He either reached the eighth planet first, or he didn’t. Either he put on the amplifier helmet, or the real Kzanol did, and then there would be no more planning, ever. No mind shield could face an amplifier helmet. On the other hand, the helmet would make him Kzanol’s master. Using an amplifier on a thrint was illegal, but he was hardly in danger of thrintun law.
(Would an amplifier boost the Power of a slave brain? He pushed the thought aside—again.)
The far future was bleak at best. He was the last thrint; he couldn’t even breed the real Kzanol to get more. Yes, he would be master of an asteroid belt and a heavily populated slave world; yes, he would be richer than even Grandfather Racarliw. But Grandfather had had hundreds of wives, a thousand children!
Kzanol/Greenberg’s hundreds of wives would be human slaves, as would his thousand children. Lower-than-ptavvs, every one.
Would he find “women” beautiful? Could he mate with them? Probably. He would have to try it; but his glands were emphatically not Kzanol’s glands. In any case he would choose his women by Larry Greenberg’s standards of beauty—yes, Greenberg’s, regardless of how he felt, for much of the glory in being rich is showing it off, and he would have nobody to impress but slaves.
A dismal prospect.
He would have liked to lose himself in memories, but something held him back. One barrier was that he knew he would nevermore see Thrintun the homeworld, nor Kzathit where he was born, nor Racarliwun, the world he had found and named. He would never look at the world through his own eye; he would see himself only from outside, if ever. This was his own body, his fleshly tomb, now and forever.
There was another barrier, a seemingly trivial matter. Several times Kzanol/Greenberg had closed his eyes and deliberately tried to visualize the happy past; and always what came to mind were whitefoods.
He believed Garner, believed him implicitly. Those films could not have been faked. Copying an ancient tnuctip inscription would not have been enough to perpetrate such a fraud. Garner would have had to compose in tnuctip!
Then the bandersnatchi were intelligent; and the bandersnatchi were undeniably whitefoods. Whitefoods were intelligent, and always had been.
It was as if some basic belief had been shattered. The whitefoods were in all his memories. Whitefoods drifting like sixty-ton white clouds over the estates of Kzathit Stage Logs, and over the green-and-silver fields of other estates when little Kzanol was taken visiting. Whitefood meat in a dozen different forms, on the family table and in every restaurant waiter’s memorized menu. A whitefood skeleton over every landowner’s guest gate, a great archway of clean polished white bone. Why, the thrint hadn’t been born who didn’t dream of his own whitefood herd! The whitefood gate meant “landowner” as surely as the sunflower border.
Kzanol/Greenberg cocked his head; his lips pursed slightly, and the skin pucker
ed between his eyebrows. Judy would have recognized the gesture. He had suddenly realized what made the intelligent whitefood so terrible.
A thrint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver’s primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters. But if the whitefood was intelligent, then it was immune to the Power. The tnuctipun had done what the Powergiver had forbade!
If the tnuctipun were stronger than the Powergiver, and the thrintun were stronger than the tnuctipun, and the Powergiver were stronger than the thrintun—
Then all priests were charlatans, and the Powergiver was a folk myth.
A sentient whitefood was blasphemy.
It was also very damned peculiar.
Why would the tnuctipun have made an intelligent food animal? The phrase had an innocuous sound, like “overkill” or “euthanasia,” but if you thought about it—
Thrintun were not a squeamish race. Power, no! But—
An intelligent food animal! Hitler would have fled, retching.
The tnuctipun had never been squeamish, either. The lovely simplicity of their mutated racing viprin was typical of the way they worked. Already the natural animal had been the fastest alive; there was little the tnuctipun could do in the way of redesigning. They had narrowed the animal’s head and brought the nose to a point, leaving the nostril like a single jet nacelle, and they had made the skin almost microscopically smooth against wind resistance, but this had not satisfied them. So they had removed several pounds of excess weight and replaced it with extra muscle and extra lung tissue. The weight removed had been all of the digestive organs. A mutated racing viprin had a streamlined sucker of a mouth which opened directly into the bloodstream to admit predigested pap.
The tnuctipun were always efficient, but never cruel.
Why make the whitefood intelligent? To increase the size of the brain, as ordered? But why make it immune to the Power?
And he had eaten whitefood meat.
Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head hard. Masney needed attention, and he had planning to do. Didn’t he? Planning, or mere worrying?
Would the amplifier work on a human brain?
Could he find the suit in time?
“‘Find him,’” Garner quoted. “That could fit. He’s looking for something he believes he needs badly.”
“But you already knew that. It doesn’t help.”
“Mrs. Greenberg, what I really came for is to find out everything you can tell me about your husband.”
“Then you’d better talk to Dale Snyder. He got here this morning. Want his number?”
“Thanks, I’ve got it. He called me too. You know him well?”
“Very.”
“I’ll also want a chance to talk to Charley, the dolphin anthropologist. But let’s start with you.”
Judy looked unhappy. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Anywhere.”
“Okay. He’s got three testicles.”
“I’ll be damned. That’s fairly rare, isn’t it?”
“And sometimes troublesome, medically, but Larry never had any problems. We used to call it ‘that little extra something about him.’ Is this the kind of thing you’re after?”
“Sure.” Luke didn’t know. He remembered that the better he knew the man he was chasing, the more likely he was to catch him. It had worked when he was a cop, decades ago. It ought to work now. He let her talk, interrupting very rarely.
“I never noticed what a practical joker he was until after he began working with dolphins, but he’s told me some of the things he pulled at college. He must have been a real terror. He was terrible at team athletics, but he plays fair squash and demon tennis…” She needed no prompting now. Her life came out in a stream of words. Her life with Larry Greenberg.
“…must have known a lot of women before he met me. And vice versa, I might add. Neither of us has ever tried adultery. I mean, we have an arrangement that we can, but we’ve never used it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” Luke saw that she was. She was amused that he should have to ask.
“…It shocks him when I can make a prediction that accurate. I don’t think he really believes in prescience, so it scares him when I get a flash. He thinks it’s some sort of magic. I remember one day, we’d been married less than a year, and I’d gone out on a shopping spree. He saw me come in with a load of packages, and when I dumped them and went out and came back with the second load he said, ‘Honest to God, beautiful, you’re spending blue chips like the Last War was starting tomorrow!’ I didn’t say anything. I just gave him this brave little smile. He went absolutely white…”
Relevant or irrelevant, it was all coming out. Judy talked faster and faster. She was doing just what he’d told her to, but with an urgency that was puzzling.
“…Most of the couples we know never got married until someone was pregnant. When you pass the Fertility Board you hate to risk throwing it away by marrying a sterile partner, right? It’s too big a thing. But we decided to take the chance.” Judy rubbed her throat. She went on hoarsely. “Besides, the ’doc had okayed us both for parenthood. Then there was Jinx. We had to be sure neither of us got left behind.”
“By me that was good thinking, Mrs. Greenberg. I’ll quit now, while you’ve still got a voice. Thanks for the help.”
“I hope it did help.”
The speed at which she’d talked—the detail. Luke sent the elevator straight to the top. He knew now why she’d painted so complete a portrait of Larry Greenberg. Whether she knew it or not, she didn’t expect to see him again. She’d been trying to make him immortal in her memory.
The Jayhawk Hotel was the third tallest building in Topeka, and the rooftop bar had a magnificent view. As he left the elevator Luke met the usual continuous roar. He waited ten seconds while his ears “learned” to ignore it: an essential defense mechanism, learned by most children before they were three. The hostess was a tall redhead, nude but for double-spike shoes, her hair piled into a swirling, swooping confection which brought her height to an even eight feet. She led him to a tiny table against a window.
The occupant rose to meet him. “Mr. Garner.”
“Nice of you to do this for me, Dr. Snyder.”
“Call me Dale.”
Garner saw a dumpy man with an inch-wide strip of curly blond hair down the center of his scalp. Temporary skin substitute covered his forehead, cheeks and chin, leaving an X of unharmed skin across his eyes, nose, and the corners of his mouth. His hands were also bandaged.
“Then I’m Luke. What’s your latest word on the Sea Statue?”
“When the Arms woke me up yesterday afternoon to tell me Larry had turned alien. How is he?”
Avoiding details, Luke filled the psychologist in on the past twenty-four hours. “So now I’m doing what I can on the ground while they get me a ship that will beat Greenberg and the ET to Neptune.”
“Brother, that’s a mess. I never saw the statue, and if I had I’d never have noticed that button. What are you drinking?”
“I’d better grab a milk shake; I haven’t had lunch. Dale, why did you want us to bring the statue here?”
“I thought it would help if Larry saw it. There was a case once, long before I was born, where two patients who both thought they were Mary, Mother of God, showed up at the same institution. So the doctors put them both in the same room.”
“Wow. What happened?”
“There was a godawful argument. Finally one of the women gave up and decided she must be Mary’s mother. She was the one they eventually cured.”
“You thought Greenberg would decide he was Greenberg if you showed him he wasn’t the Sea Statue.”
“Right. I gather it didn’t work. You say they can use my help at Menninger’s?”
“Probably, but I need it first. I told you what I think Greenberg and the Sea Statue are after. I’ve got to chase t
hem down before they get to it.”
“How can I help?”
“Tell me everything you can about Larry Greenberg. The man on his way to Neptune has an extraterrestrial’s memories, but his reflexes are Greenberg’s. He proved that by driving a car. I want to know what I can count on from the Greenberg side of him.”
“Very little, I’d say. Count on something from the Greenberg side of him and you’d likely wind up naked on the Moon. But I see your point. Let’s suppose the, uh, Sea Statue civilization had a law against picking pockets. Most countries had such laws, you know, before we got so crowded the cops couldn’t enforce them.”
“I remember.”
Snyder’s eyes widened. “You do? Yes, I suppose you do. Well, suppose Larry in his present state found someone picking his pocket. His impulse would be to stop him, but not to yell for a policeman. He’d have to make a conscious decision to do that. This would be unlikely until after the fight was over and he’d had time to think.”
“If I caught him by surprise I could count on his human reflexes.”
“Yes, but don’t confuse reflexes with motivations. You don’t know what his motivations are now.”
“Go on.”
Snyder leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. A waiter glided up and produced drinks from a well in its torso. Garner paid it and shooed it away.
Abruptly Snyder was talking. “You know what he looks like: five feet seven inches tall, dark and fairly, handsome. His parents were Orthodox, but they weren’t millionaires, they couldn’t afford a fully kosher diet. He’s very well adjusted, and he has enormous resilience, which is why he was able to take up contact telepathy.
“He does have some feelings about his height, but nothing we need bother about. They are partly compensated by what he calls ‘that little extra something about me.’”
“Mrs. Greenberg told me.”
“Partly he means his telepathy. Partly it’s the medical anomaly I assume Judy mentioned. But he’s in dead earnest in regarding himself as something special.
“You might also remember that he’s been reading minds for years, human and dolphin minds. This gives him an accumulation of useful data. I doubt if the dolphins are important, but there were physics professors, math students, and psychologists among the volunteers who let Larry read their minds by contact. You could call him superbly educated.” Snyder straightened. “Remember this, when you go out after him. You don’t know the Sea Statue’s intelligence, but Larry has his own intelligence and nobody else’s. He’s clever, and adaptable, and unusually sure of himself. He’s suspicious of superstition, but genuinely religious. His reflexes are excellent. I know. I’ve played tennis with him: Judy and I against him alone, with Larry guarding the singles court.”