Age of Miracles

John Brunner

No time to stand around brooding, he told himself. He had to get this prize of his

off Grady’s Ground, and not later than tonight. It should be in a proper government

lab. All the aliens’ scrap and rubbish should go to a proper lab!

He needed a crate. What could he pack the stuff into?

On the verge of turning to peer under a bench for suitable containers—he was

sure he had some lying around—he checked, startled. Was something happening to

the… device?

He stared. Yes! From the small glowing ovoid, the pattern of light was now

oozing—permeating the bowl-like base, spreading into the larger ovoid, infecting

the three objects piled above!

“Oh my God!” Bennett whispered.

For the process was not stopping when it reached the limits of the alien

substance. It was spreading still further—staining the very air with radiance and

taking on the shape of something as incomprehensible, as majestic and as fearful as

the place from which its scattered parts had come. He gasped… and the inhalation

drew with it some of the stained and colored air.

There was a sensation like a blow delivered to—not his physical brain, but—his

abstract mind, and he collapsed on the floor without another sound.

AGE OF MIRACLES

Copyright ©, 1973 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Ltd.

An Ace Book. All Rights Reserved.

An earlier and substantially shorter version of this novel was copyrighted © 1965 by Ace Books under the title of

“Day of the Star Cities.”

First Ace printing: May, 1973

Printed in U.S.A.

Chapter One

^ »

Like needles thrust into a wax doll, images stabbed him.

During the summer there was plenty to eat. The fox avoided the place where his

world was being invaded: the clanking mysteries, the smoky smells, the bellowing

bipeds. Summer ended. For a while there was mud. Rain soaked his coat and

sharpened the edge of the wind. By frost there was a hard place and a succession of

stinking roars and flashes. The fox turned aside, slinking back into the long grass

and the bushes. The grass became dry and yellow, the bushes stood out bare as an

engraving against the sky.

Snow brought scarcity.

The fox grew resigned to the new thing in his world. It was not a change he

understood, but neither could he control it. Printing his traces in the snow,

breaking through the thin frozen crust although lack of food was lightening him

daily, he came to the borderline and paused—not for reflection, but because a

complex balance of instinctual drives was seesawing between hunger here and

unknown there.

A roar began. Automatically the fox ran forward. It was his last action but one.

Afterwards, when they had cleared away the wreckage and the bodies—including

the fox’s—men came with guns and searched the area. His vixen and his last litter of

cubs were shot. On the new road cars went cautiously as winter spread the concrete

with a glaze of ice.

He moaned in darkness. Wet, clammy, unpleasant, something slimy on his face,

his chest, the front of his legs. Lying in the dirt he battled ghosts.

The man—something familiar about him—in a place lit by candles, windowless,

the door locked and barred against intruders… working. But pausing every few

seconds to look around him nervously.

We know very little about them. A sardonic curl of the lip, here. We know beyond

a doubt that they can set off fissionables at an indefinite distance because we

learned that the hard way.

(No, it wasn’t funny.)

Another nervous glance, and back to work. Knowledge, is the first weapon.

People generally say we’re fighting in the dark, but you can’t call it fighting when

you don’t know what your enemy is or even whether he regards you as his (?) enemy.

We must find that out!

(Was that a noise? A footfall? Nothing to be seen… of course.)

After a petrified pause, the conclusion that it was a trick of overactive

imagination. Something found now, something to claim all attention and generate

pulse-pounding excitement. Could it possibly… ?

He lay alone in the darkness, soaked with thin wet mud, and writhed as violently

as if the blow had been physical in this instant of time.

Blasphemy! The howl came, the blow followed, then the laughs of triumph.

(Shalt not suffer a witch to live.) Seek to probe the secrets of what is hidden not in

knowledge but in faith! Blasphemer!

Spittle on his face. Like maddened animals all around. A snag-toothed mouth

grown to enormous size, stretching from horizon to horizon and speaking the

dogmas. If you would enter the holy city among the shining angels go in humility

not arrogance, blasphemer and upstart!

After that, boots: kicking again and again.

He tried to crawl away, and his eyes opened. For a little he could not see and

thought he must be blind. Then he rolled over, the mud plopping; its sour taste was

in his mouth. Man the crown of creation (irony) lying in dirt like a hog in its wallow.

Anger burst out and bloomed in him like a fireball, lighting the landscape of his

mind with a beautiful and deadly brilliance. Who put him here in the dirt? Who

threw him down in a ditch like a dead dog? He did.

The man began to pick himself up, clawing at the sides of the trench for a

purchase. He felt the horrible clay fill the space between his nails and his fingertips,

foul as feces. His limbs were like wooden rods, uncontrollable. He was about

three-quarters dead, but his mind was alive with hate.

Dark—night—dark—night…

Over the lip of the ditch he saw lights and thought of lights he had seen before.

He desired to go towards them. Clawing, scrabbling, thrusting, he tried to force

himself up and out. Failed, and fell back. Like a man handcuffed in a cell awaiting

the torturers’ return, he railed against the slippery clay, his weak body, his

powerlessness. White-hot, the hate crumbled his humanity as lava can crumble a

peasant’s hut on the slopes of Etna.

Inhuman, he found neither time nor space so impassable a barrier as the sides of

this deep trench.

When the figure appeared in the restaurant, everything stopped. Only for one

moment was a man’s high-pitched voice raised into the appalling silence, closing a

bargain with a woman for the night. And then nothing. The remembered sound of

chattering and music hung in the air like dust.

His mere presence was a slap in the face. To look at him was to realize what he

was, and recall that all humanity had been disgustingly insulted. Not the mask of

the Red Death, not Naaman white with leprosy, could have chilled the company as

this man did.

Ripped, his clothes hung from him like the bannering rags on a scarecrow made

of poles. Dirty brown mud glistened wet on his face, chest and legs. He left smeared

footprints as he lurched across the restaurant’s floor.

Seconds passed. There were a few half-hearted screams, but it was clear from the

focused intensity of the man’s burning glare, from the straight-line course he was

following, that he was concentrated on one individual among those present. For

what? Vengeance? You could not be sure. In this Age of Miracles, you could not be

sure of anything.

He’s after someone, Den Radcliffe thought. It seemed a vaguely silly idea, like

the delusive insights of a dream full of surreal absurdities. Me. He’s coming directly

towards me.

The tick-tock of heartbeats told him that time was passing; so did the

foot-dragging approach of the stranger. Nothing else did. As though sunk in a block

of transparent plastic he sat rigid beside his companions at the table. The width of

the table, at least, was between himself and the intruder.

The distance narrowed to twelve paces, ten, eight. Suddenly the girl on his

left—he knew her only as Maura—screamed and leaped to her feet, and others

imitated her. The spell broke. Den Radcliffe could move, do something to drive

away this horror, break it, smash it, this obscenity walking like a man!

He snatched up what his hand encountered on the table: a heavy glass pitcher

full of water. He hurled it, and it struck the man’s shoulder, making him check his

stride for a second while its contents slopped some of the mud from his cheek.

A bottle, caught around the neck for a club. On his feet now, Den Radcliffe felt

all his nerves sing back to life, stinging as a limb stings when circulation returns

after tourniquet-like cramp. Bottle raised, liquor spouting from its neck and

flowing down his sleeve, he waited in the vain hope of help.

The man spoke. His nauseous screeching voice filled the room like air rushing

into a punctured vacuum. “Damn you!” he howled. “Damn you damn you damn

you! You did this to me, you bastard!”

Superstition, against his will, shattered the self-control which Radcliffe had

already weakened with drink. He swung the bottle and let it go. It broke on the

man’s forehead, gashing the skin, scattering with a tinkle across the floor, and then

there was the long-repressed panic.

Chairs crashed over, tableclothes were dragged unheeded by scrambling fighting

crazy-milling men and women, shedding cutlery and plates ringing and breaking.

The waiters went with the rest; so did the musicians from the band, using their

instruments as clubs, and a hundred people were rushing the yard-wide exit door

before the manager turned on the ceiling panic sprays and oblivion came sifting

down like snow.

Still the ghastly figure stood facing Radcliffe. He hurled things at it like wooden

balls at a cockshy—bottles, glasses, what his hands chanced on. The tableknifes

would not throw; their handles were too heavy. A plate caught the air and swung

aside, like a badly aimed discus.

He heard the hissing of the panic sprays, and terror seized him. For all he knew,

the other confronting him might not breathe, might now draw in air and be

immobilized by the anesthetic. He snatched his own last lungful before the gas

came down, hooked his hands under the table’s edge and lifted it with insane

violence from the floor. As it came up, he somehow got another purchase on its

underside so that he leaned forward into it and turned it, brought it slamming

down on the impassive, hate-auraed figure, and fell forward, triumph coloring his

slide into unconsciousness. After him tumbled and clattered his past and his hopes

for the future.

Chapter Two

« ^ »

“The history of the last years of the twentieth century,” Waldron said under his

breath, “is going to be the story of how nothing happened.”

“What was that?” Across the desk Canfield—suspicious, touchy—stiffened, sure

he was being snidely insulted.

“Nothing,” Waldron said. “Go on.”

That is, he added without even moving his lips, if anyone bothers to write

history again.

Canfield was still glaring at him, his dark face full of hostility. Abruptly unable to

bear that scowl any longer, Waldron snapped, “Go on, damn it! You came to give a

report, so spit it out.”

Canfield grunted and turned back the leaves of his notebook. He said, “I took a

crew down to the City of Angels as soon as the call came. It was a shambles, but the

manager had turned on the panic sprays. According to him, the weirdo just

appeared, on the dais inside the entrance by the hat-check booth, and walked

straight across the room towards one particular table. He watched it happening

from a sealed armor-glass compartment on the—”

“I know the City of Angels,” interrupted Waldron. And, as he saw self-righteous

disapproval gather in Canfield’s mind, added, “I go there all the time! When I can

afford to, anyhow.”

He made no attempt to interpret Canfield’s reaction in words, but the latter

pursed his lips hard for several seconds, as though forcibly blocking off a sharp

retort, before he continued.

“Of course, it’s ridiculous to say that the weirdo just appeared. I brought in the

doorman and the bouncer, naturally, and questioned them on the way—they missed

most of the gas because they were right next to the exit. Ether they’re lying or they

panicked and don’t want to admit it.”

Leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, Waldron said, “What state was

this weirdo in when you picked him out from under the table?”

His train of thought broken, Canfield hesitated. “Filthy,” he said at last.

“Smeared with wet mud, ragged, bruised—but some of that was due to things being

thrown at him, I guess.”

“A man in that state wouldn’t be let into the City of Angels through the main

entrance,” Waldron said. “I’m not asking you to speculate. Just tell me what you

found when you arrived.”

Canfield shut his notebook and rose to his feet, his mouth working, his Adam’s

apple bobbing on his stringy neck. He said, “What the hell are you trying to

do—make me angry enough to give you an excuse for throwing me off the force?”

“Shut up and sit down,” Waldron said. “Or if you don’t want to go on, give me

your notebook and I’ll pick the details out of it myself.”

Canfield took another few heartbeats to boil over. Then he threw the notebook on

the desk in front of his chief—it made a noise like an open-handed slap—and strode

out, slamming the door. The ill-fitting windows rattled in their frames; the pencils

on the desk rattled against each other.

It seemed suddenly very dark in the room, although the high swinging lightbulb

was new and free of dust. Waldron sat a while without moving, looking at the black

cover of the notebook.

The story of how nothing happened…

That was what was going to break James Arnott Waldron: the hysterical pretense

that it was still the same old world. One day he was going to scream at some idiot

like Canfield and say, “How the hell dare you claim that you are Man, the lord of

creation? You’re a rat, you’re an insect, you’re a dirty little crawling louse

scavenging after the angels—a dung-beetle butting at your ball of muck and fooling

yourself that you’re trundling the sun!”

Why do I hang on here? What’s the point? Why don’t I simply quit?

His eyes drifted from the oblong of the notebook to the oblong of a map on the

wall—not the city map, the hemisphere map. That bore handmade additions and

amendments; you couldn’t buy a commercial or even a government-issue map

which showed the world as it really was. Consequently he was not altogether certain

his was accurate. But it was as truthful as he could make it. Not from masochism,

as Canfield and so many other of his colleagues seemed to think. From honesty.

Why can’t they understand it’s necessary?

The pockmark gaps in the neat mesh of human symbols—the devastated areas,

the fallout zones, into which the lines of highways and railroads led like footsteps

over precipices— had to be included on the printed map; it would be beyond

anybody’s powers of self-deception pretend that Omaha, for instance, still existed.

(Though of course you didn’t have to keep stating aloud that the city had gone.) But

the heavy black border isolating a tongue-shaped area in the center of North

America, the other similar border surrounding a kidney-shaped zone in Western

Brazil, and the patches of silver foil like distorted pentagrams which indicated the

alien cities—those, Waldron had applied himself the day after he grew tired of the

popular fiction that governments in Washington and Ottawa still held sway over the

whole of their former territories.

“One day,” Waldron declared to the uncaring air, “I’ll wire up a hell and some

flashing lights and stick a sign under the map saying DON’T KID YOURSELF. And

fix it so it comes on when the door is opened.”

But he knew he wouldn’t go that far. It was all very well to insist that people

must face the facts; it would take more than words, whether written or spoken, to

bring the result about.

He was as scared as anybody else. He was as ready to hide from reality as

anybody else. All he had as margin was a kind of shame. He could easily lose it.

Maintaining its original force was straining his nerves. Otherwise he wouldn’t have

snapped at Canfield.

He drove himself to pick up the notebook at last and flip through its pages,

seeing the familiar shorthand it was filled with, as clear and as easy to read once

you had the context as ordinary print.

Is that symptomatic? So many of us now seem to need to do small things

perfectly, as though we’re resigned to giving up the big things… for good and all.

He hoped not. He thought of his own laborious attempts to perfect Beethoven’s

Opus III, first without a wrong note or shaky time-value, then without a flaw of

expression. He didn’t want to write that off as mere compulsiveness.

All right! The symbols danced on the page. He froze them by an effort of will. At

the City of Angels—the name was a gesture of timid defiance, of course, on a par

with a boy thumbing his nose at an adult whose back was turned—there had been

this extraordinary intrusion. Words like “extraordinary” were losing their force.

Lately you didn’t even hear people say as they had used, “The Age of Miracles is not

past.” Now they said, with a wry shrug, “A of M!”—and that was its own

explanation.

Canfield had arrived and found people jammed, physically jammed, in the exit

doorway, and sprawled all over the low dais leading to it, dropped where the panic

sprays caught them. And crushed under a table, the weirdo. And on top of the table,

the man the manager believed to have been the target of the weirdo’s interest. And

on the floor nearby two girls and a man who had completed this particular party.

The man lying on the upturned table was called Dennis Radcliffe.

Waldron frowned. The name rang a distant bell. But he couldn’t place it

immediately. He wasted no time trying to puzzle it out—he could have the records

checked easily enough.

The manager said Radcliffe had gone wild and started to hurl things: bottles,

knives, crockery. But he hadn’t seen what happened after that because of the rush

for the exit and the need to turn on his gas-sprays.

So Canfield had closed out the place, of course, and taken all the hundred and

forty names of clients and waiters and other staff by a slow process of searching

pockets and purses for identity papers, and had brought here the people most

directly involved: the manager, the bouncer and doorkeeper he suspected of lying,

Radcliffe and the rest of his party, the weirdo himself, and half a dozen people

picked at random to give corroborative evidence. A thorough job. Now it was

three-ten A.M., and Waldron felt his vitality at such a low ebb he hated the prospect

of sifting through the data Canfield had meticulously assembled.

But it was going to have to be done.

Where the hell do you start on a thing like this?

He shut the notebook and thumbed switches on his desk intercom in the hope

that it might have started working again by itself. It hadn’t, and no one would be in

to fix it before nine. He repressed the urge to throw it at the wall and got out of his

chair.

The basement, white-tiled and forbidding, always put him in mind of a public

toilet. There was something of the same stench about it, too, when the cells were

full. Under harsh lights some of those arrested tonight moaned in their sleep;

others, thinking even trying to sleep was futile, sat on hard benches and stared at

nothing, eyes rimmed red with weariness. The people from the City of Angels were

still unconscious for the most part, and lay like morgue-delivered corpses on the

benches and floors in the end three cells.

At Waldron’s appearance the men at the desk facing the cells glanced up. There

were Rodriguez, the duty sergeant, Dr. Morello, one of the regular police surgeons,

and Canfield, who glowered and bared his teeth.

Controlling his movements deliberately, Waldron descended the last few steps

and held out the notebook. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Canfield,” he said. “Tired, I

guess.” He planted an elbow on the corner of the desk.

Canfield accepted the notebook and said nothing.

“Well, doc?” Waldron went on, his voice brittle. “What brings you here—the City

of Angels affair, is it?”

Morello, whose eyelids were puffy and whose hair was uncombed, was writing

out a report with the stylo chained to the desk in front of Rodriguez, and the chain

was hampering. After favoring it with a muttered curse, he said, “Sure, they

dragged me out to look at this weirdo. Could have waited until morning. Any fool

could have seen he was dead.”

“Did you say ‘any fool’?” Canfield inquired in a tone as light as a caress. And

when the doctor didn’t respond, he went on, “I did what the regulations say! If you

don’t like being woken at two A.M., you don’t have to have a police card. Want us to

revoke it?”

Morello grimaced. “What the hell difference does it make if I get my patients

from the police or pick ‘em up off the street?” he said sourly. “Same color blood,

same broken bones whichever way.” Completing the last line of his scribbled report,

he signed with a flourish and pushed the paper towards Rodriguez.

“Anybody got a cigarette?” he added. “I forgot mine.”

“Here.” Waldron proffered a pack. “I didn’t realize the weirdo was dead, by the

way.”

“He wasn’t when we brought him here,” Canfield supplied. “He died about ten

minutes before I came to see you. I’d have told you if I’d had the chance.”

Ignoring the gibe, Waldron turned to Morello. “So what killed him? The things

Radcliffe threw? The table falling on him?”

The doctor shrugged. “Contributory, maybe.” He drew on his cigarette, closing

his eyes momentarily as though to drown consciousness in the smoke. “But I doubt

if you have a murder charge. Cerebral hemorrhage, far as I can tell. A whole slew of

ruptured blood-vessels. His eyes are like cherries. My guess when they open up the

skull at the autopsy, his brain will look like it’s been stirred with an eggbeater.” He

uttered the similes with gloomy relish.

Uncomfortable, Waldron noticed that a woman in the cell directly opposite the

desk was listening, her mouth slack, her eyes wide, and that now she was

shuddering and licking her lips like a spectator at a grand guignol show. He

decided not to look at her again.

“O.K.,” he said. “Who was he? Anything known?”

“No papers on him,” Canfield said. “Nothing. Wearing rags. Looked like he’d

been through hell.”

“No tattoo marks or anything like that, either.” Morello spoke through a yawn.

“Body covered in contusions a day or two old, plus fresh ones probably due to what

got thrown at him. No major scars.”

“Take his prints, then,” Waldron said. “Have him cosmeticized and get some

as-in-life pictures. Any hope of photographing the retinal patterns, doc?”

“Take the retinas out at the autopsy,” Morello said. “His eyes are too messy to do

a proper job through the corneas. I told you—they’re like cherries.”

“A lot of trouble,” Rodriguez grumbled. “For a weirdo!”

Waldron didn’t comment.

“Shouldn’t be too much sweat.” Morello yawned again, more widely. “Got one

unusual thing about him. Mirror-image lay-out. Heart on the wrong side, large lobe

of the liver on the wrong side, all the way down the line. Shouldn’t be surprised if

he’s one of a pair of identical twins.”

“Ah-hah!” Waldron said. “Got that, Chico?”

“It’s in the report,” Rodriguez grunted.

“So that’s finish for me,” Morello said. He picked up his bag from beside the

desk. “Don’t bother me too early in the morning. He’s in freeze, he won’t rot before

the afternoon. And I’m short on sleep.”

When his footsteps had died away on the echoing staircase, Waldron beckoned

Canfield and walked over to the cells where the unconscious people from the City of

Angels were lying.

“Which is Radcliffe?” he asked.

“That’s him.” Canfield pointed out a dark-haired man in very expensive clothes.

Even in his drugged stupor his rather swarthy face wore a look of remembered

terror. Waldron spoke to avoid thinking about the reason for that expression.

“We know something about him, don’t we? I’m sure I’ve heard the name before.”

“Could be, but not because we ever booked him here. He’s the famous Den

Radcliffe. Not a nice guy. Free trader, spends most of his time over with Governor

Grady. They told us from the West Coast he’d been seen out of Grady’s territory.

Maybe you spotted the name on the teletype.”

Not a nice guy! Hell of a mealy-mouthed way to put it! And anyway, what right

did a Canfield have to dismiss such a man as his inferior? More gutsy than a

Canfield, at least: not content to he down in the shelter of the universal cheap

pretenses…

“Want we should start with him?” Canfield proposed—eager, perhaps, to shift

this living reminder of the plight of the world from under the roof they presently

shared. Waldron had intended to leave Radcliffe until later anyway; hearing

Canfield’s tone, he felt the decision gilded with a veneer of malicious pleasure.

“No, I’ll start with the manager and his staff, and the people you picked up for

corrobs. I’ll have Radcliffe and the party who were with him after I’ve got the

general picture from the ones who weren’t directly involved.”

For a moment he thought Canfield was going to raise objections. But he merely

shrugged and called Rodriguez to open the first cell.

Chapter Three

« ^ »

Appeared out of thin air. Looked around and spotted Radcliffe. Walked straight

towards him—no, more kind of plodded, like he had weights tied to his ankles. Said

something. Things were thrown. Panic. And oblivion. No, never saw him before. No

idea who he might have been. Anyway, how to tell when his face was plastered with

mud?

By the time he had picked through a dozen substantially identical stories,

Waldron was regretting his petty desire to extend Canfield like a man on the rack.

When Radcliffe was finally shown into the office he studied him with unconcealed

curiosity. Radcliffe returned it with interest, his gaze lingering a long while on the

hand-altered map pinned to the wall before he obeyed Waldron’s invitation to come

and sit down.

“You’re Dennis W. Radcliffe, that right?” Waldron said.

“Right.” Radcliffe crossed his legs. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead.” Waldron turned the pedestal mike on the desk a little more towards

the other’s mouth. “This interview is being—”

“Recorded and may subsequently be used in evidence,” Radcliffe interrupted

wearily. “I’ve been through this sort of drill before.”

“Have you had the full treatment?” Waldron countered. “The man you threw the

table at is dead.”

For a moment a wary flicker showed in Radcliffe’s face. It vanished, and he was

shrugging. “So? The panic sprays were on. Between inhalation and unconsciousness

there’s a period when a man isn’t necessarily responsible for his actions.”

Neat. Waldron took a cigarette for himself, wondering what set a Radcliffe so far

apart from a Canfield.

“Are you making a charge?” Radcliffe added.

“Not yet. Do you wish legal representation?”

“Why should I, before you make a charge?”

“Yes or no, please!”

“Not yet—and I quote.” Radcliffe grinned without mirth.

Waldron let it go at that. “Particulars, then. Age, birthplace, current address,

permanent domicile, profession.”

“Born Minneapolis. Age forty.” Waldron had imagined him five years younger.

“Hotel White Condor, suite 215. And I’m a free trader with a permanent domicile

just outside Gradyville, but I don’t believe you recognize the existence of such a

place.”

Defiance flavored the last words. Waldron extended his hand. “Documents?”

“They impounded them downstairs.”

Waldron cursed inwardly. But Rodriguez must have done that to save time in

compiling the written report; he couldn’t complain.

“Right, let’s go straight to the point. What’s your version of this affair?”

It dovetailed exactly with the other accounts he had heard, but included one

significant addition.

“He spoke to me,” Radcliffe said. “He sounded crazy-mad. He said something

like, ‘Damn you, you did this to me!’ I concluded he was insane and obviously

dangerous.”

“Are you qualified to pass judgment on people’s sanity?”

“I deal with a wide and varied cross-section of the public in my profession,”

Radcliffe answered, without the bat of an eye.

“Go on.”

“He made a move towards me which after his seemingly insane verbal attack I

interpreted as hostile. To forestall an actual assault I threw a water-jug at him.”

A pause. “Is that all?” Waldron pressed.

“When he kept coming, I threw something else—I forget what, because it was

about then that the panic sprays came on. I made to raise the table as a barrier

between us, I recall that, but I lost consciousness while doing so. I woke up on being

revived in the cell downstairs.”

Waldron probed further, but Radcliffe was too cagy to qualify what he had said.

He switched the line of his approach.

“Who was this man? Had you seen him before?”

“Not to my knowledge. Of course, he was a weirdo, so—”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Jesus! I’ll lay a bet that people in the restaurant who’d never before been within

a hundred miles of one pegged him as soon as they laid eyes on him. And me, I’ve

seen plenty.”

Waldron hesitated. He said, “You describe yourself as a free trader. Define the

term.”

Oddly ill at ease for a moment, Radcliffe said, “I buy and sell—uh—rare

artifacts.”

“In the vicinity of the so-called alien city?”

Radcliffe lifted his chin half an inch. “Yes.”

“That’s where you’ve seen so many weirdos?”

“Of course.” Radcliffe had apparently expected the questioning to turn overtly

hostile; recognizing he was wrong, he sounded puzzled. “That’s why I say I hadn’t

seen this character before to my knowledge. I didn’t recognize him, I don’t know his

name or anything about him, but conceivably he may have seen me—uh—”

“On Grady’s Ground?” Waldron suggested softly. His superiors wouldn’t like that

in the official record, but the hell with them. “What were you supposed to have

done to him?”

“Heaven knows.”

“You don’t recall offending a weirdo lately, maybe?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to go about it. They kind of lose touch with the world

everyone else lives in, you know. Most of them are harmless, but some aren’t. So I

keep my distance from them.”

“I see. So you’d never consciously met the guy, you don’t know and won’t guess

what grudge he had against you, he made a crazy-sounding verbal attack on you

which you thought was about to turn physical, and you were trying to drive him

back when the panic sprays went on and you fell on him with the table. That

correct?”

“That’s the size of it.”

Waldron studied the other for a few seconds, then gave a noncommittal grunt.

“How about the other people at your table? Who were they?”

“The man’s called Terry Hyson. A business contact of mine. I don’t know

anything about the girls except the blonde is called Sue and the brunette is called

Maura. Terry provided them for the evening. I guess he had them from a supply

agency.”

“They charge?”

“Two-fifty.” Radcliffe shrugged.

They would, of course. Someone like Radcliffe wasn’t apt to get it any other way

outside his home ground. As though Grady’s dirt, rather than his own guts, were the

significant thing. Abruptly Waldron found himself feeling angry on Radcliffe’s

behalf. He said, “O.K., I guess that’s enough. If we want you again we’ll trace you

through Hyson or at your hotel. When do you plan to leave the city?”

“Not before the weekend, as things stand.” If Radcliffe was surprised the

interview had been so easy, he didn’t show it.

“Fine. You can go.” Waldron moved pencils randomly on his desk.

But Radcliffe didn’t make to leave at once. His gaze roamed the office, coming to

rest on the hemisphere map, at which he jerked a thumb.

“You haven’t got it quite right.”

“What do you mean?”

“This.” Radcliffe rose and approached the map, laying his finger on the western

edge of the black tongue-shaped outline defining Grady’s Ground. “Goes forty-fifty

miles further west here.”

“Thanks for the information,” Waldron muttered.

“You been out that way?” Radcliffe cocked his head.

“No.”

“You should.” He gave a crooked smile. “Some time when you get sick of making

phony gestures in this smelly little room, come out and see me. I’m not hard to track

down.”

How the hell did he know? For a short eternity Waldron saw nothing but

Radcliffe’s eyes, and then he heard himself say, “I guess—yes, maybe I will. Maybe I

will.”

When the door closed, Waldron found he was sweating. His teeth were going to

chatter if he didn’t set his jaw hard. He looked towards the window. Dawn was

breaking over the city.

He was kidding himself, worse than the Canfields of the world. Radcliffe had

seen right through him in a few minutes. Sticking a map on the wall and thinking

that was as far as honesty need go…

The door opened and the first girl came in. She was very pretty, with sleek dark

hah braided to the back of her head with gold wire, but she looked peaked with

cold. Not surprisingly. She wore a synsilk nightsuit of dark red tassels on net

covering her left arm and breast, her belly and buttocks, and her right leg.

Two-fifty, Waldron thought. At that price I guess she can afford to shiver.

“Sit down,” he said. “Name?”

“Maura Knight.” She dropped into the chair. “Got a cigarette?”

“No. Particulars?”

When she gave her profession as “secretary”, he pounced. “So what are you

charging Radcliffe—overtime?”

“Sure, overtime!” she snapped. “If you know girls who don’t charge, they’re

probably rich!”

Waldron framed a retort, then sighed and changed his mind. It wasn’t her fault

that nowadays sex seemed to be bought and sold more often than given, as though

along with its old ambitions the human race had abandoned any conception of love

in the bright awful shadow of Earth’s invaders.

He asked for her version of events, and she recited it in dull fatigued tones. Once

again it tallied exactly, up to the point at which the weirdo spoke. And then a little

life seemed to enter her; she sat forward on the chair, looking past him into

memory, and her voice rose from its former colorless level to a pitch almost to be

called passionate.

“He said something like, ‘You did this to me, you damned bastard!’ I looked at

Den—I mean Radcliffe. I’ve never seen such a murderous look! He picked up this

heavy jug and threw it, and that wasn’t enough. The weirdo hadn’t done anything

and he still didn’t do anything. He just kept glaring, his face full of hate. And

Radcliffe threw a bottle, and it smashed on his head!” She closed her eyes and sank

back. Staring at her, Waldron saw her swallow as though fighting the need to

vomit.

“I tell you, I saw him smash the bottle on the guy’s head. And then he threw

anything else he could find, like a lunatic trying to ruin a doll. Plates, knives,

anything. As though he’d gone completely berserk.”

Waldron didn’t say anything. But he wondered why she hated Radcliffe so, on

such short acquaintance.

“He was trying to throw the whole damned table when the gas came on! Listen,

why did he want to do that?” She opened her eyes again, this time wide with

incredulity. “Sure, this weirdo looked revolting, but… but… Oh, I don’t know much

about these things, but I always thought a weirdo gets that way because he doesn’t

just sit around like everybody else letting himself be treated like vermin by the—the

whatever they are. He’s someone who’s tried to do something, even if he has wound

up crazy. I think he was telling the truth. I think he wanted to get his own back

because Radcliffe had done something terrible to him. Cheated him, maybe. How

do the free traders get their stuff, anyway? Do they really scavenge for it, or do they

leave the dirty work to other people and kick them out if they take one risk too many

and lose their minds?”

“Shut up,” Waldron said coldly. He was taken aback, not only to hear her

uttering comments on this level, but also to find that he half-wanted her to

continue. Even to talk about defiance was better than ignoring reality altogether.

“You met Radcliffe for the first time last evening, didn’t you?” he demanded.

She gave a sullen nod.

“Then you’d better think twice before jumping to slanderous conclusions, hadn’t

you?”

She was ice-calm suddenly. “Weren’t you just trying to insinuate me into your

records as a professional prostitute? After an even shorter acquaintance!”

He was in acute danger of losing his temper, Waldron realized, and over people

he didn’t give a damn about at that. He told her to go. Shivering, she moved

towards the door. Just before going out, she gave him a glance sharp with

contempt.

She has no right…But the thought would not complete.

When he had spoken to Hyson and the other girl, Susan Vey, he felt physically

and emotionally drained. He could risk napping for the rest of his tour if Canfield

had nothing more for him—but to find out whether that was so, he would have to go

down to the basement again. Damn that intercom.

As he turned the corner of the stairway and came in sight of the cells, the fact

that some of the prisoners had broken out of their apathy and were staring towards

the desk told him something must be wrong. He hurried down the next half-dozen

steps and could then see for himself: Canfield and Rodriguez each holding Radcliffe

by one arm, while facing him, her cheeks very white, her lower lip puffy and a

trickle of blood creeping out of the corner of her mouth, Maura Knight still held up

her hands defensively as though to ward him off.

Chapter Four

« ^ »

Waldron felt as though the world were throwing events at his head the way

Radcliffe had bombarded the weirdo (had it been like a madman smashing a doll?)

and it was making him giddy. It seemed when he spoke that plates of hard dry skin

were flaking around his mouth.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

Canfield and Rodriguez let Radcliffe go. The trader took a step back and

shrugged his coat into place around his shoulders, his expression stony as a statue’s.

Canfield jerked a thumb at him.

“I imagine Radcliffe is going back in the cage,” he said. “I never saw a man hit a

woman like that before. Did he break any teeth?” he added to Maura.

She shook her head numbly. Feeling the blood on her chin, she wiped at it with

the back of her hand.

“What for?” Waldron said, addressing Radcliffe.

“She didn’t expect to find me waiting for her,” Radcliffe snarled. “Thought she

could slip out of here and sneak off home. But I want value for the two-fifty I gave

her!”

“You can have the money!” the girl cried. “You—”

“I want what I paid for! Come across, or I’ll help myself. It’s up to you!”

“Be quiet!” Canfield rapped. “I don’t know what the hell you do on Grady’s

Ground, and I don’t care. But what you’re going to do here is head back into a cell

the moment she says the word.”

“Listen, you wooden-headed angel-chaser!” Radcliffe began, balling a fist.

“Hold it!” Waldron barked. “You! What’s your name? You, Maura! Want to

swear out an assault charge?”

“No, I don’t want to have to see him again, even in court. He can take his dirty

money. Now I have some idea how he gets it I’d rather be rid of it before I catch—”

“Chico!” Waldron exclaimed, and Rodriguez clamped down on Radcliffe’s arm

before it could deliver a second punch. “Take your money, Radcliffe. Count yourself

lucky she doesn’t want her pound of flesh. Free traders aren’t any too popular

around here.”

The anger drained from Radcliffe all at once. He relaxed, eyes on Waldron. “I

guess you’re right,” he admitted. “You take the money off her, then. If I go any

closer I’m apt to forget my good manners.”

Where the hell could she be carrying money in that outfit, anyway? Oh: the

gold-braided hair on the back of her head was a chignon. She lifted it off, produced

the bills; Canfield returned them to Radcliffe.

“Now—out,” he grunted. “And remember what the lieutenant said. You’re

damned lucky.”

“Aren’t you going to give me a head start over him?” Maura said. “You heard him

say he didn’t want the money, he’d rather take what he paid for.”

Radcliffe grinned. Waldron caught the expression as it came and went, but

couldn’t be sure whether it was wry or—what to call it? Vicious? He passed his hand

across his face.

“Send her home in a squad car, goddamn it!” he ordered. “Anything for the sake

of peace and quiet!”

In the main lobby he paused, looking out through the doors at the early-morning

street. A cleansing cart was crawling by, its huge vacuum mouths slurping up their

diet of litter, its hind end giving back a flood of detergent and water like urine. His

mind seemed to switch off, and minutes passed without his realizing. Then there

came a tap on his shoulder.

“I appreciate what you did for me there, lieutenant,” Radcliffe said. “Back home,

I guess I’m in the habit of doing as I see fit and to hell with the consequences. It

isn’t often that someone can talk me around as neatly as you just did. I’ll settle

matters some other way, or if I can’t, what the hell? Either way, I promise it won’t

concern you.”

He drew back half a pace and looked Waldron over with a searching stare.

“Don’t forget what I said, will you? I’m accustomed to making snap judgments,

you know—I have to, because all the time people are wandering on to the Ground,

and I have to decide usually on the basis of a five-minute chat whether it’s worth

hiring them or letting them go to somebody else. And I’ve made my mind up about

you. I have a security problem. You could handle it the way I want. Give me the

chance to do you a favor back—come out where things actually happen. You said

you very well might.”

Had he really said so? The memory of his own words came back to Waldron from

infinitely long ago. He gave a listless nod.

“Great. Take your time to think it over, of course. But my guess is that you’ve

already had your bellyful of this play-acting. See you shortly!”

With a smile and a wave Radcliffe headed for the exit, while Waldron returned

to his office.

Like a lunatic trying to smash a doll… ?

He had thought of laying his head on the desk and trying to doze away the last

hour of his shift, but that was out of the question, for he could hear the sounds of

the building coming to daytime life—office-cleaning machines going up and down

the service racks between floors, coffee-and-rolls trolleys rattling down the

corridors for the overnight staff. One more mortal hour before he could leave. Of

course, this had been a good night in one sense—no shootings, no arson, no

gang-rumbles or major riots…

How were things in the old days?

The coffee trolley stopped at his door and hooted. He collected his ration.

Sipping it, puffing at the latest of too many cigarettes tonight, he stared at the map.

Radcliffe had claimed that Grady’s western boundary reached forty or fifty miles

further out. If he made the change, nobody would notice. Or—well, they might, but

they’d think of it as a gibe, not an attempt to face the truth. De jure, they would say,

the USA is still the USA, Canada is still Canada. De Facto, of course—but that’s not

exactly our fault, is it?

Where would we have got to by now if the aliens hadn’t come?

He remembered the beginning with fearful vividness. No one had known what

was really happening, of course—they’d taken it for a mere crisis in human affairs.

Internal, so to say. (Almost funny, that. Like a cerebral hemorrhage. It occurred to

him that the reason why Morello had been so pleased with his comparison of the

weirdo’s eyes to cherries was that a kind of dark cherry was called a Morello.)

With casual simultaneity, all fissionable material on the planet had been

exploded with an efficiency ranging from eight to eighteen percent conversion.

Every missile and bomber base; every bomb in flight; every nuclear power station

and every refinery where the stocks exceeded a couple of kilograms had

mushroomed into fire. It was a day and a half before the survivors knew it wasn’t

war. With the exception of those who would have started such a war. They knew.

But for that day and a half they withheld their knowledge out of panic.

During that time something became clear which previously governments and

general staffs had preferred to play down, since they still existed in a fantasy world

where concepts like “victory” and “conquest” were meaningful. Modern industrial

society was like a watch. To drop a single pinch of sand into the works was to ruin

it. And this was no pinch of sand—it was a truckload. The anti-missile missiles,

ranked in sets of forty per million population, naturally did the most damage; each

had a warhead designed to knock down an enemy rocket on a seven-mile near miss.

The bombers and ICBM’s were in comparatively isolated districts, or aboard

submarines far out to sea, while the Minutemen and other city-wreckers wasted

their blast on their underground silos.

It wasn’t the explosions, or the gigantic fires—worst on the West Coast, where

they swept thousands of square miles at the end of a dry summer—or even the

fallout which caused the disruption of North America. It was the people who fled

from the fires, abandoning their homes and their jobs; it was the plagues which ran

through refugee camps when city-dwellers drank bad water; it was the National

Guardsmen and hastily sworn-in armed deputies who fought pitched battles to turn

back swarms of metropolitan fugitives made mindless by terror when they reached

the outskirts of smaller towns. In Europe things were infinitely worse, because the

giant opposed armies went into battle like machines turned on by the nuclear

explosions, and ravaged both Germanies, most of Czechoslovakia and parts of other

countries before it was possible to switch them off.

There was a time—according to what event one chose to mark its ending, one

said it lasted weeks or months—during which the planet churned like an overset

beehive, and nobody seemed able to think far enough ahead to restore any

organization. It was in this period that the alien cities were built.

One said: “alien city”. And was no wiser.

Bewildered governments brought their immediate problems under control,

arranged emergency food supplies, drafted doctors to the rash of refugee camps,

charted the fallout zones, and learned with relief and dismay that the calamity was

as worldwide as the distribution of fissionables. It was in Israel and India, Chile

and China. (Inevitably, though, the countries where weapons had been readied

suffered worst.)

Also they learned that in the north middlewest of the USA almost touching the

Canadian border, in western Brazil, in Russia a short distance east of the Urals, in

Australia’s Nullabor Plain, and in the Antarctic, there were… strangenesses. From

the air they were seen as distorted five-pointed stars, glowing translucent, vaster

than any city yet seeming to be single buildings—if they were buildings. There was

energy in them; the radio bands crackled with static, electrical storms gathered

around them, and occasionally a shattering noise was heard, though such

phenomena dwindled and eventually ceased. Within the boundaries of these

places—misty, sometimes nearly opaque and sometimes glass-clear, constantly

radiating unpredictable patterns of color—could be discerned shining entities.

Question mark.

People thought: invasion. And within a few more weeks moved against the

intruders. It was still impossible to assemble more than two or three kilograms of

fissionable material anywhere; that was tried and proved. But they sent armies with

conventional bombs and rockets, and thought in terms of siege, and were repulsed

with madness.

What it was due to—poison gas, telepathic bombardment, mass hypnotism, a

virus—no one knew. But the armies dispatched against the shining cities reached a

certain point which might not even be in sight of their target, and then mutinied

and turned back. They raved across the countryside wrecking, looting,

burning—fire gave them especial pleasure and they would stand watching a

haystack blaze until it was almost all ash, then pour gasoline on it to enjoy another

few minutes of flame. Overhead, planes released their bombs anywhere but on the

alien cities, then sought a funeral pyre in a human city or, most favored, an oilfield.

It became impossible to pretend to the continuance of national government

anywhere near the alien-controlled areas. You couldn’t tell whether the army

battalion which came to invest your town was under orders from Washington—or

Moscow, come to that, for the terror reigned everywhere—to protect you, or was

waiting with lunatic glee for night to fall so that your home might be set ablaze with

maximum spectacle.

Little by little things settled towards a semblance of normality. No further

assaults were made on the alien cities. It was in their vicinity that chaos lasted

longest. Realizing that no government would dare send in troops to reestablish

authority for fear of adding to the toll of those rendered insane, a few men saw their

chance, and snatched at it. In Russia, the man who emerged as ruler of the

no-man’s-land was called Buishenko; in Australia it was Villiers-Hart; in Brazil,

Neveira; and in North America the self-styled “Governor” Grady.

These had fought other, less astute rivals to seize the reins of effective power in

the lull between the extremity of the crisis and the present. It did not seem to matter

if humans squabbled among themselves in plain sight of the alien cities; the

madness only struck if they actually contemplated an attack.

Like speculative builders erecting apartments on the San Andreas fault, like

peasants farming the slopes of a volcano, others joined them and accepted their

arbitrary rule. They were lured by greed.

For there were what Radcliffe had called “rare artifacts”—the garbage, perhaps,

of the nonhuman beings who had descended on Earth. They hinted at fantastic new

principles, undiscovered laws of nature, energy-states which were neither matter

nor radiation. Instantly commercial and governmental interests set to squabbling

and bargaining for them. In the States all that were found were nominally federal

property, but the decree was a nullity. So, trading like vermin on the refuse of a

higher species, Grady and his counterparts enjoyed a tenuous security.

But it took guts, didn’t it, to perch there on the volcano’s lip, trying to snatch

meager clues to the nature of the invaders? Most of humanity, ran a phrase which

seemed apposite to Waldron, was writhing like a snake with a broken back. The free

traders were at least the equal of rats… also a species preying on the leavings of a

higher one.

His aimless musing was interrupted. The door opened to reveal Canfield,

extremely weary. He said, “About the weirdo—” And waved a sheet of teletype

paper.

“Yes?” Waldron stirred. “Have you identified him?”

“Not exactly. But you remember what Morello said—he might be one of a pair of

identical twins, seeing his body is laid out mirror-fashion. So when Washington

said they didn’t have his prints on file, I said to try reversing them.”

“Ah, hell!” Waldron said with incipient scorn. “Not even twins have identical

prints, you know that.”

Canfield bristled. “Haven’t you put me down enough for one night, even yet?” he

snapped. “Not that I give a shit anyhow. I found his twin.”

“What?”

“See for yourself.” Canfield dropped the paper on the desk. “A guy called Corey

Bennett. Works for the Federal Scientific Service. The match-up of the prints is

exact.”

A cold shiver invaded Waldron’s spine. “But it’s impossible,” he said faintly.

“A of M!” Canfield grunted, and marched out.

Chapter Five

« ^ »

“Are you sure it isn’t a trap?” Jespersen said again.

Orlando Potter glanced around. All lights were out on the bridge of the jet-driven

Coast Guard launch, bar the shaded lamp over the navigation table, but the

northern summer sky was bright enough to show faces. Not for the first time he

regretted bringing along the rangy Swedish-born physicist as “scientific

advisor”—hell, what use was human science where the aliens were concerned?

Irritation embrittling his voice, he said, “I’ve told you! We know beyond a shadow

of doubt they’re desperate. Isn’t that proved by what they did for Congreve?”

Not turning his head, continuing to stare across the smooth shield of the sea,

Congreve gave a cynical grunt. “I sometimes think you’ve stopped regarding

Russians as human, doctor! They’re as capable of being frightened as you and I.

And believe me, they are frightened.”

Improbably out of place in this stark, almost warlike setting—blonde hair

hanging loose, makeup impeccable, her only concession to the task in hand being

her choice of a jerkin-and-pants suit in dark suede rather than one of her regular

bright and revealing costumes—Greta Delarue tossed in one of the

innocent-seeming questions that often made it impossible even for Potter to tell

which way her mind was running… and she had been his mistress for six months

now.

“Obviously, Mike. But which are they more scared of: the aliens, or Buishenko?”

Congreve didn’t reply immediately. During the pause Potter found himself

studying the spy for the latest of many, many times, struggling to discern from some

outward clue whether his loyalty had been undermined.

Congreve was still in Russian clothes: the green zip-fronted jacket, the black

pants with elasticized cuffs and baggy calves reminiscent of Cossack breeches which

had been fashionable at the latest period when there were still fashions to engage

the attention of Russia’s prosperous new class. His Moscow-styled hair was growing

out of its intended neatness, but since his return he had hardly had time for such

minor problems as getting it trimmed.

By their tens of thousands, Potter thought, men in such clothes are falling under

Buishenko’s sway. He’s gobbling up Russia like a new Khan of the Golden Horde.

Did any of his agents get to Congreve?

And if so— how?

“I wish,” Congreve said finally, “people would get cured of this contempt for

spies! I’m a damned good spy, and proud of it. I’ve been and out of the Soviet Union

for more than eight years, and they still weren’t sure I was a foreigner even when

they decided to make their approach. They took a gamble. I spent a full week

checking before I came into the open. And they sent me out through Austria by one

of their own routes, on a government pass with ten thousand rubles and the

message. In my judgment they’re equally scared of both the aliens and Buishenko

because you can’t separate them. If it hadn’t been for the aliens he could never have

achieved power. You haven’t seen what he’s doing to Russia. I have!”

Abandoning his contemplation of the sea at last, he turned. “That’s not like

Grady’s Ground, for God’s sake—it’s not just a kind of make-believe Gold Rush

enclave! It’s a cancer of barbarism, and it’s spreading like a forest fire!”

“I only wish”—Potter heard his own voice with vague surprise—“that we knew

exactly what we’re supposed to be waiting for.”

“It could be any of half a dozen things.” Greta shrugged. “My guess is an alien

device in operating condition. If I’m right, it would be worth much greater risks

than what we’re actually taking.”

Jespersen snorted. He was a tall man, and anxiety had wasted him until his skin

hung loose on his bones. His hair, which had been light brown before the coming of

the aliens, had turned to silver and started to fall away almost by the handful.

“Going by what they told Congreve, we can’t be certain of anything. A lot of

gibberish and double-talk, that’s what I call it.”

“Here we go again,” muttered Congreve. “I was hoping that scientists might be a

bit less hidebound than politicians, or my own people, but it seems I was wrong…

No, Dr. Jesperson, it wasn’t gibberish! It made perfectly good sense. They’ve

managed to get their hands on something which Buishenko will stop at nothing to

get back. They can’t keep it in the Soviet Union because the country is just tumbling

around their ears. They can’t take it out westwards because Central Europe is

impassable on land and anyhow Buishenko controls half their surviving antiaircraft

guns and missiles and any plane they tried to put into the sky would probably be

shot down. There was no point in taking it out northwards; that’s a dead end, and it

would probably be stuck in Finland until Buishenko marched in there, too. But they

did think they could get it out through Vladivostok and if I could arrange safe

custody for it on delivery they’d make the attempt.” His voice was tinged with

weariness. Potter wondered how often he had already recited this story—under

hypnosis, under drugs, his mind being probed to its roots in search of any hint of

treason.

The radio mounted over the navigation table came to life, and the naval

commander sitting there answered without taking his eyes from the radar screen.

“Harlequin, Harlequin—pawn to rook four!”

“Columbine,” a distant voice said, “Queen to queen one, check.”

“They’re coming!” Potter said under his breath, and moved to peer over the

commander’s shoulder. At the helm the captain—also naval, not a Coast Guard

officer—demanded to know whether they had a fix yet.

The commander shut off the radio briefly to say he had a blip at the extreme

limit of range, but nothing definite, and relayed similar information in verbal code

to the headquarters ship referred to as Columbine. It was a curious makeshift fleet

they had mounted to carry out this operation: after the worldwide destruction of

fissionables, the Navy was left without its aircraft carriers, without its cruisers and

destroyers, without its nuclear submarines… “Columbine” had been a lowly

pre-atomic sub-chaser, cocooned and due for the scrapyard.

An eternal pause followed, during which all their eyes focused achingly on the

commander’s face, eerily lit by the shaded yellow lamp above, the green glow of the

radar below.

“Harlequin,” he said finally. “Discovered check—very neat. King’s knight to

queen five.”

“If anybody’s listening,” Jespersen grumbled, “they’ll be damned sure we’re not

just playing chess to pass the time!”

“The moves are legal!” Congreve snapped. “It may not be a good game, but it is a

game! Damn it, I spent two weeks working up the code, didn’t I?”

Jespersen scowled but fortunately forbore to answer.

“What the hell… ?” the commander said, half to himself. “Either there’s

something wrong with the radar, or… No, it’s really there.”

“What?” the captain snapped.

“I don’t know. Not quite what we were expecting, that’s definite. The range is

closing on every sweep, and the speed—” The commander checked a printed list

pasted beside the radar screen. “Christ. It says sixty-five knots. Are you sure we’re

expecting a watergoing vessel, Mr. Congreve?”

“That’s what I was told,” Congreve answered. “I guess they might have managed

to get their hands on a plane after all, but at the time they were quite definite. In

any case that’s too slow for a plane, isn’t it?”

“A helicopter, wave-hopping to keep below following radar?” Greta offered.

“Possible,” the commander conceded. “But could we have silence now, please?”

He resumed his coded contact with the headquarters ship.

Pointlessly, Potter, Greta and Jespersen formed up in a line to stare in the

direction from which the Russian craft was approaching, though they well knew

nothing was to be seen as yet.

“How soon will it be close enough for us to spot it?” Jespersen muttered,

fingering a pair of binoculars on a strap around his chicken-thin neck.

“Depends what size it is, doesn’t it?” Congreve answered mockingly, and the tall

Swede flushed.

The voice from Columbine muttered, “Uh… now that the… ? Oh yeah. Castle king

side, check and double-check on the next move. With the queen’s knight. Better

watch it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jespersen growled.

“They’re being followed,” Potter said. “Right, Congreve?”

The spy nodded, gazing anxiously up into the twilit sky.

Their own vessel’s “counter-move” Potter failed to catch. That didn’t matter,

though, for the next statement from headquarters was about pawn taking pawn,

and from somewhere astern a string of half a dozen glowing objects crossed the

zenith like shooting stars in reverse. Tension grew. Then…

“Got them!” Greta said with uncharacteristic excitement. Something had shone

red on the horizon and faded instantly.

“What was it, could you tell?” Potter asked the commander in a hushed voice.

“Air pursuit,” the officer answered equally quietly, “I don’t know why the shots

came from astern, though. We’re supposed to have a couple of conventional-missile

ships ahead of us—”

“Guard your queen!” Columbine said sharply, and in the same moment

Jespersen, binoculars raised, let out a muffled exclamation.

Even without glasses Potter could not only see the thing rushing towards them,

but recognize that there was something peculiar about its design as soon as its

movement attracted his eye. “What is it?” he exclaimed.

“I think it’s a Red Whale,” Congreve said.

Potter struggled to make sense of an incongruous lopsided form half in, half out

of the water. “What’s a Red Whale, for God’s sake?”

“Hydro-aerofoil,” Greta said unexpectedly. “Four turbines, two underwater foils,

two wings. Experimental. Meant for high-speed transit in the China Sea. If it’s only

doing sixty-five knots it’s loafing. Its design speed is a hundred and ten.”

“Shut up!” the captain ordered, and Potter realized they must have missed some

vital exchange with Columbine, for the whine of the engines had sharpened

noticeably.

The commander gave a nod, and the captain’s hand shot to the power control.

He barked at his passengers. “Hold on to something! Here we go!”

They all grabbed at the metal rails which ringed the bridge, and in the same

second the pursuit launch took off: bump-bump-slap on three consecutive waves

and then up on its foils and dead steady, like a limousine on a concrete road. The

plume of the jets stretched astern for a hundred yards.

“Something wrong?” Potter demanded.

“Very,” the captain confirmed. “There’s a ‘copter up there with infrared cameras

and an electron-multiplier. Pilot reports one wing shot off the Russian—ah—vessel,

one engine stopped to balance the drag, and a nose-down attitude. Must have been

hit before we took out the plane that was chasing her.”

“I can see the damage!” Jespersen burst out. “How is it still afloat?”

Potter seized a spare pair of binoculars from an overhead rack he had only just

noticed. Jespersen was right. Not only was one wing of the awkward craft missing;

there was a hole in the hull, and water was slapping up towards it.

The radio emitted an abrupt blast of frantic Russian. Congreve was translating

before he was asked.

“They’re in great danger—at this speed the hydrofoils hit a critical resonance and

make the hull shiver—if they reduce speed they’ll drop and water will come through

the hole—if they go faster they’ll tip over because of the missing wing! They must

ditch as soon as possible! If we can come close and pick them out of the water flash

a light three times.”

Instantly the captain hit the main deck-lights switch. The whole of the boat stood

out in sudden glaring whiteness.

“Look!” Greta whispered.

The monstrous, misshapen Russian vessel had swung broadside in a terrific swirl

of spray. Something detached from it: a jettisoned hatch, leaving a bright oblong on

the hull. A figure tumbled out. Another. Another. Like toys.

“But why on the turn like… ?” the captain said to no one in particular. And then:

“Oh, of course. Centrifugal force—toss them clear of the wake.”

“Whoever’s at the helm knows his business,” the commander said soberly.

The captain dropped the launch back to slow ahead and the uneven rocking of

the waves. A searchlight from her bow swept the water and picked up three bobbing

heads in quick succession.

The Red Whale completed a hundred-and-eighty degree turn and slammed back

on its original track. One more doll-like figure dived out—and a heartbeat later the

craft dipped, dug its nose in, and shattered to pieces with a grinding roar.

“Made it!” Potter cried, beside himself with uncontrollable excitement.

“The hell you say,” Greta snapped. Potter gave her a blank stare. She repeated:

“The hell you say! Whatever they were bringing, they didn’t push it through the

escape hatch, did they? I only saw men going into the water, not taking anything

with them—which means the reason for all our trouble is at the bottom of the

Pacific!”

Chapter Six

« ^ »

In the excitement of watching the brilliant maneuver carried out by the Russian

helmsman, Potter had completely forgotten about the consignment they were

expecting; he had been concentrating on the figures pitching out of the emergency

door. And for the next several minutes too much was happening to permit quiet

thought. He comforted himself with the idea that perhaps the precious

object—whatever it was—might be very small, pocket-sized… though that hardly

matched the scale of the alien cities or the mysterious entities which had been

glimpsed within them.

All four of the survivors’ life-jackets had inflated properly, and although one of

them appeared to be unconscious and they were widely scattered, there was no need

for excessive haste. Potter stood by on the afterdeck while muscular sailors operated

a retrieval device, a cross between a grapnel and a lasso designed to catch a floating

body in a padded ring.

First to be rescued was a grossly fat man whose life-jacket would barely fasten

over his chest. He was coughing helplessly from a lungful of water, and had still not

recovered from his convulsions when the second followed: a pale man with a

spade-shaped brown beard salted with gray.

This one was in sufficiently good shape to stand unaided as he reached the deck,

and even to bow his thanks to the sailor who had hauled him up. Congreve

addressed him in Russian and at once had both his hands clasped fervently.

“What’s he saying?” Potter whispered.

“His name’s Alexei Zworykin. Medical doctor. Says he was never so glad in his

life as when he saw us flash our lights.”

“What’s his reason for coming along?”

“I haven’t asked that yet.” Congreve resumed his questioning.

Number three to be fished up was the unconscious one. The instant he came into

view at the gunwale, limp as a dead fish, Zworykin forgot everything and dashed

forward with an oath. Dropping to his knees, he checked the newcomer’s pulse and

rolled back his eyelids. He uttered an impatient order to Congreve.

“We must get him below at once,” the ex-spy relayed. “He has a very frail

constitution.”

“I can believe that,” Potter agreed. The white impassive face showing above the

collar of the life-jacket was somehow…wrong. Deformed. The features were in a

false relationship: forehead too low, eyes too far apart, mouth slack and idiotic.

“He’s diabetic,” Congreve said. “Also has a skin disease and something else—a

medical term—I can’t remember the English for.”

“Well, if he’s here presumably he’s important,” Potter grunted. “Get them below

and see the doctor’s given whatever he needs.”

He turned to see how the fat man was, and found Greta and Jespersen in halting

conversation with him, their Russian badly accented and full of struggling pauses.

Even so, Potter—who had not even a nodding acquaintance with the language—felt

envious.

“Who is he?” he inquired.

He had meant the question for Great, but it was Jespersen who replied, with

thinly veiled contempt. “Don’t you recognize him? Pavel Abramovitch, their

Minister of Science!”

Of course! Potter damned himself for not identifying the man, but somehow,

even after what Congreve had reported, he hadn’t expected anyone of this eminence

to be with the party. Abramovitch was no chair-polishing career politician,

either—he had already been an Academician of the USSR with a noteworthy

research record when one of the periodical Kremlin reshuffles brought him into the

Supreme Soviet.

He was about to request a formal introduction when there came an exclamation

from behind, and he swung around.

Number four of the survivors was climbing aboard without the aid of rescue

apparatus. Sleek black hair running-wet framed a square Slavic face; on sallow skin

red lips showed like an open wound. A woman? Well—unmistakably!

In excellent English she said, “Thank you very much. I was hoping we could get

all the way under our own power, which was why we asked for a jet-propelled boat

to meet us and ride into port together. But it was hard to evade the attacks because

seawater is not my usual habitation!” She bestowed a sunny smile on everyone in

view.

There was a moment of enduring astonishment. Potter ended it by moving

forward, hand outstretched.

“Ah—I’m Orlando Potter,” he said. “Theoretically I’m in charge. I’m deputy

chairman of the Congressional Committee on Emergency Countermeasures, if that

means anything to you.”

“It would be like our commission on—” The girl snapped her fingers. “Oh, I don’t

know the English for that! I am Natasha Nikolaevna.”

Her self-possession impressed Potter tremendously. He said, “You were the… the

pilot of the ship?”

“I was steering, yes.” A wry grimace. “But it was not what I am used to, you

understand. I am a cosmonaut.”

A cosmonaut! That word brought a rush of agonizing nostalgia to Potter: so

many aborted dreams… Before he had framed a suitable comment, Greta came

tapping him on the shoulder.

“Orlando, you must come and talk to Abramovitch. He has something important

to say, but he won’t tell anybody below government level.” There was a hint of

irritation in her voice. Potter made to excuse himself to the Russian girl and comply,

but she shot an urgent question at him.

“How is Pitirim? Is he all right?”

“Do you mean the sick boy?” Potter found the words come automatically; on

reflection the unconscious survivor had seemed very young, perhaps in his teens.

“He’s below with the doctor, being well looked after.”

“I’m so glad,” the girl exclaimed. “Any of the rest of us could have been lost, but I

was afraid for Pitirim.”

Why? What could make a mere boy—an apparent mental defective, at

that—more important than the Minister for Science? But Potter had no chance to

ask, for the captain called from the bridge.

“Mr. Potter, take everyone below, will you? We’re getting underway, and even if

we can’t hit a hundred and ten knots there’ll be a slight breeze here on deck.”

A slight breeze, Potter repeated to himself. The pursuit launch was slicing the

night at about forty-five knots now, and the wind-noise and the yammer of the

turbines permeated the entire hull, making conversation in the cramped quarters

amidships a matter of slow well-articulated shouting.

Congreve came to join them, and reported that Zworykin was wearing a

comprehensive medical kit strapped around his body in a waterproof covering and

didn’t want anyone else to interfere while he attended to the unconscious Pitirim.

He sat down next to Abramovitch; the fat man was at a worse disadvantage than

the others when trying to talk above the noise, because his fit of coughing had left

him hoarse. But anything he wanted to say would have to be relayed anyhow by

Congreve or Natasha, and they were either side of him.

Potter caught Natasha’s eye. “Please explain to Mr. Abramovitch who I am. And

please tell him, too, that Dr. Jespersen is Associate Professor of Physics at the

University of British Columbia and Miss Delarue is a senior executive of our Federal

Scientific Service, so he can speak freely to all of us.”

Natasha complied. Waiting for her to translate the reply, Potter found himself

glancing at Greta. There was an unexpectedly sour expression on her lovely face. It

couldn’t possibly be jealousy, could it?

Yes, it could. For on reflection he realized it had made its appearance as they

were corning below, when the captain had called from the bridge to compliment

Natasha on her skilled handling of the Red Whale. He knew very well it was not to

Greta’s taste to have other women around who excelled her in anything, be it looks

or ability.

She must be quite a girl, this cosmonaut… I wonder how she feels about the

aliens, whether she finds it possible to hate them. How many years of ambition,

how much tough training, went to waste because of them? It will be long before

another spaceship leaves this ravaged planet.

But he himself had long ago realized, to his surprise, that he did not hate the

aliens because he could not. They were too foreign to his understanding. One might

as well hate a bacterium, or a storm-cloud.

“He finds it difficult to talk,” Natasha said now, turning back to Potter. “His

throat hurts. So please put your questions to me, and I will only translate them to

him if I cannot answer. Is this O.K. by you?”

Imperfections were beginning to show in her generally astonishing English; that

faintly archaic phrase was one. Nonetheless her accent was superb. Potter shaped

his first query and was forestalled by Greta in a voice as bitter as aloes.

“Is there any point? You saved nothing from the wreck except yourselves.”

“Please?” Natasha countered, eyes widening in puzzlement.

Potter scowled Greta into silence. Plainly she was still concerned that no alien

device had been salvaged from the sunken boat, but there was nothing in the

Russians’ demeanor to suggest that they considered their venture a failure. On the

contrary, they seemed in very good spirits.

“Miss—ah—Miss Nikolaevna,” he said, “we ought to start with the full

background to the story, you know. What Mr. Congreve was told didn’t make it at

all clear.”

She checked rapidly with Abramovitch; on his confirmatory nod she leaned back

and crossed her legs.

“Very well! First, you know what it is like in Russia now—there is Buishenko who

has risen like a mad dog to the top of a pile of mad dogs, and his saboteurs and

criminals are breaking up the organization of our state and fighting over the pieces.

It is like a jungle! First there was only the part around the… the alien city, I think

you call it in English. We are discouraged to call it that. Officially the name is

‘energetic phenomenon’. But I myself am sure there are thinking creatures inside,

much advanced over us.

“Well, it spread like a plague, you see. But we could not understand why

Buishenko gained so much support. We have done much for our people, and

believed them mainly loyal. It is in some way a superstition, but there is great love

of Mother Russia. Of course he began with the remnants of the maddened

leaderless armies we had sent against the… the aliens. Many thousands of them

survived but had no organization until he enrolled them. Also many people joined

him through fear, or for bribes, or to save their skins from his terrorist forces. But

this could not be the whole of the story. There were still gapes, do you follow me?

Ah—gapes…?”

“Gaps,” Potter supplied.

“Thank you, yes. So we spied, and we sent commando forces into his territory,

and we interrogated those we captured in battle against him, and it came out. Our

government had done its best against the aliens, and they spat on our petty

achievements. Buishenko had done what we could not manage, so in the face of the

terrible strange threat people turned willingly to him.”

She paused impressively, looking from face to face.

“What our captives said was this: Buishenko had found a way to enter and leave

the alien city at will, and obtained many strange marvelous objects as proof.”

“You mean”—Potter heard his voice shaking—“he didn’t go out of his mind?” In

memory, scores of movie films showing those who had tried to enter the city in

North America and been rendered instantly insane. The weirdos.

“In our country too we have many who went crazy trying it,” Natasha agreed.

“Still, this really did seem to be how Buishenko could accrete—no: augment his

support. We presume, naturally, he must have come on the secret by chance.

Perhaps he located some alien-made thing which can protect him. Perhaps some

scientist is working for him and has made a new discovery. At all costs we must find

out. So we make plans to spy in his headquarters. That was formerly an emergency

army base, underground in the Urals, intended for use in nuclear war. We have all

the maps and can fix the alarms and booby-traps. But if we manage to steal this

thing of his, what can we do with it? Soon no part of Russia—”

“We’ve heard all that!” Great broke in. “So what became of it? Is it at the bottom

of the ocean?”

Natasha was incredulous for a moment. Then she threw back her head and

pealed with laughter. “No, no! Our guess was wrong! It was not a machine that was

so useful to Buishenko. It was a person. And though eight of our men were killed,

we brought him safely away—Pitirim!”

There were long seconds of silence while they thought about the pasty-faced

slack-jawed sickly boy. At last Jespersen said faintly, “Him? But what can he do?”

“Go into the alien city and return, bringing things with him,” Natasha said

patiently. “Which until now he has handed always to Buishenko. That man is a wild

animal caring for no one but himself. I think—I hope—we are caring for everybody

on Earth. Is it not better for Pitirim to give us what he can gather?”

Chapter Seven

« ^ »

Crooning to himself, clutching his prize tightly in both dirty hands, Ichabod

scurried crabwise along the dusty path, now and then chuckling and shaking back

straw-fair hair from his bulging forehead. He paid no attention to the people

coming and going around the shacks of scrap timber, plastic or salvaged bricks

mortared with clay which he passed, and correspondingly they ignored him.

Everyone knew Ichabod—a little touched in the head, but harmless, unlike some of

the other kids.

The path wound randomly. He followed it as automatically as a trained rat in a

maze. At one corner he stopped to relieve himself against a post, not letting go of

what he held, and his crooning took on the words he had heard every Sunday, and

sometimes weekdays as well, since he first learned to talk.

“Praise the Lord for He has sent

Angels from the firmament!”

(He knew exactly what the firmament was. It was a big town up near the stars.

You couldn’t go to it—though some people had impiously tried to—but you didn’t

have to. Not now.)

“Sinners He will likewise throw

To the raging fires below!”

(He knew what that would be like, too. His father had shown him by dropping

his pet frog into the cookstove.)

Hardly waiting for the last drop to fall, he went on his way. When he came close

to his home, though, he progressed more cautiously. It was one thing to have got

hold of something which had belonged to the angels; it was another to keep it

secret. If luck were with him, he might be able to slip indoors and hide it in his bed.

He had to make it himself, so that was a good place to hide things…

No. He couldn’t sneak in. Peeking around the corner of the fence, he could

see—and hear—his parents in the frame of the downstairs window. They were

arguing as usual. Ichabod accepted such arguments as a fact of life. He would just

have to wait until one or both of them went out.

Squatting against the fence, he wondered if he dared risk another glance at his

treasure. Nobody was in sight. He opened his hands and gazed down with wonder

and fascination. Surely this must be beryl, or chrysoprase, or—or one of the

marvelous colored stones people said were used to build the palaces of heaven! Even

between his hands it glowed red, green, blue, while if it were held up to the light it

was dazzling!

“Hello, son. What have you got there?”

Gasping, Ichabod snatched the stone down between his legs, overcome by a wave

of terror. He had been so absorbed he hadn’t noticed the cat-footed approach of the

man who had spoken. It wasn’t anyone he knew, but a stranger—and he had been

told that “stranger” almost beyond doubt also meant “sinner”. He tried to huddle

himself up so small that he would vanish from sight.

The man—he was medium-tall, but to Ichabod’s frightened vision he seemed a

giant—dropped on his hunkers and leaned forward cajolingly. “Show me what you

got, son. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“You leave me alone!” Ichabod commanded fiercely.

The man rocked back, feeling in the pocket of his neat, unmended jacket. “Show

me, son. I might like to buy it off you. You ever had this much money, son?” He

shook a dozen jingling coins in his outstretched hand.

“No! No! No!” Ichabod yelled, jumping to his feet and dashing up the noisy

planking of the stoop before the house. The door swung open as he charged towards

it, and he slammed full tilt into his mother’s apron-front. Behind her he saw his

father coming more slowly, his dark face set in a threatening frown which Ichabod

for once found welcome.

“Make him go away!” he shouted.

His parents exchanged glances; then his father strode over to the stranger, who

had risen to his feet and stood calmly on the path.

“A’right, mister—what’ve you been doing to my kid?”

“Nothing.” The stranger smiled. Ichabod didn’t trust people who smiled like

that—just with their mouths. “My name’s Corey Bennett. I do a little trading in rare

artifacts. Do you have any idea what that thing your boy is holding might be worth

in the right quarter?”

“What thing?” His mother glanced accusingly at Ichabod and shot out her arm.

He tried desperately to cling to his treasure, but fingers like steel claws prised apart

his grip and revealed the gorgeous polychrome glitter of the relic of angels.

“Ichabod!” she snapped. “Where did you snitch this?”

“I found it!” Ichabod wailed. “It’s mine—give it here!” He stretched after it; a

smart cuff above the ear was his reward, and he turned aside, blubbering, while his

mother held him by the shoulder to stop him from running off. After a thoughtful

examination of the flowing colors, she spoke up.

“Excuse my being uncivil, friend. I’m Martha Sims and this is my man Greg. You

know what this thing is?”

“I reckon I will be able to, if I can take a closer look.”

“Here then.” She held it out. Bennett got up on the stoop and took it from her,

studying it closely.

“Now wait a second!” Sims said. “That from the city?”

“Looks like,” Bennett agreed.

“That’s holy, then!” Sims stepped forward. “Martha, are you going to sell a holy

thing to a sinner? It rightly belongs like all of its kind to—”

“You’d do well to talk less and work more, Greg Sims!” his wife broke in. “Can

you eat it? Can you keep warm at night with it?”

“You sell that, you might as well sell your soul!” Sims raised his hand. “Bring the

money-changers back to the temple, would you? I’ll beat sense into you first!”

“Lay a finger on me and I’ll lay a pole on you—I’ve done it before! At most I’ll

tithe it, but that’s all, you hear?”

Bennett’s shrewd dark eyes lifted for an instant from the gem, or whatever it was,

and flickered over the faces of the couple. He gave a discreet cough and held the

object out as though to return it.

“If it means something special to you, I wouldn’t cause dissension,” he said. “And

the boy does seem to set store by it.”

He was pleased to see the light of cupidity gleam now in Sims’s eyes as well as his

wife’s.

“Got no business setting store by anything in this world,” Sims growled. “Lay up

your treasure in heaven—hear me, you little sinner?” He shook a fist towards his

son, who cringed away. “Maybe the lesson he’ll learn if it’s taken—a lesson against

avarice—maybe it’ll outweigh the stain of passing it to an unbeliever.”

“Who said I was?” Bennett objected. He made a quick pass with his hands; he

had learned many such since arriving here and found them useful. “In my view this

is what the relics are for. Don’t we draw from them the funds which enable us to

survive, an island of faith in a sea of unbelief? Doesn’t the apostle say, ‘To the pure

all things are pure’? Money isn’t evil in itself. Only lusting for it is.”

Sims drew puzzled brows together. “Whose teaching do you follow, then?”

“Should it be anyone’s but Brother Mark?” Bennett didn’t wait for further

comment, but rolled the gem around his palm; it was shaped like a long thin egg. “I

don’t know that this thing is more than pretty, though… Well, someone should buy

it gladly for a jewel. For the sake of feeding and clothing honest folk I’ll take the

chance. A hundred dollars.”

He could see his pointed remark about lust for money had sunk deep in the

minds of the Sims couple and was festering. Without making himself look

dishonest, Sims couldn’t argue the price up; his wife was only too well aware that if

she tried to haggle her husband’s piety might reassert itself and prevent any

agreement. Ichabod had settled to a dull moaning.

While they were still hesitating, Bennett made it a hundred and twenty and

closed the deal.

A genuine free trader—the notorious Den Radcliffe, for instance, or any of

Grady’s own buying staff—secure in the knowledge of a minimum thousand percent

profit, might have paid twice as much and then had to bribe a federal agent as well

before he could dispose of it as jewelry.

Corey Bennett was a Federal agent. And jewelry was the last purpose he had in

mind for his prize.

He was almost light-headed with excitement as he picked his way out of the

shanty town towards the highway. It was the second such settlement on this site.

Refugees fleeing aimlessly from explosions at SAC bases south of here had

established the first, but it had been burned almost at once by maddened troops

after an abortive attack on the alien city. Some of the present inhabitants had lived

through that, and—having nowhere else to go—had doggedly rebuilt. A much

greater number were rootless wanderers, attracted to Grady’s Ground because the

rule of its self-appointed “governor” offered safety from federal law and a chance to

get rich quick which had eluded them elsewhere, while another third or thereabouts

were like the Sims family and had been lured by the widespread belief that the

shining city was the home of angels sent to Earth to scourge sinners.

Bennett had learned to prove this latter view from the Book of Revelations.

Practically anything, he had decided, could be proved from the same source.

Grady’s Ground was in no sense an attractive place to live. The cities which had

escaped destruction by maddened soldiers were overcrowded and dilapidated,

while the shanty towns were still worse, and Bennett was relieved to be back on the

highway where he had left his car.

But his heart sank when he saw a patrolman in one of the local peacock-gaudy

uniforms standing beside the vehicle.

There was nothing for it but to walk up with an innocent expression. He did so,

mopping his brow because the sun was strong today, while the dark glasses

shielding the patrolman’s eyes from the glare fixed him with the impassivity of a

basilisk.

“Documents,” the man said, one elbow on the car’s roof, the other hand

outstretched. Bennett produced them.

“Free trader,” was the neutral comment. “O.K., what have you picked up today?”

In a split second Bennett made his decision. He was a comparative newcomer

here, but already he had had a good number of “rare artifacts” pass through his

hands—or sacred relics, according to your point of view. He had dutifully paid on

each the levy exacted by Grady’s tax-collectors, who were more like a protection

gang, in fact, though one had to admit that some of their take did get canceled into

public services. It was unlikely that a lowly patrolman would risk offending him; his

record suggested that one of these days he would bring off a really profitable coup.

So he dipped in his heavy pocket and displayed only a handful of the coins he

carried because so many people around here had become disillusioned with paper

money… not, including luckily, the Sims family.

“In that overgrown garbage pile?” he said. “Hell, those people won’t trust

anybody they haven’t known for years. I thought I was coming to be pretty well

respected, so I went and asked around, but clams aren’t in the same class with them

when it comes to keeping their mouths shut.”

It was at least half true, and Bennett could see the patrolman’s mind turning

over. Imperceptibly he tensed, because if the man decided on a search he would

have to risk jumping him. He had been hunting ever since his arrival for what he

had obtained from Ichabod.

“O.K.,” the patrolman decided, and handed back the documents. “Better luck

next time. Show your face around more, is my advice. Make friends with one of

their nutty religious groups. I could live the rest of my life on the stuff locked up in

one of their tumbledown churches.”

“Let me sell it on commission and you’ll be able to afford two lifetimes instead of

one,” Bennett suggested, smiling. The patrolman cracked a faint grin in response

and stood back.

It cost Bennett all his self-control not to touch the pocket where he had put the

precious object, to reassure himself it was still there. But he managed it, and when

he was well down the road found he had been holding his breath since starting the

car.

Almost, he had recognized the thing when he saw it in the crippled boy’s hand.

The shape had seemed familiar, but the shining colors were so extraordinary he had

thought he was confronted with some entirely new type of artifact.

This, though, was what he had been seeking. He had seen six or eight similar, all

broken, all dull and colorless. This one was intact. He formed the words to himself:

in working order! (Did that have a meaning? Did the aliens’ products do anything,

in the ordinary human sense?)

If that patrolman had guessed what I’m really up to… !

Piece by painfully gathered piece, the first complete alien “machine” to fall into

man’s possession was being assembled here under the very nose of Grady, to whom

what he carried would be only a gewgaw for sale to some fat rich woman in Dallas

or New York. The machine had cost two lives already, to Bennett’s certain

knowledge; once when a man tried to rob the store of a local church for a part

rumored to match what he was looking for, once when Grady’s patrols caught a

man trying to smuggle something away for study at UCLA. Now, though, it was

within sight of completion.

“And it’s here in my pocket, the missing bit!” he whispered, trying to make the

idea come real. “What’s it doing? It’s processing energy, that’s for sure. What kind

of energy? How much? How? Will I be able to tell without breaking it open and

ruining it?”

And the worst question of all, of course, was this: what would the finished device

do—this mysterious apparatus that he, third in line of succession, seemed fated to

perfect? Like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, it had been compiled from many

sources. Suppose, after such effort, after such loss of life, it was something a human

mind could never comprehend?

“Or something useless and pointless,” he said to the air. “Like a bust of rich old

Uncle Joe. But what the hell? We’ll see. One of these days, we’ll see.”

He had been saying that to himself ever since the aliens arrived. It was becoming

more and more difficult to believe.

Chapter Eight

« ^ »

It was as though humanity had fled in two directions through time from the

catastrophe accompanying the appearance of the aliens. Or that was how it struck

Orlando Potter, anyway.

Some small part had exploded towards the future, in the sense that many

national boundaries had collapsed; here he was in Victoria, after all, on the

southern tip of Vancouver Island, and nobody was raising objections because an

American official was requisitioning Canadian facilities and had had his temporary

office tied in by phone and teleprinter to the surviving nuclei of government in the

United States. Of course rules, regulations and traditions had already taken a severe

beating when the Canadian Parliament was transferred here in the immediate

post-disaster period.

Curious, this preference for an island. A survival of British-oriented thinking,

perhaps. Or possibly it was rather less subtle. Maybe they had simply foreseen the

risk that the chaos now reigning on Grady’s Ground might spread, wildfire fashion,

and decided that Vancouver Island would be easier to hold against a wave of

barbarism than a site on the mainland.

Because by far the majority of the human race had exploded towards the past,

not the future. Remembering the civil wars in miniature that had been fought so

bloodily south of here, especially in California, when panic-crazed city folk clashed

with small-town vigilantes determined to keep what they had, Potter felt his mouth

twist as though he had bitten a putrescent fruit.

That was a scattering backward through time, surely. To the days of closed

peasant communities, suspicious of any stranger; worse, to the days of

feudalism—for what after all was Grady but a feudal lord of the manor, governing

his followers as absolutely as a medieval baron his serfs?

So now, ratlike, men squabbled and quarreled among the ruins of their

once-proud civilization, and here and there a few of them toiled to assemble the

broken pieces in a new form.

Can we coexist with the aliens? The question was an eternal one. Can we simply

draw back from where they have set their cities, and be our own masters

everywhere else? After all, natural forces have barred us from parts of our planet

in the past: deserts, icecaps, trackless forest…

Probably not. Potter wished achingly that the solution could be so simple, but he

knew it would never happen. There were two insuperable obstacles: first, it was

impossible to predict whether the aliens intended to spread further across the

surface of the globe; second, it was not in keeping with the monkey-curious nature

of man to ignore a mystery of this order.

He stared through the window of his temporary office, high in a recently built

tower block. From it he could see the sea. The water was calm, and the summer sky

was clear and blue. He would have preferred it storm-dark, to match his mood.

He was stuck here because of Pitirim. The original plan had been to fly him

onward after their landing at Victoria, the nearest usable seaport; the whole of the

far northwest of the USA was a fallout zone following the immense explosions at the

ICBM sites there, and anti-missile missiles had created comparable havoc around

all the conurbations further south.

But Zworykin had forbidden them to take the sick boy any further for the time

being. The American and Canadian physicians and psychologists who had been

flown to join him, under the leadership of the famous Dr. Louis Porpentine,

concurred with his judgment. Life was being adequately, though precariously,

maintained in his feeble body. His equally feeble mind, though, had suffered

trauma upon trauma, what with being kidnapped from Buishenko’s base under the

Urals, and shot at by pursuit planes, and at last unceremoniously dumped in the

Pacific. He was now terrified of his own shadow, literally, and it would be a long

while before he could stand any further strain—even longer, perhaps, before he

could be persuaded to cooperate with strangers the way he had obeyed Buishenko.

So: a temporary headquarters for “Operation Pantomime”, as some idiot had

code-named it—hence the use of terms like Harlequin and Columbine during the

rendezvous at sea. It was his responsibility. He had pressed for its approval by the

Committee on Emergency Countermeasures, and to go back without tangible proof

either of success or of unavoidable failure was a prospect he dared not consider. His

confidence was badly enough undermined already. So was the trust the rest of the

committee reposed in him.

There were few surplus resources left here after the importation of Canada’s

emergency parliament. However, the facilities were tolerable. The standard of

hospital care was as good as could still be found on the continent, and that was the

chief consideration. There were the top four floors of this building, in near-new

condition; moreover, the previous occupant

had been

an

insurance

company—insurance was a bad line to be in during the post-disaster period—and

had left behind a computer of very respectable capacity. The Canadian government

had automatically requisitioned it, but they hadn’t yet put it into service and were

only moderately unwilling to let it go again. There were teleprinters and telephones,

enough to go around, so Potter ought to feel he’d been very lucky.

In actual fact…

His head was beginning to ache from long staring at the bright sky. With an

effort he brought his mind back to the tasks in hand, and took up the topmost of

many sheets of paper from the in tray at his left. For a long moment he failed to

make sense of it, and thought this was because his vision was swimming with

after-images of the sunlit window. Then words penetrated—something about a

policy on the life of a ship’s captain—and he realized he was looking at the wrong

side of it. Even in this country, formerly one of the greatest paper-producers in the

world, it had become necessary to use both sides of the sheet. Some of the forests

had burned for six weeks.

Turning the document over, he discovered the usual brief daily bulletin from the

doctors attending Pitirim. It would have been summed up in three words: “Hardly

any progress.”

Heaven’s name, how long is all this going to take? He thrust the paper blindly at

the filing basket and took up the next report.

He was only halfway down the first of its ten paragraphs when he stiffened and

began to read with absolute concentration—so total, indeed, that it was a shock

when he came to the end and on glancing up discovered Greta facing him. He had

not heard the door open. She was scowling.

“Yes?” he said—more abruptly than he had intended, for his mind was still

preoccupied with the implications of what he had just read.

“I think we’re being made fools of,” Great said. “Got a cigarette?”

“Oh—yes.” Potter pushed an almost empty pack across the desk, and a book of

matches. As she helped herself, he went on, “What was the point of that crack?”

“I said we’re being made fools of,” she repeated, dropping into a chair. “I don’t

believe for one moment that this idiot child they’re fussing over is more than simply

an idiot. I agree Buishenko may very well have stumbled across some way of getting

in and out of the alien city, but mess the world is in, who turns out to have her

bachelor’s in science and says she decided to join the Scientific Service when she

was fourteen—remarkable! Out on the boat that night when we made the

rendezvous with the Russians I remember feeling very envious because along with

all the rest it turned out you could string a few words of Russian together, while the

best I can do is order a meal in Spanish. And then, the moment Natasha came

aboard, you started to show another side of your character altogether.”

She had become like ice now. He chipped at the frozen facade.

“Anything you can do… Isn’t that about the size of it? She’s a trained space-pilot;

she’s a first-rate engineer; she speaks marvelous English even though she’s never

been in an English-speaking country before. She overshadows you, and you took an

instant dislike to her. Ever since you’ve been taking it out on me, on Abramovitch,

on anybody who comes handy, and now you’ve decided to take it out on Pitirim as

well.”

“Give me one shred of proof,” she said between her teeth, “and I’ll write out what

I said and eat the paper. Until you do, I’ll go right on saying we’ve been made fools

of, and you’re behaving like the worst fool of all.”

“Ever heard of weirdos?”

The question, as he had meant it to, surprised her. An answer struggled on the

tip of her tongue with a continuation of her tirade, and emerged first.

“Hell, of course I have! What about them?”

“Define the term as you understand it.”

“What is there to understand? You can’t understand them. Supposedly they’re

people who tried to get into an alien city or spent too long trying to figure out an

alien artefact and—well, something happened to them and they wound up filthy,

hostile to ordinary people, and generally schizoid.”

“Pitirim?”

Potter let the name hang on the air like a wisp of smoke. Greta did not stir to

disturb it for long seconds.

At last she leaned to tap her cigarette-ash into a tray on the desk. With infinite

weariness she said, “O.K., you win. Know what I was going on to say?”

He shook his head.

“I was going to talk some more about your parlor psychology. The way you

manipulate people to serve your ends. But—oh, damn you. You’re good at it. I never

thought you’d pull it on me, but you just did, and it worked. Yes, yes, it can be

argued that Pitirim didn’t have enough of a mind to be driven crazy… Oh, aren’t you

the clever son of a bitch, though? You’re power-hungry—”

“No more than most people,” Potter snapped. “If it hadn’t been for the aliens, do

you think I’d be deputy chairman of a congressional committee? The hell I would. I

never wanted to be a Big Boss. I’d have had to pay too high a price.”

“Maybe the talent came naturally, but you have it. You can make people feel

weak and—and naked. You know how to lean on them, and when you feel like doing

it you don’t even pretend to be nice about it.”

“Think weakness is a virtue?” Potter said harshly. “Do you? Garbage, it’s a

luxury! One we can’t afford any more. We could get along when there was no

competition bar other human beings, also with weaknesses like our own. But the

aliens aren’t people. If we’re even going to survive in face of the challenge they

present, we’re going to know ourselves more intimately than ever before. We’re

going to have to criticize ourselves ruthlessly. We’ve got to give up making

mistakes!”

Her only answer was a grimace. She stubbed her cigarette as though wishing she

could crush him equally easily.

“But,” he resumed, “as it happens none of this is of immediate consequence.

Here, read this report, and then go pack your bags.”

Hand poised to take the paper he was offering, she checked. “So you have

decided to move me over!” she flared. “God, you’re the most egotistical bastard I

ever met! Nothing short of a space-pilot is good enough for you, is that it?”

Potter gave a weary sigh. “No. No, in fact in spite of there never having been

much affection between us I shall miss you and hope you get back soon. I don’t

imagine you’ll believe me, but I’ve never spent as long as ten minutes alone with

Natasha and as far as I know she’s shown no interest in me or any other man here.

But we have to get someone reliable to Grady’s Ground, right away. Since you

complained when you came in about wasting time here on a fool’s errand, I thought

you’d welcome the assignment.”

She had scanned the paper while he was talking. Now she said, not looking up, “I

see. You’re sending me there alone because there’s a fair chance I may not come

back. I’ll no longer be a nuisance to you.”

“Not alone,” Potter said patiently. “Not if you can persuade one key man to

cooperate. He can provide you with a flawless cover. Well?”

She pondered for a moment. Finally, sighing, she handed back the paper.

“Very well. This place is getting on my nerves. And so are you. It wouldn’t be a

bad idea for us to separate for a while.”

“But the assignment!” Potter said. “Did you actually read all this?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it—well, doesn’t it sound… ?” He groped in the air as though in search of

a word, and ended lamely: “Doesn’t it sound exciting?”

“I don’t think I know what that means any longer,” Greta said, rising and turning

to the door.

Chapter Nine

« ^ »

It was abominably hot tonight. Restless, Waldron paced his apartment. For a

while he tried to settle to his piano, but he felt oppressed and could not concentrate;

all the channels on the TV were spewing forth infantile rubbish, repeats and old

movies from the days before the aliens, and when he thumbed through his records

not one item tempted him to set it on the player.

He stopped before the small table under the main window and for perhaps the

thousandth time picked up what lay alone on the varnished wood. What was this

damned thing? A stubby rod, eight and a quarter inches long, of something which

was not glass but had cracked irregularly, glass-fashion, down the centerline, with

spiny quasi-crystals embedded in its clear substance. From each apex of the

crystal-like forms threads thinner than hairs wound out towards the surface—not in

any formal pattern, but with a symmetry like that of a living organism.

A bit of garbage, tossed aside by a higher race. He had bought it nearly a year

ago; it had cost him eight hundred bucks, and that was the lowest price paid at the

auction sale he’d attended. Most of the other bidders had been speculators, as usual

frantically seeking something from which a fortune might be made on resale to the

government or to one of the corporations which still had research labs in operation.

He had only wanted an object—any object—made by the aliens, as a barb for his

mind.

Now, as occasionally before, the useless thing sparked his memory. Of course: he

was neglecting the most important of his self-imposed tasks, the keeping of a

journal which he had begun when he realized there was bitter truth in his habitual

gibe about no one bothering to write history any more.

He picked up his recorder and carried it to his most comfortable chair. He

poured a drink, then sat down and thumbed the control knob to recording position.

He gave the date, hesitated, and suddenly uttered words he had not thought over.

“I have a mental picture of Washington. A pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of

fog by night. A solid week now since Bennett walked into the City of Angels and died

after Radcliffe’s attack on him. Within hours of our reporting his suspected

identity, they’d descended on us. I wasn’t there because I’d had the night shift and

was home trying to sleep. When I got back they’d sucked his body into the

Washington fog and given strict orders not to mention the name Bennett to anyone.

And a day later I received a call from somebody who wouldn’t give his name, just a

departmental reference—I traced it to the Secret Service—who commended me for

not arresting Radcliffe and making it harder to hush this affair up.

“He didn’t say ‘hush it up.’ But that was what he meant.

“Lord, I wish those underground bunkers in Washington hadn’t been so

efficient! The fires and the fallout might have cleaned house for us, and given new

people with fresh ideas a chance to tackle our problems. Instead of which, we’re

stuck with pretty much the same old gang of hidebound bureaucrats and party

wheeler-dealers, whose ideas fossilized in the Stone Age of the seventies. What’s

going to become of us with them still in charge?

“They must know that Bennett didn’t walk in the front door of the City of Angels.

That’s been sworn to, over and over, and anyhow he wouldn’t have been let in,

looking such a mess—would he? So how did he get where they first spotted him?

Did he materialize out of thin air? Did he jump clear from Grady’s Ground, where

Radcliffe said there are so many weirdos? Hell, it ought to have been the biggest

news since—since the aliens landed!

“But I guess there’s a protocol laid down. I guess it’s ‘not expedient’ to investigate

too closely. I guess it’s all being smothered under labels saying ‘Top Secret’. Maybe

not even his brother has been told he’s dead.

“If he has a brother.”

He stopped abruptly. This was the point past which, ever since the chilling

moment when Canfield brought him the news about the reversed identical prints,

he had not dared to push his thinking.

A of M! The Age of Miracles is not past!

Into his moment of blankness the sound of the door buzzer broke like a

sawblade. His hand flew to switch off the recorder. Who the hell could that be? He

didn’t want to be interrupted. Let the caller wear out his patience and go away.

But the caller had more patience than he’d expected. After the third buzz he

leaned on the button and waited. Waldron jumped up with an oath and stormed to

the door.

The sight of an elegantly dressed woman through the spyhole in the door brought

an automatic assumption to his mind. Opening on a security chain, he said harshly,

“I’m not interested! And watch who you pick on—there are still laws against

prostitution and I’m in a position to enforce them!”

He made to slam the door.

“Lieutenant Waldron!” the woman snapped. She had colored a little, but

betrayed no other reaction.

That shook him. If she knew his name and rank, clearly she was not just working

her way around the bachelor apartments in search of a client for the night.

Wondering, he unchained the door and swung it wide.

“I want to talk to you,” the woman said. “About the death of Corey Bennett.”

The words seemed to rest on the surface of his mind for a moment, as stones

might rest on thin ice before breaking it. He looked her up and down. She was

slender, almost as tall as he was; her face was rather thin, and jade-dust makeup

lent her complexion a luminous pallor. Her fair hair was shoulder-long, gathered by

a comb to the left so that it emphasized the delicate molding of her skull. She wore

a dark-green bolero over rust-red leotards patterned with silver.

The ice cracked and the stones sank. He heard himself say, “Corey Bennett?”

The woman nodded, her expression sober. “I somehow expected that to surprise

you. Here, you’ll want to see my ID.”

She zipped open a change-pocket on the hem of her bolero and proffered a small

yellow card bearing her photograph. It identified her as Greta Helen Delarue, B.Sc,

Office of the Federal Scientific Service, Washington D.C.

Waldron grunted. “Come to commend me for keeping my mouth shut?” he

suggested sourly as he gave back the card. “O.K., come on in.”

He waved her to the chair he had been using, picked up his drink, and sat on the

edge of a table facing Tier. There was a brief silence. Eventually he had to make an

impatient gesture. “So talk to me! You said you wanted to.”

She was gazing at his alien artifact. “From the way you said ‘ Corey Bennett?’ I

imagine you’ve already worked out a lot of what I thought I’d have to explain.”

“I’m not allowed to talk about it to anybody,” Waldron snapped. “But I sure as

hell have been thinking about it. I don’t believe in identical twins with mirror-image

prints.”

“Correct. Corey Bennett was an only child. By the time our experts got at the

body, organic death was well advanced—I must say your police surgeon isn’t a

paragon of efficiency, and that didn’t help either—but we established his identity

beyond doubt. And wound up with a far worse headache than before.

“Trying to figure out what turned him around?” Waldron said. “Well, what did

happen to him?”

“I’ll come to that in a moment.” As soon as we—“

“What happened to him?” Waldron slammed his glass down on the table, and it

rang into shivering fragments. He stared at the mess stupidly for as long as it took

the pieces to stop rocking.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’ll get the disposall.”

“Leave it, please! Why don’t you sit down properly? I appreciate the strain you

must have been under, but it’ll make things a lot clearer if I can come to the point in

my own way.”

“Then get to it, instead of dancing all around it!” Waldron flung the words over

his shoulder as he unhooked the disposall from its bracket and ran the nozzle over

the wet table.

“Corey Bennett has been with the field branch of the Scientific Service since June

last year,” Greta said. “Four months ago he was assigned to a purchasing mission on

what I gather you insist be called by the slang name of Grady’s Ground. At present

he is making good progress; his last report came in the small hours of yesterday

morning.”

“What?” The disposall thumped to the floor; Waldron kicked the power-switch

before it could ingest the carpet, and spun to face her.

“I’ve been checking up on you, Mr. Waldron. Apparently you like to complain

that nothing is being done about the—well, the aliens. I promise you, a great deal is

being done. We simply dare not publicize the fact, though. For one thing, we’d face

instant opposition from the relidges, and even though they’re cranks there are a lot

of them, too many for us to want to stir them up. For another, we’re fairly certain

that the aliens can read hostile intentions from a human mind. There’s no other

reasonable explanation for the way our armies were driven mad when they tried to

attack their cities. The aliens could probably sterilize the planet if we annoyed them

sufficiently, just as we could exterminate rats and mice if we sank all our efforts

into the job. The most flattering assessment of their and our relative intelligence

puts us no higher than rats.

“But we do what we can, and right now we have a problem which demands

immediate and intensive investigation, but we have an incredibly small number of

people to call on. Our resources are stretched so tight you can hear them twang.

“It goes like this. Corey Bennett is dead. His body is in one of our labs, being

taken to very small pieces like a delicate machine. And Corey Bennett is at the same

time probably engaged in the course of action which will lead to his death.”

The following silence soughed through the room like a cold wind. In memory

Waldron heard something which Maura Knight had said concerning weirdos. He

moved to a chair, sweating.

“You mean he jumped through time as well as space to get to the City of Angels?”

he said incredulously.

“It’s the only halfway rational explanation we’ve hit on. Can you improve on it?”

Waldron shook his head feebly.

“Can’t you—well, warn him he’s in danger?”

“Do you think we dare?” Greta countered. “For all we can tell, the warning might

trigger the event. On the other hand, if we do nothing, we know that sooner or

later… Oh, the poor bastard is a condemned man either way. All we can do is draw

some profit from the situation. For the first time ever we’re in a position to observe

an alien process. It must be alien. And… Well, this is not supposed to be made

known, but it’s something you deserve to be told. Bennett’s assignment was to try

and complete an alien device which two predecessors had made progress with.

According to his latest report, he thinks he now has all the parts, and he’s going to

assemble it and see what if anything it can do.”

Waldron whistled. “Is it that which—which twists him?”

“That’s what we’re hoping to find out. Our theoreticians have suggested that he

might have made a trip in Mobius space. Think of a hollow tube of triangular

cross-section. Rotate one end through a hundred and twenty degrees and close it up

into a ring. That would do it. Among the few things we know about the aliens is the

fact that they’re capable of intense local distortions of the continuum.”

“Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with me?”

“As much as you want it to.”

“What do you charge for straight answers?” he snapped.

“I’m sorry. What first drew our attention to you, of course, was your fortunate

decision not to arrest Radcliffe on a homicide count. I doubt if you did that for the

right reasons, but it was a stroke of luck for us. That, plus the fact that apparently

he attacked the girl he’d hired for the night and came close to being booked for

assault on her, only you talked him round, left him with a debt of honor some time.

Out on Grady’s Ground, they tell me, they have the omerta bit in full form. And

after the conclusion of your formal interview with him, we found something else on

the tape—not very well recorded, but decipherable. He actually invited you to go out

and join him on his home patch. Talking to his associate Hyson the following day,

he specifically mentioned the offer again.”

She raised her head and looked him square in the eyes. “When you answered,

your tone suggested that you found the proposition attractive.”

Waldron felt perspiration creeping down his back. “That was then!” he barked.

“I was angry at myself for something. I guess—” He hesitated. “I guess I’d invested

Radcliffe, as a free trader, with a spurious artificial glamour. But I promise there’s

no risk of my throwing up my job and heading for Grady’s Ground, even if he would

like to hire me to run his security force.”

“Very well, then.” Greta started to her feet. “I’d hoped you might feel otherwise,

but if I must I’ll go on my own.”

“Wait.” Waldron felt a stab of puzzlement. “I—uh—I seem to have missed

something, don’t I?”

She approached the table by the window, letting her hand fall to the stubby

cylinder which was not of glass. Shrugging, she said, “I’ve been assigned to watch

Bennett do the things that will lead to his—arrival in the past. In my profession we

aren’t content to say ‘A of M!’ and forget about it. But on Grady’s Ground it’s

difficult for an unattached woman to act independently. It occurred to us that if

you were sincere in your complaints about the general apathy, you might be willing

to exploit your contact with Radcliffe and provide me with a cover. It would make it

a hell of a sight easier to get on the Ground, you know. They’re fierce with strangers,

and Radcliffe’s safe-conduct would make all the difference.”

There was a roaring in Waldron’s ears. He felt as though the room were afloat on

a rough sea. His stomach churned and his palms were wet.

Dear God! whispered some far-distant part of his mind. It wasn’t enough to talk

about it. Something has to be done, sooner or later. And now I’ve got to be the one

to do it. I didn’t mean to get trapped, but I am trapped— I was never so frightened

in my life and I don’t want to say yes but if I don’t how shall I ever be able to face

myself again?

His voice, however, was perfectly calm as he spoke. “Sit down again. Have a

drink. I wish you’d mentioned this when you first came in. It would have saved a lot

of time.”

Chapter Ten

« ^ »

After Floodwood neither of them spoke for twenty hot miles; they sat, sweating

and apathetic, while U.S. 2 went reeling under the wheels like an endless humming

tape. Waldron had stopped at a drugstore in Duluth and bought a cheap pair of

sunglasses, but they didn’t completely screen the glare from the road, and wrinkling

up his eyes made his forehead ache.

He had written to say he was arriving. But the U.S. mails did not recognize the

existence of Grady’s Ground, and there was no way to be sure the letter had reached

Radcliffe. At all events there had been no answer. Still, they dared not wait forever.

The country, for some distance past, had begun to look neglected, like a room

used but undusted for months on end. When there were people to be seen, they

went timidly in patched shabby clothing. In every small town after Floodwood there

were ruins burned by the mad armies—charred beams poked up from mounds of

rubble, dark stains washed down by rain on the surviving walls, seedlings sprouting

atop the mess.

But for the fact that the worst potholes in the road had been recently leveled with

stone-chips and asphalt, Waldron would have taken it for granted that Minnesota

had been abandoned by anyone with more ambition than to live as a grubby

peasant.

A tilted sign stood by the road, its painted face chipped by bullets and cancerous

rust eating at the metal: DANGER FALLOUT ZONE. From the anti-missile missiles

around the Lakes, presumably; the wind would have carried a lot of the dust this

way. But the count would have gone to safe long ago.

The people had fled from the fallout zone, of course—not officially evacuated,

just panicking away. Where had they ended up? Shot on the Canadian border,

maybe, or killed by disease, or trapped by despair in some refugee camp to the

south—whatever had become of them, they hadn’t returned. This area not only

looked empty, which would have been a commonplace to a visitor from the crowded

East; it was empty, and felt like an aboriginal wilderness.

Beside him Greta reached to the switch on the radio, and a sentimental

pre-catastrophe ballad with a backing of lush strings oozed on the air. Waldron

uttered a wordless objection: Do we have to endure this garbage?

“It’s in character,” Greta said. “We’ll have to pass a border check somewhere

soon.”

“Already?” Waldron betrayed his astonishment.

She gave a twisted smile. “I thought you were the man with a map of Grady’s

Ground on his office wall.”

“Stop needling me!” Waldron ordered savagely. Now the journey was nearing its

end, all his half-formed fears were clamoring in the back of his mind again. I

thought my talk would never have to become action…He spoke aloud to silence the

mental uproar.

“I was told that Grady controls North Dakota, part of South Dakota and

Montana, a wedge of Manitoba, and only a narrow strip of Minnesota. Hell, we’re

not through Grand Rapids yet?”

“Not Grady’s border post. Ours.”

“What?”

“You never heard of such a thing. I know.” She spoke with exaggerated

weariness. “Christ, ”Jim, do you imagine the government wants to admit we’ve had

to set up border posts on our own territory? They masquerade as forward defense

posts, cordoning off the area dominated by the aliens. But they’re border posts in

fact if not in name, and it’s no good claiming otherwise.“

Waldron was at a loss for a moment. The sickly singing galled him. He said

abruptly, “If you must play the radio to bolster your role, at least pick another

station!”

The record ended. An unctuous voice said something about Lampo Products

being better than.

“Can’t,” Greta said. “It’s Grady’s. Has a monopoly. Sabotaged every station for

almost two hundred miles and trucked in all the gear he could to use for his own.

Now it’s the most powerful west of Chicago.”

“Grady’s? But… You mean he gets advertising?”

“Why not? There are a hell of a lot of people anxious to sell things to the richest

community in North America.”

“The richest?” Waldron felt like an idiot, parroting the succession of questions.

He snapped his mouth shut, half-afraid of it hanging slack and foolish. Another

pre-catastrophe record began, this time a pounding rock number.

“Jim, haven’t you boned up on what you’ve let yourself in for?” Greta demanded.

“I assumed you knew what it’s like on Grady’s Ground.”

“I never had any intention of going there,” Waldron sighed. “So what point

would there have been in boning up? And least of all I never expected to go there to

watch a man doomed to die and not tell him anything!”

“If only I’d realized,” she muttered. “Better hurry with the questions. We can’t

have you pumping me for information once we’re on the Ground. Somebody might

start wondering how it is I know so much more than you do.”

Waldron looked at her sidelong. No, she didn’t give the impression of being a

well-informed person. Not any more. He couldn’t determine what else the federal

disguise experts had done besides coarsening the line of her mouth and rinsing her

hair in some chemical to make it look bleached even though it was naturally fair.

But the effect was unmistakable. Any man would assume that here was a selfish,

pampered woman, losing her looks and afraid of it, but too spoiled not to be

excessively fond of martinis, cigarettes and late nights.

She was supposed to be his mistress. It didn’t say much for his taste or his sex

appeal, in Waldron’s view, but it was pointless to argue. This was the commonest

type of woman now moving into the Ground—usually with a couple of failed

marriages behind her—and so Greta Delarue had been transformed into Greta

Smith, slut.

Putting up with her is going to be the worst part of the job.…

Aloud he said, “To start with, I want to know why you expect the border check so

soon.”

“There’s a no-man’s land. The border posts are on the line where the maddened

troops were first affected. Some of them got closer before turning back, but none

were initially affected further away. For a long while that was as far as they dared

go. When they eventually tried to push ahead again, Grady was there and sinking

roots. He likes having a big moat around his territory. It means he can run down

smugglers without federal interference. He uses helicopters and Dobermans.”

Trying to recall the geography of the area, Waldron said, “Whose is Bemidji,

then?”

“Nobody’s. Or it would be if it was still there. It was razed during the madness.

I’ve seen aerial photos. Nothing but rubble.”

The announcer cut short the record and read another commercial. Greta turned

down the volume.

“Jim, what kind of analogies do you have in mind for the situation on Grady’s

Ground? Or don’t you have any?”

He was going to take a long time to get accustomed to her using his first name

so—so maritally. He shrugged.

“I thought I had some ideas. You seem to be torpedoing them all.”

“This is gold-rush territory. Grady has a monopoly on this continent of what’s

potentially the most valuable commodity in history, and he’s sewed everything up

tight. He runs the Ground on police-state lines, except that the major crimes aren’t

political—they’re financial. Smuggling, for instance; failure to tithe alien artifacts,

or pay a redemption fee in lieu. And so on. Everything is taxed, on top of being

hideously expensive, and Grady is the chief tax-collector. Of course he does

maintain the public services—the utilities which escaped the catastrophe, internal

mail distribution, drainage and garbage clearance, the bare necessities. But do you

know how much money he has to do it with?”

Waldron shook his head.

“The Revenue people calculate that the income from selling alien artifacts last

year must have topped one and a half billion dollars.”

She took a cigarette from her pocket and pressed the dash lighter home. “Grady,

his staff, the top free traders, and a few others who’ve made themselves

indispensable to the Governor, altogether about a thousand, are dripping money all

over the Ground and hardly know what to spend it on. Like those oil-rich sheikhs

used to out in the Persian Gulf. Gold-rush territory!”

The lighter popped out and she applied it to her cigarette.

“You’d think they’d try and close him out,” Waldron said sourly. “Given that all

alien artifacts are supposed to be federal property.”

“How? By sending in another army and having it run wild all over the

countryside the way the rest did? Lord knows how the aliens discriminate between

an organized body of men and the riff-raff they tolerate on their very doorstep, but

they manage it somehow. We have a hundred and thirty million people left to cope

with. Grady’s going to have to stew until we’ve put our own house in order.”

And there it was: the border.

The road had been widened by the addition on either side of a large flat concrete

pan. Concrete blockhouses with machinegun slits commanded the approaches and

both pans, and barbed wire encircled the whole area, leaving only a gap on the road

wide enough for a single vehicle and closed by heavy timber gates. In either

direction stretched a line of watchtowers with searchlights and radar on top. An

army helicopter was parked alongside the nearest blockhouse. Also there were six

trucks: two of them heavily armored, the others—each with a trailer in tow—being

two flatbacks and two tankers. They were painted dull gray.

“That’s a bit of luck,” Greta said softly, turning up the radio a little. “An ingoing

convoy.”

“So I gather. Why a convoy?” Waldron took his foot off the accelerator and let

the car coast towards the gates.

“The no-man’s-land is rugged and full of lakes; a lot of hijackers work it, so the

wealthiest residents on the Ground bring in their household supplies under escort.

And goods for other people too, of course—at a price.”

A voice boomed from a loudhailer, ordering them to halt. As soon as the car

stopped, a sergeant and two privates, all with slung carbines, appeared to open up

for them and waved them towards a clear spot on the nearer pan. The sergeant

approached with a bored expression.

“Read this and signify that you understand it,” he told Waldron, proffering a

much-stained printed form pasted on a card. Waldron scanned it: now entering a

zone defined as an emergency zone by Federal Emergency Regulation number

so-and-so, act of proceeding beyond this point implies recognition that the

Government of the United States cannot be held responsible for—et cetera. A polite

way of saying you’re going abroad, Waldron translated.

He returned the card. The sergeant beckoned the nearer private, who took out a

notebook and scribbled down the license number of the car before coming to ask

their names.

“O.K., wait there,” he said. “May take a while.”

Greta put on a sour expression. “We have to sit out here scorching to death?

What for?”

The private gave her a grin full of stained teeth. “For all I know, lady, you and

your pal murdered grandma and pawned the family jewels, hm? Or maybe it’s a hot

car and I don’t mean from the sun.” He grinned again and went into the

blockhouse. The sergeant had walked over to the tail truck of the convoy and was

talking to a man leaning down from the armor-glass window of the cab. The

remaining private stood staring at Greta with his gun leveled and his jaws

chomping rhythmically on a wad of gum.

Waldron’s hand went to his pocket and began mechanically to stroke his alien

artifact, which he had picked up just before setting out. As an amulet? Have we

become that irrational?

Time passed. From the blockhouse emerged two men in sweat-damp overalls,

guns belted at their waists; one of them was stuffing a packet of papers into a

satchel. They must have been going through some form of clearance procedure,

Waldron decided. The first to catch sight of Greta nudged his companion and

rounded his lips in a mocking whistle. They both advanced on the car.

“Waiting got you down, sugar?” the first man said, bending to the passenger’s

window. “Why don’t you ditch this creep and ride along with us? We’re pulling out

right now.”

“Yeah,” the other supplied. “You stick with this guy, you could be here all day. I

bet they’re going through every wanted file they got looking for his ugly pan—hey,

Rick?”

Chuckling, Rick glanced at Waldron for the first time. A startled expression

crossed his face. He said, “Just a moment, Bill. Mister, is—is your name Waldron by

any chance?”

Waldron stiffened. Yes, it is. How the hell did you know?“

“Jesus!” Rick straightened. “Bill, get in there and tell that assheaded soldier to

quit messing around and clear this car to ride in with the convoy. This here is our

new security chief. The boss said he’d be arriving soon!”

Waldron and Greta exchanged looks of astonishment. In an agony of apology,

Rick mumbled excuses for not having recognized them, and Waldron dismissed

them with half his mind while the other half wondered why in the world Radcliffe

had not replied to his letter, given that he had obviously received it.

Well, it wouldn’t be long before he had a chance to ask in person. Here was Bill

coming back, and the private looking horribly embarrassed, and the sergeant

bawling him out, and one way and another it was clear that around here Den

Radcliffe swung rather more weight than the Army and the federal government put

together.

Chapter Eleven

« ^ »

Den Radcliffe sat under an awning on the upper-level balcony of his house. He

had had it built for him by an architect who was almost pathetically grateful. Since

the catastrophe he had designed nothing but emergency prefabricated apartments

to be stacked on top of one another like drawers in a chest. Radcliffe’s assignment

was so perfect an opportunity to pretend that the world was back to normal, he

would probably have accepted it without pay.

There were eighty-eight rooms. There was a private lake. There were

fortifications on nearby hilltops. There was an underground generating plant which

could be switched from diesel to windmill or watermill drive if need be, diesel fuel

being imported and expensive. The building was the modern counterpart of a

medieval baron’s castle, capable of withstanding siege… if not nuclear attack.

But one didn’t have to worry about that any more.

Gradyville was just out of sight behind a row of hills. So was the alien city. When

there was low cloud, the light from the latter could be seen reflected in the sky. That

was the one thing Radcliffe regretted about the site he had chosen for his home.

A phone buzzer sounded. He said to the air, “Get that!” While someone got it he

went on wondering whether he should go down to the lake for a swim or merely call

for another beer.

He was feeling very pleased with himself. He had put over on Grady the slickest

piece of trickery anyone had ever managed against the big greedy slob. He had

come back from his recent trip around the States to be greeted by his apologetic

staff with bad news. The greater part of a convoy of goods he had dispatched from

California had been hijacked in no-man’s-land. The total value of the lost

consignment was about a hundred thousand dollars, on which he would have stood

to pay Grady fifty percent import duty.

He had stormed and reprimanded left and right; he had fired his security

chief—Waldron’s letter had arrived during his absence, and offered a providential

bonus for the scheme; in sum he had generated an impenetrable smokescreen.

Behind it he had quietly sold off the goods under Grady’s very nose, making a

handsome profit and escaping the duty. The hijackers had been a team of his own

men—not his estate staff, but members of his private army about which Grady knew

only that it existed.

Radcliffe had built up that army by slow, cautious degrees. It came in handy for

operations like mock robberies, but that was not its real purpose. Ultimately it was

destined to oust Grady and install Den Radcliffe as his successor.

He chuckled, picturing the look on Grady’s face when he learned he was about to

be deposed.

“It’s Rick Chandler,” the girl who had taken the phone-call reported. “The convoy

is just leaving the Ball Club post now. They’re bringing in the new security chief,

too.”

Radcliffe gave a satisfied nod. On this convoy, of course, he would meekly have to

pay the duty, but to have sneaked even one load through without—

“What was that?” His head snapped around. The girl, dark-haired and quite

naked, stood in the opening of the double glass doors leading on to the balcony,

clutching the phone. He liked to have naked girls around him. “Did you say the new

security chief?”

“Mr.—uh—” A frown creased the girl’s tanned forehead; she found remembering

things rather difficult. “I guess he did say what the name was, but I forgot it again.”

Her voice was flat, characterless, like a machine’s.

“Give me the phone!” Radcliffe barked.

Frightened, the girl came running, almost tripping over the extension cord.

Radcliffe cursed her for a clumsy idiot, and she dropped the instrument at his side

and fled.

“Rick!” he exclaimed. “Is it right that you got Waldron with you?”

“Sure we do. I—uh—I guess I have to admit I didn’t recognize him straight off,

but you showed that picture and I thought he looked kind of familiar, so I up and

asked him, and it’s him O.K. I’ve seen his ID. He’s the one.”

“When you get here, bring him straight to see me,” Radcliffe ordered.

“Yessir. And his girlfriend too?”

“He’s not alone?”

“No, he has this blonde along. Dye-and-paint job and not so young as she once

was.”

“Hmm!” Radcliffe pondered. “Get one of your men to take over his car, then, and

have Waldron and the woman to ride with you in the lead truck. Talk to him, get

acquainted. I want your opinion of him, and some of the other men’s, before I

definitely hire him. The starch doesn’t wash out of a cop that easily, you know. If

he’s not the type you can get along with, I’ll have to go look for someone else.”

“O.K., Mr. Radcliffe,” Rick said. And added after a pause: “It’s good thinking,

sir. I know some of the guys aren’t too happy about the idea. But me, I trust your

judgment and I’ll do my best to talk ‘em around.”

Radcliffe set the phone down, very thoughtful. Waldron’s letter had seemed like

pennies from heaven when he found he could tie it in to the pattern of deception

he’d woven to bolster the mock hijacking. Over the past few days, however, he’d

been having second thoughts, which was why he had not written back extending a

formal invitation, and he had been winding up to telling his men that there had

been a change of plan.

Still, here he was, and it might turn out for the best in the end. He called

philosophically for another beer and went on musing.

It was phrased as a polite request; nonetheless it was an order, and Waldron

complied, letting Bill take over his car while he and Greta accompanied Rick to the

armored monster heading the seven-vehicle string. He was curious to know what

the armor was protecting apart from the occupants, and when he saw crates of

liquor and exotic foods he was mildly amused… and more so when he heard the

tankers contained gin.

It was convenient to have this post of authority ready-made for him. He could

reasonably inquire about details of Radcliffe’s organization which no ordinary

stranger would be told. Moreover if they had driven in alone they might have run

foul of hijackers or had to bribe Grady’s patrols even for directions to get where they

were going.

There were comfortable padded seats in the back of the cab, plenty large enough

for Rick, Greta and himself. He passed cigarettes, learning as he did so that the

driver was called Tony.

“I—uh—I heard about you from Mr. Radcliffe,” Rick ventured. “You did him a

good turn when he was in the East, that right?”

“More sort of prevented him doing himself a bad one.” Waldron answered dryly.

“Say, how did you come to recognize me, anyhow?”

“Oh, Mr. Radcliffe showed us your letter, and he had this photo of you from

somewhere. Don’t know if you sent it—did you?”

Waldron shook his head, impressed with Radcliffe’s efficiency but a trifle

disturbed also.

“Pretty good likeness, too,” Rick went on. “Of course I should have looked at you

before I… What is it, Tony?” In response to a muttered exclamation from the driver.

“Only a weirdo,” Tony answered. “Thought for a moment it was someone else.”

“A weirdo? Where?” Greta had spoken little since leaving the border post; now

she craned around like a tourist.

“Over there.” Rick pointed through the side-window of the cab. “Like a

scarecrow—see him?”

Some thirty yards off the road, on a hillside thick with weeds, a man was

standing stiff as a post, his clothes ragged, his face turned ecstatically to the sun

and his eyes wide.

“What’s he doing that for?” Greta whispered. “Looking at the sun like that, he’ll

go blind!”

“Maybe that’s what he wants,” Rick said contemptuously. “How can you figure

what goes on in a weirdo’s head? Nutty as a candy bar, him. Tony, why are you so

nervous?”

“I thought for a moment he might not be a real weirdo,” Tony muttered. “That’s

how the boss lost that big load the other day, right? Guy spotted the convoy by

making like a weirdo, gave the signal for the hijackers.”

“Mr. Radcliffe had something hijacked?” Waldron probed.

“Afraid so,” Rick confirmed, and told the story. He, naturally, accepted that the

robbery had been genuine; Radcliffe had carefully restricted the number in the

know.

“Is that going to be one of my jobs here?” Waldron said. “Preventing hijackings, I

mean?”

Rick nodded. “The guy before you didn’t do so well,” he said. “That’s why the job

came vacant.” He hesitated. “I guess I ought to say,” he concluded, “that it’ll be

vacant again if it happens twice.”

“Oh, I didn’t come all this way to turn around and go straight home,” Waldron

answered with a confidence he did not feel. Out here, away from the familiar

surroundings and the pretended normality of New York, he felt naked and terribly

vulnerable. But he must put a good face on things at all costs.

A few miles further on, Tony began to whistle under his breath. Glancing up,

Waldron realized why. They had traversed the no-man’s-land. While the U.S.

government might prefer to call its border posts anything but, Grady had no such

scruples. Ahead was a squat concrete building on whose roof an enormous garish

red-and-white sign announced GRADY’S GROUND! complete with exclamation

point.

“Two miles to Gradyboro,” Rick said contentedly. “Then just another twenty or so

to Gradyville, and a mile and a half beyond and there we are.” He peered past

Tony’s shoulder. “Who’s coming out for us—can you see?”

“Mother Hubbard,” Tony grunted.

“Ah, shit. Just our luck.”

Guards in musical-comedy uniforms barred the roadway; at their head was a

bulky woman with gray hair cut man-short who alone among the dozen or so

carried no gun. Tony wound down the window beside him and leaned out.

“Evening, Captain Hubbard!”

The woman didn’t return the greeting. Her face was as sour as a green apple.

“What you got this trip?” she demanded. “Where you been?”

“General purchasing mission. Over around the Lakes.”

“Ah-huh. Want to pay up now or have everything listed and sealed?”

“Better seal it, I guess. It’ll be quicker. We have an important passenger along.”

Rick gestured for Waldron to show himself, and Tony presented him.

“Ex-Lieutenant Jim Waldron of the New York police, our new security chief.”

“Started well, hasn’t he?” Captain Hubbard grunted.

“What?”

“Kept the hijackers off you this trip, I mean.” She turned away, signalling to her

subordinates, who promptly and efficiently began to inspect the contents of all the

trucks.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Greta ventured. “It all looks so—Well, so official.”

Rick gave a proud-father smile. “We’re no messy barbarian mudhole here,” he

said. “They tell me this is the richest community in North America—did you hear

that?”

A fragment of history was chasing around Waldron’s skull. Abruptly he caught

up with it. “Katanga,” he murmured.

“What?” Rick said, on the verge of leaving the cab.

“Nothing.” But Waldron saw that Greta had reacted to the word and was

nodding.

It took only half an hour or so to list and seal their cargo, and then they rolled

again. Darkness was gathering as they reached Gradyboro, and huge neons were

lighting the façades of the few intact buildings, advertising in about equal

proportions gambling and girls. There were no streetlamps, but their absence didn’t

matter. On several streetcorners they saw groups of people waving banners and

handing out tracts to passers-by.

“Relidges,” Rick explained in answer to a question from Greta. “Cranks who

think there are angels in the alien city. We put up with them. They do our dirty

work for us. Not bright enough to do more than haul garbage, most of ‘em.”

It was fully dark by the time they reached Gradyville, equally bright, a

gap-toothed city where ruined buildings had been cleared and the rubble leveled

and tents and trailer-homes had moved into the vacant sites. By then Waldron was

so tired, he found he could not remember the original names of these towns which

Grady had renamed after himself. There was also a Gradywood further on.

“That’s the governor’s place,” Rick said, gesturing at a distant floodlit edifice

with fountains playing before its portico. “Big—but wait till you see ours. Grady just

took that one over and dolled it up. Mr. Radcliffe had his built special.”

The convoy, headlights ablaze, rounded the shore of a darkling lake, and there it

was: Radcliffe’s mansion, a sprawl of armor-glass and reinforced concrete faced

with colorful tiles, with pools and flowerbeds and a horde of scurrying servants who

closed in on the trucks, and a scatter of lesser buildings all around, some looking

like defense posts, others like barracks or family accommodation.

“I’m to take you straight to Mr. Radcliffe,” Rick said, helping Waldron and Greta

down from the cab. “And when he says straight, he means it. Sorry. I guess if you

need to go to the can we could spare that much time, but that’s the limit”

So, barely having had time to glance around, they were escorted into the house,

along a corridor with one glass wall fronting the lake, through a door and into a

room dominated by a vast dining-table at the left end of which sat Radcliffe in an

immaculate white suit, contemplating the remains of what must have been a

gourmet’s dinner. But at the other end of the table…

Waldron’s heart lurched in his chest.

“Ah, Mr. Waldron!” Radcliffe said silkily. “I see you recognize my companion.

Well, I told you I’d get what I paid for, didn’t I? One way or another!”

He gestured for Rick to leave the room. Waldron didn’t notice his departure. His

eyes were riveted on the woman—not on her body, though she was completely

naked, but on her face. It was a vacant face now, almost devoid of intelligence, but

there was no mistaking the identity of Maura Knight.

Chapter Twelve

« ^ »

A long and terrible silence followed as empty of time as of sound. Waldron had

no idea whether it lasted seconds or minutes. Eventually Radcliffe stirred.

“Thank you, Maura. You may leave us now. Have someone come with drinks for

Mr. Waldron and his friend.”

Obedient as a trained dog, Maura rose from her chair. As she passed Waldron on

the way to the door, her eyes scanned his face, and briefly a gleam of recognition

shone in them; then she was gone, and he was reacting with a fit of almost physical

nausea.

“Sit down,” Radcliffe invited, waving at chairs on his right. “Ah… I didn’t have to

introduce you to my girlfriend, but I don’t believe I’ve met yours.” He cocked a

sardonic eyebrow.

Mechanically Waldron shaped words. “Greta—Greta Smith. We—uh—we

decided to travel together. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind? Hell, no. Sensible of you. Half the women on the Ground are whores and

the rest are so damned ugly you wouldn’t want to look at them twice. Apart from

those who are in service with free traders, I mean. We can get the best in that area,

too. Heh-heh!” He chuckled thickly, and Waldron realized abruptly he was drunk.

He carried his liquor well, but the tell-tale signs were perceptible in his voice and

his flushed face. “Come on, sit down—how often do I have to tell you?”

They complied. Radcliffe leaned both elbows on the table and stared fixedly at

Waldron.

“Well! What made your mind up for you, then? I’d more or less decided you were

too fond of your roots to do more than talk about coming here. It was kind of a

surprise when I got your letter.”

Waldron had to lick his lips. The shock of finding Maura here had reminded him

with painful vividness of the night of their first meeting, and though he could only

guess what Radcliffe had done to get what he had paid for he could be damned sure

it wasn’t pleasant. “I got tired of making phony gestures in a smelly office, like you

said I would. I wanted to see if it’s true that out here things actually happen.”

“Has meeting Maura again changed your mind back where it was?”

Waldron hid his hands under the table so that he could drive the nails into the

palms unobserved. He said, “I didn’t think she was likely to speak another civil

word to you. What did you do?”

“None of your business,” Radcliffe said, and laughed. It was a horrible laugh,

half drunken, half mocking. “Are you shocked, Waldron? If so there’s no point in

your staying here. Except maybe you could gang up with a bunch of relidges. We

don’t live by the book here, you know. We don’t waste our time filling out forms and

inventing petty regulations. I guess it’ll take you a while to get used to that. Maybe

you’ll never make it. Some people don’t.”

A liveried manservant tapped at the door and brought bottles and glasses on a

trolley. Radcliffe held out his own glass with an imperious gesture and before

serving the guests the man half-filled it with straight whisky.

“Coming in with Rick’s convoy,” Radcliffe went on, “you must have got better

acquainted with Grady’s Ground than most newcomers manage right away. What

do you think of it? Is it like you expected?”

“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Waldron parried. He wanted very much to look at

Greta, maybe draw her into the conversation, but he dared not. Her role was

exclusively that of a sexual convenience he’d brought along; as much attention as

possible must be diverted from her if she were to have any hope of carrying out her

mission.

“The hell with that,” Radcliffe said. “I’ll tell you what you were expecting, shall

I? I’ve seen enough strangers react like you. You expected a kind of Wild West show,

a patch of anarchy, an every-man-for-himself sort of scene. Balls! We have the

civilized amenities. We got flush toilets. We keep our roads mended. We pay taxes,

for Chrissake.” He chortled as though at a private joke. The sound turned into a

burp. “We got patrolmen—like regular police except a lot of people who came here

thought that was a dirty word. We run this like a modern country, with radio, TV,

phones, everything. What’s more they work. Yes, that’s what it looks like: a modern

country. But do you know what it à?”

He was leaning so far forward now his chest was almost touching the polished

tabletop, and his voice was gruff with the intensity of sudden emotion. Greta,

alarmed, fumbled for Waldron’s fingers under the table.

“I said do you know what this place is? It’s a rathole! It’s not a country or a

community or an empire or what the hell label they last stuck on it! It’s a nest of

god damned rats.” He spaced the words with emphatic care.

“Know something, Waldron? Last time I saw you I was out of the hole. I was on

human territory. I was kidding myself I was still a man, rational, intelligent, master

of our own planet. And when they radioed me you’d shown up, I got to thinking. I

been drinking with it. You noticed.” He drained his glass and threw it tinkling to the

floor.

“That kid Maura… A rat! Hear me? That’s all any of us are—rats, and worth no

more than rats. You think I oughtn’t to have changed her mind to get what I paid

for? You think she didn’t deserve it? You do, damn you! I can see it in your eyes!”

Radcliffe slapped the table with his open palm and leaped to his feet so violently he

overset his chair.

“Hell, then! I’ll have to prove I’m right! I won’t have you sitting there thinking

you’re really a man!”

He stormed to the door and bellowed at the top of his voice for Rick Chandler.

Waldron, not moving, remembered that infinitely long ago he had sat in his office

and compared free traders like Radcliffe to the same animals: rats, preying on the

work of a higher species.

The two identical cars which were waiting at the door when Radcliffe harshly

ordered them out of the house were familiar to Waldron only from pictures: silent,

luxurious Mercedes limousines with recirculating Freon-vapor engines listed at a

basic price of forty-thousand dollars and supplied before the advent of the aliens to

heads of state and royalty-in-exile only. Rick, looking very tired and struggling to

hide his ill temper, was at the wheel of the one into which they followed Radcliffe;

the driver of the second was accompanied by four armed bodyguards, two black

and two white.

“Take ‘em up and show ’em the aliens!” Radcliffe barked, and slumped against

the cushions.

Greta gave a whimper of alarm. Waldron wondered how much of it was genuine,

how much feigned. He himself was very frightened. The dark night seemed full of

unspeakable menace, and Radcliffe, drunk and depressed, was in a dangerous

mood. But there was nothing he could do except keep quiet in the hope of not

making his new employer still more angry.

The road they took led past two shanty towns where there were no lights but

kerosene lamps, dim in unglassed windows, and another small town almost as

shabby, almost as dismal, emitting a stench of sewage that percolated the car’s

air-conditioning.

“Rats!” Radcliffe repeated, sniffing and jerking his thumb at the car’s window.

Waldron tried to orient himself, but failed. He had covered up the roads and

names on this part of his map with the lopsided five-pointed star of silver foil he’d

pasted to it. He had made it far larger than scale, thinking otherwise it would not

show up well enough. And indeed its glow must cover a huge area; the highest hill

ahead was peaked with a roseate aura.

Moving towards him as though for protection, Greta asked diffidently,

“How—how much further?”

“We can get a clear sight from the next rise,” Rick answered. Radcliffe snapped

at him.

“Don’t stop there! Keep right on going until I tell you!”

Rick gulped audibly, and then nothing more was said for long minutes.

They could see it.

Monstrous beyond conceiving, as though the cities of London and Tokyo and

New York had been piled together and turned into a translucent, mist-veiled,

iridescent unity. The natural features of the landscape had been ignored;

somewhere under the shining mass there had been lakes and hills, roads and small

towns, woods and fields—and they were not, stamped flat like lumps in muddy dirt.

Stabbing hundreds of feet into the night, shafts of luminescence rose: a myriad

gems thinned to the substance of a higher cosmic plane. Lights sharp as stars

flashed and faded, and the colors rioted—tonight, the commonest was rose-pink,

but ever and again blues, greens, pure flame-yellow and white of a clarity to terrify

an onlooker crossed the background and dissolved.

Opal and chalcedony, jade and chrysolite, jacynth and amber, ruby and emerald,

everything which mankind had ever meant by the word “jewel” was epitomized in

this majestic, awful creation: sixty-six miles from the tip to the furthest tip of its

deformed pentangular outline. Waldron’s mouth was dry. He wanted to shrink

away from his eyes, cut the nerves conveying knowledge of such a reality to his

brain. Not only the sheer integrated size of the alien city—for from this point one

could see a mere fraction of it—but the implication that its builders must be not

simply more powerful, not simply more advanced than man, but utterly and

inconceivably different, made him cringe and whimper silently: I dared imagine we

could act against them? I was a stupid arrogant fool.

“We live off their garbage,” Radcliffe said in a thin voice. “How do they think of

us? The way we think of flies and maggots… ? Rick, stop the car.”

Face beaded with sweat, the driver obeyed. The lights of the second car bloomed

briefly in the rearview mirror as it swung out and came to a halt alongside.

“How—how is it obtained?” Waldron forced out. “I mean the garbage.”

“Oh, it turns up all over the countryside for about fifty miles in any direction,”

Radcliffe sighed. “As though they throw it away at random when they have no

further use for it. I—” He hesitated, uncharacteristically, as though the

awe-inspiring vision before them had sobered him. “I keep a bit which killed a kid,”

he concluded. “Came slamming in through the window of his room. Cracked his

skull.”

“You—uh—you keep a watch on the place?” Waldron hazarded. “Try and spot the

stuff as it comes out?”

“Oh, sure, we tried that. Or rather Grady did. Can’t be done. You can’t see it

being tossed out, you can’t photograph it, you can’t pick it up on radar… I guess it

kind of skips the first bit of its trip.”

Greta’s hand closed painfully on Waldron’s arm. He knew why she had reacted

so violently. Corey Bennett, too, had “skipped.”

Or rather: he’s going to.

“So we gave up,” Radcliffe said. “Only people now who keep watch on the city are

relidges. Some of them out there tonight, in fact. Hear them singing?”

Until this moment Waldron hadn’t noticed the sound; when his attention was

drawn to it, he found he could hear it clearly, slow and solemn and rather sweet.

“Show ‘em, Rick,” Radcliffe ordered. Rick switched on a powerful spotlight

attached to the side of the car’s windshield and swiveled it around. Its beam

sworded across a small group of ragged men and women, a few hundred yards

distant on a bare hillside, staring with adoration at the alien city.

“You saw some like that back in Gradyboro, remember?” Rick said to Waldron

and Greta. “They come out here one or two nights a week and sing hymns through

to dawn. Bring their kids and all. In the rain, too. Even in the snow I’ve seen ‘em.”

For the first time Waldron felt less than contemptuous of the fanatics who had

jumped to the conclusion the aliens were visitors from heaven. Certainly they must

be closer to the angels than mankind…

“Rick, douse the light!” Radcliffe had glanced to his left; now he was peering

down the dark hillside. There a dry gully was shielded from the otherwise

all-pervading luminance of the city, and something like a firefly was moving across

it, flickering irregularly a few feet from the ground.

“Someone carrying a flashlight?” Rick suggested.

“Flashlight hell!” All the drunkenness and maudlin depression had vanished

from Radcliffe’s tone. “Look, it’s changing color all the time. Call the other car. I

want whoever it is surrounded—quick!” He flung open the door.

Rick uttered brief commands to a radiophone under the dash, and the guards

leaped from the second car and spread down the hill towards the darting

polychrome gleam.

“What is it?” Greta asked.

“Could just be that someone’s found a live relic,” Rick grunted. He fumbled out a

cigarette and lit it without taking his eyes from the half-seen men fanning out

around the spark of light. It had stopped moving, as though its bearer had realized

he’d been spotted and was minded to turn tail.

“A live relic?” Waldron echoed.

“Mm-hm. Turned on, or whatever. In working order, I guess you’d say. I’ve seen

a few, but they’re pretty rare. The boss got thirty thousand for a big one last

summer. He won’t let this one slip through his fingers, that’s for sure.”

Chapter Thirteen

« ^ »

Ichabod’s first horrified thought as the moving shapes closed on him out of

darkness was that his impiety in coveting the pretty relics of the angels had worn

out their patience, and avengers were coming to punish him for his sins. Then a

flashlight beam sprang up, and he realized those approaching were merely men.

Not that that was any great comfort. They would certainly take his prize away from

him. Like that nasty Mr. Bennett!

Silent tears coursing down his cheeks, he stood with his treasure englobed in

both hands, its brilliant multicolored splendor leaking out between his fingers. If he

had thought of stuffing it inside his shirt… But it was too late now.

He cast a frantic glance towards the spot, higher on the hill, where his parents

sang lustily with their friends under the fervent exhortation of Brother Mark, and

wished he could turn back time and once more find himself on the fringe of the

group, cancel his decision to sneak off and search for another beautiful heavenly

jewel to replace the one his parents had sold.

“Why, he’s only a kid,” one of the silhouetted men said to another.

“And crippled with it,” confirmed the second man. “Hey, is the boss around?

Didn’t I see him get out of the front car?”

“I’m here!” an authoritative voice called from slightly higher up the hill, and the

speaker came scrambling and grunting to Ichabod’s side. “Get it away from him,

Gabe.”

Reflexively Ichabod tucked his hands, and the thing he held, between his legs

and doubled up, yelling. It was no good. Strong fingers pried loose his grip and held

up the coruscating ball.

There were low whistles, and by the ball’s light faces could be seen reflecting

awe. “That’s a beauty!” one of the men said in an impressed tone. “Never saw one

that bright before.”

“Give it here,” Radcliffe said, and it was placed in his palm. It was about three

inches in diameter, slightly warm, slightly slippery from Ichabod’s perspiring

clutch; that apart, it was ordinary to the touch, being about as smooth as

window-glass. Its appearance, though, was not at all ordinary. Within its

translucent depths moved colors as rich and varied as those of the city itself.

Radcliffe’s earlier despondent mood had faded the moment he saw this object in the

distance; now he felt it return, but tinged this time with gentle envy of beings who

could create such lovely things.

“Why should they want to chuck away something like that?” Gabe asked

rhetorically.

“By mistake?” offered another of the guards.

“You really think they can make mistakes?” Gabe countered, and that question

went unanswered.

Radcliffe turned to the soundlessly weeping Ichabod with an ingratiating smile.

“Where did you find this, son?” he cajoled. “Right near here, was it?”

“None of your business!” Ichabod retorted.

“Oh, come now, son,” Radcliffe reproved. “Sure, it was very smart of you to find

it, but finding it doesn’t make it yours, you know. Didn’t your mom ever tell you that

when you find something you got to give it back to… ?”

“Boss!” Sharply from Gabe. “Trouble’s coming!”

Radcliffe swung around. The relidges had ceased their singing, and a group of

half a dozen had detached themselves and were heading this way in the wake of a

tall man with a full black beard, wearing a black robe with a big silver cross hung

around his neck on a thong.

“Gabe, go back to the car and ask Rick for all the cash he has on him,” Radcliffe

instructed. “For a relic like this they’ll probably stand out for at least a thousand.”

“Boss, I have a thousand right in my pocket,” Gabe grunted. “But don’t you know

who that is leading them? That’s Brother Mark. You could offer him a million and

he’d only curse you for a wicked sinner.”

“So that’s the famous Brother Mark, is it? How do you know? I’ve never seen him,

or even a picture of him.”

“Right. He says photos are graven images, and forbidden. But my kid sister is in

his church.” Gabe spat sidelong by way of comment on his sister’s views.

They waited. The relidges advanced at a steady pace, not hesitating or hurrying

even when they came close enough to see that Radcliffe’s men carried guns.

Ichabod let out a wordless yell when they were ten paces off, and hobbled at

maximum speed to throw his arms around the man third from the front.

“What the hell… ? I mean what are you doing here?” the man gasped. “Brother

Mark! It’s my boy Ichabod!”

Brother Mark took no notice. He marched straight up to Radcliffe and held out

his hand.

“Give it to me,” he said. “It’s holy.”

Radcliffe studied him. He was an impressive figure: very tall, high-browed, with

deep-set dark eyes. But Radcliffe was seldom daunted by appearances.

He let his gaze flicker towards Ichabod’s father, and spoke in a deliberately loud

voice. “I was just about to offer the kid a thousand dollars for it.”

At that even Ichabod forgot to cry for several seconds, while his father—one hand

on the boy’s shoulder in a melodramatically protective pose—gave an audible gasp.

Brother Mark took a pace back, horrified. “You’d buy and sell a relic of the

angels?” he thundered. “Who are you—apart from being an ignorant blasphemer,

which is obvious?”

“I’m Den Radcliffe. Maybe you’ve seen my place back towards Gradyville. It’s not

easy to overlook. About twenty times bigger than that hovel you miscall a church.”

At hearing his sect’s headquarters dismissed as a hovel, Brother Mark was

nettled. He tried not to show it, but it was plain from the sanctimonious tone of his

answer.

“What need do we have of splendid churches when the very hosts of heaven have

built a temple for us?”

“I never saw you or your followers going in there for Sunday service,” Radcliffe

gibed.

“We shall enter in due time, when we are cleansed of our earthly pollution,”

Brother Mark snapped. “You of course will go to hell—though you could gain grace

by handing over that relic. Its proper place is in my church. You defile it even by

looking at it, let alone touching it!”

Radcliffe tossed the ball casually into the air and caught it again. He shook his

head. “I’m not going to part with it. I’m licensed by Governor Grady to be in

possession of things like this, and you’re not. I’ll pay a fair price, but I won’t let it

go.”

“But it’s mine!” wailed Ichabod, leaving his father’s side. “It’s not fair! It’s mine,

and I won’t let you take it away! They took the other one, and—and they didn’t even

give me any of the money!”

His father rushed after him and clamped a hand over his mouth, fractionally too

late. Brother Mark had heard the betraying words.

“Greg Sims!” he rasped. “Has your boy found a relic before?”

Sims moved his feet in the dirt like an embarrassed child. He said, looking at the

ground, “Well—uh—”

“Yes or no?” Brother Mark blasted.

“Well… Well—yes.”

“A bright and shining relic of the angels?”

Sims nodded miserably. “But it wasn’t my idea—it was Martha’s.” The flood of

self-justification came with a rush. “I said give it to the church but Martha said no,

tithe it if you like but we must have food and new clothes. I did pay the tithe on it, I

swear! Paid the whole twelve dollars!”

“Who bought it off you—this unclean sinner here?”

“No, it was a man called Corey Bennett. He made the sign you taught us and said

he follows you—”

“No disciple of mine would sell a holy relic for dirty, disgusting money!” roared

Brother Mark. He flung out his arm, like an angel ordering Adam and Eve to quit

Eden. “Go!”

Shocked murmurs were heard from the other relidges; they drew aside as from

lepers. Sims, clutching his son’s hand, tried to argue, but Brother Mark would have

none of that.

“I said go!” he repeated. “And take the boy with you! He must be a vessel of evil,

or he’d have brought what he found direct to me!”

Catching Gabe’s eye, Radcliffe nodded towards Sims. Gabe understood, and as

the father and son trudged dejectedly away he followed them. At a discreet distance

he invited them to halt, and they complied and stood waiting. So far, so good.

Anybody, child or adult, who could find two live relics was worth investigation.

“Now do you give that sacred object over?” boomed Brother Mark. “Or must I

call on angels to visit you with all the plagues of Egypt?”

“Call the angels as much as you like,” Radcliffe answered. “I’m going to buy this

off the Sims family. If you’re going to throw them out of the church, they’ll need

funds to keep them, I guess. You don’t come into it at all.”

“Then I curse you!” Brother Mark shouted, and his fingers curled over like claws.

But Radcliffe, his expression bored, merely tossed the gleaming ball high in the air

again—higher than before, higher in fact than he had intended.

Much higher.

The shock was fearful. He looked at where the ball ought to be. It wasn’t. And it

had not come down. Only a stain of radiance in the air suggested that it had ever

existed.

Vanished!

“I—” whispered Brother Mark, his eyes bulging. “I curse—”

“Oh my God!” cried one of Radcliffe’s men, and turned and ran.

Radcliffe stood frozen for long moments. He was recalled to awareness of the

relidges’ hasty departure by a fist pummelling at his arm. It was Ichabod, hysterical

with fury. Radcliffe tried to brush him aside, but he persisted.

“Give it back!” he wailed. “It’s mine, it’s mine! I want it back!”

“Ichabod, you dirty little sinner!” his father bellowed, stumbling after him

through the darkness.

“Leave him be, Mr.—Mr. Sims, isn’t it?” Radcliffe recovered his self-possession

with an effort. “I want to talk to you. I gather your son found one of these relics

before.”

“Uh…yes, sir, he did.”

“A hundred and twenty dollars and you didn’t give me a cent” moaned Ichabod.

Sims cuffed him into silence.

“Was the other one like tonight’s?” Radcliffe continued.

“More like a long thin egg, I guess you’d say.”

“No, I mean did it shine with its own light?”

“Oh, sure. Like the ones they have in the church.”

Radcliffe swallowed hard and tried to slow the pounding of his heart. The

disappearance of the shining ball had shaken him, but he was getting over it. After

all, just because no live relic had been reported as vanishing before didn’t mean

there was anything frightening about it. It could well be that the aliens had tossed it

out—he remembered Gabe’s question—because they knew it was near the end of its

useful life, due to go pop like a perished balloon.

Yes, that argument made excellent sense. And the crucial fact remained: Ichabod

had found two live relics.

Also Corey Bennett had secured the other one for a mere hundred and twenty

bucks, when its price on resale would certainly be in the tens of thousands and, if it

were a particularly fine example, even higher. One of Grady’s had reputedly fetched

a quarter of a million. That wounded Radcliffe in his professional pride. Bennett

was new on the Ground; they hadn’t even met each other yet.

“Mr. Sims, I want you to come and see me in the morning,” he said. “Bring your

son with you. Gabe! Give Mr. Sims a hundred, will you? It’s—ah—compensation.

And another ten for the kid. He deserves his share.”

He cut short Sims’s garbled thanks and strode up the hill towards his car,

repressing an irrational desire to glance over his shoulder at every other step for fear

an alien was coming after him to reclaim the property filched by this inferior

species.

Rick had the use of a pair of binoculars kept in the car, but Waldron and Greta

had had only a poor view of what was passing between Radcliffe and the relidges.

While the gleaming ball was lighting the scene they could see fairly distinctly, but

after it vanished there were only dim shadows.

“Clever!” Rick said admiringly when the ball disappeared right in front of

Brother Mark. “The boss is always pulling new tricks!”

On that basis they expected Radcliffe to be jubilant when be rejoined them. On

the contrary; his face was dour and he refused to utter another word until they

returned to the house. Then he merely said, “Rick, get somebody to show them to

their room. Good night.”

And that was that

Chapter Fourteen

« ^ »

During the last half-minute before ten A.M., the official starting time for the

conference, Potter looked down the long table and reflected on the paradoxical

nature of the gathering. To satisfy those who were still concerned with legalistic

niceties, he had had to constitute this group into a subcommittee of the

Congressional Committee on Emergency Countermeasures, with unlimited

discretion to co-opt.

But was there ever anything so absurd? We’re meeting on foreign soil. We

include a Soviet cabinet minister, not to mention a woman cosmonaut and a

doctor, also Russian; we have three Canadians, an American psychologist, a

professor of physics born in Sweden…

Who, he realized abruptly, wasn’t here. As the wall-clock’s minute-hand closed

on the hour-mark he said, “Where’s Jespersen?”

A saturnine man named Clarkson, one of the Canadian observers, glanced up in

faint surprise. “Haven’t you heard? His plane was overdue at Calgary. They’ve

mounted a search for it.”

“What? What took him to Calgary?”

“He heard a rumor about a live artifact being offered for sale there and flew

down to check on it. But he never arrived.”

There’s a cheerful note to start the day’s proceedings on!

“Excuse me.” Natasha leaned forward. At these meetings she carried on a

running translation service for Abramovitch, and frequently had to have

post-catastrophe terms explained to her. Potter had not previously realized how

many there were. “He heard about a—what?”

“A live artifact. An alien object showing signs of activity, radiating or vibrating or

something like that.”

“Thank you. By the way, Mr. Potter, I should also say that Dr. Zworykin

apologizes to be a little late. Pitirim has shown hopeful signs today.”

The others brightened, as though they had been dispensed a careful ration of

optimism, like a mental vitamin

Pill.

“Good,” Potter said. “But I’ll call the meeting to order without waiting for him.

Before we get down to regular business, I understand Mr. Congreve has something

to say. Mike, go ahead, but keep it short, please.”

Congreve rubbed his chin. “Well, it wouldn’t be easy to make it long, because

there’s damned little to it bar a sneaking suspicion. What I just heard may reinforce

it a bit, but… O.K., for what it’s worth. As you know, Academician Abramovitch is

in contact with sympathetic members of the rump administration in the Soviet

Union, and at considerable risk to themselves they’ve managed to relay some

messages to us by short wave. I’ve been analyzing them, and they’re very suggestive.

“There’s been a noticeable slacking-off in Buishenko’s advance. The government

forces have held two cities which Buishenko had formerly scheduled

for—ah—tactical evacuation this week. Last night’s messages were even hinting at

countermoves to regain lost territory. All this implies that losing Pitirim did indeed

undermine Buishenko’s grip on his followers. But!

“Since Buishenko set up his HQ in what was designed as an emergency Kremlin

during a nuclear war, it’s possible for the government to monitor his transmissions.

He’s using known cipher-modes and scramble-patterns. Some of the intercepted

traffic recently has been… well, enlightening.

“First off: there was to have been a blitz-style raid with air support on the

government’s temporary capital in the Samarkand region. It’s been called off. My

assessment is that Buishenko started by assuming Pitirim was in government hands,

but has received information showing that he was wrong.”

Potter’s imagination filled with a picture of the situation in Russia as described

by Natasha and Congreve: the whole monstrous sprawling nation torn to shreds by

Buishenko’s Tartar-like hordes, communications broken, government reduced to

impotence by the sheer distances involved… In comparison it made him feel that

North America was the size of a suburban lawn.

“Two: we know that the air pursuit which followed the Red Whale cannot have

been Buishenko’s. He has nothing far enough east with adequate speed or range to

have made the interception. In any case why should he have imagined that the

vessel had anything to do with him? We’ve been assuming that some local loyalist

air force commander mistook what was going on for—oh—regular smuggling, or

something like that.

“But putting that together with the cancellation of his planned raid on the

temporary capital, another and very disturbing possibility emerges. We suspect that

a reactionary faction on the government side got wind of Abramovitch’s plan to take

Pitirim out of the country and determined to stop it at all costs.”

Potter sighed, thinking: let not thy right hand know… Yes, it was a safe bet that

plenty of the surviving high officials in Russia would judge Abramovitch’s scheme

by an obsolete yardstick and treat it as simple treason. Old habits were dying very

hard in this new age of the world.

“Are you saying they would give the information to Buishenko?” Natasha

demanded. “Surely they would never do that! Besides, Pitirim could have been

taken anywhere! Buishenko cannot search the entire planet Earth for him!”

“Well, there’s another and even more alarming point?” Congreve said, but he was

interrupted as the door slammed open and Zworykin came in, his face a

battleground between fatigue and jubilation. Directly behind followed Louis

Porpentine, head of the American medical team working in cooperation with him.

Abramovitch hurled an eager question at him, and received as answer a snapped,

“Khorosho!” That much Potter didn’t need translated, but the rest of the exchange

was incomprehensible. He looked appealingly at Congreve. Before the spy could

interpret, however, Porpentine dropped exhaustedly into Jespersen’s vacant chair

and announced, “Finally we managed to get him talking!”

“And are we right?” Potter demanded.

“I guess so.” The psychologist yawned cavernously. “Excuse me—they called me

out at five A.M. You’ll have to get the details from Alexei, because I don’t speak

word one of the kid’s language, but what it boils down to is this.”

While

Zworykin

explained

the

news

to

his

compatriots,

the

non-Russian-speakers craned excitedly towards Porpentine.

“Young Pitirim has been into the alien city not just once but several times. What’s

more, he enjoys doing it, and the reason he’s given for not cooperating before is that

we took him away from Buishenko who allowed him to go in and out of the alien

city as often as he wanted.”

There was a stunned silence, except for a murmur of Russian from Natasha.

Potter said at last, “But how? Without going crazy, I mean. And he isn’t that

crazy, is he?”

“God knows.” A lock of hair had fallen into Porpentine’s eyes; he shook it aside

irritably. “As you know, Mr. Potter—though maybe some people here don’t—I’ve

spent over a year evaluating interactions between us and the aliens. I’ve sifted

through literally hundreds of rumors about people who’ve managed to get into the

alien city over here and return alive. I’ve arranged for federal agents to enter

Grady’s Ground and check out the most promising of the stories. But when they

tried to pin them down with names and dates they invariably wound up with a

reference to some hopelessly schizoid weirdo, or else, if they fell in with a religious

maniac, they were told about some mythical new saint who’s now more than likely

ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot. I guess there must be stories like that in

Russia, too”—with a glance at Natasha.

“What? Oh! Oh, yes, many of them. At the beginning we took them seriously

enough to ask for volunteers who would enter the alien city and sabotage it. But—”

She lapsed briefly into her own language to ask Abramovitch a question, and

resumed. “Yes, it is as I thought. Not one attempt was successful. Either the man

vanished, or else later he was found dirty, ragged and insane.”

Abramovitch spoke up, and she translated. “We shall not know whether Pitirim

can do as he says until we have taken him to the alien city here.”

“That won’t be so easy,” Potter sighed. “It’s quite true that we can occasionally

inject an agent into Grady’s Ground, as Dr. Porpentine mentioned—in fact Greta

Delarue is there right now.”

Along the table a few cocked eyebrows, a murmur which quickly stilled.

But the difficulty is that even though Grady may not be a ruthless tyrant like

Buishenko, he does exert tight control over his territory. A native American can be

eased across his border with a good cover-story and preferably a skill that’s in short

supply there. But what cover you could invent for a mentally retarded and very

sickly Russian teenager, I’ve no idea. Obviously, sooner or later we shall have to find

an answer, because otherwise there’s no point in having Pitirim over here. But I

must stress that it’s going to be a very tough problem.“

He hesitated. “Dr. Porpentine, are you certain Pitirim is telling the truth?

Couldn’t his boat be—well, a fantasy?”

“I doubt it. As you say, he’s extremely backward, and his IQ is probably under

eighty, so it’s unlikely he could elaborate such a well-detailed fantasy. But there’s no

hurry to devise this cover for him, you know. If we take him away from here too

soon, we might very well drive him back to his former apathy. I’d say it’ll be at least

a month before we dare even take him out of the hospital for a walk. On top of

which, as you know, he’s physically unwell. Buishenko’s medical services must be

worse than rudimentary.”

“But you’re going to have to move him,” Congreve said.

“What?” Porpentine blinked at him.

The spy leaned forward. “I said you’re going to have to move him. For the good

and sufficient reason that in a very short time Buishenko is going to know where he

is.”

There was a blank pause. Natasha said eventually, “Mike, I simply don’t believe

that even the reactionary faction on our side would pass the information to him. Or

are you saying that he has agents among them?”

“Neither.” Congreve bit his lip, then seemed to reach a sudden decision, and

addressed Potter. “Mr. Chairman, I was going to withhold this until I’d discussed it

with you privately, but I’ve changed my mind. I hadn’t heard before that Dr.

Jespersen was supposed to be flying to Calgary in search of a live artifact.”

“What to you mean, ‘supposed’?” Clarkson countered. “I saw him take off with

my own eyes.”

“Yes, he flies his own plane, doesn’t he?”

“Why not? The RCAF is as short of pilots as your own air force, you know.”

“I’ll tell you why not. Because the search party isn’t going to find any wreckage

on his line of flight. You see, Dr. Jespersen has always claimed that he was born in

Norrkôping, Sweden. But he wasn’t”

Potter felt the world tilt to a crazy lopsided angle.

“Things are still functioning fairly normally in Scandinavia,” Congreve pursued.

“So I arranged to have some checks carried out. I’m now ninety percent certain that

Dr. Jespersen is one of our Russian friends’ most remarkable achievements. I think

he’s a hypno-spy.”

He glanced around, sharp-eyed. “Anybody here need that term explained? Yes?

Well, it simply means that he’s had a complete artificial personality construction for

him under deep hypnosis. Suitable subjects are very rare—I believe we only know of

about forty cases altogether. They hoped I might make one, but it turned out that

although I’m a good hypnotic subject I’m not quite good enough.”

“But what does all this have to do with moving Pitirim?” Porpentine demanded.

“Yes, with the state the world’s in now it might seem irrelevant, but for one thing.

Among the secrets the Russian government—ah—failed to hide from me while I was

working over there was the location of the report-in point for returning hypnospies.

It now lies deep inside Buishenko’s territory. I’ve no idea how Jespersen proposes to

get there, of course. His plane has nothing like the range to fly direct. He may very

well be shot down, or killed when trying to leave government-held territory. But I

can say this with confidence: nothing short of death will stop him from returning to

his base, and the only factor I can think of that might have caused him to go home

and report in person is the presence of a Russian cabinet minister here,

explicable—according to the principles he was indoctrinated with—solely in terms

of defection. And where Abramovitch is, Pitirim can be presumably be found also.”

Chapter Fifteen

« ^ »

Waldron awoke to discover with some surprise that he was lying with his arms

tight around Greta. They were supposed to be lovers, so the fact that the guest room

to which Radcliffe had dispatched their baggage was furnished with a double bed

had had to be accepted, but it had been Waldron’s impression that the pose was to

remain a pose. Yet here they were as cosily entangled as newlyweds.

Then he remembered why. For fear the room was bugged—a precaution you

might expect a successful free trader to take in the dog-eat-dog society of Grady’s

Ground—they had cuddled up to whisper their comments on the awe-inspiring

spectacle of the alien city. So far, quite clear. But when tiredness overtook them,

they had separated, surely…

And clung to one another again when dreams assailed them. That was it.

Waldron felt a prickle of sweat spring out on his forehead.

Because fearful images crowded his sleeping mind—entities as bright and pure

as sunbeams, cold as crystal, implacable as fate itself—he had sought comfort,

child-fashion, in the warm presence of another body.

Reflexively he hugged her, not from affection but from gratitude that he had not

had to be alone. Asleep, without the daytime makeup designed to suit her role as a

greedy aging slut, she was more than just attractive; she was beautiful. He had not

realized that before. Awake, she maintained a cool aloofness that shifted

occasionally into affected superiority, and he had subconsciously edited her

appearance to match her manner, thinking of her as hard-faced and emotionless.

Part of that illusion had been dispelled by what she had said last night. The alien

city had shaken her as much as it had him. No amount of pictures or descriptions

could have prepared a human mind for that astounding reality.

Now her eyes flickered open, and she looked vaguely surprised, but made no

move to push away from his embrace. She said only, “You had a bad night, didn’t

you? Nightmares?”

“Yes. And you?”

“Yes. About the aliens.” She rubbed her eyes as though afraid of slipping back

into sleep. “Jim, are we crazy? I don’t mean you and me. I mean the whole human

race. Even to think of opposing creatures like them… !”

“I don’t know,” Waldron muttered, and rolled towards the side of the bed. “What

I do know is that if we quit, Radcliffe will have been proved right. We’ll just be rats

and not men any longer.”

“Why was he so bitter about it last night? It had something to do with that girl at

dinner with him, didn’t it? I meant to ask, but last night I couldn’t think of anything

but the alien city.”

Waldron, face dark, told the story of Maura Knight. Greta shivered.

“Oh, my God. I assumed she was just a beautiful mental defective. Some men like

their women to be stupid. You mean he made her that way.”

“Obviously. Though I haven’t the least idea how.”

“Oh… Well, it could have been dociline, I guess.”

“What’s that?” Waldron glanced up from the case, open at the foot of the bed,

from which he was extracting clothes to hang in the closets.

“A drug that a chemist at Pfizer came up with about ten years back. Never

publicized. They were evaluating it at Fort Detrick for a while. The Russians were

also said to have it. Ten c.c.‘s is equivalent to several months’ intensive

brainwashing.” She shuddered. “I never saw anybody who’d been given it, but from

the reports I read I got the mental picture of somebody like that girl— drained.”

Waldron recalled with shocking violence that last night they had worried about

the possibility of eavesdroppers. He slapped his hand over his mouth in a gesture

for silence, and dismay spread swiftly over Greta’s pale face. Not saying another

word, she rose and headed for the bathroom.

If there were spy-mikes, those responsible for monitoring them hadn’t yet passed

on their findings to Radcliffe. Though it was late when they emerged from their

room, already past ten A.M., they were taken to him sitting at the same table as last

night, a half-eaten dish of pancakes before him, a servant silently keeping his coffee

cup filled, a cigarette spiraling smoke up from its perch on a portable radio, which

wasn’t playing.

He greeted the visitors with a curt nod, but said nothing until they were provided

with coffee and food. Then he took a last drag on his cigarette and as he stubbed it

addressed Waldron.

“Well, rat?”

“Yes,” Waldron said. “It made me feel that small.”

“Good.” Radcliffe took another cigarette and the servant standing by was quick

to light it. “I wish someone would drag Governor Grady out some night and rub his

nose in the same sight. I hear it’s more than a year since he last set eyes on the alien

city. Too long. I go out and refresh my memory every month or so.” He gave a bitter

laugh. “You know, I read once that when they gave a general a triumph in

Ancient-Rome, they had this slave standing beside him in his chariot to whisper in

his ear all the time, ‘Remember that you’re only a man!’ ” He emptied his coffee cup

with a nervous gulp and waved away the servant’s offer of more.

“But it’s better to make like a rat than a mouse, isn’t it? Rats have sharp teeth.

Rats carry plague. They aren’t creatures you can quietly ignore because they’re too

insignificant to bother about. How do you feel about it? The same way I do?”

Waldron gave a cautious nod.

“Yes—” Radcliffe tapped ash off his cigarette. “You know, when I first saw that

map on the wall of your office I thought Christ, here’s a rat-type in this swarm of

worthless mice. Then I thought again, and decided that if you were content to waste

your life in that kind of job now there are aliens on Earth, you must be a mouse at

heart after all. And mouse-types make me want to throw up. We got them here on

the Ground too, you know. Those relidges! What happens to us if they win out?

Why, we’ll spend the rest of eternity singing jolly hymns to a god who doesn’t give a

damn about us even if he’s up there, and praising angels who are no more angels

than I am!” He snorted loudly.

“Grady’s not a rat-type, you know. I don’t know what you’d call him. Spider,

maybe? He runs this Ground pretty damned well, I got to give him that. But he

hasn’t been out for over a year to call on the characters he ought to thank for

putting him where he is. Instead he sits in the middle of his web listening to the

threads of it twang, and sucking the weakest of us dry. But the hell with him, too.

He’s not concerned about the future. Say, is your breakfast O.K.?”

Greta nodded, mouth full, and Waldron said, “This is the best food I’ve had in

months. Best coffee, too.”

Radcliffe gave a sardonic chuckle. “That’s what comes of spending the kind of

money I have. I do spend it. What the hell would be the point of saving it?

Tomorrow the aliens might perfectly well decide they’ve had enough of us and wipe

us out altogether. That’s what’s wrong with what you were trying to do, you know.

What happens if the government pulls things together, maybe manages to regain

control of the Ground? Will we be any better off? Hell, no. We’ll be tailing along

behind people who’d rather pretend the aliens don’t exist—fooling ourselves on the

grandest possible scale!”

Another servant had silently entered and was waiting by the door for permission

to speak. Radcliffe ignored him.

“What we need is guts. That’s all. The guts to stand and face that great shining

monstrosity and say, ‘Damn you! Whatever you are, damn you! We have as much

right in this universe as you, and a lot more right to this planet! So we’re going to

kick you back where you belong, and you’ll never dare mess with us again!’

Agreed?”

“Yes, but—” Waldron hesitated.

“But what?”

“I was going to say I’m not sure we’re capable of living up to a promise like that.

There’s something so completely unearthly about the alien city, as though they’re

not only ahead of us, but started from somewhere different anyway.”

“So what?” Radcliffe grunted. “Men don’t have wings, but show me a bird that

can go supersonic! Yes?”—to the patiently waiting servant.

“There’s a man called Greg Sims to see you, sir, and a kid with him. Says you told

them to call here this morning.”

“I was wondering when they’d get here. Put them in the audience room and I’ll

be with them in a moment.“ Radcliffe pushed back his chair. ”As for you, Waldron,

I’ll tell you how I want you to spend today. Wander about the Ground. Watch the

mice at play. Take in one of these nutty relidge meetings. Say hello to the gamblers

and the whores and the rest of them. Ask all the questions you can, get ‘em out of

the way. Because tomorrow I’m going to put you to work, and from then on I want

you to concentrate. Is that clear?“

“Absolutely,” Waldron said, and rose politely as Radcliffe strode away. From the

corner of his eye he saw that Greta was having difficulty in concealing her delight.

They could hardly have wished for a better break.

At Radcliffe’s entry Sims jumped to his feet from the chair on whose edge he had

been perching. Carefully drilled, Ichabod copied his example.

“Mr. Radcliffe, sir! I’d have been here earlier, but we had trouble last night. I got

into this argument with my wife, and then Brother Mark sent a cursing party to sing

outside the house and stop us sleeping, and there was this fight with someone from

over the way who was being kept awake too, and—”

“Shut up,” Radcliffe said, and dropped into a soft leather-cushioned chair.

“What’s your boy’s name?”

“Ichabod, sir,” Sims answered, and added apologetically, “My wife’s choice, not

mine. Says it means ‘the glory is departed’. I never could see that because according

to Brother Mark the glory has come to us now and—”

“Sims, if you always talk like this I’m surprised Mark didn’t throw you out of his

church long ago. Will you shut up?”

Appalled, Sims subsided back to his chair. Ichabod, however, remained

standing, his eyes fixed on Radcliffe’s face and eloquent of his resentment.

“Good morning, Ichabod,” Radcliffe said levelly.

The boy turned down the corners of his mouth. “I hate you,” he said. “I wouldn’a

come if pa hadn’t beat me first. You took my ball. I found it! It was mine!”

“Ichabod!” Sims exclaimed. “You mustn’t talk to Mr. Radcliffe like that!”

“Sims, if you open your mouth once more I’ll throw you out of the room, is that

clear?” Radcliffe snapped. And to Ichabod, in a coaxing tone: “Now listen, son.

What did your pa say when you had the pretty thing before, the first one?”

Ichabod scowled. “Said it wasn’t right I should have it ‘cause I’m not supposed to

want anything but grace. He kept on saying that even after he took it away and sold

it to the man.”

Sims squirmed, but the force of Radcliffe’s threat kept his mouth shut.

Something is going to have to be done about Corey Bennett. But Radcliffe kept

that to himself. Aloud he said, “So where did you get the first one, son?”

“It come from the holy city,” Ichabod said.

“Well, of course it did. But where did you find it? Just lying on the ground?”

Ichabod rubbed his hand on his leg and didn’t answer, his eyes roving all over

the room.

A little more gentle probing satisfied Radcliffe that like a good many of the

unschooled kids from the shanty towns hereabouts, his sense both of past time and

of geographical location was poorly developed; moreover, his bulging forehead

suggested he must be retarded. He switched his line of inquiry.

“Well, how about the ball you found last night? How did you come by that?”

Ichabod was more forthcoming about this. Half by deduction, half by

guesswork, Radcliffe prompted him along a chronological sequence of events that

looked highly promising. He learned, in some detail, Ichabod’s opinion of all-night

hymn-singing sessions, while Sims sat squirming but not daring to interrupt.

Eventually, Ichabod admitted, he’d become so bored that he had simply sneaked

away.

“And your parents didn’t notice?” Radcliffe inquired.

“Them? Of course not!”

“So what did you do when you sneaked away?”

“Went and got the ball, what else?”

Radcliffe started. It wasn’t possible that Ichabod… Or was it? Memory threw

fragments at him: Brother Mark saying that his disciples would enter the heavenly

city when they were cleansed of pollution, a look on Ichabod’s face which had not

been simple rage. He drew a deep breath.

“Now let’s get this straight, son. You mean you went into the holy city and just

picked it up?”

“Well—well, I guess they must have an awful lot of this stuff because they throw

so much of it away, so I thought they wouldn’t mind if I—” Ichabod’s voice tailed

away as he stood torn between pride in his own daring and the anticipated wrath of

his father.

Which erupted. No threats could have silenced Sims in face of such blasphemy.

“Why, you lying little devil!” he roared, drawing back his fist for a fierce blow to the

boy’s head. “I’ll teach you to mock at holy things!”

Radcliffe jumped from his chair and caught the upraised arm a fraction before

the punch landed. He kicked Sims’s feet from under him and the man found

himself dumped foolishly on his backside. By that time alert servants, hearing the

outcry, had rushed into the room.

“Sims, I warned you,” Radcliffe said, breathing hard. And to the servants: “Take

him away. But leave the kid.”

“What?” Sims struggled to his feet, bewildered.

“The kid stays,” Radcliffe said, and noted Ichabod’s reaction. Sudden wild hope

had flared in his dull eyes.

“But you can’t take a man’s son away from him!” Sims exploded.

“It’s him I’m interested in, not you. Ichabod, what do you think?” And, seeing

that Sims was on the verge of another outburst: “Hold your tongue!”

Ichabod hesitated for a long moment, then gathered his courage. “Mister, I

always wanted to beat pa the way he beats me all the time. And you knocked him

down and—and he deserved it. All the time he beats me and sometimes he kicks me,

‘specially when he’s drunk. And ma’s no better. Worse maybe, ’cause she takes a

broomhandle to me. Uh—you won’t beat me all the time, will you?”

“I will not. That’s a promise.”

“Then I want to stay right here,” Ichabod said firmly.

“When I get my hands on you, you sinful little—” Sims began. Radcliffe cut him

short.

“But you won’t. There may not be a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children

on the Ground, Mr. Sims, but from what the kid says I’m doing him a service. Of

course, it’s true that he’ll be doing me one—” He paused. “There should be a fee for

that, don’t you think? Shall we say a hundred dollars a month?”

“Two hundred!”

“One hundred, take it or leave it. Well? Fine!”

And that’s a bargain, Radcliffe thought, considering he looks like a lever to

topple Grady for good and all!

Chapter Sixteen

« ^ »

“What shall we do first?” Waldron murmured to Greta, and her answer was

prompt.

“Go see Bennett—what else?”

He checked in midstride; they were walking down the same long corridor with

one glass wall which had been the first part of the house they saw last night. “Isn’t

that risky? We don’t want to draw Radcliffe’s attention to him.”

“We know for certain that one way or another a connection has been or will be

made between Radcliffe and Bennett. Remember he headed straight for Radcliffe

when he turned up at the City of Angels. And it’s more likely to be ‘will be’ than ‘has

been’. Unless they’ve got acquainted since Bennett last filed a report, at this

moment in time the two of them haven’t met.”

Hearing the paradoxical reality of the situation summed up so bluntly made the

blood rush and thunder in Waldron’s ears. It almost drowned out the rest of Greta’s

argument.

“No, but the free traders are never short of it. Grady Bennett gets—gets

displaced. For all we know he may already be involved in the actions which lead up

to that. We can’t miss the chance of contacting him at once just because Radcliffe

might start wondering if I’m not the person I pretend to be.”

Unanswerable logic. Waldron shrugged and came to a halt at the end of the

corridor. “Where do you imagine they put the car? And do they have proper gasoline

distribution here on the Ground?”

“Not, but the free traders are never short of it. Grady writes contracts like a

South American dictator with most of the big corporations. Look, there’s somebody

we can ask about the car.” Greta pushed open a swinging door and called to a

passing servant.

It took them nearly an hour’s search to locate the address Greta had for Bennett;

they had to give the impression of chancing on it, for fear that if they asked

directions the news might filter back to Radcliffe. It was the only one of a group of

four five-story apartment buildings to have survived the passage of the mad armies.

The sight of it, fresh with paint and all its glass sparkling, was incongruous by

contrast with the other three so similar and so close, but windowless and with

smoke-stains licking up their walls.

“You’re sure that’s it?” Waldron said in low tones as he braked the car.

“Certain. Look, someone’s coming to meet us. You better talk to him.”

Waldron nodded, feeling by reflex for the alien artifact he had again slipped into

his pocket when he dressed today. Lucky charm or not, he did find its presence

comforting, a memento of his old home and his old life.

From the main entrance of the building a tall black man in tan coveralls with an

embroidered name on the chest was emerging. He wore a Sam Browne style belt

with a holstered .45. As he came closer Waldron saw that the embroidered name

was BENNETT.

“Is—uh—is Mr. Bennett at home?” he called out, rolling down his window.

“Could be,” the man agreed warily. “Depends who’s asking, doesn’t it?”

“Would you give him this? I think he’ll see us when he’s read it.” Waldron

handed over an envelope; it contained a note scribbled by Greta which consisted of

three Scientific Service cipher groups.

The man took the note and went indoors again. Waiting, Waldron glanced up

the face of the building and saw that at three of the high windows men were peering

watchfully down.

“I guess they don’t care too much for strangers here,” he said.

“I know what you mean,” Greta answered in a whisper. “I feel on edge. As though

murder might be done at any moment.”

Neither of them spoke again until the same man returned and curtly invited

them to come inside.

They found Bennett in the penthouse, among fine pictures and luxurious

furniture: a man of middle height, well-dressed, with sandy hair receding and

watery blue eyes. The horrible thought crossed Waldron’s mind: so that’s what

color they were before they became like Morello’s cherries!

They had come to call on a dead man, and they dared not warn him of the death

sentence. He was unspeakably glad that Greta, not he, had to do the talking.

The moment the door closed behind the man who had escorted them, Bennett

exploded.

“So you’re Greta Delarue, are you? They told me to expect you. But what the hell

are you doing here? I’m in a tricky enough position without gratuitous outside

interference!”

Not waiting for a reply, he waved them irritably to chairs and sat down himself.

“Who’s the impatient son of a bitch behind all this?” he went on. “Orlando Potter?

He’s the meddlesome type, I know that only too well. I said I’d need a full year to

consolidate myself. I said it was probably over-eagerness that screwed up the last

two agents you sent in. Here I am standing in dead men’s shoes, damn it! And I’ve

only been here about four and a half months, and here you come, charging in like a

herd of buffalo and more than likely leaving a trail a mile wide that anybody with

the brains of a mosquito could follow! Am I right about Potter?”

“Yes,” Greta said in a tight voice, sitting very straight on the edge of her chair, her

hands white-knuckled in her lap.

“I was sure of it. That slick-tongued bastard with his Committee on Emergency

Countermeasures and all that garbage… Listen, I may not have been on the Ground

very long, but I’ve been around long enough to realize one thing. All these so-called

‘countermeasures’ are make-believe. Fairytales designed to help people kid

themselves that we can put the world back together and carry right on as though

the aliens don’t exist.” He gave a scornful snort. “Hell, it may very well be possible, I

admit that. There they sit and ignore us except when we try and attack them, and

even then—well, do they actually pay attention to us, or do they simply hang up a

few extra flystrips?”

Bennett must have been boiling up to this for a long time, Waldron decided. He

exchanged glances with Greta, who moved one eyebrow to signal that they should

let him talk himself out before trying to argue.

Leaning back in his chair, he glanced around the room while Bennett concluded

his tirade. According to his sketchy briefing, Bennett had come here in the guise of a

former insurance salesman. Insurance, notoriously, had foundered in the aftermath

of the aliens’ arrival. He was in fact a physicist with a good research record, and

there were few such people left because so many universities and large laboratories

had been in urban fallout zones. His orders were to apply for a free trader’s

license—Grady issued the licenses—and buy in all the artifacts he could, using

government funds, to try and complete the only alien device ever to fall into human

hands whose function seemed in the least comprehensible—or, if not its function, at

any rate the pattern in which its parts ought to be arranged.

He’d done well. Moreover he had displayed considerable talent for his adopted

role. He controlled this building, he had a staff of over twenty, and—as was clear

from the lavish appointments of this penthouse—he enjoyed a very comfortable

existence after a remarkably short time.

“We’d get somewhere if we only kept our priorities straight!” he was declaring.

“I’ve said this again and again in my reports. We’re wasting our scientific resources

by deploying them so thinly. You know, some of the stuff I’ve seen imported to the

Ground recently makes me sick. Thirty-nine-inch color TV sets! Fruit machines and

one-armed bandits! My God, Grady bought himself a chess-playing computer the

other day! That sort of thing takes precious skills away from the only job we ought

to be doing—studying the aliens!”

He jumped to his feet and began to pace back and forth. “Here I am working by

myself, not even allowed to know how many other federal agents we’ve got here,

and all around me I see people trading in things that could offer us invaluable data.

I don’t mind so much about the corporation scientists. I’m friendly with quite a few

of them, in fact. I know what they buy up does find its way back to labs with decent

facilities, even though their bosses hope to make a fortune before they pass on what

they learn. Nonetheless the situation’s ridiculous. They passed that bill saying alien

artifacts were federal property, and no one takes a blind bit of notice, so we may

very possibly have the separate parts of a workable device sitting in three different

labs this very minute. But what makes me want to puke all over the floor is seeing

ignorant bastards like Grady and Radcliffe and the rest just grabbing what they can

and selling for all the market will stand. Listen, the other day I salvaged something

I hadn’t expected to find in less than a year’s hunting. I say salvaged, because if

Grady got hold of it he’d sell it for jewelry! But it’s a working artifact, damn it,

and—”

He broke off. “I don’t have any business saying that,” he corrected himself

morosely. “We don’t even know whether what the aliens build can be said to work

in any human sense.”

“But according to your reports,” Greta said, “you think you’re on the verge of

confirming that they do.”

Bennett hesitated. At length, with a nod, he resumed his chair.

“I think and hope I may be. You see, ever since I arrived here I’ve been trying to

force myself into a different frame of reference. I’ve been after an intuitive

understanding of our relationship with the aliens. A mathematician would probably

be better equipped for the job than a physicist like me, but… Well, a few weeks ago

I had a dream about something I haven’t thought of since I was a kid. My family

had a weekend place in the mountains, and they build a new freeway that ran right

past the end of our land. And the first winter the road was in use, there was a fatal

smash on an icy downgrade. They found a fox tangled up in the wreckage. So they

went out and shot his mate and cubs. The more I think about that dream, the more

I come to believe my subconscious is telling me something very important. I think

these so-called ‘cities’ are nothing of the kind. I think they’re interstellar transport

nexi.”

Greta whistled. “It could fit,” she said, staring into nowhere. “I’ve seen reports

that mention intense gravitational disturbances—intense by comparison with the

regular shift due to tides, for instance, though still only detectable with sensitive

instruments.”

“I wish to God they’d send me reports like that,” Bennett said savagely. “Your

precious Mr. Potter is ready enough to interfere with my work, but he does damned

little to help it along. Ever since I hit on this hypothesis I’ve been asking for data

about the color-patterns in the cities, because if I’m right there ought to be

recurrent cycles and maybe synchronicity between various points on Earth. But I

can’t get an answer.”

“That’s not altogether surprising,” Greta countered. “I mean, the fact that we can

get this close to the city here is pure accident. In Russia, Buishenko would shoot

down any government scientist who tried to tackle the job. So would Neveira in

Brazil, and there’s dense jungle in the way there too, while in Australia—”

“I know, I know. Waterless desert!” Bennett sighed. “And in Antarctica there’s

literally nobody at all. Oh, well: maybe when we’ve convinced people that there is a

chance of comprehending what the aliens do, we’ll get some action. And with luck it

won’t be long before that happens.”

Waldron tensed. So did Greta, who said, “Something to do with the live artifact

you just mentioned?”

“Exactly. Down in my basement strong-room—it is a strong-room, and of course

everyone assumes that’s all it is, when in fact it’s a pretty fair lab, apart from my

having to work in there by candlelight because it might attract attention if I drew

power for lamps as well as the instruments I have… Well, right in there I have—”

A buzzer sounded. Automatically Waldron and Greta looked around for a phone.

It proved to be concealed in the chair where Bennett was sitting. He spoke to its

back.

“What is it?”

“Anne Street lookout here, Mr. Bennett. Two big limousines coming this way.

Mercedes like the ones Den Radcliffe owns… Yes, they’re his O.K. I just got a clear

sight of them.”

Bennett started. “Radcliffe! What the hell can he want? Unless… Oh, no!” He

jumped to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Waldron demanded.

“If Radcliffe’s heard about that live artifact I bought… It was too precious to

report to Grady, you see, so I didn’t pay the duty on it. It would have wrecked my

pose if they’d started wondering why I didn’t resell it for jewelry. I hope to God

that’s not what brings him here. There are some swine on the Ground—like Grady

himself—but Radcliffe is a self-styled rat, and he’s determined to topple Grady

regardless of who gets trodden on. You’ve heard about him, I guess?”

Waldron and Greta exchanged glances. “We—we know him,” Greta said. “It was

because he decided to hire Jim that I got the cover I’m using.”

“You’re working for him?” All the color drained from Bennett’s face. “Then get

out—fast! Before he comes in sight of the building and recognizes you or your car!

Christ, I knew this was a mess when you said Potter was behind it, and now I have

Radcliffe on my back because of you!”

“We made sure we weren’t followed!” Waldron flared. “And we checked the car

for bugs!”

“Stuff your excuses! Move, both of you! Get lost—and don’t come back, or I

swear I’ll have my sentries gun you down!”

Chapter Seventeen

« ^ »

“Could they have spotted us?” Waldron whispered. Consciously he knew it was

absurd to keep his voice down, but it seemed natural.

Twisting around to peer through the rear window, Greta said, “I don’t think so,

but I can’t be sure.”

“We’d better get well clear anyhow,” Waldron said, and swung the car around a

sharp corner with a screech of tire rubber. “How the hell could he have tracked us

to Bennett’s?”

“Maybe he didn’t. I’m sure there isn’t a tracer on this car, and it’s a common

make and a common color. More likely Bennett was right the first time.”

“Yes, what was all that about evading tax on the live artifact?”

“Grady imposes a levy on all the free traders he licenses. He insists on all finds

being declared. If something extra-special turns up, he tries to buy it himself so he

can cream off the profit, and if the owner refuses he has to pay for the privilege of

keeping it— what the hell?”

Waldron had jammed on the brakes halfway around another corner, and the car

had skidded on a patch of gravel. Across their path, broadside on, was a large black

patrol car. Beside it stood four men, all armed, in Grady’s gaudy uniforms, who

waited silently while Waldron brought his own vehicle back under control and

halted it. Then they moved forward in puppetlike unison.

The most heavily braided of the four bent to Waldron’s window with an insincere

smile. “Morning!” he said. “I’m Captain Bayers. You’re new on the Ground, aren’t

you? I don’t recall seeing you before. Identification, please, and if you’ll take my

advice you won’t argue.”

Sweating, Waldron fumbled out his papers. Greta did the same. Bayers

examined them carefully.

“I see,” he said at length. “Hired by Den Radcliffe and came in yesterday. O.K.,

get out. Leave the car here. You can pick it up afterwards if it hasn’t been

commandeered. The governor wants a word with you. And you’d better come along

as well, Miss Smith.”

For a moment neither of them moved. Then, suggestively, Bayers dropped his

hand to his gun.

“No, I don’t want to come in and talk to Mr. Bennett,” Den Radcliffe said to the

black man who had warily accosted him. “I want him to come down here. All I want

is to show him something.”

The man made to voice an objection, changed his mind, and went back into the

lobby of the building where he could be seen talking to a wall-mounted phone.

Radcliffe lit a cigarette and glanced at Ichabod, next to Rick in the front seat. The

kid had been washed and clothed and Radcliffe’s personal physician had applied

ointment to a skin condition he was suffering from—like most of the shanty-town

children—and shot him full of vitamins and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. He had

been troublesome at first, especially at the sight of the hypodermic, but on this drive

he had sat as quiet as could be wished, fascinated by the size and comfort of the car.

The black man returned. “Mr. Bennett says—” he began, but Radcliffe snapped

at him.

“Hell, if he’s scared to show his face let him just peek out of an upstairs window!

I guess he owns a pair of binoculars, doesn’t he? Rick, open the near door and let

Ichabod out for a moment. That’ll do.”

Rick complied. Uncertain, Ichabod lowered his feet to the ground and stood

blinking in the sunlight, one hand on the car’s door handle as though afraid they

might drive off and abandon him. Radcliffe scrutinized the face of the building for

any sign of Bennett—and there he was, visible behind an upper window. At any rate

the sandy receding hair answered to the description.

“That your boss?” he asked the black main, pointing.

“That’s Mr. Bennett, yes.”

“He’ll go on being Mr. Bennett,” Radcliffe said, and curled his lip. “But he won’t

be your boss much longer.”

He ordered Rick to help Ichabod back in the car, and subsided with a grunt of

satisfaction into the soft upholstery. He had been concerned about Corey Bennett as

a possible rival for some while; the newcomer was making too much of a mark far

too quickly. The sight of Ichabod, from whom he had bought a live relic which he

then failed to declare—Radcliffe had verified that thanks to a spy in Grady’s

financial records office—could be relied on to make him thoroughly rattled. It

would not be surprising if he now quietly decamped. Alternatively he might beg

Radcliffe not to tell Grady of his transgression. Either way, he would never pose a

threat again.

It was all working out very neatly.

Camouflaged guard-posts protecting the approaches to the Governor’s Mansion

shot challenges at the car over its radiophone. Bayers replied crisply and the driver

did not slow down.

Last night Waldron and Greta had seen the house from a distance. Certainly it

was palatial; otherwise it had appeared ordinary enough, an extravagant exercise in

mock-classical idiom probably dating back to the early years of the century. As they

drew closer, however, they realized it had been turned into a fortress, its façade

reinforced with concrete false-walls, its roof screened with armor-plate, its windows

eyelidded by heavy steel shutters poised to drop down at a moment’s notice. The

grounds were densely planted with hedges and shrubberies, but gaps revealed

tantalizing glimpses of the private army Grady maintained—men drilling by squads

on a graveled pathway, the crew of an armored car servicing their guns, six or seven

tracked troop-carriers in a tidy line.

At one point the driver swerved sharply to the left, then to the right again, for no

apparent reason. Noticing his passengers’ surprise, Bayers chuckled.

“Mined, just here,” he said. “In case you were wondering. The governor doesn’t

much care for—ah—uninvited callers.”

And he added after a pause, “Don’t worry, though. We have them set so they

won’t go off simply by being trodden on. Mr. Grady likes to take a stroll around the

place now and then, you see. And he’s a lot heavier than you or me.”

Waldron feigned amusement, though in fact he was too tense to think of

anything except the central question: what could Grady want with them?

Before the portico of the house, other cars were parked: one snow-white Rolls

Royce, another patrol-car similar to this, and a red convertible. As they rolled to a

halt, a man in impeccable clothes emerged from the house, escorted by an armed

guard, and got into the red car. So did the guard, who seemed to be issuing

directions. Waldron wondered how many visitors had been accidentally blown up

thanks to someone’s carelessness.

Bayers and his men led them to the door, handed them over to the resident

guards, and turned away, Bayers giving a mocking wave by way of farewell.

The hallway was like a Hollywood reconstruction of a Byzantine palace, marred

by piles of loot along the walls. It was clearly loot, even at first glance: pictures

wrapped in sacking, rough wooden crates leaking excelsior, furniture draped with

plastic sheet. Armed men were everywhere, suspicious, hard-eyed.

Their new escort spoke with a thin man in a black suit. They waited while he

vanished and reappeared, beckoning, then followed him down a long corridor

towards the back of the house. Greta’s hand found Waldron’s and clutched it

tightly.

Double doors were opened by yet more guards; the doors were of beautiful

natural oak, with handles and fingerplates of gold. And here, at a desk bigger than

the legendary Pershing desk, framed by a vast window beyond which sun lay bright

on long lawns and immaculate flowerbeds.

“Governor Grady!” their escort rasped, and threw up a perfectly drilled salute.

Perhaps it was Bennett’s description of the governor as a swine which had caused

him to expect a gross man, Waldron reasoned. He wasn’t gross. He was big, but

well-proportioned: six-foot-three or four tall, with smooth black hair combed over a

widening bald patch, a heavy Teddy Roosevelt moustache, red cheeks, sharp dark

eyes. He wore a shirt the color of ground cinnamon; a cream jacket and a black

cravat were tossed on one corner of the immense desk, half-concealing a bank of

phones and intercoms.

Notoriously he was a self-indulgent man. In front of him was a tray of bottles

and glasses, along with a case of eight-inch cigars and a stack of colorfully wrapped

goodies, chocolates, liqueur chocolates and candies. But he did not exude the aura

of a decadent feudal lordling. He looked precisely like a man capable of carving out

a private empire while most of humanity was on the run like so many frightened

rabbits.

He was not alone; there were two pretty girl secretaries sitting on chairs against

the wall, one with a notebook and the other with a recorder, while at another much

smaller desk a blond man in gray was studying the new arrivals unblinkingly. After

a moment he produced a camera and took two quick pictures. But Grady’s presence

reduced these others to less than life-size.

“Mr. Waldron and Miss Smith,” the escort said. Grady gave a nod.

“Get them chairs. They may prove cooperative, and I believe in giving people the

benefit of the doubt.”

Chairs were promptly provided. Mechanically Waldron and Greta sat down.

“Right,” Grady said, leaning back and waving one of his cigars absently in the

air, a gesture which brought the nearer of the girls hurrying to light it. “I guess

you’re wondering”—puff—“what I brought you here for, hm?” Puff, and a mutter of

thanks. “So I’ll go straight to the point. I don’t have time to waste, you know. I have

the Ground to run with an estimated population of nearly a million, and I run it,

believe me—keep my finger on its pulse night and day. Or I wouldn’t be here. So tell

me: what’s cooking between Corey Bennett and that bugger Radcliffe?”

There was silence. Waldron’s mouth was absolutely dry.

“Ah, come on!” Grady barked. “I know you’re new on Radcliffe’s payroll, I know

you left Bennett’s half an hour ago, I know Radcliffe went there but left again

directly because you’d already gone. On my Ground I’m like God, you know. Not a

sparrow falls but I get to hear. Well?”

Once more, silence.

“This is your last chance,” Grady said eventually. “You don’t know me yet, do

you? You’re too new here. Think you can keep secrets from me! Then listen. This

morning comes in the boss relidge, the screwball who goes by the name of Brother

Mark, to fink on some of his own flock—a guy called Sims, Greg Sims, and his wife

Martha. Report is, they have a kid name of Ichabod who found a live relic and sold

it to Corey Bennett. Bennett’s a free trader. I license free traders on conditions,

including that they declare what they find. Bennett didn’t declare any live relic. Also

I hear that last night the same kid found another one and Radcliffe tried to take it

off him. Were you there?” he interrupted himself, catching some betraying reaction

on Greta’s face. “Thought you might have been. It’d take some special reason like

inducting important new staff to keep Radcliffe away from his bedmates at that

time of night!” He chuckled coarsely.

“Now today you go down to see Bennett, and you’re the first birds to tangle in the

net I’m putting around him. The second would have been Den Radcliffe and his

men—except I thought, why the hell put Radcliffe’s back up? He’s a conceited

bugger, thinks I don’t know he dreams of the day when he’ll be here instead of me.

Let him dream; he’ll fall over his own feet in the end. Also he hasn’t declared any

live relic lately, either, and particularly not the one he took off the kid last night.

Brother Mark says the angels came and took it back, but he’d say that anyway. No,

my guess is that Radcliffe and Bennett are trying to screw me, and I don’t propose

to let ‘em.”

He leaned in fake-confidential fashion on the desk. “I don’t blame you for being

taken in by Radcliffe’s lies, you know. I’d be the first to admit that he runs an

impressive operation. But if he snowed you with stories about how he’s going to

move me over, he was conning you the way he cons himself. He’s the one due to go

crash—and soon, too. So if you don’t want to be dragged down with him—”

Waldron took a deep breath. “Mr. Grady, we only arrived yesterday, you know.

Mr. Radcliffe hasn’t even briefed me on my duties yet. I can say one thing, though:

he didn’t pick up any live relic last night. It did vanish. I guess it—well, maybe it

sort of burst.”

“That’s a good one,” Grady said. “Tell me another. Tell me for instance you just

went to pay a social call on Bennett, hm?”

The words hung on the air as though engraved in fire, and no sound followed

them. Waldron glanced past Grady’s shoulder and froze rock-still, and knew

without looking that Greta and the secretaries and the guards and the fair-haired

man were staring at the window too. As though moving in deep mud, slowly and

with infinite effort, Grady also turned his head.

Coming up the long sweep of lawn, not on the ground but—above? No, somehow

around it, around any ordinary direction of travel. What? Something. Something

hurtfully bright to the eyes. Something moving within itself without relation to its

forward progress. Something as alien and as terrible as the monstrous city they had

gone to see last night…

Chapter Eighteen

« ^ »

Sweating, Bennett twisted the combination on the door of the strong-room which

occupied more than two-thirds of the basement of his home. He knew the door to

the stairs was shut and bolted, and he had welded steel bars across the elevator

shaft himself. Nonetheless he kept looking over his shoulder expecting to find that

he was being watched.

There was only one explanation for the charade Radcliffe had mounted. He knew

about the live relic Ichabod had found, and proposed to betray its existence to

Grady.

Damn fool that I was, to lie and hide it! But what else could I have done? Grady

would have wanted to know when I sold it and to whom, and if I’d delayed he’d

have started wondering why, and if I’d faked a sale he’d probably have

investigated the buyer because there aren’t many people who can afford a live

relic.

The door of the strong-room creaked as it opened. The hinges needed oiling. The

hell with them. He struck a light for his candles. Crazy nuisance having to use them,

but if he were to run a thicker cable than would be called for by a few lamps into

what was supposedly no more than a store for money and valuables, someone might

start asking inconvenient questions. Loyalties were fragile here on Grady’s Ground;

every servant seemed to dream of being a master, and he had had to let himself be

regarded as a miser whose favorite pastime was gloating over his possessions rather

than risk sharing the secret of his laboratory with anybody.

And there it was: the climax of his achievement.

When it came to studying the aliens’ artifacts, conventional methods were

virtually useless. They could be weighed, measured, examined through optical

microscopes… but try for X-ray diffraction patterns and their internal structure

would prove opaque; test them with reagents and even under fluorine the surface

would be stubbornly unaffected; bombard them with neutrons and there would be

no disturbance of the flow, as though the particles had encountered a perfect

vacuum…

As though they’re not matter at all! What then? Energy somehow stabilized

into a nonentropic condition? Words!

What could creatures capable of such marvels have had to fear from mankind’s

petty stocks of H and A-bombs? Maybe the equivalent of the static electricity

generated by people wearing synthetic fibers, guilty of screwing up the

micro-circuitry of computers!

So the only possible course was to piece random items together, with infinite

patience: choose from hundreds, even thousands, of broken and inoperative odds

and ends those which looked as though they might fit.

Like these.

It began with a sort of bowl, a foot across, having on its upper surface two

indentations following the tautochronic curve, one larger, one smaller. The larger

held a half-egg form with three more irregular objects on top; the smaller held the

thin near-ovoid he had acquired from Ichabod. It was—well, it was somehow

complete, not in a technical sense (for he still had no least inkling of what if

anything it was for) but in an esthetic one. He recalled how his hands had shaken

when he set the live artifact in place, thinking that the whole assembly would

perhaps vibrate or glow or—or something. It had not done so, and he was gloomily

being forced to the conclusion that the three irregular objects should in fact have

been one, combined, or conjoined, or fused. But how could they be repaired, if

indeed they were broken? One could not weld, or glue, or braze, this impossible

substance…

No time to stand around brooding, he told himself. He had to get this prize of his

off Grady’s Ground, and not later than tonight. It should be in a proper government

lab. All the aliens’ scrap and rubbish should go to a proper lab!

He needed a crate. What could he pack the stuff into?

On the verge of turning to peer under a bench for suitable containers—he was

sure he had some lying around—he checked, startled. Was something happening to

the… device?

He stared. Yes! From the small glowing ovoid, the pattern of light was now

oozing—permeating the bowl-like base, spreading into the larger ovoid, infecting

the three objects piled above!

“Oh my God!” Bennett whispered.

For the process was not stopping when it reached the limits of the alien

substance. It was spreading still further—staining the very air with radiance and

taking on the shape of something as incomprehensible, as majestic and as fearful as

the place from which its scattered parts had come. He gasped… and the inhalation

drew with it some of the stained and colored air.

There was a sensation like a blow delivered to—not his physical brain, but—his

abstract mind, and he collapsed on the floor without another sound.

When he woke, it was to total darkness and total silence. He cried out, and only

echoes answered. Clumsily and timidly he rose to his feet; by touch he found his way

to the stairs and up them to the door which was still locked and bolted. All he

wanted was to get back to light and fresh air. He did not pause to grope along the

bench where he had assembled the artifact and check whether it was still there.

All the lights in the building were out. No one came in response to his moans.

The floor of the lobby was littered with broken glass and his shoes crunched at every

step. Beyond the doors light beckoned; the neon signs were still ablaze in Gradyville.

He moved towards them like an insect courting a lamp.

“There! That’s him!” a voice shouted from the shadows outside, and a flashlight

beam stabbed him in the eyes. Men came rushing, while he screamed and flailed his

arms in vain, and they dragged him feet first down his own front steps to spit on

him, and beat him, and kick him, the blasphemer who had profaned a holy relic

and brought the wrath of the angelic hosts on Gradyville.

When they had finished, they threw him in a ditch half-full of wet mud.

The intercom on Potter’s desk buzzed. He had been gnawing at nails already

bitten to the quick and staring at the black rectangle of the window, punctuated

only by stars.

They had ordered a blackout for tonight, preparing for the worst.

More than likely someone wants to know why I haven’t drawn the curtains to

hide the glow of my cigarette.

“What is it?”

“Air Marshal Fyffe and his aide are here, sir.”

“Send them right in,” Potter said, and rose to draw the curtains and switch on

the lights; one could hardly receive the acting Chief of Continental Defense in a

starlit office.

One glance at the face of the elderly man who entered told him that the news was

bad.

“Buishenka’s taken Vladivostok!” he exclaimed.

The Air Marshal nodded. “Worse than that. Better let Farnsworth give you the

details—he heard them direct.”

The younger man, in RCAF squadron leader’s uniform, who had come in with

Fyffe passed his brown leather gloves from hand to hand nervously as he spoke.

“Well, sir, it’s pretty difficult to get a coherent picture. Apparently there have been

massive defections on the government side, and their forces are completely

disorganized, so Mr. Abramovitch’s contacts haven’t been getting through at the

agreed times. We have jamming on their regular wavelength, which suggests—”

“For heaven’s sake, man!” Fyffe rapped. “Stop maundering and come to the

point!”

Farnsworth reddened. “Sorry, sir. I was just trying to make it clear that we’re

only getting scraps of data. But we do know Buishenko took Vladivostok five or six

hours ago against negligible resistance, which means he’ll have suffered very few

casualties, whereas we hoped he might have to lick his wounds for a bit.. And, just

to cap the rest, our naval forces standing by off the coast have been attacked with a

new weapon.”

The words took time to register. Potter felt as though liquid air had been poured

into his skull, freezing his mental processes. “Something he got from the aliens?” he

whispered at last.

“Presumably,” Fyffe grunted. “At first, from the description I was given, I

thought it must be something conventional like the ‘flaming onions’ the Germans

used for metropolitan defense in World War II. But we’ve had a few TV pictures

now, and they’re definitely not ordinary missiles that he’s using. They’re large,

diffuse, glowing balls that last anything up to a quarter of an hour. They seem to

pop out of nowhere. They get sucked into a plane’s jet intake, or drift down a ship’s

ventilator, and explode.”

“Our reports indicate that the entire air-defense system around Vladivostok was

taken out with these things,” Farnsworth amplified. “After that Buishenko moved

up in division strength, following a feint towards a point on the coast further north,

and surrounded the city and its port. Then he dropped paratroops. But nothing like

as many as we know he can call on. I’m afraid he must be reserving the rest for us.”

“Invasion?” Potter spat out the word as though it had burned his tongue.

“We’ve got to be prepared for one,” Fyffe confirmed. In the same moment the

intercom buzzed. Potter snapped the switch.

“What the hell do you want? I’m busy!”

“Message for the Air Marshal, sir. We have a Cardinal on radar at sixty-five

thousand feet.” The voice sounded vaguely puzzled. “I’m told just to say that, and

he’ll understand.”

“Thank you,” Potter said. And to Fyffe: “The Cardinal—isn’t that their

ultra-high-altitude spy plane?”

Fyffe nodded.

“Can we shoot it down?”

“No, we can’t.” Fyffe’s shoulders hunched as though they bore the cares of the

entire world. “We have nothing on the whole western seaboard that could reach

sixty-five thousand and intercept.”

“I presume this means that your Mr. Congreve was right about Dr. Jespersen,”

Farnsworth said. “It can’t be simple coincidence that Buishenko has concentrated

all his efforts for the past week on moving eastwards.”

“No, he’s obviously following a lead. And if Pitirim was responsible for him

getting hold of a weapon based on alien principles, no wonder he’s desperate to get

the boy back!” Potter rubbed his weary eyes. “So we’d better move him out of here,

right away. Air Marshal?”

“I’ve laid on a plane,” Fyffe said. “It’s on ten-minute standby. Dr. Porpentine

thinks the strain will drive him back to the state he was in when he arrived, you

know, but Dr. Zworykin thinks he’ll be all right provided he and the girl—what’s her

name?—Natasha go with him and keep on reassuring him in Russian.” He

hesitated. “We haven’t been told which flight plan to issue yet, though.”

“We’ll go straight to Grady’s Ground,” Potter said. “Away from an alien city, he’s

an idiot and nothing more. If it’s true that Buishenko has a brand-new weapon, I

don’t think anybody can doubt that we’ve got to make use of his talent too.”

“But it’ll be courting disaster if one of the free traders hears about him,”

Farnsworth objected. “I’m told they run private armies and sometimes they fight

regular battles. If Pitirim really is such a prize—”

“Courting disaster,” Potter cut in, “is what the human race has been doing for

centuries. Should we choose to be different? Besides, what you said is only part of

the picture. Grady runs his empire with a tight leash. Some of our own agents are

settled there, doing research and keeping us posted, and they all say life is much

quieter than it was a couple of years ago. What’s more, if Buishenko does invade,

Grady will have a refugee movement on his hands, and I think we can hole out

with—”

The intercom buzzed again. “For the Air Marshal, sir! Forward naval units report

radar contact with massive wave of aircraft, speed height and direction consistent

with airborne… invasion?”

“Where are they now?” Fyffe barked.

“ETA given as plus four hours fifteen minutes.”

“Four hours!” Fyffe looked at Potter. “You’d better hurry, then, if you want to be

on Grady’s Ground by then. The best of luck, anyway. They call this the Age of

Miracles, don’t they? I hope one turns up. Because otherwise—” He turned over a

gnarled hand as though spilling a little heap of sand.

“What the hell can they be shifting those troops in?” Farnsworth muttered, half

to himself. “Surely he can’t be building his own planes yet!”

Potter thumbed the intercom again. “Call the hospital, tell Dr. Zworykin to get

Pitirim to the airport for immediate evacuation. Say I’ll meet them there. And have

my car at the front door in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Uh—where are you going, sir? In case I’m asked.”

“Grady’s Ground,” Potter said, for the hell of it. “As things stand, we’re a damned

sight safer dealing with the aliens than with our own lunatic species!”

Chapter Nineteen

« ^ »

Waldron groaned. The act of drawing breath for the groan hurt acutely, because

all the muscles of his chest and belly were terribly bruised. But the pain was

welcome as evidence that he was still alive.

He opened his eyes and saw only darkness. Something heavy, he realized, was

pressing down on his legs, and at once he felt panic in two successive stages: first,

thinking of being weighed down under rubble or a beam, deadfall-fashion; second,

because the thing on his legs moved slightly and conjured up inconceivable horrors.

There were noises in the gloomy night. In the distance, he heard

explosions—perhaps gunfire. Closer, there were scrabbling sounds, crunching

sounds, scraping sounds. With slow, patient effort he identified them, shaping

words with his stiff lips to make sure he understood himself: Feet moving in gravel

or suchlike, a door being forced wide, someone stubbing his toe…

Abruptly there was light, so brilliant it stung his eyes, and a booming

exclamation.

“So he is dead! I couldn’t believe it!”

Who’s dead? I’m not! I’m NOT! Waldron found his voice, deep in a throat as dry

as a dustbowl, and uttered a meaningless croak.

“What was that?” another man said sharply, and then the first speaker.

“It’s Waldron! What the hell’s he doing here? Look, behind that pile of furniture.

And his girlfriend, too.”

I know those voices … Oh, yes. Rick Chandler. And the other’s Tony, who drove

the truck.

“Get them out,” Rick ordered. “Maybe they can tell us what’s been going on.”

Did he say girlfriend… ? Oh! Oh, of course! This heavy and moving thing across

my legs: a human body. Yes. Greta. I— I somehow remember her as a soft weight

…

Figures half-seen in the clash between total darkness and tremendous

glare—they had brought a searchlight that required two men to carry it, one for the

power-pack and one for the reflector—moved and grasped and helped to stand.

Waldron found himself on his feet, one arm around dizzily swaying Greta, whose

face still showed the imbecilic emptiness of shock.

“The boss has been asking after you two,” Rick said. “Grady’s mansion was the

last place we expected you to turn up. Don’t try any tricks—I’m warning you. He’ll

want a lot of explaining done, you know.”

“Who’s—who’s dead?” Waldron forced out. “Is it Grady?”

“See for yourself,” Rick grunted, and gestured for the man with the light to turn

his beam.

Where Grady had sat commandingly at his enormous desk, there was a hole in

the floor. Bright shards of glass from the shattered windows overlay everything with

a spangling of diamond-dust. Half in, half out of the hole Grady lay, his skull

cracked like a boiled egg.

“What killed him?” Greta whimpered, clinging to Waldron as to a life-raft of

sanity in an ocean of madness.

“You’re asking me?” Rick countered sardonically. “But you were here when it

happened!”

“Rick!” Tony said. He had gone closer to the body, but not to look at it—to peer

down between the dangling legs into a pit which had been revealed below. “Rick,

what do you suppose this was, under the floor?”

“Get the guy we caught in the driveway,” Rick said. “He was one of Grady’s top

security men, so he may know.”

There was a coming and going, and then from the direction of the double doors a

man was thrust forward limping, his hands lashed behind him, his gaudy uniform

dirty and a smear of blood drying on his forehead. Waldron recognized the patrol

captain who had escorted them here—when? Yesterday, earlier today? He had no

idea how much time had passed.

What’s the name? Bay-something... Bayers!

“There’s a big hole under the floor there,” Rick was saying. “What was it? It

didn’t get there by accident.” And when Bayers didn’t answer at once, he added,

“Spit it out! You can see your boss is dead, so make things easy for yourself, why

not?”

Bayers seemed to wilt. He said in a thin voice, “That was the governor’s vault. He

kept his best purchases in it. Mostly live artifacts, I believe.”

“Live artifacts,” Rick repeated slowly. “Yes, that figures—as much as anything

does.” He rounded on Waldron. “Say, what the hell were you doing here?”

“Ask Bayers,” Waldron sighed. “He stopped us as we were driving around and

told us to leave the car and come here because Grady wanted to talk to us.”

“Is that true?” Rick demanded, and Bayers gave a resigned nod.

“I see. So what actually happened? Did you see it?”

Waldron hunted through a dazing mental fog, and images began to emerge.

There had been the—the shining thing, moving towards the house…

“I think,” he said at last, “one of the aliens came to get his property back.”

He had expected Rick to react with surprise, but instead he countered, “You

mean like when the chief threw up that shiny ball last night and it just vanished. It

fits, I guess.”

“And the churches too,” Tony grunted. Greta was shaking dreadfully; reflexively

stroking her head to soothe her, Waldron looked a question, and Rick amplified.

“All hell’s been let loose since you’ve been unconscious. The relidges are up in

arms because they say their churches have been looted—you know they had a lot of

live relics, and they’ve all been taken. Then there was this deal where Corey Bennett

bought one off the Sims kid, and something happened at his place like what’s

happened here. We found it empty, all the lights out, the staff run off in panic,

nobody around but a bunch of relidges chanting a—an exorcism, I guess. Grady’s

staff ran off, too. Or tried to.” With a sour grin at Bayers.

“Dirty bastards,” Bayers said. “No call for them to hand the Ground to Radcliffe

on a platter!”

“But that’s what’s happened, isn’t it?” Rick said. Bayers’s answer was to spit

sidelong into the wreckage of Grady’s desk.

“O.K., let’s get home,” Rick said after a pause. “Can you walk O.K., Waldron?

No, you look shaky. Someone give the guy an arm, someone help Miss Smith too.

Move it now—the boss is going to be very interested in what they have to say.”

“Orlando! Orlando?‘

The words jolted Potter out of the half-sleep into which he had finally managed

to subside despite the maddening drone of the lumbering ‘copter’s engines. They

had decided on a ’copter for the evacuation because it was uncertain what

night-landing facilities existed on Grady’s Ground. The governor was known to

maintain a small private air-fleet, but it consisted mainly of helicopters used for

chasing smugglers across no-man’s-land and a couple of executive jets reserved for

him and his personal staff. Servicing and fueling modern airliners or military

planes was probably beyond even his astonishing private resources, so he had not

kept up his one available commercial airport, and their landing might have to be

made on a highway or rough ground.

“What the hell… ?” Potter grumbled, then realized that it was Congreve bending

over him; they had included him in the party because they wanted to have as many

Russian-speakers around Pitirim as possible. He tensed. “Is something wrong?”

In a single quick glance he surveyed the interior of the cabin. Nothing was

obviously amiss. Forward, the Canadian pilot Fyffe had assigned them—a young

man named Stoller—with Natasha next to him as copilot; Pitirim stretched out in a

semi-coma, watched over by Zworykin; nearby Porpentine was dozing, his head

against the shoulder of Abramovitch who was also sleeping. Apparently normal.

“I’m afraid there may be,” Congreve whispered. “Come over here to the radio. I’ll

show you.”

Taking great care not to trip over Porpentine’s out-sprawled legs, Potter

scrambled awkwardly to his feet and accompanied Congreve to the navigator’s

table, over which their radio was fixed.

“Listen,” Congreve invited, handing him a pair of earphones. “That’s Grady’s

station.”

Nothing was audible but a strong hum. “Are you sure?” Potter demanded.

“As sure as I can be. We have a directional antenna. The ground-location checks.

So does the frequency. So does the power output. But Grady’s supposed to operate a

round-the-clock commercial sound service, and since I first picked up the signal I’ve

heard nothing but the carrier.”

Potter fought weariness to the back of his mind. “Uh—have you checked the

other wavebands? Could the dial be miscalibrated?”

“I’ve done everything I can think of,” Congreve broke in. He twisted the tuning

knob with angry fingers. “Here—here’s Federal Midwest out of Chicago, which

ought to be harder to catch than Grady’s station right now. Here’s Federal Far-West

out of Spokane. I’ve had all three Canadian services—hell, I’ve had the Mexican

government broadcast out of Baja California, clear as a bell! But Grady’s, which

ought to be loud enough to shake the ship, is—” He snapped his fingers.

“How far are we from the Ground now?” Potter demanded.

“That’s the hell of it. We’re practically in sight of the alien city. Up ahead there’s

a faint glow through low cloud which might be a reflection from it, I guess. I never

saw it before. You ever seen it?”

“Once,” Potter said curtly. “After the first of our troops mutinied and turned

back—the night they burned Bemidji, in fact. I was sent out to survey the situation,

and I saw it then. From the air.” He hesitated. “I never wanted to see it again, to be

frank.”

Natasha called out suddenly. “Yes, that must be it! Mike, I can see it clearly now.

Can you still not raise Grady’s station?”

“No!” Congreve said. And to Potter: “So what can we do?”

“Set course to skirt the alien city to the south. Keep a good distance. See if you

can find any transmission at all—police band, hire-car service, anything. If you still

draw a blank, we’ll just have to announce ourselves.”

Congreve stared. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“What else can we do, goddamn it?” Potter snapped. “Grady’s proud of his radio

and TV service. Things must have blown up in his face if they’re off the air. I don’t

want to put down blind, late at night, into heaven knows what—rioting, maybe!”

“Yes, but—”

“Mr. Potter!” Stoller, leaning excitedly forward, was pointing through the nose

window. “Down there—flashes on the ground. Looks like rifle fire. And there’s a

burning building, too.”

“Sure it’s not a reflection from the alien city?”

“No, that’s away to port. I’m setting a course to the south—I overheard what you

just said. My guess it that we’re practically over Gradyville.”

Potter hesitated fractionally, then barked at Congreve. “Mike, put out a call. Try

the old North Dakota State Police frequency—we know Grady uses that. Identify us

as a federal-authorized flight and ask for a landing site.”

“But… !”

“Do as I say!” Potter wiped his face; sweat had sprung out and he was itching.

Reluctant, Congreve obeyed. For several minutes there was nothing to hear.

Ahead, the burning building grew clearer, and at last they flew over it, jouncing in

the uprush of hot air. On the streets which the flames illuminated, figures no larger

than ants were scurrying about.

“This is worse than I ever expected,” Stoller muttered.

“Look! Look!” Natasha had been peering into the darkness with binoculars; now

she was pointing to starboard. “It’s another helicopter, closing on us fast!”

“Mike, call them!” Potter cried.

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Congreve retorted. And in the same second, a voice burst

from the radio, harsh and authoritative.

“Federal ‘copter! Federal ’copter! Land at once!”

Potter snatched at the mike. “Hello! Hello! This is the federal ‘copter. We wish to

land at a safe site and be conducted to Governor Grady. We can’t land blind in the

middle of a riot, or whatever is going on. Over!”

There was no reply for endless seconds. And then, with the horrifying

inconsequentiality of nightmare, a yammering string of flashes lit the dark shape of

the other ‘copter and a line of holes sowed itself along the wall of the cabin and the

last slug of nine tore open the chest of Pitirim.

Chapter Twenty

« ^ »

It was still hard for Den Radcliffe to believe, but it appeared to be true: no one

else on the Ground had made preparations against the chance that Grady might

drop dead or be assassinated, and consequently the rulership of this territory was

falling into his hands like a ripe fruit off a shaken branch.

He sat alone at the custom-built electronic desk he had had installed in an

underground sanctum beneath his house. From this one console, he could not only

sweep the neighborhood with hidden TV cameras and maintain radio

communication with any of his forces, but also direct the fire of his outlying

fortifications, erect barricades, raise and lower steel shutters over all the windows,

and in the last resort detonate any or all of over a thousand mines.

But he wasn’t going to need his armaments. Not by present accounts, anyhow.

It had been an incredibly confusing day, but sense was finally emerging from the

chaos of it all. The information Rick Chandler had radioed in from his car, outside

the governor’s mansion, had completed another section of the overall picture, and

doubtless when they arrived Waldron and his woman would fill in the smaller

details.

Meantime he had the chance to savor the taste of power.

Pushing a stud on the side of the desk, he said, “Bring me some cigars and a jug

of Martinis, and make it fast!”

Then he leaned back with a feeling of work well done.

First had come garbled news of something amiss at Grady’s place—the staff

panicking, the private army scattering, forgetful even of their weapons, carrying

only some crazy tale about aliens attacking the house. That had been enough to

spur Radcliffe into action. His own personal army was both smaller and less

conspicuous than Grady’s, but his men were still chortling over the smooth way the

governor had been cheated when that consignment of valuable goods was

“hijacked”. Two or three score people beside himself had shared the profit on that

swindle, and when he alerted them they were ready to trust his judgment implicitly.

Then followed the uprising among the relidges, sparked by another similar

report, this time to the effect that angels had invaded Brother Mark’s church and

another or possibly several others, and driven out the worshippers with flaming

swords. One rumor claimed that Brother Mark was dead, but so far that had not

been confirmed.

Those of Grady’s forces—chiefly car-patrolmen—who had not yet heard what had

happened to him, because nobody at the mansion had dared announce the news

over the radio, found themselves inundated by mobs of frantic relidges. That tied

them down very conveniently.

By early afternoon a good deal of street-fighting was in progress; there had also

been much looting and a little arson. The relidges had attempted to storm the radio

and TV stations and inform the unbelievers that the wrath of the heavenly hosts was

about to descend on Gradyville, and since late afternoon there had been no

transmissions on either sound or vision. The defenders had held out until sundown,

but either they had been too busy to go near a microphone, or—more likely—they

were afraid to do so, just in case Grady proved to be alive after all. If he were, his

vengeance on anybody who had broadcast a report of his death would certainly be

terrible.

Well, by this time they had been disabused of that idea. Radcliffe’s forces were in

possession, and waiting for a land-line to be patched in over which he planned to

announce his accession to the governorship later tonight, when things had quieted

down. He had midnight in mind, since it felt like an aptly symbolic time.

The relidges had also carried out a series of sporadic attacks on the governor’s

mansion, but had been repelled by a handful of desperate or disbelieving “heroes”

and after losing a good few dead had wandered off in disgust. Also around

nightfall, Rick and his men had moved in and disarmed the defenders, who were

well aware by then that Grady was in fact dead.

Other relidges, with the plain intention of visiting Brother Mark’s curse of last

night on its designated victim—since the angels seemed to have got hold of the

wrong end of the stick—had marched on Radcliffe’s own home. But they had easily

been beaten off. It was from wounded survivors that he had obtained a great part of

his information about the day’s events.

Still other relidges had made for Corey Bennett’s place, and there they had not

met with such a hot reception. Radcliffe regarded Bennett as the most likely among

the smaller free traders to keep his head and try to profit by the crisis; after what

had happened this morning, moreover, his wits would very probably be at their

sharpest. But when a party of his men warily approached Bennett’s home after dark

they found the building empty, and a gang of relidges chanting hymns on the

sidewalk nearby, smug in their belief that proper vengeance had been wrought on

its former owner.

And not one of the other free traders seemed to have reacted positively to the

challenge. Radcliffe chuckled aloud—and then grew grave. It was as though a voice

had whispered in his ear the phrase he had quoted to Waldron: “Remember you’re

only a man!”

Yes, I must drive out and look at the alien city as soon as it’s safe for me to leave

here. If we’ve finally provoked the aliens into paying attention to us, I may not

enjoy my inheritance for long.

Angrily he tried to stifle the thought. He wanted to relish his success at least for a

few hours. When a knock came at the door he welcomed it, shouting loudly, “Come

in!”

And here, bringing a box of cigars and a jug and glass and bowl of olives on a

tray, unclothed as he had ordered her to remain unless told otherwise… Maura

Knight.

Wordlessly she set the tray down at his side, and stood back, looking hopeful.

Of… ? Praise, possibly. Or even punishment. Just so long as he paid her attention.

That was her sole reward for living now.

He stared at her, and as though a maggot were gnawing at his brain he felt his

triumph turn bitter and putrid. He recalled how he had told Waldron that he was

going to get what he’d paid for, one way or another. And he’d done that. She would

never refuse him anything for the rest of her life.

Yet he felt cheated. Awareness of that fact had begun to claw its way up from his

subconscious yesterday, when he learned that Waldron was on the Ground; that

was why he had drunk so much last evening. The same disappointment was

undermining his pleasure at winning control of Gradyville.

What drives me? The same need people outside feel, to pretend they are

masters of something, or of someone, when compared to the aliens we’re mere

vermin? But I’m different from them. I’m better. I admit that I’m a rat.

It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t convince himself. The sour thoughts flowed on:

I didn’t win this woman. The drug won her for me. I didn’t win Gradyville. The

aliens gave it to me. What the hell have I ever done that I can be proud of?

Abruptly he realized that someone was peeking in through the door, which

Maura had left ajar, and glanced around. The intruder was Ichabod, looking

shy—as ever—but determined.

“Mister, can Maura come back now, please?” he ventured. “I—I’m kind of scared

after all that shooting, and there’s nobody else for me to talk to. I guess I’m

lonesome without my folks.”

What became of the Sims couple in today’s riots? Did they get shot down, or

wouldn’t the relidges have anything to do with them? Maybe they were attacked

by their former friends! They’d have been an easy target.

Emboldened, fascinated by the contents of the room, Ichabod had advanced

across the threshold. With a quick glance at Radcliffe, as though seeking his

permission for even such a trivial action, Maura held her hand out for him to grasp.

“You like Maura, don’t you?” Radcliffe said gruffly, more to still his dismal train

of thought than because he cared about the answer. Ichabod blushed tremendously

and gazed at the floor.

“Y-yes,” he said in a near-whisper. “I—uh—I always wanted to see a pretty lady

without any clothes on. I did try once. I went around the back of Mrs. Harrison’s

house and looked in the window, but Mr. Harrison caught me and beat me, and

then he took me off home and my pa beat me too!” He giggled loudly. “But she

shows anybody, and I don’t feel I’m a dirty little sinner for liking it!”

Radcliffe felt a blast of laughter charging up his throat. He slapped the smooth

metal of his desk and whooped and gasped and hooted and almost slid off his chair,

while tears poured down his cheeks and the others, at first timidly and then with

gusto, joined in.

When he could, he said, “Oh, Ichabod, that’s the medicine I needed! God, I don’t

know when I last laughed like that— years ago! Yes, have your Maura back by all

means. Have her all to yourself for as long as you like. That is”—with sudden total

calmness—“if she doesn’t mind.”

“No, Mr. Radcliffe,” the dull voice said. “I don’t mind.”

And, still holding the boy’s limp hand, she led him out.

A moment after the door closed, the radiophone in the desk buzzed, and he

recalled himself to business.

“What is it?”

“Mr. Radcliffe, a ‘copter’s approaching Gradyville from the west. It looks like a

Canadian machine, but someone’s calling on our regular patrol frequency claiming

that it’s a federal-authorized flight and demanding to be taken to Governor Grady.”

“Hah! They’re due for a disappointment, then, aren’t they? Where are you?”

“About a mile from them, sir. This is Keene, in the Sikorsky. I’ve been on survey

duty. Base just contacted me and said to go look the intruder over.”

“Well, order them to land at once. Are you armed?”

“Just a submachine gun, sir. I mean that we have shells for. We had to use up

most of our ammo on a relidge riot. I guess a couple of shots will show we mean

business.” And a little more faintly: “Chuck, you heard that, did you? I’ll close the

range.”

“Just a moment,” Radcliffe grunted. A light was flashing on the desk now,

indicating that someone was approaching the outer defense perimeter. He spoke to

an internal phone.

“Who’s coming in?” he demanded.

“Rick Chandler’s party, sir,” a voice crackled. “Bringing Waldron and the girl.”

“Fine! Put ‘em in the long room. I’ll be with them in a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

Radcliffe turned back to the radio. “Keene! I’ll leave this to your initiative. Shoot

through their rotor-sweep, or something. But get them down! After what’s

happened today I don’t want any aircraft bumbling around close to the alien

city—it might get mistaken for a bomber!”

Alarm clear in his voice, Keene signed off.

Rapidly, Radcliffe checked with all his outstations in succession, and received

reassuring reports from each. The Ground was under his control beyond a doubt.

I wish it didn’t taste like ashes…

He set the desk on automatic, and rose. As he made to leave the room, though,

the radio buzzed again, and he hesitated. A gray cloud of doom blurred his mind, as

though he had already heard the message and it was of a nature to destroy his

still-fresh victory. But he accepted the call anyway.

“Yes?”

And instead of Keene’s voice, it was a stranger he heard, a man almost crying,

with other noises blending in: engines droning, a woman shouting, three or four

other men cursing. But the man near to tears was shrieking within inches of the

microphone, and what Radcliffe heard was this.

“Bastard, bastard, bastard! You’ve killed him, do you hear? You’ve killed the only

person in the world who can walk into an alien city and come out again! You’ve

killed Pitirim, you son of a bitch! Murderer! Traitor! Mur-der-er!”

Chapter Twenty-one

« ^ »

It dawned only gradually on Waldron that something was badly wrong with

Radcliffe. Shock from the fearful experience he had undergone accounted for part

of his slow-wittedness; in addition, while he was being interrogated he was also

being checked by Radcliffe’s personal physician, whose fingers stabbed with painful

precision at his injuries before the verdict was pronounced: no broken ribs. He and

Greta had been amazingly lucky. Whatever force the alien had used to enter the

vault under Grady’s office, it had been violent enough to shatter the walls and bring

the ceiling down.

And, of course, to smash Grady’s skull.

Finally, however, he did realize that Radcliffe was showing none of the signs of

satisfaction one would have expected. Why not? A stroke of fate had made him

undisputed master of the Ground. It might take a while to consolidate his holdings,

persuade the other free traders to recognize his authority and cool down the most

fanatical of the relidges… but he had such a long start over his competitors that his

ultimate victory was beyond doubt.

Yet here he was, betraying no hint of jubilation—looking, indeed, downcast and

apprehensive.

Can it be that he’s afraid the aliens will snatch his new power from him before

he’s had time to enjoy it?

It seemed like the only reasonable explanation. Naturally, however, Waldron did

not dare broach the matter directly, and before he had the chance to lead up to it by

a roundabout route, there came an interruption which put all such matters out of

his head.

One of the many nameless servants entered, bringing an extension phone, and

whispered to Radcliffe. Seizing the phone, Radcliffe said, “Yes, Gabe? What’s going

on?”

Waldron strained his ears in the hope of catching Gabe’s distant words, but it

was no good; the doctor was putting away his instruments and making too much

noise. Still, enough could be deduced from what Radcliffe himself was saying.

“Where did they come from?… I see. Is it going to be difficult getting them away

from there?… Damn the relidges! Run ‘em down if you have to!… I know, I know,

but I want them all brought here right away!… Are any of the others hurt?…

Orlando Potter? Who’s he?… Is he now? Do any of the others claim to be anything

special?”

At mention of Potter’s name, Greta had tensed and given a stifled exclamation.

This did not go unnoticed by Radcliffe, whose eyes flicked to her face and remained

there until he finished talking to Gabe.

“The Russian what? … What the hell have you found, a bunch of megalomaniacs

with delusions of grandeur?… Yes, yes, O.K. Just get them to the house and I’ll

make up my own mind. And don’t let anybody slow you down, is that clear?”

He slammed the phone back into the hands of the waiting manservant and

addressed Greta.

“The name Orlando Potter seems to mean something to you!”

Greta licked her lips and sought advice with wide and frightened eyes from

Waldron, who had none to give. At last she said in a resigned tone, “Yes, you’re

right. He’s—uh—he’s on the Congressional Countermeasures Committee.”

Radcliffe pursed his lips. “Interesting! I mean it’s interesting that you should

know that. I didn’t think many people paid attention to the Countermeasures

Committee. It’s a farcical idea, planning countermeasures against the aliens, isn’t

it?”

He stroked his chin, looking thoughtfully from her to Waldron and back.

“I suspect we’ve only had half the truth out of you two,” he went on. “For

instance, you said you were in Grady’s office because Bayers picked you up while

you were driving around the city. You didn’t mention that you’d stopped to pay a

call on Bennett. Why not?”

Waldron and Greta exchanged glances. They had had no chance to consult on

details of their story… but it would have been useless anyway, since Bayers was in a

position to punch holes in any he they used to cover up their visit to Bennett.

“Out with it!” Radcliffe snapped. He leaped to his feet and took two long paces to

confront Greta. Shooting out his hand with finger and thumb forked, he pressed

cruelly under her chin and forced her to turn her face upward. “How do you know

Orlando Potter, to begin with?”

She jerked her head free and shrank back in her chair to elude a renewal of the

grip. “All right, I’ll talk!” she blurted. “I know about him because I’m an executive

of the Federal Scientific Service. He’s my chief.”

Radcliffe let his hand fall to his side. “So that’s it,” he said softly. “I take it Smith

is not your real name.”

Sullenly she shook her head. “I’m Greta Delarue.”

“Did you know about this, or did she fool you?” Radcliffe demanded of Waldron.

“I knew,” Waldron sighed.

“Hah! So why the interest in Bennett? Let me guess. You wanted to move Grady

over, and you thought he’d be more tractable than I would, is that it?”

“Hell, no,” Greta muttered.

“There’s no point in sticking to a lie, you know!” Radcliffe barked. “Bennett’s

probably dead. He’s missing for sure. I’ve had my men combing the city for him,

and they haven’t found a trace anywhere.”

Waldron jolted on his chair. Of course not! he thought. He’s gone looking for

you at the City of Angels! What more likely departure point into time than the day

when the aliens take a hand in the affairs of Gradyville?

He turned to Greta, wishing he could come straight out with the idea that had

just struck him. She seemed to mistake his expression for advice to make a clean

breast of everything. Shrugging, she told Radcliffe, “No, he’s one of my colleagues.

A physicist, buying in artifacts not for resale but for study.”

Radcliffe spun on his heel and resumed his chair. When he next spoke, his

manner and tone had completely changed.

“I thought those bastards in Washington had turned their backs on the aliens

and were concentrating exclusively on their own patch of dirt. Do you mean it isn’t

true?”

“Of course it isn’t. But—Christ, with a hundred and thirty million demoralized,

hysterical fools cluttering up the continent, how much manpower do you think we

have to spare for work here?”

Radcliffe pondered for long seconds. Eventually he said, “There’s one thing I

don’t get. I’ve been priding myself on knowing everything about the Ground. I never

had the least suspicion that Bennett was a federal agent. So if his cover was good

enough to fool me, why didn’t you go straight to work for him? Why all this

pantomime about being Waldron’s mistress?”

Greta let go the final devastating blast. “Because at all costs he mustn’t be

allowed to find out that he has already walked into the City of Angels and accused

you of—”

She broke off. In utter amazement Waldron saw Radcliffe’s face turn white as

milk; his eyes closed, he slumped sideways in his chair.

He had fainted.

To Potter, the events following Pitirim’s death were as inchoate as nightmare.

Everything looked, sounded, felt flat, the way he had once heard someone describe

the experience of a nervous breakdown. There was no emotional depth to his

perception of the gaping wound in the boy’s chest, of tears coursing down

Zworykin’s face, or of Congreve’s hysterical cries flung at the radio. It was as though

the fabric of time had been ripped and clumsily darned: things were happening, but

they were jumbled out of rational sequence.

He struggled to wrestle his memories into the order he knew intellectually they

must have occurred in. The descent came first, of course, a tangle of noise and

blood and stinking kerosene from a punctured fuel tank. They landed on a highway,

with no lights nearby, and the other ‘copter followed them and armed men rushed

to surround them and order them out. Over frenzied yelling he had heard Natasha

blistering their captors’ ears with a medley of archaic literary insults.

After that, vehicles came roaring up: two huge armored trucks, their headlights

like the eyes of dragons. One of the men who arrived with them was called Gabe,

and took efficient charge, silencing the commotion and putting crisp direct

questions. He relayed the information back to his base by radiophone from the

leading truck. At the edge of consciousness Potter picked up scraps of news: Grady

was dead, Radcliffe was taking over the Ground, the rioting they had seen from the

air was due to the relidges, the aliens had intervened, or people were saying they

had… It was too much. All he could think of was the mystical trust he had had in

Pitirim, to whom he had never even spoken.

Packed like cattle in the leading truck, they were then carried off for display to

Radcliffe. Meantime, what else might not be going on in the world? Potter

wondered whether Buishenko’s hordes were drifting from the sky like snowflakes,

wielding the new weapon he had heard about; whether the aliens were discussing

the day’s events, after their fashion, debating the need to make another smashing

onslaught against the local vermin… It was intolerable to think about such

possibilities. He let his mind fold inward, passively enduring what the world might

offer.

It was not until they had been hustled out of the truck and herded down a long

bright corridor, into a room where Radcliffe waited for them, that anything struck

through his armor of apathy. Then he came back to the present with lightning

speed.

Greta!

She looked at him wanly, according him a mere nod for greeting. Beside her was

the man Waldron, her associate for this assignment, recognized from a photograph.

Both were in torn dusty clothing, and scratches and bruises on their hands and

faces had been smeared with yellow salve. They were clearly on the verge of

exhaustion.

So, too, was the man presiding over this encounter, Radcliffe himself, whom

Potter also recognized from pictures he had seen. But what kind of a person was he?

Cast from the same mold as Grady—self-indulgent, unscrupulous, careless of the

future? Presumably. That was the likeliest type to rise to the top in this

environment.

“I guess you must be Orlando Potter,” Radcliffe said slowly. He did not rise on

their entrance. “And Mr. Abramovitch, and Mr. Congreve and Miss Nikolaevna

and… ?”

“Flight Lieutenant Stoller,” the pilot said in a dull voice.

“I see. Sit down; there should be enough chairs. Gabe, what did you do with the

boy’s body?”

“Brought it on the second truck,” Gabe answered.

“Have it put in freeze. I don’t know if there’s anyone on the Ground who could

learn anything from it, but we’ll make sure it’s preserved just in case. They can take

it to Washington later if they like.”

He glanced at the newcomers, sitting down as they had been told: rendered

compliant by weariness, or shock, or despair, or sane unwillingness to offend this

unknown tyrant.

“Mr! Potter,” he said—not looking directly at him, but slightly to one side, as

though ashamed of something—“I’ve been talking to Miss Delarue and I’ve learned

a lot I didn’t know before. In particular I’ve been told that the weirdo who attacked

me at the City of Angels was, in fact, Corey Bennett.” He moistened his lips. “I had

his place searched, floor to roof, earlier on. No sign of him. But a few minutes ago

some of my men called in to say they ran across some relidges who were boasting

about how they set on him, threw him in a ditch and left him for dead. He isn’t in

the ditch now. I reckon he’s gone.”

Silence, except for loud breathing from fat Abramovitch.

“You’re wondering, I guess, what kind of man you have to deal with,” Radcliffe

resumed, and gave a bitter chuckle. “You know something? So am I. I’ve been used

to calling Grady a swine and myself a rat, and there’s a grain of truth in that. But

today I’ve discovered I don’t know how to be a good rat! Rats carry plague! Rats

gnaw power cables! Rats jam machinery and foul granaries and—and hell, they kill

kids! I want to do that much to the aliens, at least, and I don’t know how. I want

somebody to teach me!”

Potter conquered his astonishment and tracked down his voice in the recesses of

his dry throat. He said, “God damn it, we might have been able to, but—”

“But the boy you brought from Russia has been killed,” Radcliffe broke in. “Greta

told me about him. I wish—” He hesitated. “But you can’t turn back the clock, can

you? So the hell with it; I’ll say this straight out. You’re wrong—the Russian kid

wasn’t the only person in the world who could walk into an alien city and come back

again. Right here in this house I have a kid called Ichabod who last evening did just

that and what’s more brought out a live artifact. You can have him, and all the

facilities you need. What I haven’t got already, I’ll send for. You can make better use

of him than I could in a thousand years.”

Chapter Twenty-two

« ^ »

Potter had slept very badly. Last night’s events had made him feel as though he

had undergone a displacement like Corey Bennett’s and been twisted through an

alien dimension. (How? How? But it’s pointless to puzzle over that for the time

being. One day perhaps we’ll find out. Now all we can do is accept it as one of the

facts of life— say “A of M!” and make the best of it.)

Moreover the first thing he had heard on waking was a radio news bulletin,

which—after insisting that Grady was definitely dead and Radcliffe had taken

over—repeated an account of Buishenko’s airborne attack on Vancouver Island

picked up from the Federal Far-West station at Spokane. It sounded as though he

had managed to establish a beachhead within a matter of a few hours.

The son of a bitch… I wonder if he’d give up and go away if we delivered

Pitirim’s corpse to him … No, not a hope. He’s neither a swine nor a rat. He’s the

mad-dog type. It would only make him even more furious.

But Radcliffe had invited them all to breakfast with him, explaining that for the

rest of the day he would be tied up with urgent administrative problems, and since

the food and coffee alike were excellent Potter was growing marginally more

cheerful.

As servants deftly and silently cleared away plates and cups, Potter spoke up.

“Mr. Radcliffe!”

Instantly there seemed to be a shift of focus, as though—once more—some

dimensional distortion had occurred and what had been the head of the table was

now its foot.

“Mr. Radcliffe, I gather there are at least a few scientists on the Ground sent here

by commercial corporations. I don’t doubt you can fulfill your promise to provide

all the facilities we need, but what we’re shortest of is manpower. Do you think it’s

worth involving people like that in our discussions?”

Oh, this automatic formality … ! But it’s comforting. It props up the illusion

that we live in a human-controlled world.

“No,” Radcliffe said flatly. “Scientists can be as greedy as anyone else, and those

who’ve come here for the big corporations are out to make a fortune if they can. I

don’t believe there’s a single one who’s genuinely interested in mastering the aliens’

techniques for the sake of it. I could be wrong, of course; after all Bennett’s cover

fooled me, and I guess other people may be keeping up a front. But I doubt it. What

about your own committee?”

Potter hesitated. Reaching a sudden and unexpected decision, he said, “Frankly,

they’re worse than useless. Let’s face it—the people with enterprise and guts mostly

got blown to bits when the aliens fired off our nukes, and what we have left is

second-rate talent dragged from backwater jobs to hold the line. The idea that we

might still be able to make progress hasn’t penetrated to them yet; if they can stop

us from degenerating into chaos, they’re satisfied.”

“Didn’t even the news about Bennett shake them out of their rut?” Radcliffe

demanded. He glanced around the table. “I guess everybody’s been filled in about

that now, right?”

“Yes, I think so,” Greta said. “I told Natasha last night, and I presume she passed

it on to Mr. Abramovitch.”

“We still have not been told one thing,” Natasha said. “It occurred to us at once.

What was the immediate cause of Bennett’s death?”

“Our police surgeon”—from Waldron—“said it was cerebral hemorrhage.” He

shuddered. “You should have seen his eyes. They were all red.”

Natasha translated for Abramovitch, and relayed his reply. “Yes, that

corresponds with what we have found when examining the brains of what you call

‘weirdos’. Naturally we have studied very few, since we cannot approach in Russia

the vicinity of our alien city.” She paused. Abramovitch spoke again.

“Yes. It is that name, ‘alien city’. Do we believe them literally to be cities?”

“Bennett had a theory about that,” Greta said, and summarized his hypothesis

about transport nexi. That provoked excited nods from Abramovitch. “But,” she

concluded, “he complained that no one would supply the data he needed to confirm

the idea.”

Potter sighed. “I know—only too well. I saw the furious memos he kept sending,

telling us to analyze the color-sequences showing at the other locations. He never

seemed to register the fact that ours is the only—ah—city which we can get at. As a

first step I did try and persuade my committee to fly a plane over the one in the

Antarctic and shoot some film at a prearranged time while Bennett was doing the

same here, hut they outvoted me on the grounds that they couldn’t spare an

aircrew. What does Mr. Abramovitch think of Bennett’s idea, by the way?”

Natasha translated. “It fits very well. Particularly it fits the reversing of Bennett’s

body. Clearly an interstellar transport system limited by the speed of light would

offer few or no advantages over physical dispatch of spaceships, but given Bennett’s

appearance in New York at a time when he was known to be still in Gradyville we

have evidence to assume the system operates in directions varying from our normal

time-axis.”

“It fits something else, too,” Greta said. “Whatever the alien artifacts are made

of, it isn’t matter in any form we recognize. Suppose they aren’t matter at all,

but—well, coagulations of energy somehow—”

“Slowed down?” Potter suggested.

“I guess that’s what I mean.” Greta put a hand to her forehead, as though dizzy.

“I can almost see it, but I can’t put it into words.”

“Does this tell us anything about the aliens themselves?” Congreve demanded.

“Are they made of coagulated energy too—whatever that is?”

“Not necessarily.” Natasha exchanged several sentences with Abramovitch, while

all the others bar Congreve waited impatiently. “It is possible,” she continued at

last, “that they are not unlike ourselves. Consider: they have chosen this planet for

their base, with its atmosphere and gravity, when others are available, particularly

Mars. We may have seen only manifestations of automatic processes which to us are

inconceivably advanced but which to the aliens may be as commonplace as”—a

glance at Radcliff e—“mousetraps ! ”

“It would explain something else, too,” Radcliffe said unexpectedly. “The fact

that Bennett could… well, unintentionally make use of one of their processes.”

“Right,” Potter said with a nod. “Given that he was reconstructing one of their

devices. Hmm! Maybe it also explains why weirdos go crazy. Suppose their

time-sense becomes deranged—suppose, for instance, they start remembering

things that haven’t happened yet?” Apologetically he added, “It’s just a suggestion. I

haven’t worked out the implications.”

“One thing we aren’t short of on the Ground is weirdos,” Radcliffe said: “Any

time you want a few for study, give the word and I’ll send you dozens of ‘em.”

“On the other hand,” Waldron ventured, “this flatly contradicts the fact that

Pitirim and Ichabod have been in and out without being harmed. If the aliens really

are fundamentally like us, or at any rate more like us than we’ve been assuming,

why don’t their processes affect everybody equally?” Reluctant nods conceded the

validity of his point. “And another thing,” he continued, emboldened. “Isn’t it true

that some people have wandered into the alien city and never been heard of again?”

Potter glanced at Porpentine—who had so far said nothing, like Zworykin, as

though Pitirim’s death had temporarily abolished their interest in the world—and

recalled his reference to “mythical saints who by now have gone to heaven in a fiery

chariot”. He started. “Lord, yes! I wonder whether they—” He didn’t need to

complete the sentence. It was obvious that the same idea had occurred to everyone.

Congreve chuckled and looked at Radcliffe.

“Say, last night you were listing some of the things rats do to humans. You left

out one important item. They get on ships, don’t they?”

A grim sort of joke, Potter thought. He said, “You know, the more I consider this,

the more I like it. The time aspect in particular. Isn’t it true that our concept of time

is a highly specialized one? It’s not universal, by any means, even among human

cultures. Maybe the aliens’ attitude to time is different—so different that most

people are shaken to the foundations of their minds if they risk entering an alien

city. Excuse me; I think we’re stuck with the name. A child, though, and especially

one whose mental functions are disturbed anyway, might not… well, might not

care!”

“ ‘Except ye become as little children,’ ” Congreve murmured. “The relidges

would love to hear you say that, I imagine.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Radcliffe said. “We shall have to take Ichabod

out there and conduct a test.” He hesitated. “I—uh—I guess I ought to say I’m

obliged to all of you, by the way. I never had a bunch of people sit down with me

and talk rationally about the aliens before. It makes them look a lot less frightening.

I think we’ve been running scared without any need. I look forward to making a lot

of progress very quickly.”

“It’s not that simple,” Potter said grayly. “We’re in an island of temporary calm

right now. But what’s going to happen when Buishenko’s forces move inland? The

Canadians will do their damnedest to stop them, of course, and we’re bound to send

all the reinforcements we can spare to help out, but our defenses on the West Coast

are practically back to the musket stage, and Buishenko has this new weapon based

on some alien technique.”

“What?” A chorus of surprise and horror. “What sort of weapon?”

Potter repeated the brief description he had been given, and Natasha and

Abramovitch started to talk fiercely in Russian.

Ignoring them, Radcliffe said, “Oh, I know that, Potter. You needn’t think I’m

kidding myself. It’s going to be tough for a long while yet. I’ve been wondering what

in hell I can do to quiet the relidges, for example. I heard earlier that Brother Mark,

the king of the angel-chasers, really was killed yesterday. Walked up to the alien

which came to collect the live relics stored in his church, and—well, like you might

expect, they say he was struck down by a flaming sword. Losing him means the

relidges are like a chicken without a head.”

“So why not give them another head?” Congreve said. “Before some genuine new

fanatic crops up and takes charge.”

“That’s an inspiration,” Radcliffe muttered. “Are you volunteering?”

Congreve put his hand on his chest, startled, as though to ask: you mean me?

And then, after only a few seconds’ reflection, said, “Well… well, why the hell not?

I’m unlikely to be any use on the scientific side, and I do want to make myself useful

somehow. O.K., I’ll—”

He was interrupted by an excited cry from Natasha. “Now listen, all of you! This

weapon of Buishenko—it is not from the aliens!”

“Not from the aliens?” Potter echoed in amazement. “But where did he get it,

then?”

“It is based on work by Academician Kapitza,” Natasha declared. “When he was

under house arrest by Stalin because he refused to help make a hydrogen bomb, he

did research on lightning balls—no, you say ball lightning, I am sorry. From his

work it was discovered how to stabilize a globe of energy in the air with power

sources from two intersecting radio beams, very tight. The wavelength is about half

a meter to two meters. We had done some work to make the weapon operational,

but having so many nuclear weapons we did not complete many projectors.

Buishenko must have had more built for him, that is all.”

“I was right,” Radcliffe announced into the subsequent silence. “Once you start

talking calmly about the aliens, you cut them down to size.”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” Potter countered. “They did explode all our

nuclears—piles as well as warheads. They did drive armies insane just by waving a

wand… If Buishenko’s forces manage to reach the Ground, I guess we can hope for

a repeat performance of that, but I can’t say I look forward to it.”

“Why are you sure Buishenko will come here?” Waldron demanded.

“Where else would we logically have taken Pitirim?” Potter retorted. “As soon as

he’s convinced the boy isn’t at Victoria any longer—”

‘I’m afraid it’s all too likely,“ Radcliffe said, glancing at his watch. ”And before it

happens, there are a hell of a lot of preparations to be made. You’ll have to excuse

me. But I won’t forget about that trial you want to run on Ichabod. Late this

afternoon, maybe, or this evening. I doubt if I can organize it any sooner.“

Chapter Twenty-three

« ^ »

As though the stars have fallen to Earth, Potter thought. And the Day of

Judgment is at hand!

Although the preparations they had been able to make for this crucial test were

minimal, compared to the scale he would have liked—with say a thousand trained

scientific observers on hand—they had taken even longer than Radcliffe had

predicted. Now it was full dark, and below the helicopter, which had been put at

their disposal while their own was having the bulletholes repaired, scores of fires

sparkled fitfully on the hillside facing the alien city, surrounded by half-seen figures

standing up to sing hymns or kneeling to pray.

“Has anybody counted them?” Greta said under her breath.

Potter glanced sidelong at her. Their brief separation had returned them to the

condition of strangers; they had not enjoyed real friendship, let alone true intimacy,

during the months they had been physical lovers. He found that knowledge

depressing. Given it was so easy for two human beings to avoid mutual

understanding, what hope was there of eventually comprehending the aliens?

“You mean counted the relidges?” he said, though she had probably not expected

an answer. “Oh, two or three thousand, at a guess. I don’t know what they hope to

gain by camping out. You’d think that now the aliens have wrecked their churches

they’d be having second thoughts.”

“Oh, they are,” Waldron said sourly from the other side of Greta. “All wrong!

They’re convinced this is the final test of their faith. Brother Mark was really Christ

born again, and in three days he will rise from the dead and lead the righteous into

the heavenly city.”

“I hope it stays fine for them.” Greta leaned across him, raising her binoculars;

they each carried binoculars, a recorder, and a still or ciné camera, while

Abramovitch—in the copilot’s seat forward next to Natasha, who was flying the

‘copter—had assembled a scratch collection of instruments from loot found in the

basement of Grady’s mansion earlier today. “I don’t see any tents,” she added after a

pause. “Some of them don’t even have blankets.”

“Too scared to go home and fetch any,” Potter sighed. “In case fire descends on

the shanty towns like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“In a lot of places it already did,” Waldron grunted. “So most of them probably

don’t have homes anymore. Looking at them, you know, makes me wonder what

right we have to object when the aliens treat us as beneath contempt.”

Neither of them had the heart to comment on that remark. Potter, uneasy,

glanced towards Ichabod, who was excitedly pointing out the fires below to Maura,

his inseparable companion. Radcliffe had warned them that the boy might be

afraid of flying for the first time, but on the contrary he had been delighted.

Apparently his parents regarded man’s flying machines as blasphemous—a

usurpation of a privilege reserved to the angels—and now he was free of their

control Ichabod wanted to try everything they had forbidden.

By contrast Maura looked unhappy and uncomfortable. She had been told to put

on a dress, for fear the sight of her body might infuriate the relidges, and she kept

fidgeting as though she had completely lost the habit of going clad.

“What became of the kid’s family, does anyone know?” Greta whispered. Potter

answered in an equally low tone.

“Rick heard a rumor that they were murdered by Brother Mark’s followers

during the riots.”

“Does he know?”

“Not yet. I judged it better to tell him later.”

“Yes, of course.”

Forward, Congreve—who was armed with a 16-mm. ciné camera to which he had

fitted the longest telephoto lens Potter had ever seen—was using binoculars to study

not the vast gleaming wall of the alien city, rearing up ahead and filling the cabin

with shifting radiance, but the ground, searching for the party of Radcliffe’s men

who had preceded them in order to clear relidges away from the spot they had

chosen for their landing. Looking at him, Waldron said suddenly, “Does Ichabod

have any preference about where he goes in?”

Greta shook her head. “He says he just walks around until he finds a safe place to

enter. According to Zworykin, Pitirim was just as vague.”

“What kind of safe place? Does he find—well, a door, or a gate of some kind? Or

simply a weak spot?”

“He can’t tell us. So all we can do is take him close to where he started from last

night. You know Abramovitch and I came out this afternoon and tried to

reconstruct his movements. The ground is fairly soft, and we found some footprints.

Beyond that, I’m afraid it’s up to him.”

“We’ve spotted the ground party!” Natasha called. “Going down now!”

“Fine!” Potter answered, and by reflex checked his still camera and recorder.

“What puzzles me,” Waldron said, “is that he doesn’t look in the least bit scared.

You’d think after being told so often that the city if full of angry angels—”

“True enough,” Greta agreed. “But he’s so pathetically pleased that we approve of

what he’s done, instead of whipping him for it the way his parents always did. It’s a

hell of a thing to say, but I honestly think he’s going to be better off as an orphan.”

The ‘copter touched down. Beyond the glass of the nose loomed the bright bulk

of the alien city. From this angle Potter found that it reminded him of something;

frowning, he chased and pinned down the elusive resemblance.

Of course. A calving glacier.

But a glacier transmuted. Where the pack-ice of the Arctic would be whitish,

grayish or perhaps greenish as it bent to the bitter sea and cracked off its daughter

bergs, this was jewel-brilliant, more dazzling than a sunbeam, more colorful than a

rainbow, more fascinating than fire. At this point the ground-hue was white with a

tinge of yellow, and the bands and striations and jagged flashes which moved across

the surface alternated dark red, scarlet and apple-green.

“Those colors mean something!” Natasha said fiercely as she shut off the engines.

“There must be meaning in them. But will we ever know what it is?”

From this close, the sheer bulk of the alien structure was as awesome as its

radiance. Shivering—and not from cold—Potter kept feeling his eyes drawn back to

it as he thanked Rick, leader of the ground party, for getting rid of the relidges; they

were being kept beyond rock-throwing range by the threat of guns, though no doubt

they would have enjoyed smashing the helicopter.

Its quantity, its volume, is what makes it so impressive. A human city might

cover just as much ground, but it would be notched, skylined, threaded with

streets and alleys. This is a unity, a single mass.

His companions, apart of course from Maura and Ichabod, were helping

Abramovitch rig his equipment, makeshift as it was. When Rick moved away, he

took some photographs and noted the exact time on his recorder, then turned to the

boy with an encouraging smile.

“Well, son, this is your big moment, isn’t it? But since you’ve been in there twice

before, it should be easy.”

Liar. For all we know the aliens may have doubled their defenses and this kid is

about to die or go insane.

“Oh, sure, mister!” Ichabod chirped. And hesitated, with a glance at Maura, who

was gazing in childish delight at the gaudy play of colors. “Hey,” he went on, “can I

take Maura with me? I know she’d just love it in there!”

Startled, Potter could not answer at once. Waldron had told him about Maura,

so he knew her personality had been degraded with dociline or a related drug—and

on learning that he had revised his originally favorable opinion of Radcliffe. But did

that mean she could stand the strain Ichabod endured without noticing? Sending a

backward child on this expedition was bad enough; sending him with an artificial

idiot for company…

“Oh, please!” The voice was bright and eager, so that for a disjointed second he

thought it was Ichabod’s again, but it was Maura’s; she was showing the first

animation he had seen on her face.

“I guess maybe it would be better if you took her some other time,” he

prevaricated. But Ichabod set his jaw mutinously.

“I won’t go!” he threatened. “Not if she can’t come too.”

“We’re all set,” Greta called, walking towards them. “He can start off when he

likes, and… Say, is something wrong?”

Potter explained, and then had to explain again when the others, puzzled by the

delay, came to find out what was happening. Sweat crawled like insects on his face.

He tried cajolery, and Greta tried candy as a bribe, and Ichabod remained

adamant.

“Well?” Potter said at last. “What do we do? Call it off?”

“And come back without Maura,” Congreve said, nodding.

“You’re as bad as my pa and ma!” Ichabod exclaimed furiously. “Telling me what

I can’t do all the time!” Big tears formed on his eyelids, while his mouth turned

down at the corners.

“Is it really out of the question?” Potter muttered.

“Yes,” Waldron said, and the others agreed. “He can get in and out O.K., we

know that. But she might go crazy and attack him, or get him lost, or… anything.”

“Very well. It’s an abort,” Potter said angrily. “Apologize to Mr. Abramovitch for

wasting his time, Natasha.”

“Oh, he quite understands,” Natasha sighed. “Please come help pack up the gear

again.”

Despondently they complied. But, just as he was about to pick up the first item of

equipment, Potter glanced back and uttered an exclamation.

“Hell! They’re going anyway!”

“What?” Greta spun around, and almost broke into a run on the instant. Ichabod

and Maura were no longer where they had been standing; the boy hobbling in the

lead, they were already a couple of hundred yards on their way to the alien city.

Potter caught Greta’s arm. “No, no!” he snapped. “If we catch him and drag him

back, he’ll never forgive us. He already said I’m as bad as his pa, didn’t he?”

Feverishly unslinging his camera, he snapped a picture of the current

color-patterns. “We’ll just have to make the most of our chance. Mike, get your

movie camera working!”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Congreve grunted. “But there isn’t a prayer of

filming them as they actually go in—there’s no contrast left when you stop down far

enough to get the colors right. Should have brought a spare camera with

black-and-white film, might give a silhouette effect at least. Say, Maura’s taken her

dress off again.”

“Probably a good idea,” Waldron said. “She’s more used to going without.”

Natasha, who had hastily assisted Abramovitch to restore his instruments to

working order, straightened and stretched. “So now we take pictures, and make

notes, and wait, hm? I do not often smoke, but if someone has a cigarette I shall say

please. It will be a tense time now.”

“Here.” Potter proffered a pack. And went on, “Of all the damned stupid things,

giving them the chance to run off like that! I—uh—I guess I should apologize.”

“Well, well!” Greta said with a recurrence of the mockery he had come to know so

well during their time together. “The great Orlando Potter, apologizing!”

Her tone changed abruptly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t make a meal out of it!”

All the color had drained from Potter’s face.

“Greta, quiet!” Waldron said. “He doesn’t look well.”

“I’m O.K.,” Potter forced out, and covered his moment of shock by taking a

cigarette himself. “Keep up the pictures. We want the fullest possible coverage.

I’ll—uh—I’ll record a note of what happened.”

But behind the effortful calm of his words, his mind was in turmoil.

Doubling their defenses … Oh, I should have thought of this before! Suppose it’s

nothing as subtle as disturbance of the time-sense which drives a weirdo crazy.

Suppose it’s simply a low-grade effect of the same defense they use against an

army.

It would have to be very low-grade indeed; after all, there were said to be almost

a million people now living inside the limit at which armies had been affected.

But if there were two factors involved, one numerical and the other qualitative,

so that the reaction could be triggered either by a great many somewhat hostile

people or by one intensely hostile individual… Natasha had said that all the Russian

saboteurs went insane; on the other hand, the relidges boasted that some of their

number had entered the alien city and never returned.

I must think this over. Because if it’s right...

Later, though. While waiting for Ichabod and Maura to come out again. As yet,

they hadn’t gone in.

“How much longer?” Waldron muttered, grinding out the latest of too many

cigarettes.

“A few moments ago I asked you the same thing,” Greta countered tartly.

“Did you? Sorry, I guess I didn’t hear you.” Waldron glanced around; his eyes

were tired of the alien splendor and its ceaseless swirl of color. “Where’s Potter?”

“Went to the ‘copter. Said he wanted to call Radcliffe and let him know what’s

happening.”

“That shouldn’t take him long… I wonder what it’s like in there. Did Ichabod

manage to give you any idea?”

“Not much. He did talk about a long high place full of colored lights, and the

shining ball he brought back was on something and he had to reach up for it. Might

be a shelf, might be a pedestal, might be something completely foreign to us. He did

make a comparison, though. Said it was like the alley barber’s. I gather that was a

place with lots of mirrors and bright lights, obviously a barber shop back in the city

where his family came from.”

“Try again,” Waldron told her. “How about a kids’ Christmas show he was taken

to? The cave of Ali Baba was full of jewels, wasn’t it?”

Greta’s jaw dropped. In disgust she said, “Hell, why didn’t I think of that? It

never crossed my mind. Maybe I took it for granted his parents would disapprove of

going to the theater. But before the aliens came probably they weren’t so strict—”

From behind them there was a shout: Congreve’s voice. They spun around, and

froze in horror.

With the dragging, zombie-like motion of a man fighting a fit of insanity and

losing, Potter was clambering down the short ladder of the ‘copter with a gun in his

hand. He was descending awkwardly, staring towards them while he kept his

balance with his free hand on the side of the door. And his face was transformed:

the lips curled back in an animal snarl, the eyes wide and glaring, a shiny trickle of

drool running down his chin.

The gun rose jerkily, wavered, steadied, targeted on the astonished

Abramovitch—or perhaps on his instruments; it was hard to tell. His jaw clenched

with terrible effort, and a sound leaked between his teeth which might have been,

“Help me… !”

The gun twisted, and its muzzle pointed now at his own temple, and Waldron

moved.

Infinitely long ago, infinitely far away, a piece of the aliens’ incomprehensible

workmanship had lain on a table in his New York apartment. Shamefaced, he had

pocketed it when setting out for the Ground, and it was still in his pocket, and he

knew its weight and shape with greater precision than anything else he had ever

handled, even his old police automatic.

He threw.

The heavy, stubby rod slammed the bones of Potter’s upraised wrist with a noise

like a hammer. The gun boomed, the flash scorched his hair, but the slug whined

harmlessly away, and by then Waldron had followed his missile, arms at full

stretch, to claw anyhow at Potter and hurl him to the ground. Close behind him

came Congreve, who twisted the pistol free and kicked it out of reach before

applying an expert wrestler’s grip. For long seconds Potter strained to break loose;

then, as suddenly as it had come on, the mad fit left him, and he went limp and

spoke in a thin parody of his normal voice.

“My God, I never thought it would be so strong!”

“What happened?” Greta cried—and the question was repeated in a shout as

Rick came hurrying to find out why a gun had been fired.

“I—” Potter had to swallow. “I know now how the soldiers felt when they were

driven mad. I was sitting thinking through an idea I’d just had, and I was picturing

the way the world used to be—messed up, sure, but halfway to paradise compared

to what it’s like now—and all of a sudden I found I hated the aliens. It’s very

strange, you know; I never did manage to hate them before, because they always

seemed so remote and… different. Maybe it’s because Abramovitch said this

morning they may be quite like us after all. I don’t know. All I do know is that I felt

this great wave of hate go through me, and then, without any warning, I knew I

wanted to kill and smash and burn. And because I couldn’t hurt the aliens, I’d have

to hurt you… or myself.”

Unsteadily he rose to his feet, rubbing his bruised wrist.

“Thanks,” he added. “What the hell did you throw at me, by the way?”

“This,” Waldron said, bending to retrieve the heavy rod.

Potter stared at it for a long moment. At last he gave a chuckle. “Well, well! Do

you know something? I guess that may very likely be the first time anybody has used

an alien product for a human purpose.”

“Corey Bennett?” Greta countered. And he looked at her straight in the eyes and

rebutted her with a single word.

“Human?”

Chapter Twenty-four

« ^ »

“The way I see it is this,” Potter expounded. He was shivering although they had

wrapped him in a blanket, as a result of the shock he had undergone. But his voice

was back to normal. “If it’s true—and we agreed this morning that it must be—that

some, of the aliens’ processes can affect humans, it’s worth asking what part of us

they affect. The answer seems to be the brain, right? Weirdos go crazy, Bennett

suffered a brain hemorrhage as a result of jumping through time. Leave the reversal

aside for a moment; it’s not really relevant. From that we can reasonably guess that

the aliens may have cut out some of the intermediate stages we use in

communication and information processing. Verbalization, for example.

Alternatively, and I think on the whole I prefer this idea, they may not reason in

linear terms at all, but in—oh—a matrix pattern. Or a field. Or something of the

sort, anyhow.

“So it struck me that possibly they have an automatic detector in operation, set to

measure the complex of signals in a human brain which associates to hostility. I

visualize two interrelated curves on a graph, one measuring straightforward intent

to attack, one for some quality like intelligence indicating that when the attack

happens it won’t just be the blind pounce of an animal, it’ll be something

sophisticated enough to cause the aliens actual harm. Now when the combined

reading exceeds a preset limit, I hypothesize that a counterfield of some kind is

generated to modify the pattern. It fits, doesn’t it? All of a sudden I found the hate I

thought wasn’t in my mind bursting loose—what I’d accumulated over years and

never noticed. Half a minute later, I felt as though I was under a posthypnotic

command. Like I said, I needed to destroy something at all costs. And when I

resisted that impulse, I found I was turning the gun on myself. Greta, you’ve read

up on the Ground recently. Are there many suicides here?”

“Grady never let out any figures. Bad publicity. But rumor says yes, a lot. Not

that that’s surprising, of course. Virtually everybody here is some kind of refugee.”

“Yes, but I suspect that a lot of the deaths could be explained by assuming the

victims gave way to hatred of the aliens, the way I just did.”

“Something else must be involved,” Natasha said, frowning. “A numerical factor,

a third line for your graph.”

“Yes, I imagine there is. Right now there are two or three thousand more or less

organized relidges camped around here. If you exchanged them for the same

number of troops, I bet they’d take off for an orgy of looting and burning within

minutes. Our armies were affected as far away as Ball Club, I seem to remember. At

the extreme opposite end of the scale, didn’t you say, Natasha, that you actually

managed to send in saboteurs?”

“Not completely in,” Natasha said. “But right up close, certainly. To within a few

meters.”

“It fits, Orlando,” Greta said. “It does fit.”

“Thanks for those few kind words,” Potter countered sardonically. He glanced

towards the spot where Congreve and Abramovitch were monitoring the scientific

instruments and watching for the reemergence of Ichabod and Maura. “Natasha,

would you explain my theory to Abramovitch and ask his opinion?”

“Surely.” She had been hunkered down at his side; rising, she checked her watch

and added, “I do wish they’d comeback!”

“So do I,” Greta concurred grimly. “It’s been over an hour, and we told Ichabod

on no account to stay more than a few minutes. All we wanted to prove was that he

could get in and out—”

“Hey!” Congreve’s voice broke excitedly on the night. “There they are now, I can

see them! But… hell! Didn’t you tell the boy not to pick up anything?”

Scrambling to his feet, Potter called back, “Over and over! Damn, what did I do

with my binoculars? Yes, of course we told him—after the way the aliens snatched

all the live artifacts yesterday, it’d be insane to take any more!”

“Then the temptation was just too much for them,” Congreve snapped., “They’ve

each got a whole armful of shiny gewgaws!”

“Pictures, quickly!” Potter rapped, and raised his own still camera.

As he recorded the current pattern of colors, he realized that even at this distance

and on the tiny viewfinder screen of the camera he could see how the two

approaching figures were bathed in coruscating light to match that from the

luminous wall behind them. A tap on his shoulder, and Waldron’s voice, worried.

“Should I run over to them, make them drop what they’ve taken?”

Potter took his time over answering. When he did, it was in a resigned tone.

“Too late for that, I’m afraid. Look. And keep on taking pictures.”

He pointed. In horror and dismay they watched: moving with inhuman swiftness

outward from the shining city, a thing that did not need the ground to tread on, but

moved as a wave moves, making successive volumes of air bloom into

furnace-bright radiance. It closed on the humans, and Congreve screamed a futile

warning—futile?

Not quite! Potter felt his heart leap. Maura, startled by the shout, turned her

head and caught sight of the glowingness as it swooped/dived to the attack (?).

With a cry she incontinently let fail the baubles she carried, so as to snatch at

Ichabod and drag him away.

Being suddenly grabbed by the arm, he too dropped his treasures, and began a

wail of complaint—cut short by a howl of alarm as he too saw the alien pursuer.

Perhaps all the tales about avenging angels his parents had dinned into him rose to

his mind; at any rate, he promptly forgot about everything except flight. Limping,

moaning, he let Maura rush him along on feet to which terror lent wings.

The pursuer, by a miracle, was content with the booty. Above the random mound

of artifacts it hovered; they were somehow drawn up into its substance, and it was

gone—not visibly, along the path it had followed before, but in a trice.

“Thank goodness for that!” Waldron breathed, and set out to meet the fugitives

at a dead run.

“Shall I carry him?” Congreve said to Natasha, who had picked up Ichabod and

was crooning to him over his helpless sobs. “We ought to get back to the ‘copter

right away.”

“Thank you—he’d be heavy to walk with. But take care. He has wet himself in

fright.” Natasha transferred her burden to him. “How is Maura?” she added,

looking around.

“Shaking like a leaf, but otherwise O.K.,” Greta reported. She was standing with

her arm around the naked girl’s shoulders, comforting her. “So at any rate we’ve

proved what we set out to do.”

“A pretty negative result if you ask me,” Congreve said. “A couple of nights ago

Ichabod stole a live artifact and got away with it, whereas this time—”

“Correction,” Waldron interrupted. “It was taken back when Radcliffe was

arguing over it with Brother Mark. No, I don’t think our results are negative at all.

Have you asked Abramovitch what he thinks?”

“Oh, he’s overjoyed,” Congreve answered. “Said he got a lot of ‘highly interesting’

readings. Now he wants all the live artifacts we can provide, so that he can set them

up and see if the aliens will retrieve them too.”

“Funny, the way the—the alien ignored Maura and Ichabod,” Waldron said

musingly. “Almost as though they weren’t there. Hmm! I wonder if—”

“What?” Potter invited.

“Nothing.”

But, when they were back in the helicopter and all the instruments had been

stowed and Natasha was winding up for takeoff, he spoke up again, somewhat

diffidently.

“Look, I’m no scientist, and I can’t pretend I’ve followed all the theories we’ve

been batting around today. I feel kind of giddy, to be honest. But I’ve been piecing

together what you said”—a nod to Potter—“with something Mike said this morning,

and something you said, Greta… Well, I think I may have an idea. Mike, didn’t you

suggest posing as a new leader for the relidges to prevent some unknown fanatic

stepping into Brother Mark’s shoes?”

“It seemed like a great idea for a while,” Congreve said sourly. “The more I think

about it, the stupider it looks.”

“Just a moment. Isn’t it true that Buishenko owed at least part of this

tremendous impression he made on his followers to the way he could send Pitirim

into the alien city and bring him back safe and sound? Well, Brother Mark couldn’t

go in and out—couldn’t even send someone like Pitirim. But won’t it prove your

sanctity beyond doubt when you demonstrate that you can?”

Congreve stiffened. “Hell, if you think I’d take dociline like Maura just for the

sake of—”

“No, no, I don’t mean that.” Waldron leaned earnestly forward. “I’m thinking of

what you said this morning, remember? ‘Except ye become as little children… !’ And

there is a way of ‘becoming as a little child’. I’ve read about it. It’s a trick you can

pull with hypnosis, called regression. The hypnotist tells you to act as though you

were five years old again, and you do.”

“My God,” Potter said in an awestruck tone. “Mike, he’s on to something. What’s

more, you’re a good hypnotic subject. You said you were once considered as a

possible hypno-spy.”

Paling, Congreve said, “Yes, I damned nearly made the grade, too. Are you

seriously claiming that I could be put into a trance, walk out in front of a gang of

relidges, and publicly pay a visit to the holy city?”

“Greta, could it be done?” Potter snapped.

“You’d have to ask Porpentine,” she answered, brushing hair from her eyes. “It’s

conceivable, but don’t take my word for it.”

“If this works… !” Potter was shaking with excitement. “Waldron, you’ve only

scratched the surface of the idea. Mike said something else this morning, which I

dismissed as just a bit of gallows humor, but now I’m inclined to take it literally.

What he said was, ‘Rats get on ships.’ ”

In the silence which greeted his words, a sudden tremulous hope took root in all

their minds.

Much to their surprise, they found Radcliffe waiting for them personally when

they landed. Jumping down first from the door of the ‘copter, Potter called to him.

“It came off! But that’s only half of what we have to tell you!” In his frantic

enthusiasm for the slim chance they had conceived for mankind, he found himself

forgetting everything else about Radcliffe apart from the fact that he was an

improvement over Grady. For a few seconds he found himself almost liking the

man.

“I have something to tell you!” Radcliffe snapped back. “More urgent than

anything you’ve come up with! Do you know somebody called Fyffe?”

Potter sobered on the instant. He said, “Of course. He’s the acting Chief of

Continental Defense.”

“He telephoned. Said Buishenko has taken Victoria and now controls the whole

of Vancouver Island. The Canadian government tried to get away by air but almost

all the planes were shot down. There is no Canadian government now. We can

expect Buishenko, according to him, no later than tomorrow morning, and he’ll

probably begin with paratroops. And that stupid lazy greedy bugger Grady… !”

“What?”

“He didn’t trust his own private army. Issued ammunition to them personally.

Rationed it out. He had stocks O.K.—but they’re in a concrete vault with a six-inch

steel door that only he knew the combination for!”

Chapter Twenty-five

« ^ »

The distant voice—somehow Potter could not think of it as belonging to an

individual with a face and a name, and was labelling it mentally just

“Washington”—was jagged with hysteria.

“Why should anybody here give a shit what happens on Grady’s Ground? Far as

I’m concerned those bastards can carry on cutting each other’s throats until

doomsday! Damnation, don’t you realize the Russians have invaded? They’ve taken

Vancouver Island, they’ve wiped out the Canadian government, there’s practically

no organized resistance and they’re flying in reinforcements as and when they

choose!”

Potter tried to interrupt. The man ignored him.

“And the refugees are on the move in Washington and Oregon, tens of thousands

of them, same as last time only worse because now they know the Russians have

landed. Why should we care about your crackbrained schemes when we’re in a mess

like this?”

“Stop talking about ‘the Russians’!” Potter barked. “I’ve told you, those are

Buishenko’s forces, and I’ve told you the only conceivable reason for him to invade!”

Sweat was running into his eyes; angrily he wiped it away.

“It’s too big! This is a full-scale military operation, not a—a bandit raid!”

Potter felt his temper strain towards the breaking point “What sort of man do

you think Buishenko is? An overgrown Boss Tweed, like Grady? Hell, no! He’s more

like a reincarnation of Attila!”

“I don’t have time to listen to any more of your garbage,” Washington said. “Your

last chance, Potter. Do you have the guts to come back and work to save the nation

with the rest of us?”

“I’d rather put up with the aliens than a bunch of block-headed short-sighted

fools like you!” Potter snapped, his temper finally giving way. He slammed down

the phone and slumped back in his chair.

Beside him, Radcliffe gave a humorless chuckle. “So you finally realized how

Washington looked to those of us who settled for Grady as the lesser evil, hm?”

“I guess so,” Potter admitted, running harassed fingers through his hair. “What

does the situation look like this morning—any improvement?”

“None at all. The best we can hope for is that when Buishenko’s men get close

enough they’ll go out of their minds and maybe a few of us will survive to pick up

the pieces.” Radcliffe uttered the words with gloomy relish.

“But I don’t believe they will go crazy,” Potter sighed. “They won’t if my theory is

correct. They don’t have the least intention of attacking the aliens, and the aliens

apparently don’t care what we do to one another.”

He jumped up angrily. “It’s a nightmare! Here we are on the verge of our first

real breakthrough, and it looks as though we shan’t live to see the benefit. I’m going

to talk to Porpentine. If I’m likely to die in the next couple of days, at least I want to

go to my grave with the satisfaction of having been nearly right.”

“Yes, Zworykin and I have been over both of them from head to foot,” Porpentine

said over his shoulder as he washed his hands in a stainless steel sink. A miniature

hospital was among the more remarkable facilities of Radcliffe’s home. “Short of

cutting them open for a direct look, we can’t find out more than we know already.

Apart from literally scaring the shit out of them—excuse me—the experience left

them completely unharmed.”

“Fantastic,” Potter grunted. “So what about Waldron’s idea of using infantile

regression as a means of deceiving the aliens’ defenses?”

“It’s barely possible it might work,” Porpentine said, inserting his hands into a

hot-air drier. “The sort of detector I gather you’re postulating would presumably

register only gross mental attitudes, the overall mood and not individual thoughts.

Not that I see how it could operate at all, but I’ll accept it for the sake of argument.”

He dropped into a chair and crossed his legs, his expression thoughtful. “The

trouble is this, though. Congreve, as we know, is an excellent hypnotic subject. But

people like him are very rare. If we make the technique work for him, all we shall

have proved is that it works for him! Suppose it does work; suppose volunteers come

forward who are averagely accessible to hypnosis—are we to send them off and risk

them returning as hopelessly schizoid as the existing weirdos? Radcliffe roped in a

couple for us to study, did you know? I’ve never been so depressed in my life.”

“I guess it will have to be a matter of volunteers,” Potter said heavily. “What else

can we do?”

“Yes, but if the volunteers are valuable, perhaps irreplaceable, what then? And

they’re likely to be, you know. Good hypnotic subjects are typically of high

intelligence and strong personality.”

“You mean, is the chance of our gamble paying off good enough to risk reducing

some of our key personnel to mumbling lunatics? How can I say? But I tell you this:

if Mike Congreve wants a companion on his first trip, I’ll go with him.”

There was a pause. At length Porpentine said with a faint smile, “You won’t have

to. Jim Waldron’s been here already, and I tested him. He’s a highly susceptible

subject, and if the treatment doesn’t work on him it won’t work on enough of us to

be any use.”

At that moment a wall-mounted PA speaker said, “Orlando Potter, please.

Orlando Potter. Join Mr. Radcliffe at once. Trouble on the way.”

“Trouble!” Potter echoed with a harsh laugh. “More like disaster! Thanks,

doctor. Though I’m afraid the whole question is about to be rendered permanently

academic.”

Porpentine blanched. “What do you mean?”

“You must have heard. We’re expecting Buishenko to—ah—drop in today.”

“Come in,” Radcliffe said, not looking up from his control console as Potter

appeared at the door of his underground sanctum. “Thought you’d like to be

present at the funeral. He’s on his way; we just picked up the first wave.”

Potter glanced at the multiple TV screens on which one after another shots of key

points were being projected. He said, “How long do we have?”

“Thirty-five to forty minutes. Rick!”—to a hanging mike.

“Yes, sir?”

“How are the relidges today?”

“Sort of chastened. It won’t last.”

“I guess not. O.K., thanks.”

“Are we expecting any help?” Potter inquired.

“Not so as you’d notice. The Canadians have promised all the missiles they can

spare, but they only have about thirty within range. A few fighters have been

harassing Buishenko’s planes, but I only know that because I picked up a couple of

clear-language calls for help on the Air Force band. Washington won’t talk to us,

you know. Gabe!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Making any impression on the door of that vault?”

“Two hours ought to see us through.”

“We don’t have two hours. Change of plan. Mine it, and be quick. Run a landline

away from the charges. Hide the terminals somewhere we can find ‘em again later.

If Buishenko turns up in person and takes over the Grady mansion, maybe we could

at least bring it down around his ears.”

“Sir, two hours is a maximum. Surely we can stand ‘em off for a while after

they—”

“O.K., do both!”

Radcliffe leaned back with a sigh. “Never thought I’d wind up making with the

Gotterdammerung bit,” he muttered. “But it seems like the only thing I can do.

Lord knows where Buishenko got all those planes of his—we counted over a

hundred already, and we’re not sure there isn’t a second wave. Whatever we do,

whatever anybody does, he’s almost bound to get on the Ground with five or six

thousand men. Suppose we have a drink. I got some English gin in that

compartment there, courtesy of Grady’s estate.” He pointed at a sliding door on the

side of the console. Compliant, Potter opened it and found bottles and glasses and a

bucket of ice.

“With tonic, half and half,” Radcliffe said.

And sipped, never taking his eyes from the TV screens.

Potter’s mind filled with hopeless visions. Out around the alien city the relidges,

still chanting their foolish hymns, unaware of the wrath of an all-too-human kind

which was about to descend from heaven. On the roads to the west, hordes of

maddened refugees, many of them fleeing their homes for the second time in less

than a decade. And here, waiting for the storm to break, a handful of people who

had deluded themselves into believing they could defy beings closer to the angels…

Is this a case of survival of the fittest? Are we shut out forever from the clan of

the highest races, those who come and go between the stars? Buishenko and those

like him care nothing about the stars, and never will. Does that mean the rest of us

must be content to copy them? A rat with dreams of flying is not cut out for the life

of rats!

“Think there’s any hope for us?” Radcliffe said unexpectedly. “I don’t mean you

and me. I mean mankind.”

“I don’t know,” Potter answered candidly. “Sometimes I get the impression the

spirit is being bled out of us. Ever been in a country occupied by a powerful foreign

army?” Radcliffe shook his head.

“I was in Viet Nam two or three times in the—the old days. And there were all

these uneducated peasants caught up in a monstrous clash of ideologies which they

didn’t understand. The most advanced machines they’d ever run across were

broken-down old trucks and tractors. All of a sudden, here was this war going on

around them with rockets and tanks and helicopters. Their minds closed up.. They

had no—no handle to grasp the situation by. Their language didn’t even have words

for what the fighting was about so the best they could hope for was to raise a

harvest and keep a few kids from starving to death so they’d be provided for in old

age. That was the greatest ambition they could take seriously.”

“Think that’s how we’re going to wind up?” Radcliffe said, and glanced at his

watch. “Ah, there’s news on Far-West in a couple of minutes—and come to think of

it I might as well monitor any other station I can reach.” He flicked a series of

switches and the room filled with a gentle susurras of sound from which occasional

words peaked.

“I guess so,” Potter said in answer to the earlier question. “Oh, in two or three

generations we may adjust enough to make another attempt… but equally we may

adjust so well the idea never enters our heads. Then we’ll have become an inferior

species. Permanently.”

The radio crackled again.

“Rick here, Mr. Radcliffe. It’s no use. Things are getting out of control. The

word’s gotten around about Buishenko and there are refugees coming into the west

side of the Ground like a tidal wave and the relidges are turning out in force again

and—oh, hell, by the time Buishenko gets here he’ll just be able to walk over us!”

“Do your best,” Radcliffe said without emotion. “What else can I say?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Rick muttered. “O.K., I just needed to blow off a little steam.”

“Want to be evacuated?” Radcliffe said, turning to Potter.

“Rats leaving a sinking ship?” the latter countered. “I didn’t realize you had

faculties.”

“Oh, I’ve been keeping a ‘copter fueled and ready. I just decided I don’t want it.

You have it. Take Natasha and Zworykin and Abramovitch—if Buishenko gets his

hands on them hell probably show them what he thinks of them, right? And I guess

you’d better take the kid, too. And Maura. That’s about the limit of what it can

carry. I’ll call the airfield and tell ’em you’re on the way.”

Before Potter could say anything, he had thumbed a switch. “Keene, you there?”

he snapped.

“What? Oh! Yes, Mr. Radcliffe. Look, there’s something very funny going on. I

just picked up a whole string of Russian, very loud. The guy sounded like he was in

a panic. Mike Congreve is over at the radar desk and he speaks Russian, so maybe

he knows what… yes, just a second, he’s coming this way, and… Mike, what the hell

are you laughing at?”

“They’re turning back!” Faint, as though Congreve were distant from the

microphone, but perfectly clear.

“What did you say?” Radcliffe barked.

“Who’s that on the radio? Oh, I know that voice. Yes, Mr. Radcliffe.” More

loudly. “It’s quite true. They’ve been recalled.”

“But why?”

“The Chinese! That message just now said they’re invading Buishenko’s territory

in force.”

The Chinese! Potter doubled his fists so that his nails bit painfully into his palms.

One had almost forgotten about that sleeping giant of a country, which had closed

up on itself again after the arrival of the aliens, in the ancient manner of the Middle

Kingdom, its leaders thinking perhaps that one day when the other Great Powers

had been sufficiently ravaged they might quietly reemerge on to the world scene. It

seemed the day had dawned sooner than predicted.

“Age of Miracles,” Radcliffe said under his breath, and for the first time Potter

felt the phrase contained a grain of truth.

Chapter Twenty-six

« ^ »

A week later Waldron stood shivering on the same hillside from which they had

watched Ichabod and Maura set off on their nearly disastrous expedition. A cool

wind carried the sound of chanting; the relidges were still clinging to their beliefs,

their numbers greatly swollen by the influx of refugees who had fled from

Buishenko’s invasion, and now the danger was past were too weary to go home—or

perhaps afraid to face the scorn of friends who had stayed put. A score of would-be

successors to Brother Mark were wandering wild-eyed from group to group,

preaching on texts from the Book of Revelations. Luckily, so far no clear-cut

inheritor of his mantle had emerged.

If this doesn’t work…

But it had to work. He looked around, seeing Greta, Potter, Congreve,

Porpentine, others and others. Rick had taken over the big movie camera Congreve

had previously used. A short distance away, Natasha and Abramovitch were setting

up a rather more elaborate array of instruments than before; during the past few

days they had had time to sift through the incredible miscellany of loot

accumulated by Grady, and extracted enough equipment to stock a small physics

lab.

Natasha called out that everything was ready, and he and Congreve moved

towards Porpentine.

“O.K.!” the psychologist said briskly. “You both know—at the moment—how this

technique works. When I give the order, you’ll regress to the respective juvenile ages

which you can reach most completely. You’ll approach the alien city and if possible

go inside. You’re protected by hypnotic injunctions against taking anything and

against staying too log. When you come out again, you’ll revert automatically to

normal awareness. Are you ready? When I say ‘nine’… One, three, five, seven, nine! ”

Waldron blinked and stared at the looming, shining marvel ahead of him as

though he had never seen it before. In a very real sense, he hadn’t. Somehow—he

didn’t remember how—he knew it was safe to go to it and see all the marvels hidden

inside. Provided, of course, that he didn’t go alone, but went with his friend Mike,

whose mind was as full as his own with love and adoration for the beings who had

devised such a miraculous edifice.

Not saying anything, gazing with hungry eyes at the glory before him, he

beckoned Mike and set off across the rough ground.

Oh, the colors! Emerald and amethyst, ruby and turquoise, sparkling and

gleaming! But— mustn’t touch! Mustn’t take anything. Look as much as you like,

but leave things alone!

“I will,” Jimmy Waldron said, a good boy aged seven excited to be visiting such a

wonderful place in company with his best friend Mike who was nine.

He walked at a dutiful calm pace on the rough ground that ended abruptly

where transparent air turned into a riot of color and light. Sheened and filmed with

beauty, this was an elseness, not a wall. Division: here, the see-through breeze;

there, the be-through frieze. It did not cross his mind to wonder how they would

enter, whether there was a gate or a door or a portal. Entering had nothing to do

with it. Other-going did. Some few yards distant still from the shining, which from

here looked like a mist somehow prevented from drifting and not at all like a solid

barrier, he experienced a pleasant shift of directions, very much like letting his body

fall to full arm-stretch from a tree-bough and swinging, except that there was no

back-and-forth, only forth.

The steps regularly measured compressed into a glide and the last/next several

paces happened without being noticed. First there was a gentle sucking sensation,

not applied only to the surface of his body (lowering himself into water made

astonishingly viscous) but to every cell and fiber of his being: as an iron filing might

feel on responding to a magnetic field. Oh, yes! Glancing back because of a last tiny

tingle of alarm he saw clearly, but confusedly, as in a kaleidoscope with transfinite

mirrors around it (the polygonal truth of a circle), the exterior Earth; he was

reassured to know that this amazing place could be looked out of. For he was

already in it. As were-in-dark into are-in-light at the touch of a switch, electricity

not having been discovered yet. It made him gasp, but with delight. Everywhere

happened to him, instantly! No sky no ground no horizon no up no down but only

around, the immanence (a word he had not learned at so young an age) of

iridescence (a word he had fallen in love with and proudly boasted of spelling with

the correct single r). Oh delicious. Blue sparkled tartly on his tongue, but on

balance (over an infinite abyss) he better liked the gold which was inspiriting and

heavy in all directions, especially inward.

Mike said something in a ripple of predictive pinks across which black bars

glossed additional layers of meaning; he was not sure whether he heard, tasted,

smelled or was hurt by the information, but he understood it and awared that there

was very much to appre-see-eat in very little XlOshun of thyme. He tunneled back

concurrence, hot brown sand fashion, and imagined himself as a waffle-iron, which

was very funny. It broke him up into about a gross of separate bits.

But that was at the surface/frontier/border/transition zone/meniscus. Click, he

had feet again, hands body et cetera. Here there was place, which briefly or perhaps

for several eternities there had not been, and substance, which had dissipated but

now was back, and he could see Mike, friend, draped (like himself he realized) in

rainbows stiff as silk and rough as butter. It was too much to reason about. It was a

totality, an embracing feel/sense, beyond dissection like the sudden recent

improbable interest (age 7) in the presence of girls budding into body-hair and…

(??? Age 7? An instant of confusion, if there were instants here; he found other

figures like 12 and 38-24-36 and 17 washing across his mind, fraught with

incomprehensible significance and ignored them because he couldn’t reason about

them or anything, could only experience and react.)

Fundamental, anyhow, was the number EYE. Straight ahead lay all possible

directions including east, west, north, south, up, down, sideways, backwards,

acute, obtuse, slow, fast, fat, thin, bronze, yellow, parabolic, paregoric and

pandemonic. It was great fun.

“We’ve done it!” Mike exclaimed. “We got outside!”

“And look at everything!” Jimmy cried. (That was possible from where they

were.) He had to giggle. “Mustn’t touch!” (Funny, because touching couldn’t be

avoided. The place touched them, inside and throughout.) Paths, passageways,

corridors, rooms, tracks, volumes!

Objects… after their fashion. Dreamwise, they moved without motion, being in a

succession of localities while remaining where they were. Fairground: the engineer

at the center of the carousel, without an engine and without the world revolving

because it wasn’t a round turning… No use; if he was ever going to find words, that

must be later. What counted was that it was happening, and it was wonderful.

They must be objects, though, surely… except they were not. They—they existed.

Like position and direction. It was possible to wander among them and examine

them, often making a slight effort akin to reaching out/up/into, at other times (if

any) simply chancing on them. The first was a fabulous sparkling ellipsoidal

shower, at least as big as a breath and nearly as light as fever-heat. Some of the

sparks were capacious and smelt of probity and congratulations. Others, though,

were hollow, prickly with fatigue, and incurred a sense of being remote.

Digesting that led to vague hunger, so they agreed on a spiral under their left and

front respectively (they were talking all the time, of course, being overwhelmed by

the variety of impingement) and invoked it until its absolute cold began to bore

them. By then they were oriented—the sunrise was among the directions they were

facing—and the place began to make sense of them, so they were able to start

counting the hundred paces which, it had been agreed, must limit this initial

incursion. In Jimmy’s case the initial was W, and in Mike’s it was C.

The limiting velocity here is W.

“Well, it is for me at any rate,” Jimmy said, proving it by saying a cloud of

pumpkins though not quite understanding what a limiting velocity might be.

Something at which you could expand outwards, he imagined, doing it. A cluster of

spheroids like a bunch of grapes dangling from a hyperbolic function—well, it was

curved like a cat’s tail, actually—measured him off in degrees absolute and that

tickled until he could scarcely bear it, although he chuckled as he writhed.

Little by little, to his surprise, the tickling began to make sense of a red fish, and

the thought expressed to him: I ought to be wearing coordinates. What goes well

with red?

Mike’s answer was prompt and coarse-textured. He had sneezed about it for a

while and decided on a very mild electric shock, the kind you get when you touch

your tongue to the terminals of a dry cell. That fitted excellently except that it

wasn’t completely square, and he wriggled around until he had altered the

perspective he was viewing it from. Were the hundred paces up, or had they turned

minus? Counting backward, he got down to about twenty-nine or possibly fifty-five,

and hesitated. The brilliance was somewhat dazzling and the style of his friend was

inadequate, lacking the middle rung.

“Mike?” he called, looking up and forth the cylindrical platform he was groping

down.

“Yes, Jimmy? Say, did you greet this one yet? It horns us! That must be what it’s

here for!”

“Mike, this way—over here!” (But where am I?) “You’re going too lofted!”

“No, I’m right here inside you! I promised we wouldn’t be too short, same as you

did!”

What? What?

(But it was making more and more sense, because it was full of echoes: age-seven

echoes. On a window ledge, nailed secure, a box with one side and the floor of wire

mesh, enclosing two sad chickens that dropped limy excreta to the street. A moment

when, standing at the front of a subway train, he had been sure that this time the

brakes were going to fail. In a corner scarcely daring to breathe while his cousin

three years older and much stronger hunted him, promising loudly and with fervor

he would smash his teeth, kick his balls, pull his hair out by the handful. Everything

on the sudden confining, expectant, apprehensive.)

“Jimmy? Jimmy!”

“Here comes a something!”

A someone.

August, majestic, awful, the crystallized sound of a million crashing cars made

his desire fromness. Flee-shrink-absent him. He knew how.

He knew how.

It was exactly like discovering that he could wiggle his ears, which he had never

thought of until he was fourteen.

But I’m not fourteen. I’m only seven. Somewhere I must have got

double/folded/plied.

“The last time I went through here—”

I haven’t been here before. I didn’t come here until next time, was I? Oh, this is

terrible, I can’t stand it, guts twisting, nausea churning, where’s Mike? The entity,

the being, the personage (infinite reflections of authority from mother to master,

parent to policeman): must not catch in that gong-ring claw I felt brush the raw

nerve of my spine. Red, shock-taste, go back until it looks absolutely square and…

The way out, as before in a deformed perspective, a headlong dash down a

kaleidoscope, yes. Stable light, daylight that didn’t shift insanely through irritation

into maddening thirst and back to animosity. Solid ground with regular up and

down, salvation, Earth! He flung towards it and realized in mid-career: No!

Caught at the interface, he bounded on it, like a fly collided with the web-thread

of a spider, and in the moment of rebound saw; pale gray rocks crowned with

brownish vegetation, overhead a slate-colored sky. Near the horizon a sun sinking,

lurid red and not from sunset clouds. An old sun, chill and unfriendly.

He cried out and reversed, and was lost before the infinite choice of ways open to

him. How do you invert a taste, a color and a not-quite square?

But…

“Jimmy! Jimmy, come back!”

His cry. Worked. But answered from… ? Tears streamed down his cheeks, little

boy lost in the city, Where’s a friend to help me home? Beware of strangers who do

dreadful things to little boys, always wait for the green before you cross, look out for

funny cigarettes and funny pills…

Wait. Wait. Think. Be calm. Once, long ago, in a visited city: recollection of a

sign which was not the right one, only identical, and then discovery of a threatening

street, and… Oh, yes. He had remembered west by the sun. Used it, returned safe

when artificial clues like names and neons failed. Parents worried since he was only

nine—and he was seven, seven, and it was Mike who was nine and…

“Hey, Jimmy! Jim-m-m-y!”

Blindly, yet with assurance, he set off in the wake of that shrieking acid signal

and prepared for the shock of yesterday which lay ahead. If felt as though he had to

shred a million years.

But in the end there was a—form? Shape? Figure? It took hold of him, and

wrenched him diagonally across eons, and somewhere on the way he lost himself.

Stop.

“Jim! Jim!”

Bending over him, person. Fair hair, anxious voice. Greta. Others nearby: Mike,

Porpentine, Natasha, Rick. He felt grass tickling, smelt air tinged with smoke. His

throat was sore from half-remembered screaming.

Seeing him stir, Porpentine knelt, briskly touched his forehead, examined his

eyes with a brush of his thumb to each upper lid, counted a dozen beats of his pulse.

“Are you O.K.?” he demanded.

“I… Yes, I guess so,” Waldron whispered. “Except I feel as though I’ve been

through a mincing-machine. Someone help me sit up. And I’d like a drink of water.”

“You’re all right!” Greta exclaimed, clasping her hands. “Mike came out carrying

you! We thought at first you were dead, and then—” She let the words die unspoken

as the others gathered around, looking as though she could have bitten her tongue.

“You thought I’d gone weirdo,” Waldron suggested, suddenly racked by shivers.

“Well—”

“Of course you did. Thanks”—to Rick, who had offered a canteen. He took three

measured mouthfuls, savoring the stability of the clear taste which was not going to

dissolve without warning into a blare of trumpets or the agony of amputation. And

continued: “I guess it was a close call. In fact for a while I think I did go kind of

crazy. Mike!”

Face concerned, Congreve bent towards him.

“Mike, I—I didn’t mean to put a scare into you. But when the alien turned up—”

“What? What alien?”

“You mean you didn’t see it? No, that’s wrong. Hear it A crashing noise. A

tremendous crashing noise. I must have panicked.”

“I don’t get you,” Congreve said after a pause. “When we got to that sort of a

waterfall place—you know, the one we came to after the hundred steps—you

seemed to become… I don’t know! What would you call it? Petrified? As though you

were mesmerized. I shouted at you, and you didn’t react, and in the end I just had

to drag you back.”

“Petrified?” Waldron repeated incredulously. “But I ran off! I thought I’d never

find my way back. And I wasn’t in any waterfall place, as you call it.”

Congreve hesitated. Glancing at Porpentine, he said, “Doc, I guess we’d better go

home. It’s going to take a long while to get to the bottom of all this.”

“But I did run off!” Waldron insisted. “And what’s more—” He licked his lips,

while the others waited intently.

“What’s more,” he said at length. “I found my way to somewhere else. Bennett

was right. I didn’t go out, but I saw it. I saw a planet of another sun.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

« ^ »

“It works,” Potter said a week later, and looked around the table, marveling at

the optimism he could read on all these tired faces. Never, since the day the aliens

struck, had he seen so many cheerful expressions in the same room.

Radcliffe said, “You mean Jim found his way back to the same place he stumbled

on before.”

“And this time I brought pictures to prove it,” Waldron said, fanning a group of

Polaroids that showed slate-blue sky, red sun, gray rocks, brown plants. “Thanks to

Abramovitch. Without his analysis of the external color-signals I wouldn’t have

known when and where to go in. It looks as though you can enter the alien city

anywhere, but the internal relationships are constantly changing. Alien city—oh,

damn! I keep trying to use a better name, but the habit’s so ingrained… Never mind.

What counts is that we can apparently respond to the conditions inside. We can

learn to recognize what are presumably the counterparts of direction-markings, the

way a rat might cross a river on a fallen tree.”

“But when you went in the first time,” Radcliffe said, “how was it that you

thought you ran off and Mike believed you were right next to him, and he thought

you were in a place with a waterfall and you remembered something different,

and… ? Come on, I want an explanation I can understand. I’m sick of merely being

told.”

Everyone looked at Porpentine, who shrugged and leaned back.

“You’re asking a lot. After all, we’ve barely begun to study the problem. But it

looks as though Jim’s analogy will hold. A dog in a city can learn to cross the street

only when the traffic’s halted for a red light, without having to understand

electricity. Pavel is still analyzing the readings he got from the instruments Jim took

on his second trip, but one or two things have become clear, so I’ll do my best to

sum up what we know. Natasha, correct me if I say anything completely wrong,

won’t you?

“Both Mike and Jim agree that when they walked up to the wall they realized it

was permeable and all they had to do was keep straight on. It is not in fact a wall,

and we might have, learned that long ago if we’d thought of using absolutely

nonhostile means to test it, like touching it with a long pole. In fact, of course, what

we’ve tried to touch it with have been rockets, bullets and laser beams, and anyone

who was fool enough to push high energies at it was immediately driven insane.”

“So if it’s not a wall, what is it?” Radcliffe said.

“Something we have no words for. For the time being we’ve decided to call it an

extraface—by analogy with interface. Under hypnosis Mike and Jim have both

clearly described the sensations they felt when they reached it. Jim says it was like

falling to arm’s length from a tree-branch, Mike that it was like being spun around

in a fast river-current. Pavel says there must be a local condition analogous to the

boundary layer of a liquid, maybe even a macro equivalent of the surface tension on

a nucleon; at any rate it seems to mark a change in the nature of space itself. During

the transit, there’s no idea of direction and the senses are hopelessly

cross-connected, although willpower remains and the confusion is quite enjoyable.

Mike said it was like a good drunk, and Jim—who incidentally had far more vivid

sensory experiences—said it was like delirium but without the pain or sickness.

“As to what’s inside… or outside, as they both insist on calling it: well, it is a place

. In other words you get your sense of location back. But as well as that you acquire

an awareness of uncountable directions, all lying ahead of you. They’re agreed on

this much, even though they differ on almost everything else. But it ties into a

suggestion Orlando put forward, as I recall.”

“Which one?” Potter said dryly. “I’ve had lots of ideas, and most of them have

turned out to be wrong.”

“You proposed that the aliens might think in a matrix mode, didn’t you? And you

also said they might omit verbalization when communicating data.”

Potter nodded.

“Well, we’re tentatively regarding this in terms of a multiplex data situation, but

not quite the way you originally phrased it; more, we’re comparing it to a modern

city as a Bushman might see it, confused by the plethora of information making

claims on your attention—advertisements, radio noise, TV, warnings, street-corner

speakers and the rest. Only that’s a terrible oversimplification. It does look as

though

beyond

the

extraface

many,

many

different

layers—volumes—segments—whatever you call them—many different bits of

space-time, anyway, coexist, and can be perceived as simultaneous.”

“But not to the same degree by everybody,” Congreve put in. “Once we were

through the extraface, so far as I was concerned it was possible, though hellish

hard, to walk a hundred paces as arranged, stop and look around, come back to the

point of entry… I interpreted my surroundings in rather conventional terms; Jim

didn’t. He must be far more sensitive to these space-time strata. Right, Louis?”

“I suspect so,” Porpentine agreed. “You were convinced he never left your side on

that first visit. He’s absolutely certain he lost touch with you when a passing alien

scared him and he fled down a direction which luckily he perceived as being labeled

by—ah—some very peculiar coordinates.”

Waldron chuckled. “Coordinates! Yes! I remember I was thinking about putting

on well-matched clothes. Literally. I guess I must have been seven when I first

learned that use of the word, and of course that was the age I’d been regressed to.

Except—” He hesitated.

“Yes, except,” Porpentine said. “That brings us to an absolutely crucial point. You

were right to suggest we might sneak past the aliens’ defenses by using hypnosis.

But for completely the wrong reasons.”

Radcliffe started. “How’s that again?”

“Regressing someone to an earlier age is of course a fiction. You don’t wipe out

the later memories. You can’t. At most you can discount them. Fortunately for us,

that’s quite enough, combined of course with a good deal of conditioning, orders

not to hate the aliens, not to touch or interfere with anything, and so on. The point

is, though, that from the regressed age you can remember in both directions. Jim

gave some vivid examples of this. He compared some of his sensations to the tingle

of excitement which went with his awakening adolescent interest in girls’ bodies,

yet at seven he was still prepubescent, and is consciously aware that his sexual urge

was dormant until he was twelve, while he didn’t lose his virginity until he was

seventeen. All these numbers got mixed up with his attempts to count a hundred

paces, as well as his concern for his theoretical mental age. And when he was

struggling to find his way back from the distant exit he chanced across, he says he

clearly recalls preparing himself for the shock of yesterday, but he had to wait a hell

of a long time before it arrived.”

“Bennett,” Radcliffe said. “He got turned around. Why didn’t Mike and Jim?”

Porpentine spread his hands. “Pavel is working on the assumption that whatever

the device was which he restored to working order, it must have lacked some

associated mechanism, or field, which beyond the extraface prevents that kind of

mishap. Compare it to having an accelerator and no brakes, or no steering. If you

have to compare it to something, and I keep finding that I do.”

“So it may be confusion of the time-sense which drives at least some weirdos out

of their minds,” Potter said.

“Yes, it may. But we’re going to have to get rid of the blanket category ‘weirdo’,”

Porpentine asserted. “When we study them in more detail, we’ll almost certainly

find there are a number of different types, some affected by the defensive field,

some by time-confusion, some by the cross-connection of sensory data—like

someone who can’t come down again after an overdose of LSD—and some quite

possibly by the shock of encountering an alien inside the—” He glanced ruefully at

Waldron. “I was going to say ‘city’, too. I mean inside the transit nexus.”

“That,” Waldron muttered, “is a very alarming experience. Believe you me. We’ll

have to work out some means of detecting their approach. Not that the chance of

meeting one of them seems to be very high.”

There was a pause. Radcliffe said eventually, “The main point is, though, that

with proper preparation we humans can learn the—the coordinates of the system,

even if we don’t have the least idea how they work. And sneak quietly through to

other worlds.”

“Yes, that’s what we’re hoping. We can’t do it on the adult level, that’s definite.

Regression is going to remain essential, at least for the foreseeable future. The

learning process is nonintellectual, like learning to swim, or ride a bicycle, or walk a

tight-rope—in Jim’s phrase, like learning to wiggle your ears. And it’s notorious that

it’s best to start young when it comes to developing any talent that can’t be

verbalized. Music is the prime example.”

“I get you,” Radcliffe said. “When I was a kid I used to think music was kind of

sissy. When I was about fifteen I got interested in guitar, but I never got to be any

good. It was already too late.”

“Pavel seems to have been right to suggest that in fact the aliens may not be very

different from ourselves after all,” Potter said. “At any rate we do seem to have the

necessary mental equipment to make some sort of sense out of their processes. The

necessary muscles, as it were—I’m thinking of Jim’s ear-wiggling image. Given the

proper incentive, even though we don’t ordinarily have any use for them we can

bring them under conscious control.”

Porpentine nodded. “The next step I plan to take is an investigation of yoga

techniques, to see if the kind of acquired skills which can reduce oxygen

requirements or alter EEG waves offer any clues to what happens inside your mind

when you cross the extraface. It’s going to be a long project, this, but I’m confident

of eventual success.”

“Given some backing,” Potter said. “Given personnel and funds. Den, could you

have those Polaroids of Jim’s copied, and extra prints made of all the film we’ve

shot? I’m going to Washington, to scream and yell and raise Cain until those

purblind idiots realize what’s happened. I’m going to recruit physicists, engineers,

astronomers, doctors, psychologists… I’m going to bring you more rats than you can

handle.”

“I get on best with my own kind,” Radcliffe said.

Chuckling, Potter continued, “But before they arrive… Mike, you’d better add a

few trimmings to your scheme for taming the relidges.”

“Mine?” Congreve said, laying a hand on his chest. “Well, I guess by adoption.

Such as what?”

“Don’t stop at half-measures. Don’t simply imitate Brother Mark. Go the whole

hog and call yourself the Archangel Michael, and preach on the text you mentioned

yourself—‘except ye become as little children’—and promise that you’ll actually

escort people into the holy city. We’ll make arrangements to screen all the disciples

you acquire, sort out those who are most susceptible to hypnosis, or drugs or yoga

techniques according to what Louis’s researches turn up, and then we’ll hold

private tuition for them in secret. I don’t believe the nexi give access to only one

other planet. I suspect it’s more like thousands. After all, they’ve put five nexi on

this planet alone, and so far as we can tell Earth is no more than an interchange

station. By trial and error we should find the way to hundreds of different worlds.”

“But they may not be fit for human life,” Natasha said. “Suppose we send people

through, and they die?”

“How many people died trying to repel Buishenko’s invasion?” countered Potter.

“How many are dying right now as the Chinese take over his territory? How many

were casually blotted out by the aliens when they set off our nukes? Maybe we’ll

have to accept that some of the people who go out will become casualties, the way

we do in wartime. They’ll include some of our finest individuals, but hasn’t war

always taken the best instead of the worst? Surely it’s better to risk death in the

cause of all mankind than for the sake of some stupid political squabble that’s going

to be forgotten in a hundred years.”

“Rats get on ships,” Radcliffe said, as though the whole argument could be

dismissed in those four words.

“Yes, but whatever you say, Den, we aren’t rats. We’re human beings, with some

guts, some intelligence, some capacity for planning ahead. And there’s going to

come a time when the aliens will wish they’d treated us with more respect!”

Chapter Twenty-eight

« ^

It would snow tonight for sure; the leaden overcast was threatening and the wind

bore a keen edge. But Fred Johnson paid little attention to the state of the weather,

like all the others standing patiently with him on the bleak hillside. His main

reaction to the prospect of snow was vague regret that he would not see how

glorious the heavenly city appeared when there was a mantle of white over the

surrounding country.

By then, though, he would be in glory…

He was an electronics engineer in ordinary life. Right now, however, he was first

and foremost a disciple of the Archangel Michael. He had attended a relidge

meeting out of sheer curiosity; afterwards he had been invited to talk privately with

one of the apostles, and had agreed because he wanted to argue the guy out of his

ridiculous convictions, and the tables had been completely turned on him. He had

reached the unexpected conclusion, over prosaic coffee and doughnuts, that his

greatest ambition was access to the angelic city. “Except ye become as little

children… !” the archangel had thundered—and he had obeyed. He waited passive

with the rest of today’s Chosen, eyes fixed in adoration on the spectacular play of

colors across the valley, and never for a moment wondered why he was hung about

with tools and equipment: an axe, a shotgun and shells, a first-aid kit, a portable

radio, a bag of food, seeds, extra clothing, a bedroll and a cookpot, a load he was

just strong enough to carry at a fast walking pace.

All the others, too, carried similar burdens, including anything that might

facilitate their survival—somewhere else. But he did not notice. He would not be

able to until the post-hypnotic trigger buried in his subconscious during those

sessions of “private tuition” in the mysteries of the angelic host were tripped by an

external stimulus.

Then he would remember what the transit nexus really was.

A helicopter settled to the ground alongside the glass-fronted hut which

overlooked the waiting group of Chosen. Radcliffe jumped out and walked—briskly,

for the air was icy—towards its door.

The occupants nodded a greeting as he entered. Monitoring a screen on which

was presented a continuous analysis of the color-patterns on the nexus—their

instruments were linked by landline to Radcliffe’s own computer, a very respectable

three-and-a-half generation model—Pavel and Natasha were too busy to do more.

Waldron and Greta were only checking equipment manifests, and could spare time

to chat.

“Come to see them off?” Waldron inquired.

“Not exactly,” Radcliffe said. “I brought some news from Orlando. Thought you

might like to hear it before it turns up on the radio.”

“Orlando?” Greta glanced up. “I thought he was still in Australia. Is he back?”

“No, this is a message from Canberra; Washington passed it on. They

successfully infiltrated the city there at five A.M. our time and the reports look

good.”

“Another possible?” Waldron said eagerly.

“More than possible. They call it the best yet—a sub-tropical climate, green

vegetation, no large animal life in the immediate vicinity… Of course, it’ll be a long

time before we can start shipping people to it, what with that bastard Villiers-Hart

trying to grab back his ground, but it does sound kind of special, doesn’t it?”

Waldron stared out of the window at the Chosen. It was a big group today,

nearly eight hundred strong.

“You know, when I got that glimpse of Exit A on my first venture into the nexus, I

was scared blind. I still don’t know how I found my way home. And here we are in a

matter of months equipped with route-finders small enough to drop in your pocket.

I thought we’d abandoned hope, resigned from the business of thinking and

decided to turn into vegetables. I can hardly believe so much has happened in such

a short time.”

“Speaking of route-finders,” Greta said, reverting to her equipment lists, “you did

hear, did you, that Pavel has confirmed his guess about Type Five artifacts? People

are already starting to refer to them as compasses.”

“I hadn’t heard, but I’m not surprised. We thought of the aliens as being

infinitely superior to us for far too long. We should have realized they had faults

and shortcomings of their own as soon as we discovered they were capable of

breaking things and throwing them away.” Radcliffe moved to Waldron’s side and

pointed at the Chosen. “Where are they going, by the way?”

“This is the first follow-up party for Exit G,” Waldron answered. “It’s a trifle

ahead of schedule, but today there’s a good plain path—purple-salt-and-rubbery all

the way. The advance guard has been there nine weeks, and they’re very

enthusiastic, and if we miss this route we may not get another good one for several

months.” He scanned a bank of clocks on the hut wall, which showed GMT, local

time, sidereal time, corrected transit time—by which they scheduled the departure

of the Chosen—and several new rhythms derived from observation of the cyclic

color-changes on the extraface of the nexus. “Mike’s late,” he added. “He was due

here two minutes ago. I hope nothing’s gone wrong.”

“I saw his ‘copter on the way here,” Radcliffe said. “Look, there it comes.”

They glanced at the gray-shrouded sky. All the Chosen were doing the same. The

arrival of “Archangel” Mike Congreve was the signal they were so anxiously

awaiting. Up to the moment when he showed himself, doubts might linger about

their chance of entering the heavenly city.

Doubting was over. A ragged cheer went up, and was followed by the chanting of

a tune they had been taught as a reinforcement for their hypnotically imposed

orders.

“Quite a guy, our Mike,” Radcliffe said soberly.

True enough, Waldron signified with a nod. During the past few months his

mind had been stocked with data concerning every route so far charted through the

nexus. Even without a route-finder he could lead the Chosen through the swirling

flows of color-as-taste, sound-as-pain and the rest, as easily as along a human

street. So far he had guided parties totaling almost fourteen thousand to eight

different habitable worlds.

Of course, “habitable” would remain a questionable description for generations.

Some plague might spring up, some long-term effect of alien chemicals in what

appeared to be safe soil or clean rain might depress intelligence, some parasite or

predator might emerge from hibernation… But there was a slim chance, worth

taking, of ultimate survival.

There had been casualties, as predicted: a few right here, people whose hypnotic

armor failed them, who returned as weirdos, and others on the far side of exits now

classified as dangerous, who had ventured through and never returned. Later, the

better facilities and more knowledge of what the aliens would and would not

tolerate, someone would investigate their fate. Not yet. There was too much else to

be done.

“It’s a hell of a big batch,” Radcliffe muttered. “Isn’t it risky to send so many at

once?”

“You think the aliens will be annoyed?” Greta said.

“It’s a possibility.”

“I guess you’re right. But since we quit pilfering live artifacts, the aliens have

shown no sign of even noticing us. I suspect they can’t be bothered to. We’ve put up

with rats and mice for thousands of years, and we only take steps against them

when they cause direct harm: rob the larder, carry plague.”

“Yes, but suppose we affect them in some way we don’t know about,” Radcliffe

objected. “Mice stink, for example. That’s regarded as a good reason to poison

them.”

“We’ll go on taking that chance,” Waldron grunted. “I’d rather risk that than be

in Asia, wouldn’t you?”

Radcliffe shuddered visibly. “Damned right. The way it started off, I thought the

Chinese would just roll Buishenko up tidily and put him away, and the world would

be a lot quieter. Then of course the loyalist Russian forces intervened… How many

casualties so far? Twenty million, is it?”

“Can we have silence, please?” Natasha called, and picking up a microphone

went on without a pause. “Mike, the colors are coming up to Exit G pattern now,

and they should take about two minutes fifteen seconds to stabilize. When you get

three green ripples moving right to left, you’ll have six minutes forty seconds to

complete your pep-talk, and you get moving on a recurrent flash of rust and gold.”

“Fine!” came the whispered reply. Congreve had a contact mike taped to his

throat for messages he didn’t want the Chosen to overhear. As for his earphones,

they were concealed by a static-aura halo of a handsome electric blue which

Abramovitch, laughing like a hyena, had personally designed and built for him. It

went splendidly with his luminescent robe of white and silver.

And, a moment later, he started to deliver his final address in a monstrously

amplified voice that made the ill-carpentered window of the hut rattle in its frame.

His job for the moment over, Abramovitch leaned back and gave a mountainous

sigh. He said something to Natasha which made her laugh, and she translated. In

the past months he had learned some English, but he was still far from fluent.

“Pavel says he is like a man in a post office, or the ticket clerk at an airport, yes?

Always hearing about distant places and never seeing any himself because he gets

too little pay for foreign vacations. Now doubtless they will ask him to go to

Australia, and he will have been all around this planet and still not have traveled

properly.”

“He’s right,” Waldron said. “In fact he’s so damned right I think it’s painful. I’m

going to quit my job. I’m not very good at it, you know.”

Radcliffe glanced at him in surprise. “But you’ve made nearly as many transits as

Mike, haven’t you?”

“Sure, sure. I’ve been through Exit G and seen a bird as big as an eagle which

wasn’t a bird but the detachable crown of a tree. I’ve been through Exit K and seen

a rock that wasn’t a rock but a colony of creatures as hard as marble. I’ve been lots

of places. But I’m too sensitive. I cross-refer sense-data too readily. Louis has to give

me tranquilizers now—and did you know I came back from one trip with a burn on

my arm because somebody shouted too loud?”

“Is that a fact?” Radcliffe said incredulously.

“Oh, yes. I had a blister the size of my palm. It’s healed O.K., but… No, I’m going

to quit and join the Chosen.”

“So am I,” Greta said, putting aside her equipment lists. “I’m going to see Louis

tomorrow, find out if I’m suitable for hypnosis. Not that that’s so important

anymore, with the new drugs they’re using.”

“I’ll be damned,” Radcliffe muttered. “Know something? You’re turning out to be

better rats than I am.”

“You’re not going anywhere?” Greta suggested.

“Me? No, the project’s too long-term to appeal to me. The best we can hope for is

to plant colonies and creep around under the aliens’ feet. Sure, it’s a great scheme,

because it means if they ever get sick enough of us to sterilize Earth we can hope to

leave descendants elsewhere. If that does happen, though… Well, look at the way

we’ve messed up this planet, even though it is our own home. We damned well can’t

afford to make the same mistakes anywhere else, right? So it’s best to let my type

stay behind.”

There was a brief silence. Then, as though embarrassed at having spoken so

nakedly, he shrugged his coat tighter around him. “Must be going. Maura and the

kid are waiting in the ‘copter.”

The door slammed behind him.

“Hasn’t Den changed?” Waldron said in a low voice.

“We all have,” Greta said. “We’ve been changed. It’s a great thing to have hope

again, even a slender hope like ours.”

“Yes, but that’s not all. Maybe it’s not the most important.” He frowned,

struggling to find words. “I think of it more like this. We’ve been desperately trying

to make the world seem familiar again. We’ve been using comparisons and

analogies: Den with his rats and mice, Orlando with his peasants under an army of

occupation, Louis with his Bushman in a modern city, and so on. Finally we’ve

begun to admit that this isn’t the same as anything we’ve run across before. It isn’t

even much like anything else. How could it be? We’ve been tossed without warning

clear over the horizon of our own past. We calculated that the odds were against

our being alone in the galaxy. Now we know we’re not. We deduced that other stars

must have planets. Now we can go and walk on them. It’s a clean break. It’s killed

our past. We can’t live in it or by its standards anymore. All that counts from now

on and forever is the future.”

He broke off, for the others weren’t listening. They were staring with aching,

longing eyes across the valley. One by one, following with perfect confidence in the

steps of the archangel who led them, the Chosen were leaving for their appointment

with destiny on a world for which there had not yet been time to coin a name.

When the last of them had dissolved into the incomprehensible web of forces

which would shrink interstellar vastness to the dimensions of a morning stroll,

Waldron glanced at Greta.

“Have you decided what exit you want to go through?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I pick the same one?”

“Good idea.”

Smiling, he leaned back in his chair. And thought: so rats get on ships … True.

And what I’m going to do is much the same. But I’m not going to do it as a rat. I’m

going to do it as a man.

At long last the sky began to shed the first of its threatened flakes of snow.

^