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Goldin-Herds
Goldin, Stephen - Herds (v2.0)
9/10/2005

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Herds

Copyright 1975 by Stephen Goldin

http://stephengoldin.com/

Wesley Stoneham thought he could get away with murdering his wife by blaming the
crime on a hippie commune. What he didn't realize was that there was a witness:
an alien creature exploring Earth by means of astral projection. Now the alien
faces two tough questions: Should he violate his world's laws by getting
involved in an alien problem? And even if he does, how can he possibly
communicate what he saw?

Herds by Stephen Goldin.

PROLOG.

The planet Zarti was peaceful at one time. The most advanced race
was a species of gentle, long-necked herbivores who had no greater
ambitions than full bellies. These Zarticku banded together in herds
for protection from predators and eventually devised simple methods of
communication to exchange basic ideas among themselves.

Without warning, the Offasü came. This space-faring race arrived en
masse at Zarti, hundreds of millions of them—conceivably the
entire Offasü population—in ships that were each several miles in
diameter. They swarmed down like locusts upon this idyllic planet and
irrevocably changed the course of life there.

First they formed zoos, gathering up specimens of each major species
of animal they could find. These specimens were tested, probed and
prodded in every conceivable manner for reasons too subtle to
comprehend. The Zarticku passed the test, and were kept, while the
others were returned to their natural environments.

There was a planet-wide round-up. All the Zarticku that could be
captured were placed in special pens; the ones who couldn't be captured
were killed outright. Then the tortures began. Many Zarticku were
killed and dissected. Some others were not so lucky—they were cut open
alive so that their systems could be observed in action. The screams of
those poor creatures were allowed to filter down into the penned herds,
panicking other animals and causing still more deaths.

No Zarticku were allowed to breed normally. Specially selected sperm
and ova were matched by artificial insemination, while the Offasü
calmly recorded the results of these breedings for three generations.
When their computers had enough data, they began altering the DNA
structure of the Zartic gametes. Genes they disliked were removed. New
ones were substituted to see what effects they would have on the new
generation. Some of these new genes also proved to be undesirable. They
were eliminated in subsequent generations.

After twenty Zartic lifetimes, a generation was born that matched
the Offasü ideal. When this generation had been raised to maturity all
remaining members of preceding generations were put to death, leaving
none but this new breed of Zarticku to inherit the world.

These new creatures were substantially different from their
ancestors who had roamed free in the forests of Zarti. They were
bigger, stronger and healthier. Their eyesight was keener. The tough,
matted hair that had been on their backs had become thin armor plating.
The little appendages at the shoulders that had originally served to
steady tree branches while eating had been developed into full-grown
arms, ending in six-fingered hands with two opposable thumbs that could
grasp and manipulate objects. Their average lifespan had been doubled.
And, most importantly, they were far smarter than their ancestors had
been. Their intelligence level had been quadrupled at the very least.

They also possessed a legacy from their predecessors. Stories of the
Offasü tortures had been passed down over the years by word of mouth,
with each generation adding its new tales of horror. Stories grew in
the retelling, and the mythos of Offasü cruelty increased.

Now that they had apparently gotten what they wanted, the Offasü
proceeded to use—and abuse—their subjects. The Zarticku became slaves
to the older race, used in the most menial and routine of tasks. They
were chained to watch machines that required no supervision, forced to
take part in rituals that served no purpose, made to disassemble
machines only so that other Zarticku could put them together again.
They could be hunted and killed for sport by the Offasü. Sometimes they
were pitted in arenas against wild animals or even others of their own
species. Although copulation was permitted, the choice of mates was
made by the Offasü, and followed no pattern that was discernible to the
Zarticku.

The period of slavery lasted for about a century. During this time,
the face of the planet changed. Every square inch of arable land was
turned to good use by the brutally efficient Offasü. Cities arose,
planned and engineered to perfection. Systems of transportation and
communication were universal.

Then one day the Offasü left. It was an orderly and well-planned
exodus, without a word spoken to the startled Zarticku. One moment the
Offasü had been running the world in their usual brisk fashion, the
next they calmly walked into their enormous spaceships—which had sat
dormant since the day of their landing—and took off into space. They
left behind them all their works, their cities, their farms, their
machines. Also abandoned was a race of very stunned, very perplexed
former slaves.

The Zarticku could not at first believe that their masters had
really departed. They huddled in fear that this might be some new and
devious torture. But weeks passed, and there was no sign anywhere of
the Offasü. Meanwhile, there were crops and machines that required
tending. Almost by reflex, they went back to their accustomed tasks.

Several more centuries passed and the Zarticku turned their
specially-bred intelligence to their own use. They examined the
machines that the Offasü had left behind and discovered the principles
of science; from there, they improved and adapted the machines to their
own purposes. They developed a culture of their own. They used their
intellect to build philosophies and abstract thought. They devised
their own recreations and enjoyments. They began to live the
comfortable life of an intelligent species that has mastered its own
planet.

But beneath the veneer of success was always fear—the fear of the
Offasü. Centuries of cruel oppression had left their mark on the Zartic
psyche. What if the Offasü should someday return? They would not take
kindly to this usurpation of their equipment by upstart slaves. They
would devise new and more horrible tortures and the Zarticku, as
always, would suffer.

It was this atmosphere of fear and curiosity that nurtured the
boldest step the Zartic race had ever taken—the Space Exploration
Project.

CHAPTER I

A two-lane stretch of California 1 ran along the coastline. To the
west, sometimes only a couple of hundred feet from the road, was the
Pacific Ocean, quietly lapping its waves over the sand and stone of San
Marcos State Beach. To the east, a cliff of white, naked rock sprang
upwards to a height of over two hundred feet. Beyond the cliff lay a
string of mountains. They weren't very tall, the highest barely a
thousand feet above sea level, but they were sufficient for the local
residents. The mountains were covered with sparse forests of cypress
trees and tangled underbrush, with a few other types of vegetation
daring to make their presence known at scattered intervals.

At the top of the cliff, overlooking the highway and the ocean, was
a small wooden cabin. It stood in the center of a cleared area, a
simple understatement of human presence in the midst of nature. A car
was parked beside the cabin on the gravel that had been spread around
the structure's perimeter. The gravel extended for about ten yards,
then gave way to loose dry dirt atop hard rock until it entered the
trees another six yards further on.

There was a narrow dirt road that led up from the highway to the
cabin. It did not come straight up, but wound snake-like among the
trees until it reached the clearing. A pair of headlights could
currently be seen weaving along that road, alternately vanishing and
reappearing as the car rounded various curves or passed behind groups
of cypress trees.

Stella Stoneham stood in the darkness, watching those headlights
approach. Her internal organs were trying valiantly to
tie themselves into knots as the lights came nearer. She took a final
long drag on her cigarette and ground it out nervously beneath her foot
in the gravel. If there were any person she didn't want to see right
now it was her husband, but it looked as though the choice was not hers
to make. She frowned and looked up into the sky. The night was fairly
clear, with only a few small patches of cloud obscuring the stars. She
looked back down at the headlights. He would be here in a minute.
Sighing, she went back inside the cabin.

The interior normally cheered her with its brightness and warmth,
but tonight there was an ironic quality about it that only deepened her
depression. The room was large and uncrowded, giving the illusion of
space and freedom that Stella had wanted. There was a long brown sofa
along one wall, with a small reading table and lamp beside it. In the
next corner, going clockwise, there was a sink and a small stove; a
supply cupboard hung on the wall near them, elaborately carved out of
hardwood, with scrollwork and little red gnomes in the corner holding
it up. Also on the wall was a rack of assorted kitchen utensils, still
shiny from lack of use. Continuing around the room there was a small
white dinette set standing neatly in the third corner. The door to the
back bedroom and bathroom stood half ajar, with light from the main
room penetrating only slightly into the darkness beyond the threshold.
Finally there was a writing desk with a typewriter and telephone and an
old folding chair beside if in the corner nearest the door. The center
of the room was bare except for a frayed brown carpet that covered the
wooden floor. The place was not much to cling to, Stella knew, but if a
fight were going to take place at all—as it
now appeared it would—it would be better to handle it on her own
territory.

She sat down on the sofa and stood up again immediately. She paced
the length of the room, wondering what she would do with her hands
while she was talking or listening. Men at least were lucky enough to
have pockets. Outside she could hear the car crunch its way up the
gravel to the very door of the cabin and stop. A car door opened and
slammed shut. A man's footsteps clomped up the three front stairs. The
door flew open and her husband walked in.

* * *

This was to be the eleventh solar system he had personally explored,
which meant that, to Garnna iff-Almanic, the task of finding and
examining planets had gotten as routine as a job that exotic could
become. The Zartic had trained for years before even being allowed on
the Project. There was, first of all, the rigorous mental training that
would allow the combination of machines and drugs to project his mind
away from his body and far out into the depths of space. But an
Explorer had to have more training than just that. He would have to
chart his course in the void, both in attempting to locate a new planet
and in finding his way home again afterwards; that required an
extensive knowledge of celestial navigation. He had to classify in an
instant the general type of planet he was investigating, which called
for up-to-the-minute expertise in the growing science of planetology.
He would be called on to make a report on the life forms, if any, that
the planet held; that necessitated a knowledge of biology. And, in the
event that the planet harbored intelligent life, he had to be able to
describe the level of their civilization from little more than a
glance—and that required that he be made as free of personal prejudices
and fears as possible, for alien societies had different ways of doing
things that could send a normal Zartic into hysterical fits.

But most of all, he had had to overcome the instinctive Zartic fear
of the Offasü, and that required the hardest training of the lot.

His mind hovered above this new solar system, inspecting it for
possibilities. It was the farthest Exploration made to date, well over
a hundred parsecs from Zarti. The star was average, a yellow dwarf—the
type frequently associated with having planetary systems. But as to
whether this system had planets… Garnna made a mental grimace. This was
always the part he hated most.

He began to disperse himself through the space immediately
surrounding the star. His mental fibers spread like a net, becoming
thinner and thinner as he pushed his fragments of mind outward in all
three dimensions in his quest for planets.

There! He touched one almost immediately, and discarded it just as
quickly. It was nothing but an airless ball of rock, and not even
within the star's zone of habitability for protoplasmic life. Although
it was faintly conceivable that some sort of life might exist there, it
did not bother him. He continued to spread his net outward.

Another planet. He was glad to find a second, because the three
points that he now had—sun and two planets—would determine for him the
ecliptic plane of the system. It had long since been discovered that
planetary systems formed generally within a single plane, with only
minor individual deviations from it. Now that he knew its orientation,
he could stop his three-dimensional expansion and concentrate, instead,
on exploring all the area within the ecliptic plane.

The second planet was also a disappointment. It was within the zone
of habitability, but that was the only thing that could be said in its
favor. The atmosphere was covered with clouds and filled with carbon
dioxide, while the surface was so incredibly hot that oceans of
aluminum and rivers of tin were commonplace. No protoplasmic life could
exist here, either. Garnna continued on in his Exploration.

The next thing he encountered was a bit of a surprise—a double
planet. Two large, planet-sized objects circled the star in a common
orbit. Upon closer inspection, one of the planets appeared far more
massive than the other; Garnna began to think of that one as the
primary and the other as a satellite.

He tried to focus as much attention as he could on this system while
still maintaining the net he had spread through space. The satellite
was another airless gray ball, smaller even than the first planet
outward, and appeared quite lifeless, but the primary looked promising.
From space it had a mottled blue and white appearance. The white was
clouds and the blue, apparently, was liquid water. Large quantities of
liquid water. That boded well for the existence of protoplasmic life
there. He checked the atmosphere and was even more pleasantly
surprised. There were large quantities of oxygen freely available for
breathing. He made himself a mental note to investigate it more closely
if nothing even better should turn up, and continued expanding outwards
in his search for planets.

The next one he discovered was small and red. What little atmosphere
there was seemed to consist mainly of carbon dioxide, with almost no
detectable free oxygen. The surface temperature was acceptable to
protoplasmic life, but there seemed to be little, if any, water
available—a very dismal sign. Though this place had possibilities, the
primary of the double planet had more. Garnna continued his expansion.

The net was becoming very thin, now, as the Zartic stretched himself
farther and farther. Images were becoming blurry and his mind seemed to
hold only a tenuous grip on its own identity. He encountered some tiny
rocks floating in space, but declined to even consider them. The next
world out was a gas giant. It was very difficult to make it out because
his mentality was stretched so thin at this point, but that was not
necessary. The search for planets was over in this system, he knew, for
he had passed outside the zone of habitability once more. A gas giant
like this could not exist within that zone, according to theory. There
might be other planets beyond the orbit of this one, but they wouldn't
matter, either. The Offasü would not be interested in them, and
therefore Garnna wasn't interested in them.

He returned his attention to the double planet system.

He felt enormous relief as he reeled in all the far-flung parts of
his mind that had expanded through space. It was always a good feeling
when the initial planetary survey was over, a feeling of bringing
disparate elements together to form a cohensive whole once more. A
feeling akin to making a Herd out of individuals, only on a smaller,
more personal scale.

It was bad enough to be a lone Zartic out in space, cut off from the
entire Herd not to mention the safety and security of his own
iff-group. The job was necessary, of course, for the good of the Herd,
but necessity did not make it any the more pleasant. And when an
individual Zartic had to extend parts of himself until there was almost
nothing left, that was almost unbearable. That was why Garnna hated
that part of the mission the worst. But it was over, now, and he could
concentrate on the real business of Exploration.

* * *

Wesley Stoneham was a big man, well over six feet, with broad,
well-muscled shoulders and the face of a middled-aged hero. He still
had all his hair, a thick black mane of it, cut so that it would even
muss stylishly. The forehead beneath the hair was comparatively narrow
and sported large, bushy eyebrows. His eyes were steel gray and
determined, his nose prominent and straight. In his hand, he carried a
medium-sized suitcase.

"I got your note," was all he said as he took a folded piece of
paper from his pocket and flipped it to the ground at his wife's feet.

Stella exhaled softly. She recognized that tone all too
well, and knew that this was going to be a long and bitter evening.
"Why the suitcase?" she asked.

"As long as I was driving up here, I thought I might as well stay
the night." His voice was even and smooth, but there was an edge of
command to it as he set the suitcase down on the floor.

"Don't you even bother asking your hostess' permission before moving
in?"

"Why should I? This is my cabin, built with my money." The
emphasis on the "my" in both cases was slight but unmistakable.

She turned away from him. Even with her back to him, though, she
could still feel his gaze piercing her soul. "Why not finish the
thought, Wes? 'My cabin, my money, my wife,' isn't that it?"

"You are my wife, you know."

"Not any more." Already she could feel the inside corners of her
eyes starting to warm up, and she tried to check her emotions. Crying
now would do no good, and might defeat her purpose. Besides, she had
learned from painful experience that Wesley Stoneham was not affected
by tears.

"You are until the law says otherwise." He strode across the room to
her in two large steps, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her
around. "And you are going to look at me when you talk to me."

Stella tried to shake herself out of his grip, but his fingers just
tightened all the more into her skin, one of them (did he do it
intentionally?) hitting a nerve so that a streak of pain raced across
her shoulders. She stopped twisting and eventually he took his arms
away again.

"That's a little better," he said. "The least a man can expect is a
little civility from his own wife."

"I'm sorry," she said sweetly. There was a slight crack in her voice
as she tried to force some gaiety into it. "I should go over to the
stove and bake my big, strong mansy-wansy a welcome home cake."

"Save the sarcasm for someone who likes that shit, Stella," Stoneham
growled. "I want to know why you want a divorce."

"Why, my most precious one, it's…" she began in the same saccharine
tones. Stoneham gave her a hard slap against the cheek. "I told you to
can that," he said.

"I think my reasons should be more than apparent," Stella said
bitterly. There was a flush creeping slowly into the cheek where she'd
been hit. She raised her hand to the spot, more out of
self-consciousness than pain.

Stoneham's nostrils flared, and his stare was supercold. Stella
averted her eyes, but stubbornly stood her ground. There was ice on her
husband's words as he asked, "Have you been having an affair with that
overaged hippie?"

It took a moment for her to realize who he meant. About a mile from
the cabin, in Totido Canyon, a group of young people had moved into an
abandoned summer camp and formed what they proudly called the "Totido
Commune." Because of their unconventional behavior and dress, they were
thought of by the surrounding residents as hippies and condemned
accordingly. Their leader was an older man, at least in his late
thirties, and he seemed to keep his group in order just this side of
the law.

"Are you talking about Carl Polaski?" Stella asked incredulously.

"I don't mean Santa Claus."

Despite her nervousness, Stella laughed. "That's preposterous. And
besides, he's not a hippie; he's a psychology professor doing research
on the drop-out phenomenon."

"People tell me he's been hanging around this cabin a lot, Stell. I
don't like that."

"There's nothing immoral about it. He runs some errands for me and
does a few odd jobs. I pay him back by letting him use the cabin for
writing. He types over here, because he can't get enough privacy to say
what he really thinks at the commune. Sometimes we've talked. He's a
very interesting man, Wes. But no, I haven't had any affairs with him,
nor am I likely to."

"Then what's eating you? Why do you want a divorce?" He went to the
sofa and sat down, never taking his eyes from her for an instant.

Stella paced back and forth in front of him a few times. She folded
and unfolded her hands, and finally let them hang at her sides. "I want
to be able to have some self-respect," she said at last.

"You have that now. You can hold your head up to anyone in the
country."

"That's not what I meant. I'd like, just once, to be able to sign my
name 'Stella Stoneham' instead of 'Mrs. Wesley Stoneham.' Maybe give a
party for the people I like, instead of your political
cronies. Wes, I want to feel like I'm an equal partner in this
marriage, not just another tasteful accessory to your home."

"I don't understand you. I've given you everything any woman could
possibly want…"

"Except identity. As far as you're concerned, I'm not a human being,
just a wife. I decorate your arm at hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners and
make charming noises at the wives of other would-be politicians. I make
a corporate lawyer socially respectable enough to think of running for
office. And, when you're not using me, you forget about me, send me
away to the little cabin by the sea or leave me to walk by myself
around the fifteen rooms of the mansion, slowly rotting away. I can't
live this way, Wes. I want out."

"What about a trial separation, maybe a month or so..."

"I said 'out,' O-U-T. A separation wouldn't do any good. The fault,
dear husband, is not in our stars but in ourselves. I know you too
well, and I know you'll never change into something that is acceptable
to me. And I'll never be satisfied with being an ornament. So a
separation would do us no good at all. I want a divorce."

Stoneham crossed his legs. "Have you told anyone about this yet?"

"No." She shook her head. "No, I was planning to see Larry tomorrow,
but I felt you should be told first."

"Good," Stoneham said in a barely audible whisper.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Stella asked sharply. Her
hands were fidgeting, which was her cue to fumble through her purse on
the writing desk for her pack of cigarettes. She needed one badly at
this point.

But it wasn't until she got a cigarette between her lips that she
realized she was out of matches. "Got a light?"

"Sure." Stoneham fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a
book of matches. "Keep them," he said as he flipped them to his wife.

Stella caught them and examined them with interest. The outside of
the book was smooth silver, with red and blue stars around the border.
In the center were words that proclaimed:

WESLEY STONEHAM

SUPERVISOR

SAN MARCOS COUNTY

Inside, the paper matches alternated red, white and blue.

She looked quizzically up at her husband, who was grinning at her.
"Like them?" he asked. "I just got them back from the printer's this
afternoon."

"Isn't it a bit premature?" she asked sarcastically.

"Only by a couple of days. Old man Chottman is resigning from the
Board because of ill health at the end of the week, and they're letting
him name the man he wants as his successor to fill out his term. It
won't be official, of course, until the Governor appoints the man, but
I have it from very reliable sources that my name is the one being
mentioned. If Chottman says he wants me to fill his term, the Governor
will listen. Chottman is seventy-three and has a lot of favors to call
in."

An idea began glimmering in Stella's brain. "So this is why you
don't want a divorce, isn't it?"

"Stell, you know as well as I do what a puritan, that Chottman
is," Stoneham said. "The old guy is still firmly opposed to sin of any
kind, and he thinks of divorce as a sin. God only knows why, but he
does." He rose from the couch and went to his wife again, holding her
shoulders tenderly this time. "That's why I'm asking you to wait. It
would only be a week or two…"

Stella pulled away, a knowing, triumphant smile on her face. "So
that's it. Now we know why the big, strong Wesley Stoneham comes
crawling. You won't leave me even a vestige of self-respect, will you?
You won't even let me think that you came because you thought there was
something in our marriage worth saving. No, you come right out with it.
It's a favor you want." She struck a match furiously and began to puff
on her cigarette like a steam locomotive climbing a hill. She tossed
the used match into the ashtray, and the matchbook down beside it.
"Well, I'm sick of your politics, Wesley. I'm tired of doing things so
that it will make you look better or more concerned for the citizenry
of San Marcos. The only person you ever consider is yourself. I suppose
you'd even grant me the divorce uncontested if I were to wait, wouldn't
you?"

"If that's what you want."

"Sure. The Great Compromiser. Make any deal, as long as it gets you
what you want. Well, I've got a little surprise for you, Mister
Supervisor. I do not make deals. I don't give a God damn whether you
make it in politics or not. I intend to walk into our lawyer's office
tomorrow and start the papers fluttering."

"Stella..."

"Maybe I'll even have a little talk with the press about all the
milk of human kindness that flows in your veins, husband dear."

"I'm warning you, Stella…"

"That would be a big tragedy, wouldn't it, Wes, if you had to
actually get elected…"

"STOP IT, STELLA!"

"… by the voters to get into office instead of being appointed all
nice and neat by your buddies…"

"STELLA!"

His hands were up to her throat as he screamed her name. He wanted
her to stop, but she wouldn't. Her lips kept moving and moving, and the
words were lost in a silencing mist that enveloped the cabin. Normal
colorations vanished as the room took on a blood-red hue. He shook her
and closed his huge hands tightly around her neck.

The cigarette dropped from her surprised fingers at the unexpected
attack, spilling some of its ashes on the floor. Stella raised her
hands against her husband's chest and tried to push him away. For a
moment she succeeded, but he kept coming, fighting off her flailing
arms to grip her with all the strength at his disposal.

There was a numbness in his fingers as they closed around her
throat. He did not feel the soft warmth of her skin yielding under his
pressure, the pulsing of the arteries in her neck or the instinctive
tightening of her tendons. All he felt was his own muscles, squeezing,
squeezing, squeezing.

Gradually, her struggling subsided. Her facial coloring seemed
funny, even through the red haze that clouded his vision. Her bulging
eyes looked ready to leap from their sockets, opened wide and staring
at him, staring, staring…

He let go. She fell to the ground, but slowly. Slow-motion slow,
dream slow. Still there was no sound as she hit the floor. She
crumpled, limp as a rag doll tossed aside for fancier toys. Except for
that face, that purple, bloated face. Its tongue stuck out like a
grotesquerie, the eyes glazed with horror. A tiny trickle of blood
leaked from her nose, down her purpled lips and onto the faded brown
carpet. A finger on her left hand twitched spasmodically two or three
times, then became still.

* * *

The blue-white world was below him, awaiting the touch of his mind.
Garnna dipped into the atmosphere and was overwhelmed by the abundance
of life. There were creatures in the air, creatures on the land,
creatures in the water. The first test, of course, was the search for
any Offasü that might be around, but it took only a quick scan to
reveal that none were there. The Offasü had not been found on any of
the planets yet explored by the Zarticku, but the search had to go on.
The Zartic race could not feel truly safe until they discovered what
had happened to their former masters.

The primary purpose of the Exploration had now been accomplished.
There remained the secondary purpose: to determine what kind of life
did inhabit this planet, whether it was intelligent, and whether it
might conceivably pose any threat to Zarti.

Garnna established another net, a smaller one this time. He
encompassed the entire planet with his mind, probing for signs of
intelligence. His search was instantly successful. Lights gleamed in
bright patterns on the night side, indicating cities of large size. A
profusion of radio waves, artificially modulated, were bouncing all
over the atmosphere. He followed them to their sources and found large
towers and buildings. And he found the creatures themselves who were
responsible for the radio waves and the buildings and the lights. They
walked erect on two legs and their bodies were soft, without the armor
plating of a Zartic. They were short, perhaps only half as tall as
Zarticku, and their fur seemed to be mostly concentrated on their
heads. He observed their eating habits and realized with distaste that
they were omnivores. To a herbivorous race like the Zarticku, such
creatures seemed to have cruel and malicious natures, posing potential
threats to a gentler species. But at least they were better than the
vicious carnivores. Garnna had seen a couple of carnivore societies,
where killing and destruction were everyday occurrences, and the mere
thought of them sent imaginary shudders through his mind. He found
himself wishing that all life in the universe were herbivorous, then
checked himself. He was not supposed to allow his personal prejudices
to interfere with the performance of his duties. His task now was to
observe these creatures in the short time he had left to him and make a
report that would be filed for future study.

He did see one hopeful note about these creatures, namely that they
seemed to have the herd instinct rather than acting solely as
individuals. They congregated in large cities and seemed to do most
things in crowds. They did have the potential for being alone, but they
didn't utilize it much.

He gathered his mind together once again and prepared to make
detailed observations. He zoomed down to the surface of the world to
watch. The creatures were obviously diurnal or they wouldn't have
needed lights for their cities, so at first he picked a spot on the
daylight hemisphere to observe. He had no worries at all about being
spotted by the natives; the Zartic method of space exploration took
care of that.

Basically, this method called for a complete separation of body and
mind. Drugs were taken to aid the dissociation, while the Explorer
rested comfortably in a machine. When the separation occurred, the
machine took over the mechanical aspects of the body
function—heartbeat, respiration, nourishment and so on. The mind,
meanwhile, was
free to roam at will wherever it chose. Few limits had thus far been
found for a freed mind. The speed at which it could "travel"—if,
indeed, it could be said to go anywhere—was so fast as to be
unmeasurable; theoretically, it might even be infinite. A freed mind
could narrow its concentration down to a single subatomic particle, or
expand to cover vast areas of space. It could detect electromagnetic
radiation at any portion of the spectrum. And best of all from the
standpoint of the cautious Zarticku, it could not be detected by any of
the physical senses. It was a phantom that could not be seen, heard,
smelled, tasted or touched. All of which made it the ideal vehicle with
which to explore the universe beyond Zarti's atmosphere.

Garnna stopped at a place where the land was regularly laid out for
the growing of crops. Farming varied but little throughout the
societies he had investigated so far, probably because form followed
function and the function was manifestly the same. These creatures were
plowing with crude implements drawn by subservient, two-horned
herbivore. This primitive state of agriculture did not seem consistent
with a civilization that could also produce so many radio waves. In
order to resolve the apparent paradox, Garnna reached out with his mind
and touched the mind of one of the natives.

This was another advantage of the freed mind. It seemed to have the
ability to "listen in" on the thoughts of other minds. It was
telepathy, but in a very restricted sense for it worked only one way.
Garnna would be able to hear the thoughts of others, but he himself
would be undetectable.

The phenomenon was not nearly as helpful as it might first appear,
however. Intelligent individuals think partly in words of their own
language, partly in abstract concepts and partly in visual images. The
thoughts go by very quickly and then are gone forever. Different
species had different patterns of thought based primarily on
differences in their sensory inputs. And within a race each individual
had his own private code of symbolism.

Mindreading, therefore, tended to be a painstaking and very
frustrating business. Garnna would have to sift through mountains of
meaningless impressions that were bombarding him at an unbelievable
rate to arrive at even the kernel of an idea. With luck, he would read
some generalized emotions and learn a few of the basic concepts that
existed within the mind he contracted. But he was experienced at this
procedure and not afraid of hard work if it were for the good of the
Herd, so he dived right in.

After a good deal of probing and even more guesswork, Garnna was
able to piece together a small picture of this world. There was only
one intelligent race here, but it had fragmented into many individual
cultures. Several constant patterns emerged in nearly all the cultures,
though. The iff-groups here seemed generally to consist of only a few
adults, usually related or mated, plus their offspring. The purpose of
the iff-group was much more oriented towards the raising of the young
than it was toward the providing of security for the individual. There
seemed to be some individuals who survived entirely without iff-groups.
The Herd was more an abstract concept here than an everyday reality as
it was on Zarti.

He learned, also, that some of the cultures on the planet were
richer than others. The richest could be currently found on the
nighttime side of the planet. In that particular culture, many of the
things done by hand here were done by machine, and there was supposed
to be plenty of food for all. The thought that one portion of the Herd
could be overfed while another portion went hungry seemed callous to
the Zartic. He reminded himself once more to stifle his emotions. He
was here only to observe, and he had best concentrate on that.

He decided to investigate that ultra-rich culture. In evaluating
these creatures as a potential threat to the Herd, his superiors would
only be interested in their highest capabilities. It wouldn't matter at
all what the poorer cultures did if the richer ones possessed a method
of physical interstellar travel coupled with a warlike nature.

At the speed of thought, Garnna zipped across an enormous expanse of
ocean and arrived in the darkened hemisphere. He immediately found
several large coastal cities blazing their lights at him. These
creatures might be diurnal, but they certainly didn't let the darkness
affect their lives to any great extent. There were parts of the cities
that were lit up as bright as daytime. There was one place in one of
the cities where throngs of the creatures gathered in seats to view the
action that was taking place between a smaller number of the creatures
down on a specially laid-out field. The pattern was similar to what had
been seen on numerous other worlds, particularly where omnivores and
carnivores were dominant—institutionalized competition. Instead of
dividing what there was evenly for the good of the Herd, as would have
been done on Zarti, these creatures felt compelled to compete, with the
winners getting all and the losers nothing. Try as he would, Garnna
could not fully comprehend what such competition would mean to these
creatures.

He moved on. He observed the buildings of the natives and found them
in many ways structurally superior to those on Zarti. The machines for
transportation were also advanced, being both efficient and capable of
traveling at great speeds. But he noticed, too, that they burned
chemical fuels in order to propel themselves. That, for the moment,
removed these beings from the threat list. They obviously would not use
chemical fuels if they had discovered an efficient means of utilizing
nuclear energy, and no race could hope to build a workable interstellar
drive utilizing chemical fuels alone. These creatures might know of the
existence of nuclear power—in fact, to judge from their very ample
technology, Garnna would have been surprised if they didn't—but it was
too large a jump from there to an interstellar drive; the Zarticku
would not need to worry about this race posing a threat in the near
future. Even the Zarticku hadn't perfected an interstellar drive
yet—but of course, there had been extenuating circumstances.

He spent most of his time gathering the material he thought he would
need for his report. As always, there was an overabundance of data, and
he had to carefully eliminate some very interesting details to make
room for trends which would help him build in his own mind a cohesive
picture of this civilization. Again, the whole took precedence over its
parts.

He finished his investigation and realized he still had a little
time to spare before he was required to return to his body. He might as
well use it. He had a small hobby, a harmless one. Zarti, too, had
seacoasts, and Garnna had been born near one of them. He had spent his
youth near the sea and had never tired of watching waves come in and
break against the shore. So, whenever he found himself with spare time
on an alien world, he tried to fantasize back to his childhood at the
edge of the ocean. It helped to make the alien seem familiar and caused
no harm to anyone. So he glided gently along the seacoast of the
enormous ocean on this strange world, watching and listening to the
black, almost invisible water crashing along the darkened sands of this
planet, a hundred parsecs from the place of his birth.

Something attracted his attention. Up on top of the cliffs that were
overlooking the beach at this point, a light was shining. This must be
an example of the solitary individual of the society, set out here far
from the nearest large grouping of others of its race. Garnna floated
upwards.

The light came from a small building, poorly made in comparison with
the buildings of the city but no doubt comfortable for a single
creature to dwell in. There were two vehicles parked outside, both
empty. Since the vehicles were not automatic, it implied that there
must be at least two of the aliens inside.

Being a pure mentality Garnna went through the walls of the cabin as
though they didn't exist. Inside were two of the creatures, talking to
one another. The incident did not seem very interesting. Garnna made a
brief note of the furnishings of the room and was about to leave when
one of the creatures suddenly attacked the other one. It grabbed at the
neck of its companion and began strangling it. Without even extending
himself, Garnna could feel the rage that was emanating from the
attacking creature. He froze. Normally the instincts of his species
would have caused him to flee the vicinity at top speed—in this case,
the speed of thought. But Garnna had undergone extensive training in
order to conquer his instincts. He had been trained to be first, last
and always an observer. He observed.

* * *

Reality returned slowly to Stoneham. It started with sound, a rapid ka-thud,
ka-thud, ka-thud that he recognized belatedly as his own heart. He
had never heard it so loud before. It seemed to drown out the
universe with its thumping. Stoneham put his hands to his ears to hold
out the noise, but it only made the situation worse. A ringing started,
too—a high-pitched tingling like a soprano alarm clock going off inside
his brain.

Then came smell. There seemed to be a queer odor in the air, a
sickly, bathroomy odor. Stains were growing at the front and back of
Stella's dress.

Taste. There was blood in his mouth, salty and tepid and Stoneham
realized he had bitten down on his own lips.

Touch. The tips of his fingers were tingling, there was a trembling
in his wrists, his biceps relaxed after having been superhumanly taut.

Sight. Color returned to the normal world, and speed became as
usual. But there was nothing to watch that moved. Just the body of his
wife lying lifeless in the middle of the floor.

Stoneham stood there, for how many minutes he didn't know. His eyes
roamed the room, seeking out the commonplace things it held, avoiding
the body at his feet. But not for very long. There was a certain
gruesome fascination about Stella's body that compelled his gaize,
drawing it back from wherever in the room it had wandered.

He began to think again. He knelt belatedly at his wife's side and
felt for a pulse that he knew would not be there. Her hand already felt
slightly cold to his touch (or was that only his imagination?), and all
pretense of life had gone. He quickly drew back his hand and stood up
once more.

Walking over to the sofa, he sat down and stared for long minutes at
the opposite wall. Headlines shrieked at him: PROMINENT LOCAL LAWYER
HELD IN WIFE'S DEATH. The years of carefully planning his political
career, of doing favors for people so that they, in turn, might someday
do favors for him, of going to endless boring parties and dinners… all
this he saw sinking beneath the surface in a great vortex of calamity.
And he saw long, empty years stretching ahead of him, gray walls and
steel bars.

"No!" he cried. He looked down accusingly at the lifeless body of
his wife. "No, you'd like that, wouldn't you? But I'm not going to let
it happen, not to me. I've got too many important things I want to do
before I go." A surprising calm settled over his mind and he saw
clearly what had to be done. He crushed out the still-smoldering
cigarette his wife had dropped. Then he walked to the utensil rack
and took a carving knife from the wall, holding his pocket handkerchief
around the handle so that he wouldn't leave any fingerprints. He went
outside and cut off a large section of clothesline. Back inside the
cabin, he tied his wife's hands behind her and bent her body backward
so that he could tie her feet to her neck.

Taking up the knife again, he proceeded to make a neat slash across
Stella's throat. Blood oozed out rather than spurting because it was no
longer being pumped by the heart. He hacked roughly at her breasts and
made an obscene gouge through her dress at her crotch. For good measure
he slashed ruthlessly at her abdomen, face and arms. He cut her eyes
out of their sockets and tried to cut off her nose, too, but it was too
tough for his knife.

Next, he dipped the knife in her blood and wrote "Death to Pigs" on
one wall. As a final gesture, he severed the telephone line with a
decisive slash. Then he placed the knife down on the floor beside her
body, at the same time picking up the note she had written him about
her divorce intentions. He put the note in his pants pocket.

He stood up and looked himself over. His hands and clothes were
liberally smeared with blood. That would never do. He would have to get
rid of it somehow.

He scrubbed his hands well in the sink until he'd removed all traces
of the blood. He looked around the room and spotted something that
caught his breath: his personally printed matchbook sitting on the
table by the ashtray. He strode over to it, thinking that it would be
very foolish to leave a clue like that lying around for the police to
find. He slipped the matchbook neatly into his pocket.

Then he went to his suitcase and took out a fresh suit of clothes.
He quickly changed into them, thinking as he did so that he could bury
his old clothes someplace a mile away so that they'd never be found.
Then he could come back here and pretend to have discovered the body as
it was. Since the phone wires were cut, he would have to drive
somewhere else to call the police. The nearest neighbor with a phone,
he recalled, was about two miles away.

Stoneham turned and surveyed his handiwork. Blood was smeared all
over the floor and on some of the furniture, the body was dismembered
in particularly gruesome fashion, the radical message was inscribed on
the wall in plain view. It was a scene out of a surrealistic nightmare.
No sensible killer would have performed a butchery like that. Blame
would instantly fall on that hippie commune, maybe on Polaski himself.
It would serve two purposes: cover up his guilt and rid San Marcos once
and for all of those damned hippies.

There was a shovel in a small toolbox outside the cabin. Stoneham
took it and walked off into the woods to bury his clothes. Since there
had been no rain for months, the ground was dry and hard-packed; he
left no footprints as he walked.

* * *

It did not take long for the bigger creature to kill the smaller.
But after it was done, the killer seemed immobilized by its own
actions. Gingerly, Garnna reached out a mental feeler and touched the
killer's mind. The thoughts were a jumble of confusion. There were
still swirling traces of anger, but they seemed to be fading slowly.
Other feelings were increasing. Guilt, sorrow, fear of punishment;
these were all things that Garnna knew as well. He pushed a little
deeper into the mind and learned that the dead creature had been of the
same iff-group as the survivor; in fact, it had been its mate. Garnna's
horror at this was so strong that he raced out of the mind and curled
himself up into a mental ball. Intellectually he could accept the idea
of killing, possibly even of one's mate. But emotionally the shock of
the direct experience set his mind quivering.

He existed there for minutes, waiting for the shock and disgust to
pass. Finally, his training reasserted itself and he started observing
his surroundings once more. The big creature was now hacking at the
carcass of the little one with a knife. Was this some sort of ghastly
custom? If so, these omnivores might have to be reevaluated with
regard to their threat potential. Even the carnivores Garnna had
observed had not behaved this obscenely.

It took all the self-control he had to enable him to make contact
with the alien's brain once more. What he saw confused and disturbed
him. For the first time, he witnessed directly an individual planning
to perform an action that would run counter to the good of its Herd.
There was guilt and shame in the mind, which led Garnna to believe that
this killing was far from a customary practice. The herd instinct was
still functioning, though quite suppressed. And overriding everything
was the fear of punishment. The creature knew that what it had done was
wrong, and its present horrible course of action was an attempt to
evade—by what means, Garnna could not say—the punishment that would
otherwise naturally come.

This was a unique situation. Never before, to Garnna's knowledge,
had an Explorer ever become involved in an individual situation to this
extent. It was always the big picture that mattered. But perhaps some
insights could be gained by watching this situation develop. Even as he
thought this, he "heard" a bell go off in his mind. This was the first
warning that his time for Exploration was almost up. There would be one
more in six minutes and then he would have to go back home. But he
resolved to stay and watch the drama play out as much as possible
before that happened.

He probed a little deeper into the alien's mind and witnessed the
deceit within. The creature was going to attempt to avoid its just
punishment by blaming the crime on some other innocent being. If the
original crime had been hideous to Garnna, this compounding of it was
unspeakable. It was one thing to let a moment of passion cause one to
violate the rules of the Herd, but it was quite another to consciously
and deliberately mislead others so that a different individual would be
harmed. The creature was not only placing its welfare above that of the
Herd, but above that of other individuals as well.

Garnna could no longer remain neutral and unconcerned. This creature
must be a deviant. Even allowing for differences in customs,
no viable society could last long if these standards were the norm. It
would fall apart under mutual hatred and distrust.

The creature had left the cabin now, and was walking slowly into the
trees. Garnna followed it. The creature was carrying the clothes it had
worn inside the room, as well as a tool it had taken from the cabin.
When the creature had gone a mile from the building, it put down the
clothes and started using the tool to dig a hole. When the hole was
deep enough, the alien buried the old clothes in it and filled it up
again, brushing the dirt around carefully so that the ground looked
undisturbed.

Garnna caught flashes from the creature's mind. There was
satisfaction at having done something successfully. There was an easing
of fear now, since steps had been taken to avoid the punishment. And
there was the feeling of triumph, of having somehow defeated or
outwitted the Herd. The latter gave Garnna a mental shudder. What kind
of creature was this, that could actually revel in causing harm to the
rest of its Herd? This was wrong by any standards, it had to be.
Something would have to be done to see that this deviant was discovered
despite its deception. But…

The second alarm sounded within his mind. No! he thought. I
don't want to go back. I must stay and do something about this situation.

But there was no choice. It was not known how long a mind could
remain outside its body without dire consequences to one or the other.
If he were to stay away too long his body might die, and it was
problematical whether his mind could outlive it. It would accomplish no
good at all if his mind were to be destroyed through carelessness.

Reluctantly, then, Garnna iff-Almanic's mind pulled itself away from
the scene of the tragedy on the blue-white third planet of the yellow
star and raced back to its body more than a hundred parsecs away.

* * *

As he walked back to the cabin Stoneham felt a certain satisfaction
at having coped successfully with a bad situation. Even if the police
didn't blame the hippies, there was no real evidence left with which to
blame him, he thought. No motives, no evidence, no witnesses.

About a mile away, a girl named Deborah Bauer woke up from a
nightmare, screaming.

CHAPTER II

This was not going to be a good day, John Maschen decided as he
drove up the coast to his office in the town of San Marcos. To his
right, the sky was beginning to turn from dark to light blue as the sun
had just begun to make its uphill climb over the horizon; but it was
still hidden from Maschen's view by the sea cliffs that reared up on
the eastern side of the road. In the west, the stars had vanished into
the fading blue velvet that was all that remained of the night.

No day that starts with having to go to work at five-thirty in
the morning can be any good, Maschen continued. Most
particularly when there's a murder connected with it.

He drove up to his office building feeling particularly scruffy.
Deputy Whitmore had called and told him it was urgent, and Maschen
hadn't even taken the time to shave. He hadn't wanted to disturb his
still-sleeping wife, and, in the darkness, had taken the wrong uniform,
the one he'd worn yesterday. It smelled as though he'd played a full
game of basketball in it. He'd taken about fifteen seconds to run a
brush through his partially balding hair, but that had been his only
concession to neatness.

No day that starts out like this, he reiterated, can
be anything but messed up.

His watch read five forty-eight as he walked through the door to the
Sheriff's Station. "All right, Tom, what's the story?"

Deputy Whitmore looked up as his boss came in. He was a
boyish-looking fellow, on the force for only half a year so far, and
his lack of seniority made him a natural for the post of night
dispatcher. His long blond hair was neat, his uniform pressed and
spotless. Maschen felt a temporary surge of hatred for anyone who could
look that immaculate at this hour, even though he knew the feeling was
unreasonable. It was part of Whitmore's job to look efficient this
early, and Maschen would have had to bawl him out if he'd looked any
different.

"There was a murder in a private cabin along the coast halfway
between here and Bellington," Whitmore said. "The victim was Mrs.
Wesley Stoneham."

Maschen's eyes widened. True to his expectations, the day had
already become immeasurably worse. And it wasn't even six o'clock yet.
He sighed. "Who's handling it?"

"Acker made the initial report. He's staying at the scene, gathering
what information he can. Mostly, he's making sure that nothing gets
disturbed until you get a look at it."

Maschen nodded. "He's a good man. Do you have a copy of his report?"

"In a minute, sir. He radioed it in, and I've had to type it up
myself. I've just got a couple more sentences to do."

"Fine. I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee. I want that report
on my desk when I get back."

There was always a pot of coffee brewing in the office, but it was
invariably terrible and Maschen never drank it. Instead, he walked
across the street to the all-night diner and went inside. Joe, the
counterman, looked up at him from behind legs propped up against one of
the tables. He put down the newspaper he was reading. "Rather early for
you, isn't it, Sheriff?"

Maschen ignored the friendliness that masked polite inquiry.
"Coffee, Joe, and I want it black." He pulled fifteen cents from his
pocket and banged it down on the counter top. The counterman took his
cue from the sheriff's attitude and proceeded to pour a cup of coffee
in silence.

Maschen drank his coffee in large gulps. In between gulps, he would
spend long periods staring intently at the wall opposite him. He seemed
to recall having met Mrs. Stoneham—he couldn't remember her first
name—once or twice at some parties or dinners. He remembered thinking
of her
at the time as one of the few women who had turned their approaching
middle age into an asset rather than a liability by cultivating a
certain mature grace about her. She had seemed like a nice person, and
he was sorry that she was dead.

But he was even sorrier that she happened to be the wife of Wesley
Stoneham. That would cause complications beyond number.
Stoneham was a man who had discovered his own importance and was
waiting for the world to catch up with him. Not only was he rich, he
made his money count in terms of influence. He knew all the right
people, and most of them owed him favors of one sort or another. The
rumor was spreading that he was even being considered for the seat on
the Board that Chottman would be resigning in a few days. If Stoneham
liked you, doors opened as if by magic; if he should frown, they would
slam shut in your face.

Maschen had been in police work for thirty-seven years, and sheriff
for the last eleven. He would be running for reelection next year.
Perhaps it would be wise to stay on the good side of Stoneham,
whichever side that was. He didn't know any of the details of the case
yet, but already he had a feeling in the pit of his ulcer that it was
going to be a nasty one. He muttered something under his breath about
the policeman's lot.

"Beg pardon, Sheriff?" Joe asked.

"Nothing," Maschen growled. He finished his coffee in one gulp,
slammed the cup down on the counter and stalked out of the diner.

Back in his office, the report was waiting on his desk just as he
had requested. There wasn't much in it. A call had come in at
three-oh-seven a.m., reporting a murder. The caller was Mr. Wesley
Stoneham, calling from the residence of Mr. Abraham Whyte. Stoneham
said that his wife had been murdered by party or parties unknown while
she had been staying alone at their seaside cabin. Stoneham had arrived
on the scene at about two-thirty and discovered her body but, because
the phone lines at the cabin had been cut, he had had to call from his
neighbor's. A car was dispatched to investigate.

Mr. Stoneham met the investigating officer at the door to the cabin.
Inside, the deputy found the body, tentatively identified as Stoneham's
wife, bound hands and feet, her throat slashed, her eyes removed, and
chest and arms brutally hacked. There was a possibility of sexual
assault, as the pubic region had been cut open. Facial discolorations
and marks on her throat indicated strangulation, but there were no
other signs of a struggle of any sort about the cabin. Beside the body
lay a kitchen knife that had apparently been used to do the hacking—it
was from the utensils set that was hanging on the wall. The carpet was
stained with blood, presumably the victim's, and a message had been
written in blood on the wall: "Death to Pigs." A stamped out cigarette
that had been only partially smoked was on the floor, and a used paper
match was in one of the ashtrays. The bedroom appeared untouched.

Maschen put down the report, closed his eyes and rubbed the backs of
his knuckles against his eyelids. It couldn't be just a simple
rape-murder, could it? This one had all the makings of a psychotic
vendetta, the type that attracted wide publicity. He reread the
description of the body and shuddered. He had seen a lot of gory sights
in his thirty-seven years of police work, but never one that sounded as
gory as this. He did not think he was going to like this case at all.
He half dreaded having to go out to the spot and viewing the corpse for
himself. But he knew he'd have to. In a case like this, with tons of
publicity—and with Stoneham looking over his shoulder—he'd have to
handle the investigation personally. San Marcos County was not big
enough to be able to afford—or require—a full-time homicide squad.

He punched at the intercom button. "Tom?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get me Acker on the radio." He took a deep breath and got up from
his chair. He had to stifle a yawn as he went through the door and down
the stairs to the front desk.

"I've got him, sir," the young deputy said as he handed the radio
microphone to the sheriff.

"Thanks." He took the mike and pressed the transmitting button.
"Come in."

"This is Acker reporting, sir. I'm still at the Stoneham cabin. Mr.
Stoneham has gone back to his home in San Marcos to try and get some
sleep. I got his address… "

"Never mind that, Harry. I've got it somewhere in my files. Are
there any new developments since you made your first report?"

"I checked the grounds around the cabin for possible footprints, but
I think we're out of luck there, sir. It hasn't rained for months, you
know, and the ground here , is awfully hard and dry. A lot of it is
just rock covered by a thin layer of loose dirt and gravel. I wasn't
able to find anything."

"How about cars? Were there any tire tracks?"

"Mrs. Stoneham's car is parked beside the cabin. There are two sets
of tracks from Stoneham's car and one from my own. But the killer
wouldn't have had to come by car. There are a number of places within
easy walking distance of here."

"A person would have to know their way fairly well, though, wouldn't
you think, if they weren't to get lost in the dark?"

"Probably, sir."

"Harry, just off the record, how does this thing look to you?"

The voice at the other end paused for a moment. "Well, to tell you
the truth, sir, this is the most sickening thing I've ever seen. I damn
near threw up when I saw what had been done to that poor woman's body.
There couldn't possibly have been any reason why the killer did what he
did. I would guess that we're dealing with a lunatic, a dangerous one."

"All right, Harry," Maschen soothed. "You wait there. I'm going to
round up Simpson and then we'll be out to relieve you. Out." He clicked
off the radio and handed the mike back to Whitmore.

Simpson was the deputy best trained in the scientific aspects of
criminology. Whenever a case of more than ordinary complexity occurred,
the department tended to rely on him more than any of the other
members. Normally, Simpson wouldn't have come on duty until ten
o'clock, but Maschen gave him a special call, informed him of the
urgency of the situation, and told him that he would pick him up. He
took the deputy's fingerprint kit and a camera out to his car, then
drove to Simpson's place.

The deputy was waiting on the porch of his somewhat
weatherbeaten house. Together, he and the sheriff drove off to the
Stoneham cabin. Very little was said during the drive; Simpson was a
thin, very quiet man who generally kept his brilliance within him,
while the sheriff had more than enough to think about in considering
the different aspects of the crime.

When they arrived, Maschen dismissed Acker and told him to go home
and try to get some sleep. Simpson went quietly about his business,
first photographing the room and the body from all angles, then
collecting small bits of things, anything that was loose, in little
plastic bags, and finally dusting the room for fingerprints. Maschen
called for an ambulance, then just sat back and watched his deputy
work. He felt very helpless, somehow' Simpson was the one who was best
trained for this job, and there was little the sheriff could add to his
deputy's prowess. Maybe, Maschen thought bitterly, after
all this time I find I'm really destined to be a bureaucrat and not a
policeman at all. And wouldn't that be a sad commentary on his
life, he wondered.

Simpson finished his job almost simultaneously with the arrival of
the ambulance. When Mrs. Stoneham's body had been taken away to the
morgue, Maschen locked up the cabin and he and Simpson headed back into
town. It was now nearly eight-thirty, and Maschen's stomach was
beginning to remind him that all he had had for breakfast so far was a
cup of coffee.

"What do you think about the murder?" he asked the stony Simpson.

"It's unusual."

"Well, yes, that much is obvious. No normal person… let me correct
that, no normal killer would chop a body up like that."

"That's not what I meant. The murder was done backwards."

"How do you mean?"

"The killer killed the woman first, then tied her up."

Maschen took his eyes off the road for a moment to eye his deputy.
"How do you know that?"

"There was no cut-off of the circulation when the hands were tied,
and those ropes were awfully tight. Therefore, the heart had stopped
pumping blood before they were tied. Also, she was killed before those
cuts were made on her body, or else a lot more blood would have spurted
out."

"In other words, this is not the traditional sadist who would tie a
girl up, torture her and then kill her. You're saying that this man
killed her first, then tied her up and dismembered her?"

"Yes."

"But that doesn't make any sense at all."

"That's why I said it's unusual."

They drove the rest of the way in silence, each man contemplating in
his own way the unusual circumstances of the case.

When they arrived back at the station, Simpson proceeded straight to
the small laboratory to analyze his findings. Maschen had started up
the stairs to his own office when Carroll, his secretary, came down to
meet him halfway. "Careful," she whispered. "There's a whole gang of
reporters waiting to ambush you up there."

How quickly the vultures gather, Maschen mused. I
wonder whether anyone tipped them off, or whether they can just smell
the death and sensationalism and come running to it. He hadn't
really expected them this soon, and he had nothing prepared to say. His
stomach was making him all too acutely aware that he hadn't eaten
anything solid in about fourteen hours. He wondered if there was
still time to duck out the back way for a quick breakfast before they
spotted him.

There wasn't. Some unknown face appeared at the head of the stairs.
"Here's the sheriff now," the man said. Maschen sighed and continued up
the steps behind Carroll. He'd known it wasn't going to be a good day.

Even he was surprised, though, when he reached the top and glanced
around. He had expected maybe a handful of reporters from a couple of
county newspapers. But here the room was jammed with people, and the
only one he recognized was Dave Grailly of the San Marcos Clarion.
Everyone else was unfamiliar. And not only were there people, there
were machines as well. Television cameras, microphones and other
broadcasting equipment lay carefully scattered about, with call letters
on them from the three major networks as well as local stations from
the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. He was overwhelmed with the
thought that this case was attracting much greater publicity than even
he had anticipated.

The instant he appeared, a loud yammering began as twenty different
people started asking him twenty different questions at the same time.
Dazed, Maschen could only stand there for a moment under the barrage of
questioning, but finally he regained his composure. He walked up to the
area where they had set up the microphones and announced, "Gentlemen,
if you will all be patient, I plan to issue a statement in a few
minutes Carroll, get your steno pad and come into my office, will you?"

He went into his office and shut the door, leaning his back against
it. He closed his eyes, trying to regulate his breathing and perhaps
calm his nerves. Events were piling one on top of the other too fast
for his comfort. He was just a small-county sheriff, used to a relaxed
pace and easy atmosphere. Suddenly, the world seemed to be going out of
control, upsetting the humdrum normality to which he was accustomed.
Again, the thought crossed his mind that maybe he shouldn't be a
policeman. There must be hundreds of other jobs in the world that were
better paid and less taxing.

There was a knock on the door behind him. He moved away and opened
it and Carroll came in, pad in hand. Maschen suddenly realized that he
hadn't the faintest idea of what to say. Each word would be critically
important because he was speaking, not just to Dave Grailly of the Clarion,
but to the wire services and the TV networks, which meant potentially
every person in the United States. His mouth went suddenly dry with
stage fright.

He decided, finally, to stick to just the facts as he knew them. Let
the newspapers draw their own conclusions; they would, anyway. He paced
around the room as he dictated to his secretary, stopping frequently to
have her read back what he'd said and correct some phrasing that
sounded awkward. When he was finished, he had her read it aloud to him
twice, just to make sure of its accuracy. Then he let her go out to
type it up.

While she was doing that, he sat down behind his desk and
willed his hands to stop shaking. The thought that he was unfit for his
job would not leave his mind. He'd been a fine cop thirty years ago,
but things had been a lot simpler then. Had time passed him by
permanently, leading him in this backwater with only a pretense left to
him? Was the only reason he'd been able to succeed as a sheriff because
there really wasn't anything challenging to do in this small coastal
county? And. now that the present seemed to be catching up with him at
last, would he be able to face it as he should?

Carroll came in with a typed copy and a carbon for his approval
before she made duplicates. Maschen fussed over it, taking an
inordinate amount of time to read the entire document. When he could
postpone the inevitable no longer, he initialed it and gave her back
the carbon to make copies. Clearing his throat several times, he
emerged from his office.

He was greeted by the popping of flashbulbs, which blinded him
temporarily as he tried to reach the microphones. He groped his way
along until he found them. "I have an official statement to make at
this time," he said. He looked at the paper in his hands and could
hardly see the words because of all the blue dots that seemed fixed in
front of his eyes. Hesitatingly, he made his way through the speech. He
described the circumstances of the body's discovery and the rather
grisly state of the body itself. He mentioned the phrase written on the
wall, but did not mention Simpson's hypothesis about the
murderer's timetable. He concluded by saying, "Copies of this statement
will be made available to anyone who wants one."

"Do you have any suspects yet?" one reporter shot at him.

"Why, uh, no, it's too soon to know, we're still assimilating the
data."

"In view of the fact that your office is so small, do you plan to
ask for state or federal help in solving this case?" That question from
a different part of the room.

Maschen suddenly felt the pressure on him. The TV cameras were
staring at him with one large, unblinking eye apiece. He was acutely
aware that he was wearing a dirty, unpressed uniform and that he hadn't
shaved that morning. Was that the type of image that was going to go
out across the country? A slovenly, unkempt hick who can't handle his
own county when something really bad happens? "So far," he said
deliberately, "the indications are that the solution to this crime is
well within the capabilities of my office. I do not plan to ask for
outside help at this time, no."

"Do you think it's possible that the murder could have been
politically motivated?"

"I really couldn't say…"

"Considering the importance of the case and the unusualness of its
nature, who is going to be put in charge?"

When the question was phrased that way, there was only one answer he
could give. "I am making myself personally responsible for the
investigation."

"Will you be putting out an all points bulletin?"

"When I have some faint idea of the type of person we're looking
for, yes. If we haven't caught him by that time, of course."

"What kind of person do you think could have committed such a
terrible crime?"

At that moment, Maschen saw Howard Willsey, the District Attorney,
enter the room towards the back, and his mind wandered from the
question for a moment. "Why, urn, uh, he appears to me to have been,
uh, somewhat disturbed. If, uh, you gentlemen will excuse me now, I
believe the District Attorney wishes to have a talk with me."

There was some mumbling of routine thank-you's as the reporters
began grabbing for copies of the statement and the cameramen started
dismounting their equipment. The DA politely pushed his way through the
crowd of newsmen to get to the sheriff's side. Howard Willsey was a
tall man, thin and insubstantial with a bleak, hawklike nose and watery
eyes that always appeared on the verge of tears. He was a prosecutor
largely because he had been unable to succeed in private practice.

"Let's go into your office," he said when he reached the sheriff.

Back in the comparative calm of his office, Maschen felt much more
at ease. It was as though the wildcat that had leapt on his back had
suddenly turned out to be a stuffed toy, after all. The removal of
pressure was a positive blessing. Willsey, on the other hand, was
nervous. He had a cigarette in his mouth before Maschen could even
offer him a chair. "Well, Howard," the sheriff said with forced
cheerfulness, "need I ask what's brought you around here so early in
the morning?"

Willsey either missed the question or ignored it. "I don't like the
idea of all those reporters," he said. "I wish you hadn't talked to
them. It's so hard, nowadays, to know the right things to say. One
wrong word and the Supreme Court will reverse the entire decision."

"I think you may be exaggerating a little."

"Don't be too sure. And in any case, the more you say, the more you
prejudice prospective jurors."

"Maybe. But even so, what else could I have done?"

"You could have refused to comment at all. Just said, 'We're working
on it and we'll let you fellows know when we're done.' Kept quiet until
everything was socked away."

The idea had never occurred to Maschen. He'd reacted spontaneously
to having a microphone shoved in front of his mouth: he talked. The
whole ordeal could have been easily avoided with the words "no
comment", only he didn't think of them. He wondered how many people
would have under similar circumstances. That was one big thing that TV
and the press had going for them—people who otherwise wouldn't utter a
word felt it was their responsibility to others to help the spread of
news.

He shrugged. "Well, it's too late to do anything about it now. Let's
hope I didn't wreck our cause too badly. Now, what did you want to talk
about?"

"I got a call a few minutes ago from Wesley Stoneham." The way he
said those words, it sounded to Maschen as though the call had come via
a burning bush. The district attorney was a man who knew his
limitations in life and realized that, without this public job, he was
a failure. Consequently, retaining his job was of uppermost
consideration in his mind at all times—especially when he received
calls from a man whose power in the county was rising so rapidly.

"What did he have to say for himself?" Maschen asked.

"He wanted to know if any arrests had been made in his wife's murder
yet."

"Good God. I just found out about it myself a couple of hours ago,
and nobody has been considerate enough to walk in here and confess to
it. What does he expect of us, anyhow?"

"Take it easy, John. We're all under a lot of stress. Imagine how he
feels—he arrives at the cabin late at night and finds… well, literally,
a bloody mess. His wife hacked to pieces. Naturally, he's going to be a
little distraught and unreasonable."

"Did he have any suggestions as to who he thought did it?" Maschen
realized that that was the type of question he should more properly be
asking Stoneham, but the DA seemed to be acting as a Stoneham-surrogate
anyway.

"Yes, as a matter of fact he did. He mentioned those hippies who
have been living out in Totido Canyon. You know, that commune group."

Maschen did indeed know about "that commune group". His office
received an average of a dozen calls a week about them, and had ever
since they moved into an otherwise deserted area three months ago. San
Marcos was a very conservative community, consisting of a lot of older,
retired couples who had little or no tolerance for the markedly
different life style affected by the young members of the Totido
commune. Whenever anything turned up missing, suspicion was always laid
first on the commune members.

A man named Carl Polaski was in charge of the group. Maschen knew
him only vaguely, but he seemed to be an intelligent and reasonable
man. A bit old to be carrying on in this manner, in the sheriff's
opinion, but on the other hand he lent maturity to the youths of the
commune. He kept them in line. To date, none of the charges brought
against any of the hippy members had ever been substantiated. Maschen
had developed a grudging respect for Polaski. even if the man's chosen
life style was counter to the sheriff's own.

"What makes him think they had anything to do with it?"

"Do you think normal people would have chopped up the body that way?
These hippies live only a mile away from the Stoneham cabin. One or a
group of them could have gotten together and gone over there…"

"Is this your theory, or Stoneham's?"

"What does it matter?" Willsey asked, his tone becoming very
defensive. "The point is, these people are weird. They think the
standards of the normal world don't apply to them. Who knows what
they're capable of? We've been trying to get rid of them ever since
they moved in; nothing but troublemakers, that crowd."

"Howard, you know as well as I do that nothing's ever been proved
against them…"

"That doesn't make them innocent, does it? Where there's smoke, I
smell arson."

Maschen cocked his head sideways and narrowed his eyes as he looked
the DA over. "Stoneham really stepped on you, didn't he?"

Willsey bristled. "What if he did? You may forget it sometimes,
John, but we're little fishes in this pool. Stoneham is a big fish. You
and I both have to run for our offices again next year, remember? And
Stoneham's help will be more than welcome in my campaign, I assure you."

The sheriff sighed. "All right, for your sake I'll go and have a
talk with Polaski…"

"Not just a talk." Willsey pulled some papers out of his coat
pocket. "I've taken the trouble to get a warrant sworn out for his
arrest." He flung the papers on the desk.

The sheriff just looked at them, stunned. "Did you ever stop to
consider the possibility that you might be wrong?"

Willsey shrugged. "In that case, we let him go and apologize. But if
we're going to maintain the public's trust, we have to act
fast on something this big."

"Howard, I know it might sound selfish, but I could be sued for
false arrest."

"Believe me, it's not going to come to that. Besides, I'm the one
directing you to make the arrest, and I think there's sufficient
evidence."

"What evidence?"

"That writing on the wall—'Death to Pigs'. That's a hippy slogan,
isn't it?"

"I suppose so."

Willsey stood up to leave. "Now trust me, John. You just go out
there and arrest that Polaski, and I promise you that everything will
work out fine."

For nearly five minutes after Willsey left, Maschen remained seated,
wondering how much worse the day was going to get before it ended. He
stared for a long time at the arrest warrant before he finally arose
and picked it up off the desk.

CHAPTER III

Back through empty space his mind raced toward a rendezvous with his
body. The speed of light was a laughable limitation, easily surpassed
and outdistanced. The fabric of space warped and twisted around him,
trying hard to conserve its own rules while he heedlessly broke every
one. He traveled at the speed of thought, if indeed any speed could be
assigned to it. Pinpoints of stars blurred into streaks and smudges
against a gray background. Back, back to Zarti. Yellow star, fourth
planet, second continent, Thirteenth City, three-story building at the
southeast edge, second floor, western corridor, third room.

UNION.

The return of physical sensation was slow, as it always was. First
the extremities, a tingling in hooves and hands. Then the feeling crept
inward along the arteries and nerves towards the body and upward
through the long neck to the head. At first a warmth spread through his
being at the reunion, but then he felt a sharp pain as the machine that
had been artificially maintaining his bodily functions shut itself off.
It was the birth trauma all over again, greatly magnified by the size
and complexity of his adult body. He gasped and shuddered, and those
two involuntary actions were sufficient to start his autonomic nervous
system working for itself once more. The weight of his body returned to
him, along with the rest of the physical reality of his surroundings.

Garnna slowly raised a hand and pushed up the lid to the coffin-like
Exploration box in which his body reposed. Light streamed in on him,
and he had to shut his eyes tightly for a moment to keep out the glare.
Then he opened them a crack to let his pupils adjust to the brilliance.
He pushed the lid all the way up and tried to move the rest of his body.

It was not easy. The box had been designed to keep him alive while
his mind was Exploring, and the dictates of efficiency precluded most
attempts at providing some comfort for the inhabitant as well. The
walls pressed tightly against him and the wires that were attached to
different portions of his body kept getting in the way.

A head peeked over the side of the machine, outlined in black
against the light background and making it impossible to discern the
facial features. A hand reached over and gripped his, providing a
strong and helpful leverage point from which to elevate himself.

Garnna rose uncertainly and lifted himself out of the Exploration
box. Around him were nine other Zarticku, all watching him anxiously.
His eyes had still not completely adjusted to the light, but he did not
need his sight to know who these others were. Standard procedure for
waking an Explorer upon his return called for all the other members of
his iff-group to be present. They helped provide stability during the
first confusing moments of reunion with the body. Psychological tests
had shown that it was much more beneficial to be surrounded by one's
iff-group at such a critical moment than by strangers.

One of the figures moved forward towards him. His sight was just
getting back to normal, and he recognized this person as his mate,
Aliyenna. Garnna let his eyes wander over the red-brown armor plating
on her back, her delicate legs and her long supple neck. It was quite
pleasant to have someone like this to come back to. She was one of the
most agreeable mates he'd ever had, and he hoped that they would be
together for a long time.

"Welcome home," Aliyenna said softly. Her hands caressed the fur
along the back ridge of his neck. "I get so worried every time you go
on one of these Explorations, and I'm so happy every time you return
safely."

With arms that were stiff from having been cramped in the
Exploration box for so many hours, Garnna reached out to return his
mate's caress. Then he stopped. A mental image flashed through his
brain, a remembrance of the feeling of rage that had possessed the
alien killer on the planet he had just visited. He imagined himself
performing such an act, or reaching out and grabbing Aliyenna's neck
and choking the life out of her until she slumped to the ground. Then
he saw himself taking a knife and hacking away at her body…

"What's the matter?" Aliyenna cried. Other members of the iff-group
were moving toward him to give him support. "Are you hurt?"

Garnna realized that his body had been swaying dizzily. He made a
conscious effort to steady his feet. "It's nothing," he said, shaking
his head. "I'll be all right. It's just an after-effect of something I
saw on my Exploration."

"How horrible," said Malbuk, one of his iff-sisters, "to have to spy
on weird creatures and watch them do disgusting things."

"Is it something you'd like to talk about?" asked Yari, the senior
iff-brother.

"Later. I have to make a preliminary report, first." He looked
around and saw the worried concern that was still on the faces of his
iff-group. "I'll be all right," he reiterated. And to himself he
thought, How wonderful to have so many others to care for me, just
as I care for them. No wonder that omnivorous race can act so depraved…
they don't have the emotional security that the iff-group offers.

He chided himself once again for letting personal prejudices rise to
the surface of his thoughts. He was supposed to view alien races
objectively, without imposing his own values on the observations. He
was only glad the Coordinators on the Project could not read his mind
at such times, or they might consider him less than ideal for the job.
Garnna enjoyed Exploring very much, and he would not care to be
retrained.

As though the thought had produced reality, his Coordinator appeared
at that very moment. Rettin iff-Laziel was quite short for a Zartic,
standing but six feet high at the shoulders with a neck barely four
feet long. His large black eyes had a steely glint in them, indicating
a practical, no-nonsense soul within. It was this pragmatic quality
that made him an ideal Coordinator.

"Welcome back, Garnna iff-Almanic," be said perfunctorily. "I trust
you had a pleasant and profitable Exploration."

"I'll leave it up to you as to whether it was profitable," Garnna
replied. "But as for me, it was far from pleasant."

Rettin frowned at this indication of an irregularity in the mission.
"Come to my office," he said brusquely. "You can make a preliminary
report there. The rest of your iff-group is no longer needed. They may
return home."

Garnna said good-bye to his iff-group and told them he would be home
shortly. Then he turned and followed the Coordinator down the hall to
the latter's office. Rettin walked at a crisp pace and Garnna, only
recently emerged from the Exploration box, was hard put to keep up with
him.

The Coordinator's office was no bigger than average—rank did not
have its privileges on Zarti. It consisted entirely of four walls and a
desk. One of the walls held a chalkboard, but the rest were bare—the
Coordinator did not require art or beauty to help him work efficiently.
There were no chairs in the office for the simple reason that Zarticku
never sat. They weren't built for it.

Rettin took a pad of paper from his desk and held a pen over it in
readiness. "You mentioned unpleasantness," he said. "Does that mean
that you found some trace of the Offasü?"

"No, I did not."

The Coordinator's grip on the pen eased slightly, but that was the
only visible indication of his relief. Coming from him, even that was
an enormous sign, for Coordinators were supposed to be unemotional in
the extreme. It only showed what the mere concept of the Offasü could
do to even the most controlled of Zarticku.

Rettin dutifully recorded Garnna's answer, then looked up at the
Explorer again. "I take it, though, that you did find an inhabited
planet, judging from the fact that your Exploration lasted to the
maximum allowed time limit."

"I did indeed," Garnna replied, and proceeded to give a short
physical description of the solar system he had encountered. Then he
described the bipedal omnivores that had inhabited the third planet and
the level their culture had attained.

"So far," Rettin said, "this is all standard. I would have expected
a seasoned Explorer like you to have become used to these things and
not find them particularly unpleasant."

Garnna took a deep breath and tried to settle his jittery stomachs.
"These things I've told you so far are only preludes to the big one. I
had concluded the bulk of my investigations and had some time to spare,
so I was cruising along the seashore of one continent. In doing so, I
happened to witness a horrifying event. I saw…" He had to gulp before
he could continue. "I saw one of these creatures killing its mate."

Rettin stared at him silently for a moment, then said, "Explorers
are not encouraged to investigate the phenomena of individuals."

"I know that. As I said, I happened upon this quite by chance."

"Describe the incident," Rettin said tersely.

With a great deal of hesitation and uncertainty, Garnna told the
Coordinator about the strangulation, about the dismemberment of the
body and the burying of clothes in the woods. He explained the anger
that had radiated from the killer's mind, fear of punishment and the
evolution of some plan not only to evade that punishment but to shift
it over to some innocent member of the Herd. He described the
unmistakable feeling of triumph the creature had broadcast at the
thought of actually being able to outwit its Herd. By the time he
finished, his mouth was so dry that the lips were sticking together.

A silence fell over the room as the Coordinator pondered Garnna's
story for awhile. Finally he said, "You're right. That was a very
distressing situation for you to walk into, as it were. I think you
should make a report on the incident and distribute it to all the other
Explorers. It will serve as a good object lesson to keep people from
violating that 'no individual' rule in the future. Was there anything
else you wished to discuss?"

"I'd like to know what we're going to do about the incident."

"As I just said, you will write a report…"

"I don't mean here. I mean back on that planet." Rettin iff-Laziel
squinted to indicate puzzlement. "I don't understand you. Why should
you want to do anything back on that planet?"

Garnna had thought that his motives would be self-evident, but
perhaps he hadn't described his feelings well enough. He sputtered
profusely as he tried to explain to the Coordinator what he thought was
obvious. "Well, that killer must be a pervert of some kind. No society
could survive if it allowed individuals to flaunt the good of the Herd
that way. The killer should be caught and punished for its actions."

"Granted. But what business is that of ours?"

"Why… why I saw everything that happened. This creature is trying to
fool its fellows. Maybe it'll succeed. I should try to communicate with
someone on that planet, to make sure that its scheme doesn't work and
that the killer is punished…"

Rettin gave a loud snort that cut off the Explorer in mid-thought.
"You're talking nonsense," he proclaimed flatly. "You've been on eleven
full Explorations, as well as having undergone extensive training in
the theory of mind projection. You know it's impossible to communicate
with the beings on this other world."

"But that's only theory. No one's ever tried to…"

"No, of course they haven't. Nor should they. What happens to aliens
is none of our affair."

"But we must have some responsibility to see that justice is done."

"Don't ever forget, our primary responsibility is to the Herd. All
else is secondary. And in this case, the Project Council decided from
the very beginning that keeping ourselves secret from the races we are
observing is in the best interest of the Herd. If they don't know we
exist, they can't become jealous of our abilities or greedy for our
world and possessions. That was one of the reasons why mind projection
was selected over other means of Exploration. You yourself have agreed
to the principle of secrecy on numerous occasions."

"Yes, but every general rule must have exceptions."

"That's possibly true," Rettin nodded. "But I can't bring myself to
believe that this is one of them. Even this argument is futile, since
we couldn't communicate with these beings even if we wanted to."

"But…" Garnna started to protest. The Coordinator walked over to him
and put a hand on his back, gently escorting him to the door.

"Don't concern yourself too much with the affairs of these aliens,"
he said. "You said yourself that their civilization had advanced to a
highly technical level. If they can attain that, then they must have
some system for detecting and punishing wrongdoers. They couldn't have
lasted this long if they hadn't. Why not trust them to rule their own
affairs? Surely their entire civilization will not fall because of this
one act, however tragic it may be.

"Now you have experienced a very horrifying situation. You are no
doubt in a state of shock. Go home and relax in the security of your
iff-group. Let them ease the anguish you feel in your mind. Eat, drink,
copulate. I'm sure that by tomorrow morning you'll see things in the
proper perspective again." He gave the Explorer a gentle shove out into
the corridor and returned to the business on his desk.

Garnna stood alone in the hallway for several minutes, biting his
lip. Then finally he turned and went out the door to go home.

CHAPTER IV

He was awakened by the sound of heavy panting alongside his ear. He
knew who was making the sound even without opening his eyes. It was the
old Irish setter that belonged to Phil Lizzuco, one of the
boys at the commune. Before coming to the commune, Phil had called the
dog Big Red, but that name
had seemed terribly
middleclass to the other residents and so, over Phil's strained
objections, they had had a rechristening party and given the dog an
equivalent name that was more in keeping with the commune's
spirit—Chairman Mao. The dog didn't mind; he'd answer to anything, as
long as there was food to be called to.

Force of habit made Carl Polaski look at his left wrist. Then he
gave himself a mental kick. Even after three months at the commune, he
still could not get used to the fact that timepieces were not used
here. He missed his watch very much. All part of the grand
sacrifices in getting back to Nature, he thought sarcastically. He
tried to roll over on the cot and ignore the dog's breathing, but it
was no use. He was one of those people who, when they are awake, are
awake completely, with no possibility of falling back to sleep. He
stretched with his bare feet dangling over the edge of the short cot,
then rolled out of bed and stood up to get dressed.

As he changed into a fresh pair of undershorts, he sneaked a peek
out the window of his cabin. The sun was well up above the horizon,
nearly to the top of the big cypress tree. That meant it was probably
between eight and nine o'clock. Everyone else in the camp would be up
and busy by this time but, by virtue of being the commune's senior
citizen—and also, in the words of one member, a cool head—he was
allowed to sleep later than the rest. It was a privilege he felt
slightly guilty about, but only slightly. He'd woken up several times
with the rest of the camp at sun-up, and as far as he was concerned
there was no conflict between living a natural life and sleeping until
a decent hour of the morning.

He slipped some dirty dungarees over his shorts and stuck his feet
into a battered pair of sandals. He ran a comb quickly through his hair
and admired his beard in the cracked mirror on the wall. His cabin—the
administration building when the commune had been a camp—was the only
one with a private bathroom, and after he'd used it he felt ready to
face the world once more. He opened the cabin door, walked down the two
steps to the ground and moved towards the cabin that served as the
communal kitchen and dining room.

He thought at first that he had the place all to himself, but then
he heard the sound of running water and the tinkle of dishes. Moving
towards the back of the room, he saw Deborah Bauer washing the
breakfast plates. Polaski scowled. He wondered whether she had
purposely volunteered for the wash-up duty so that she could be alone
with him when he came in. That would be just like her.

"Good morning, Carl," she said cheerfully when she saw him. "We'd
almost given up on you for breakfast this morning."

" 'Morning, Debby," he acknowledged, returning her smile. "I hope
I'm still entitled to eat. I know it's a crime to sleep late around
here."

"Almost as bad as sleeping alone," the girl sighed.

"It's by your own choice," Polaski pointed out. "You could have
almost any man in the camp."

That was no exaggeration, even though Debby was far from what the
normal person would call attractive. She tended to the plumpish side,
fifteen pounds overweight, and it showed badly on her short body. Her
face was rounded, with black, stringy hair that came down past her
shoulders. Her face consisted of brown, bovine eyes, a glop of a nose
in the center, and an overly-large mouth with too-full lips. But the
members of the commune looked past the obvious. Debby was friendly,
outgoing, easy to talk to. She was always eager to share whatever work
had to be done, no matter how dirty, and she was the quickest person to
laugh at a joke, even if she'd heard it before. She was universally
admired and was the best friend of nearly everyone at the commune.

"True," she said, acknowledging Polaski's implied compliment
matter-of-factly. "But I don't want almost any man in the camp. I want
you."

Polaski sighed. That was the trouble. Debby had developed a
father-fixation on him. She was still emotionally immature, and
followed him around like a puppy. Being nearly twice her age, Polaski
felt that any relationship the two of them might have would be sloppy
and emotionally damaging to her.

"You're a nice girl, Debby," he said slowly. "And I like you too
much to do that sort of thing to you."

"That sounds Victorian!" she exclaimed, misunderstanding him. "I'm
hardly a virgin, you know. 'That sort of thing' has been done to me
lots of times."

Polaski picked up a just-washed plate and turned to the food table.
"That's not what I meant at all, and you know it. I happen to be a
married man…"

"Separated," Debby corrected him.

"… and a good deal older than you are. Professionally speaking, I
think our having an affair would be emotionally damaging for you."

"Sure, pull rank on me. That'll teach me to argue with a
psychologist." There was no bitterness in Debby's voice. They had been
over the same ground before, with the same results. She pouted slightly
to show her disappointment, but otherwise took his decision with good
spirits. She would accept the stalemate for now, and try to improve her
lot at some later time.

Polaski looked over the food selection and grimaced. The "natural
life" that the communities lived included a very basic diet—fruits,
vegetables, nuts, berries, grains, eggs, cheeses and the ever-present
goat's milk. The psychologist had had frequent delicious daydreams
about strangling one of the commune's chickens to get some solid
protein; but, having agreed to live as an ordinary member of the group,
he had quashed them. Now, with a faint sigh, he scraped the bottom of
the oatmeal pot and ladled the half-cold cereal onto his plate.

Debby watched his discomfort with mild amusement. "I woke up with a
nightmare last night," she said conversationally.

"Oh?" Polaski paused for a minute in his eating. "What was it about?"

"I'm not sure. It didn't seem to be anything specific. Fear, anger,
a choking sensation. I was screaming when I woke up; Rachel had to calm
me down."

"Probably something you ate," Polaski said, and went back to his own
food.

"I don't know, it didn't feel like it. And then I woke up this
morning with one of my Feelings."

"Good or bad?"

"Bad, definitely bad. The vibrations are all out of synch. Something
rotten is going to happen today, I know it."

The psychologist paused again. That Debby had some sort of psychic
powers he didn't doubt. It was her ability to find missing articles and
"feel" events before they happened that had led the other members of
the commune to nickname her "The Little Witch". Perhaps this was a
partial explanation of how she could be so totally simpatico with her
friends. Polaski had seen her use her talents too often over the past
three months not to believe that they existed.

Parapsychology was not his speciality. He preferred working in the
area of social psychology, the individual's reactions to the social
milieu. But he had read some papers on the subject, and some of his
colleagues had been studying Extra Sensory Perception and bouncing
their theories off him, so that he had more than a casual grounding in
the field. He even had a deck of Rhine cards tucked away somewhere in
his luggage. He kept making mental notes to dig them out one day and
try to test Debby's powers under scientific conditions, but there never
seemed to be enough time to get everything done, and testing Debby's
psychic powers always seemed to get shoved into the corner of
meant-to-do items.

"Any details to this feeling?" Polaski asked.

Debby shook her head. "Just barely. It seems to spread over the
whole commune, but somehow it centers on you. You are right in the
middle of what's going to happen."

Polaski raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. Too bad we don't know more
about it."

"I could find out," Debby volunteered.

"How?"

"All I'd need is a little pot. It heightens my perception…"

Polaski shook his head. He was in an unusual position. As an
observer of the activities at the commune, scientific procedure
demanded that he play as small a role in those activities as possible,
so that the Heisenberg uncertainty factor would be kept to a minimum.
On the other hand, being the most educated—and by far the most
mature—person at the camp, the responsibilities of leadership had
naturally gravitated to him. He disdained the outward forms of ruling,
and tried to shun interpersonal politics of all sorts. Theoretically,
all decisions involving the commune were made by the group as a whole.
But on a practical level, the other members always looked to him for
advice and, reluctantly, he gave it. His suggestions ended up as policy
and his statements became law. It made him wince sometimes—he was
supposed to be gathering data, not creating it.

One of the earliest problems to arise at the commune was the
question of drugs. Polaski had advised strongly against the use of any
illegal substances at the commune. The ban was not because of
prudishness or personal prejudice on his part; he felt that all the
evidence on marijuana, for example, was not yet in, and he refused to
either condemn or praise something on insufficient data. His reason for
suggesting the ban was eminently practical. San Marcos County was
small, consisting largely of small land owners and elderly retired
people, all with a conservative outlook. They were already very unhappy
about having this radical-looking group of young people move in and set
up an exercise in what to them was sinful free love (and what the
communites regarded as primal existence). One whiff of burning grass,
and the entire commune would be busted for good. It was
self-preservation—and a desire not to become known as another Timothy
Leary—that made Polaski keep the commune rigidly on the right side of
the law.

"But it would be for the good of the commune," Debby protested his
denial. "I'd be able to find out more about what this bad thing is and
we might be able to prevent it. I'd only need one joint…"

Polaski continued to shake his head. Debby was weak-willed, and
frequently used grass to escape her emotional problems. Polaski wanted
to keep her as far away from her crutch as possible, in the hopes that
she would outgrow it. "If you have the right to do something," he said,
"then everyone else has that right, too. You know the rule: no special
privileges. Even if it is for the benefit of the group as a whole,
what's to stop someone tomorrow from saying that they have 'feelings'
and need some pot to sort them out correctly? I think we'll all be
better off if you keep off the grass. Let's try fighting kismet blind,
like everyone else does." He finished what was left on his plate and
placed the dish neatly atop the stack that had yet to be washed. "Right
now, I have work to do… and I suspect that you do, too. I'll see you a
little later, if catastrophe doesn't take me first."

"Okay," Debby said ruefully. "But take extra care of yourself."

Today, like every third day, was Notebook Day. Polaski would spend
most of his time back in his cabin making longhand records in his
notebook of the events of the past three days as well as the emotional
reactions of the commune members to those events and their
interreactions among themselves. After three months, Polaski could make
out unmistakable lines of division throughout the colony. Loosely
speaking, the membership had divided itself into two camps, which he
privately termed the active and the passive, those who wanted to make
bold new social experiments and those who just wanted to live as
quietly and effortlessly as possible. Not only was Polaski engrossed in
observing the goings on, but he also tried to predict who would join
which camp and how each would react to a given issue. There was no
vehemence yet between the two groups, but Polaski suspected that it
would build and that eventually—sometime in the next several months—the
commune would fall apart under dissension and mutual animosity. But
from that break-up, if it did occur, he hoped to glean some small
kernel of knowledge that might help mankind at some future date.

He grabbed a hunk of cheese and a handful of nuts from the bowl on
his way out of the dining room, then returned to his own cabin. The
interior of his quarters was simple—one large room for working and a
smaller one for sleeping, plus a private bathroom. His bedroom had a
cot, a bureau and a closet, while the furniture in the outer room
consisted of a long wooden worktable and several chairs. The walls were
adorned with artful posters and a Playboy calendar.

Taking his notebook down from the high shelf on which he kept it, he
set doggedly to work. He wrote a short burst, then took time to
consolidate his thoughts before writing again. It was difficult to
remember the details of three days of activity, but the only
alternative would be to carry the notebook around with him all the
time, which would probably have tended to make the other commune
members even more self-conscious. They already knew he was here to
study their behavior; it would be impolitic—not to mention bad
procedure—to remind them of the fact.

Several hours went gliding silently by as he wrote. The next thing
he knew of the outer world was when Joanne Kefauver came running up and
banging at his cabin door. "Carl, you'd better come out here, quick.
There's a sheriff's car pulling up the road."

He looked up, startled. His mind took a moment before it could
recover from its broken train of thought. "Huh? Oh. I wonder who's
missing some socks this time." He was referring to an incident that had
happened three weeks back, when one county resident had complained to
the police that a pair of socks had been stolen from her wash, and she
was sure that one of the hippies had done it. A brief investigation had
shown that her cat had dragged the socks down from the clothesline and
behind the house, then abandoned them in the grass. The socks were an
in-joke at the commune now. But Joanne didn't smile as Polaski got up
from his writing, stretched and walked casually past her and out the
door.

He arrived at the center of the camp at almost the same instant that
the car came to a halt in the dirt. Polaski was surprised to see
Sheriff Maschen himself get out of the car. Something big must be
happening, he thought, If the sheriff himself is coming all
the way out here to see us. I wonder what he thinks we've done now.

"Good morning, sheriff," he greeted Maschen. "It's a pleasant
surprise seeing you around here."

Maschen grumbled something. On closer inspection, Polaski noticed
that the sheriff was looking a shade unkempt. He hadn't shaved that
morning, and his uniform was grubby. Polaski was even more puzzled.

"This is the first time you've ever been up here, isn't it?" he
asked politely. "Would you like me to show you the sights?"

Maschen looked around. His appearance had elicited two types of
response from the younger people. Some of them had pretended not to
notice his presence at all, continuing on with their chores as though
nothing whatsoever were taking place. The rest of the communites had
stopped what they were doing and were staring at the sheriff with
unabashed curiosity. "Uh, no, not right now, thank you," he answered.
Then, lowering his voice, he continued, "Is there any place we can talk
in private?"

"Theoretically, there is no privacy in this place," Polaski said,
being careful to maintain his smile. "We have no secrets from one
another. However, the chances of our conversation being overheard would
be considerably diminished in my cabin."

"Then let's go there," the sheriff said.

They walked to the cabin in silence, with more than a dozen pairs of
eyes following them every step of the way. Inside, Polaski closed the
door and motioned for the sheriff to sit in one of the chairs beside
the table. Maschen settled his squat frame into it as Polaski sat down
opposite him.

"Interesting place you've got here," Maschen said after a moment.

"You're a man who considers his adjectives carefully," Polaski
replied.

Maschen leaned forward and looked the psychologist straight in the
eye. "I'll make a deal with you. I'll stop playing the hard-boiled cop
if you'll stop playing the smart-ass intellectual."

Polaski's smile was genuine this time. "Touché, sheriff.
What can I do for you?"

Maschen relaxed and settled back into the chair. "Well, for one
thing, you can tell me what went on here last night."

"You mean aside from the orgies?" The sheriff shot him a reproving
glance. "Sorry," Polaski went on. "Intellectual snottiness is an easy
facade to fall behind, and a difficult one to abandon. Nothing much out
of the ordinary happened. Why, did someone complain that we were too
noisy?"

"What exactly do you mean by ordinary?" Maschen asked, avoiding the
question.

The psychologist spread his arms apart. "Oh, nothing exciting.
Mostly a couple of groups got together and talked. We had a small
campfire. One fellow had a guitar and some people were singing folk
songs. Then we all went to bed."

"About what time was that?"

"Oh, between nine and ten, I'd imagine. We don't have any clocks
here, which makes it a little difficult to be precise."

"So you'd say that, from midnight on until this morning, everybody
was asleep, including you?"

Polaski's eyes narrowed. The sheriff was uneasy about something, and
he was leading up to it in a roundabout fashion. "Yes, I think that's
an accurate statement."

"You wouldn't, uh, have anyone who could vouch for your whereabouts,
would you?"

Polaski bristled. He did not like the sneaky half-innuendo buried
within the sheriff's comment. "No, I sleep alone. And because everyone
else was asleep, they can't swear that I was. Just as I can't swear
that they were, because I was asleep. What's all this leading
to?"

Maschen exhaled loudly and shifted his weight around in the chair.
"Do you know Stella Stoneham?"

"Yes, she lets me use her cabin for typing up my reports. In return,
I clean it up and do odd jobs there.

Why? Is there something wrong with that?"

"Stella Stoneham died last night." Polaski was shocked into silence.
He opened his mouth twice to speak, but only stuttering syllables came
out. Finally he shook his head and looked down at the ground. "I'm
sorry to hear that. She was a very nice person. How did it happen?"

"She was murdered."

Polaski's head jerked upward sharply and he looked the sheriff
straight in the eyes. "And that's why you're here? Because you think I
did it?"

"Take it easy," Maschen said. "Nobody's accusing you of anything
yet. I have to check out all aspects of the case, and you're one of
them. You've been seen up around the cabin a number of times, and this
camp is only about a mile away. I have to investigate the connection.
You understand, don't you?"

Oh sure, Polaski thought. The little minds around this
neighborhood think they can leap front A to Z without bothering with
the letters in between. If I was up at her cabin a lot, it must mean
that I was having an affair with her, which then makes me the most
likely suspect in her murder. It's only logical. But he kept those
thoughts to himself, and framed a reply that was more diplomatic. "I
suppose I do. You're just trying to do your job efficiently."

Maschen relaxed visibly. "I'm glad you see it that way. It'll make
it easier for both of us."

"Tell me, how… how was it done?"

"She was strangled," the sheriff said simply. Polaski grimaced. "Not
a very pleasant way to go, is it?"

"No. But then, so few of them are. I was wondering whether you might
be able to come into town with me for awhile."

"What for?"

"I'd like to ask you a few questions…"

"Can't you ask them here just as easily?"

Maschen fidgeted again. It appeared to Polaski as though the sheriff
were wrestling with some problem and trying to keep from surrendering
to it. "We, ah, need an official statement, a disposition. It has to be
properly witnessed. Also, we'd like to get a set of your fingerprints,
just for the record."

Polaski hesitated for a moment, then decided there was no point to
being stubborn. "All right. Would you mind if I bring my notebook
along? I was right in the middle of jotting down some notes for my
project when you interrupted me."

"Not at all," the sheriff said.

The psychologist stood up. "I suppose I should put a shirt on, too,
if I'm going into town. Wouldn't want the folks around here to think
I'm a degenerate." He went into the bedroom and grabbed a clean but
wrinkled shirt from a pile of clothing in one corner. After putting it
on, he slipped his notebook and pen into the breast pocket. "Let's go,"
he said.

As the two men left the cabin, they confronted the membership of the
commune. The young people had gathered silently in a semicircle facing
the cabin and were now staring with mixed expressions at the sheriff
and the psychologist. In particular, Polaski sought Debby's face. It
held a look of very fearful concern.

He stepped down to the ground with the sheriff behind him and walked
through the crowd. "It's all right," he said cheerfully. "I just have
to go into town for awhile to straighten up a few matters. I should be
back in a couple of hours."

"I think this is the thing I mentioned to you," Debby said quietly.

Polaski forced a smile. "Well, if it is then you were worried about
nothing. I'll be back in a little while." He got into the passenger
side of the sheriff's car as Maschen got in to drive.

Polaski waved to his friends as the sheriff started the engine. The
crowd parted to let the car go through. As it drove off down the dirt
road, Polaski turned around and caught sight of Debby, a look of
forlorn helplessness still evident on her face.

CHAPTER V

Garnna walked home from the Project headquarters rather than taking
the public trams. Hooves were the only private mode of transportation
on Zarti, and Garnna wanted to be alone with his thoughts. His mind was
very confused. If it had been one Zartic killing another that he had
seen, there would be no moral question; his responsibility for the
welfare of the Herd would demand that he testify against the killer.
But it was the fact that the event had taken place on another planet,
between creatures of another race, that was confusing him. Zartic
morality had always been simple before—the welfare of the Herd was
always the first consideration, and policy guidelines were set by those
most qualified to judge what was best in that particular area. But now
that space exploration was possible, there were other races, other
Herds, to consider. Did he have a responsibility to those Herds as well?

It was dark by the time he finally reached his iff-home, and he
still had not arrived at any answers for his problem. He walked in the
doorway and was immediately greeted by Nolisk, the youngest of his
iff-sisters. "It's about time you got back," she said, relief evident
on her face. "We were worried that you might have had an accident. We
even called the Project, but they said that you had left hours ago."

"I decided to walk home. I wanted to think."

"Sure. And while you're thinking, we're starving," Fare, Nolisk's
mate, complained. "This is becoming an annoying habit with you."

Meals were the big events in the daily lives of the Zarticku. It
was at these two occasions—breakfast and dinner—that the entire
iff-group was assembled together for common purpose. After dinner they
relaxed individually, then went into their own little cubicles to
copulate or sleep; while during the day they worked at diverse jobs
according to their aptitudes. The meals were crucial, the meals bound
them together and made them, a solid social unit. No one could be
excluded from a meal and no one could eat until all were present.
Garnna's entire iff-group had had to wait until either he returned
safely or they were informed that he was dead or injured—and if the
latter, they would go to the hospital to have their meal with him there.

"I'm sorry I've held up our dinner again," Garnna apologized to the
entire group. "I had more of an appetite for thought than for food, and
I selfishly indulged it to the detriment of the group. I didn't realize
I would be so late."

Yari, the senior iff-brother, waved off Garnna's apology. "You
aren't that late. Fare was exaggerating, as usual, letting his belly
take precedence over his brains. While he was right that you've been
tardy lately because of your pensive nature, there was no harm done
this time. Your apology is noted and accepted. Now let's eat."

Garnna walked quickly over to his position beside the trough,
unwilling to cause any more of a delay than he already had. All the
males took positions on one side of the trough, all the females on the
other. Yari, the senior iff-brother, stood at the end nearest the wall,
across from Dondors, his mate. At the other end of the trough were Fare
and Nolisk as the two youngest in the group. In between were the other
three couples, ranged according to age. Garnna was precisely in the
middle, opposite Aliyenna, his own mate.

When they were all in position, Yari pushed a button and a small
metal door at the kitchen end of the trough swung open. The food
machine sent a stream of hot greenish liquid down the trough. In the
soupy solution were floating large, succulent hunks of greenery. The
smell that arose reminded Garnna that he did have an appetite for food,
after all.

"I hope you all like this," said Yari. "It's my latest recipe." Yari
was one of the prime chefs at the Food Institute, responsible for
developing better and more nutritious meals for the Herd. He was a
creative genius when it came to food, and his recipes were popular as
well as nutritious. Most iff-groups in Thirteenth City had at least one
of his recipes programmed into their home food machines.

Garnna unhooked his ladle from the side of the trough and dipped it
into the liquid, managing to snare some of the floating vegetation as
well. The broth had a grass base, but was delicately seasoned to hide
the normally spicy taste one usually associated with common grass. The
solids turned out to be pressed baloh leaves mixed with flour
to form little dumplings. The combination was exquisite.

All up and down the trough came sounds of enthusiasm and praise for
this delicious new dish. Yari beamed with modest pride. "It's great,"
Blouril called out between swallows.

"It wasn't easy making that grass broth and keeping the twigs and
seeds out at the same time," Yari admitted.

"Magnificent," Racgotz said, echoing the general sentiment.

Now that the compliments had been bestowed on the chef, the general
interest turned to Garnna. Always before, on returning from one of his
Explorations, he had fascinated the iff-group with the descriptions of
the strange and wonderful things he had seen while his mind was so many
parsecs away. Usually he was effervescent and eager to talk about his
adventures, but tonight he was subdued and quiet.

"Did you have a good Exploration this time out?" asked Nolisk when
it finally seemed as though Garnna were not going to volunteer anything
at all.

"No," Garnna answered, munching introspectively on a dumpling. "No,
I don't think so."

This unexpected, unhappy reply from their iff-brother prompted the
rest of the group to instantly adopt a concerned attitude toward him,
as their responsibility. "We'll understand if you don't want to talk
about it," said Dondors, the senior iff-sister, kindly.

Garnna looked up and around at the faces that were watching him so
intently. "No, no I believe I should. This is a pain that should be
shared, and a problem whose solution can best be found among the
iff-group." Slowly, Garnna began to describe his Exploration to his
assembled peers. He had to hesitate often and pick his words carefully
as he went, for the other members of the iff-group had not undergone
the training that he had. They were still laden with instinctual
prejudices and fears. Concepts that he could view dispassionately might
disturb them deeply, so ideas that disturbed him might wreak untold
havoc in their psyches.

He was particularly delicate when describing the killing. He talked
around it, built up to it gradually, then described it in the gentlest
possible terms. There was shock on their faces as he told of the
killing itself. When he described the dismemberment, several of his
iff-sibs dropped their ladles into the trough with revulsion. He
concluded by mentioning the creature's scheme to avoid its punishment
and was met by dead silence. After a long pause, the group's reaction
was an explosion.

"How terrible!"

"Disgusting!"

"Dreadful!"

"Horrible!"

"Revolting!"

Malbuk put down her ladle. "With all due apologies to Yari, I'm
afraid I can't eat any more of this delightful meal after hearing a
story like that."

"No wonder you weren't feeling hungry tonight."

Toskit said to Garnna. "A sight like that could spoil anybody's
appetite."

"I'm certainly glad I don't have to go Exploring," Nolisk
stated. "I'd probably shrivel up and die if I met beasts who would do a
thing like that."

"You can keep all these alien creatures of yours, Garnna," Toskit
agreed. "Just let me live my life among safe, sane Zarticku and I'll be
contented."

"What did your Coordinator say when you told him about all this?"
Yari asked. Although Garnna's story had shocked him as much as any of
the others, he was the oldest one present and had the greatest reserves
of self-control.

"That's where my problem comes in. Rettin iff-Laziel told me that I
should forget about the matter, not worry about it, try to pretend I'd
never seen it."

"I'd say that was very wise advise," nodded Racgotz. "Yes, I know I
shall work very hard at not thinking about it," added Malbuk.

"You mentioned that you had a problem," Aliyenna said softly,
sensing some of her mate's anguish. "What is it?"

"It's… it's a question of responsibility. Here is a creature who is
blatantly defying its entire Herd, putting its own welfare first. This
is wrong."

"Very true," Dondors said, and everyone around the trough nodded
agreement.

"And yet, the creature has worked out some plan whereby not only
will it avoid punishment, but the blame will fall on some other,
totally innocent member of the Herd."

"What is your problem?" Aliyenna repeated. "I… I want to try to
communicate with these beings and let them know their fellow has done,
to ensure that its horrible plans are defeated."

There was a momentary stillness in the room. Then Malbuk said
lightly, "Well, personally, I feel that whatever these hideous
creatures do to one another is their own concern and none of mine."

"Exactly," Racgotz said. "What difference does it make to the Herd
if one alien thing kills another alien thing? I can't see it as a
matter of great importance."

"But that's the point," Garnna argued. "These aliens are not
'things', they are creatures who are probably every bit as intelligent
as we are."

"Then why don't they act it?" Rocgotz challenged.

"Perhaps," interposed Blouril, trying to smooth matters over,
"perhaps you are becoming alarmed over nothing. It may be that these
creatures habitually behave this way, that this anti-Herd behavior that
we consider so deviant is the norm in their world."

"Impossible," Garnna said, shaking his head. "These beings had built
up a well-ordered culture. And no society can exist for long if every
individual is attempting to flout the rules so flagrantly. The society
would just fall apart."

"Have you considered the welfare of the Herd in this matter?" Yari
asked quietly from the end of the trough.

"I've tried," Garnna admitted. "That's what I was thinking about all
the way home as I walked. I couldn't come to any conclusions. My mind
kept running in circles."

"Obviously. It is a question of ambivalence. Racgotz brought out a
good point. It does not hurt the Herd if one of these aliens kills
another. Putting aside the matter of their intelligence, they are so
far away from us that their actions can have no possible bearing on the
Herd. Is that correct?"

When it was put so baldly, Garnna had no choice but to agree.

"Therefore," Yari continued, "the question of whether this errant
individual is punished is likewise of no consequence to the Herd.
Therefore, if these were the only considerations at stake, the matter
would be wrapped in ambiguity. Since the punishment of this deviant can
neither help nor hurt the Herd, your actions concerning it would be a
matter of individual choice and not a question of responsibility at
all. This ambiguity is no doubt why all your thoughts were going in
circles.

"However, there are other factors to be considered. If you were to
somehow communicate with these alien beings, they would learn of our
existence. From the way you have described them, they seem very
competitive. They might take a disliking to us. Or they might feel that
we have something they want. We are all familiar with the behavior of
carnivores and omnivores on Zarti—they take what they want by the power
of their teeth and claws. I daresay, from this killer's behavior, that
the omnivores on this other planet are exactly the same. If they
learned of our existence, they might try to take our planet from us,
even to the point of developing a physical interstellar drive to do it.

"Summing up my argument, then, it can do no harm to the Herd if we
ignore the situation on this other world. On the other hand, there is
the chance that it could harm the Herd if you were to
interfere. From this, your course of action is obvious. Your
responsibility for the welfare of the Herd absolutely forbids you from
interfering in this alien situation." Yari finished his argument with a
small flourish of one hand, as though he'd driven home some brilliant
point. All the other iff-sibs at the table looked in awe of his ability
to sort out the tangles of such an unprecedented situation and explain
it so simply and lucidly.

Garnna, however, was more confused than he'd been before. It all
sounded so dry, so clear, so logical when Yari explained it. But Yari
had not been there on the planet. Yari had not witnessed the
strangulation and dismemberment of that poor creature. Yari had not
touched the mind of an alien killer and seen the rage and maliciousness
that swelled within. If the senior iff-brother had seen the cancer
mind-to-mind, he might not be so glib with his therefores.

The Explorer tried to gather his mental resources to rebut his
senior's arguments. But by the time he could even begin to frame a
reply, Toskit had changed the subject by relating an incident that had
happened to him that day at the machine shop. The dinner conversation
shifted with obvious relief to more mundane matters. Yari's argument
had settled Garnna's problem to the satisfaction of everyone but Garnna
himself.

The small talk continued through the rest of the meal. Several
times, Garnna tried to steer the subject back to the alien killing, but
no one paid him any attention. It was as though the subject did not
exist for them any more. He felt puzzled, confused, drawn apart from
the rest. Alienated from his own iff-group. That thought was even more
hideous than the killing. He could not allow himself to be cut away
from these others, no matter what the cost.

But how could they be so blind? There was an important question at
stake here. It was not some worm that had died, but an intelligent
creature, as sentient as any Zartic. Why did they dismiss the affair so
lightly and forget about it? It was almost as if they were afraid of
something. And Rettin iff-Laziel had behaved the same way, flatly
refusing to become involved in the tragedy. What were they all afraid
of?

Dinner ended with the ritual pledging to the Herd and to the
iff-group. The nearly empty trough was tipped upward so that the scanty
remains of the meal were poured back into the food machine for
recycling.

The hours after dinner were devoted to individual relaxation.
Several of his iff-sibs chose to go to the small home gymnasium for
physical exercise, but Garnna chose a more cerebral activity. He stood
in the dining room for the three hours holding a recent text on
planetary geology in front of his face, but he found it impossible to
concentrate on the words. A tinkling bell announced the end of the
relaxation period and the iff-group members moved to the sleeping area.
This was a large circular room with five individual cubicles branching
off around its perimeter. Garnna's problem still burned unresolved in
his mind.

As he entered the cubicle he shared with Aliyenna, he discovered
that his mate had already arrived. "I'm in Cycle," Aliyenne stated.
Garnna nodded absently, but made no other comment.

"You seem very troubled, Garnna," Aliyenna said as she began
caressing the short, bristly hairs along the back of his neck. "It must
have been terribly unsettling to have witnessed such a ghastly act."

Garnna realized that his jaw muscles had tightened, and he made an
effort to relax them. Of all his iff-group, Aliyenna was the one who
understood most what he was feeling. And that was as it should be. Not
because she was his mate—there was little more than a physical
relationship attached to that—but because she was the kind of person
she was, with her individual aptitudes. The Tests had shown her to be
kind, empathic, selfless and devoted… the perfect qualities for a
Childraiser. And so Aliyenna worked all day in Thirteenth City's
east-side Academy. All day she was one of the "mothers" for the more
than three hundred young Zarticku who were raised in that Academy from
birth to maturity. And the same qualities that made her ideal for
tending children also made her empathic in her relationships with the
adults around her.

"Everything is unsettling," Garnna answered bitterly. "Particularly
the attitudes of the people around me. Can't they see that they're not
discussing inanimate objects? They're talking about people like
ourselves."

"They have worries of their own," Aliyenna soothed. "They don't have
the training or the interest. Take Yari. His aptitudes make him a Chef,
an excellent one. All day he struggles for perfection in his recipes,
and if something isn't perfect he tosses it out and forgets about it.
Should he be any different when he gets home? All the others, too, have
more immediate problems that worry them every day. How can they bring
themselves to worry about something that has happened to someone else
so very far away? If it will not harm them, they would prefer not to
bother with it. Only you can be concerned here, because only you are
trained to worry about other planets."

Is that the reason? Garnna wondered. Is that why I
seem to be the only one disturbed by this event? Because only I have
been trained to observe and take an interest in alien cultures?
But even as he thought that, he knew it was wrong. Rettin, too, had had
training that was bent towards understanding alien societies. Yet he
had been as frightened of the concept of interference as Garnna's
iff-group.

Aliyenna's hand had wandered down from his neck and was now
caressing the plating along his back. This was not the time for
thinking. Garnna tried to push the aimless thoughts out of his mind. He
moved close beside his mate. His hands sought and found her short
little fluff of a tail, fondled it momentarily. Aliyenna sighed, and a
pleasant shudder ripped through her body. Instinctively, they ceased
hand contact and moved back to back.

He imagined himself taking Aliyenna's neck between his hands and
squeezing it until all the life went out of her. He could see her eyes
bug out, her mouth open in surprise. Her face took on the same look as
that dead alien. Her lifeless body slumped to the ground at his hooves,
her beautiful, lithe neck purpled with the imprint of his fingers.

He himself would stand over the body coldly. Dispassionately, he
would hack at it with a knife until Aliyenna was nearly unrecognizable.
Then he would go outside the cubicle, dragging the bloody carcass with
him unobserved, and place it in Toskit's quarters. "Toskit has killed
Aliyenna!" he would shout. "He has killed his own iff-sister. He must
be ostracized at once!"

The image was too vivid, too nerve-shattering for him to stand. His
outstretched forelegs no longer seemed capable of supporting him, and
he fell forward to the ground. His digestive system was convulsing as
both stomachs churned with their only partially digested dinner. Then
they both gave up the effort and the double mess came hurtling quickly
up his long throat and spurted out his mouth. The world spun silently
around him as he lay on the floor, quietly vomiting.

After a while, his internal organs seemed to steady themselves
again, and the vomiting stopped. The smell of the acrid stuff burned in
his nostrils. He shivered as he lay there, too weak to rise. He became
aware of Aliyenna bending her neck over him, a very worried look on her
face.

"Are you ill, my mate?" she asked. Garnna groaned. Aliyenna bent
closer to him and repeated her question.

"No," he answered finally around the sour taste on his tongue. "I… I
think it's just due to everything that's happened to me today, all the
horror, all the upsets. Even though you are in Cycle, I think you'd
better leave me alone tonight. I apologize…"

Aliyenna cut him short. "I'll bring you a towel," she said, "to
clean up this mess." And she raced out of the cubicle before he could
say another word and was down the hall in a flash.

Left alone for a moment, Garnna had time to ponder. It was no good,
his trying to go back to leading a normal Zartic life. His mind
wouldn't let him. He had seen a horror on that far planet, and it had
changed him. Whether the change would be permanent or not, he couldn't
say, but the change was there now, and it was definite. It was a change
not so much in theory as in application. He still agreed with the Herd
philosophy—all his instincts as well as his training supported that.
But. But, but, but. There was a difference in his mind that he couldn't
pin down, and it was forcing him to view events from a new perspective.
He was not at all sure he liked it. It had come between himself and his
iff-group, normally the closest bond a Zartic could have. But, like it
or not, the change was there and he would have to live with it.

Perhaps another Zartic, viewing the way his thoughts were going,
would think him insane. Garnna couldn't be sure whether he was or not,
and he dismissed the consideration from his mind.

Aliyenna came back with several towels, two for wiping up the mess
her mate had made and another for wiping off the sweat that was
covering his body. As she worked, she crooned to him in low, soothing
tones. Garnna paid her no attention whatsoever. He was busy planning
his future course. Tomorrow morning he would go to Rettin and ask once
again to be allowed to return to that alien planet and attempt to
contact the beings about the killing. And if Rettin turned him down…

Garnna did not even consider that. He simply would refuse to take no
for an answer.

CHAPTER VI

It was nearly eleven-thirty by the time Maschen and Polaski arrived
in San Marcos, and the sheriff's stomach was complaining loudly that it
wanted to be fed. Both men in the car pretended to ignore the
rumblings. They had made the drive back from Totido Canyon with only a
couple of words exchanged between them. I guess we don't have much
in common, Maschen thought. Then, too, this is an awkward
circumstance for a conversation.

When they arrived at the Sheriff's Station, Maschen led the way up
the narrow stairs to his office on the second floor. "Anything happen
back here, Carroll?" he asked his secretary.

"Nope," she said shaking her head. "I made all the reporters clear
out—told them to wait downstairs if they wanted to, but I had work to
do up here." She looked at Polaski for a moment. "Ah, it might be best
if you and your visitor wait out here for a moment, sir. There's
someone waiting for you in your office."

"Who?" Maschen blinked.

"Wesley Stoneham," Carroll said matter-of-factly.

Maschen's mouth formed a small "oh" and indecision overcame him
momentarily. He hadn't particularly wanted to see Stoneham quite this
early in the investigation. The man would be upset and possibly
incoherent this soon after his wife's murder. And to boot, Wesley
Stoneham was a totally unpredictable man. He could be polite as a
diplomat, but he had a lightning temper when riled—and he had the power
to back up any threats he made.

"Carroll's right, I think you'd better wait here."

Maschen told the psychologist. "Mr. Stoneham is liable to be
distraught over the loss of his wife, and I should talk to him alone.
I'll be with you in just a few minutes."

"Suit yourself," Polaski shrugged. He walked over to a bench against
the wall, pulled out his notebook from the breast pocket of his shirt
and began writing. Maschen braced himself mentally and turned towards
his office.

"Oh, Carroll," he said with his hand on the knob, "would you go
across the street and pick me up a couple of sandwiches from Joe's? It
feels like I haven't eaten in days."

Maschen entered his office and found Stoneham waiting. The lawyer
was wearing a black business suit and tie, looking thoroughly
presentable. He was seated calmly in one of the comfortable chairs that
were spread around the large office, reading a paper that he had taken
from the sheriff's desk. His expression reeked of
dignity-in-the-face-of-tragedy. He stood up as he saw Maschen come in.
"Hello, John."

Maschen put on his sympathetic face as he shook Stoneham's hand.
"It's a shame we have to see each other under circumstances like this.
I was really shocked when I heard about it. I can't tell you how sorry
I am."

Stoneham managed a wan smile. "It's nice to hear you say that, but
it's rather poor consolation."

The sheriff nodded. "I know how you must feel. If there's anything I
can do…"

"Aside from catching Stella's murderer, I can't think of anything."

Maschen looked towards Stoneham's hand, which was still holding the
papers he'd been scanning when the sheriff had walked in. "What are you
reading?"

"Oh, just a report that was on your desk." Stoneham shrugged and
handed the papers to the sheriff. Maschen saw that it was Acker's
report that Tom Whitmore had typed up earlier that morning. "I hope
there wasn't anything secret in it," Stoneham continued.

"Not exactly," Maschen said, a trifle annoyed, "but it was a private
document. I'm sure you wouldn't like me coming into your office and
reading your contracts."

"I guess not. Sorry."

"But as long as you've read it, what do you think of it?"

"It's basically accurate. He's got all the facts, but he doesn't
really convey the horror of it."

"I know. I was up there myself a couple of hours ago."

"What did you think?"

"Terrible." Maschen shook his head. "Obviously the work of a madman."

"Have you made any arrests yet?" Stoneham asked.

"That's something I wanted to talk to you about. Howard Willsey was
in here this morning. I got the feeling from talking to him that you
think you know who did it."

"Of course. That Polaski guy."

"What makes you think it's him?"

"Well, who else could it be? He's a member of that hippy cult, and
'Death to Pigs' is a hippy slogan, isn't it?"

"Perhaps. But anyone can write slogans, and Polaski isn't the only
hippy in the world."

"He's been seen around the cabin several times."

"But not last night, as far as we know."

Stoneham looked exasperated. "What are you trying to do, John—defend
him?"

"I'm just trying to look at this thing rationally." He put a hand on
Stoneham's shoulder. "I know you're upset…"

"Upset? Of course I'm upset. My wife has just been brutally murdered
and the police are doing nothing about it."

"Take it easy. Have a seat." He guided Stoneham over to one of the
plush chairs and sat him down. Then he went behind his own desk and
sat. "You'll have to realize, Wes, that these things take time,
particularly when there are no witnesses and no one confesses. It'll do
us no good to get so excited."

Stoneham appeared to be trying to control himself. "I suppose you're
right."

"Of course I am. Now, can you think of any motive Polaski might have
had for killing your wife?"

"Haven't you been reading the papers lately? Nobody needs motives
any more; they just go out and kill for the sheer hell of it."

Maschen spread his hands. "Nevertheless, it would help convince a
jury if we could find out why the murder was committed. Even madmen
have reasons for what they do, even if they don't make sense to us."

"Well, Polaski was around the cabin a lot. Maybe Stella caught him
trying to steal something. Or maybe he developed an infatuation for her
and, when he found her alone, he raped and killed her."

Or perhaps they were having an affair, Maschen thought less
kindly. And yet, none of those explanations seemed in keeping with the
character of Carl Polaski, although the sheriff had to admit that he
hardly knew the commune leader.

"Maybe they all got high on marijuana," Stoneham continued, "and
decided to go on a killing spree like the Manson bunch. An orgy of
death."

The sheriff shook his head. "There is no evidence to suggest that a
large number of people was involved. And rape seems to be unlikely,
too—the bedroom was untouched and nothing in the outer room indicates…"

"All right, all right." Stoneham was getting testy again. "So I
don't know why he did it. But he did it, I'd stake my life on that. Why
don't you bring him in and ask him yourself?"

"I have brought him in, but I can't be as blatant as all that."

"Why not? You can ask him anything when he's under arrest."

"He isn't under arrest. I just brought him in to get a statement
from him."

"Didn't Howard give you the warrant?" The pleasantness was gone from
Stoneham's face.

"Yes, he gave it to me, but I chose not to use it just yet."

"Why the hell not? What kind of an operation do you run around here?"

Maschen's own temper was wearing thin. "Look, I don't tell you how
to write up your contracts, don't you tell me how to handle police
work. I had several reasons for not serving the warrant. Primary among
them is that I'm not sure there's any case at all against Polaski. He
seems like a calm, rational man to me, and that murder was not
committed by a calm, rational man."

"So you're a psychiatrist too, eh?"

"Secondly," Maschen went on, ignoring the other's jibe, "if I were
to arrest Polaski outright, he'd shut up like a clam. The man's no
fool, he knows all about his civil rights. The only person he'd utter a
word to would be his lawyer, and we'd never get any information out of
him. By inviting him to come down here voluntarily, I've tried to make
him less suspicious. I can't remove all the suspicion—he'd have to be a
low-grade moron for that—but by being cordial I can talk with him, get
a statement from him, ask him some questions and maybe get a modicum of
cooperation. If I then feel that the action is justified, I can
still serve the warrant. But I will not arrest anyone on an idle whim."

The lawyer harrumphed loudly. "Sounds to me as though you're trying
to think up excuses for not doing your duty."

Is the man that dense? Maschen marveled. Grief-stricken or
not, he ought to be able to see that the sheriff was being as helpful
as the law allowed. Even more so, perhaps, for he doubted that the
warrant that was still in his shirt pocket had been obtained by
precisely normal channels. Aloud he said, "I've been on the Sheriff's
Department for thirty-seven years, and I've never failed to do my duty
yet. My record speaks for itself."

"Perhaps that's the trouble—you've been around too long. Maybe what
the Department needs is new blood, someone who isn't too stodgy to take
chances." Maschen flushed as Stoneham's criticism echoed his own
self-doubts of earlier that morning. Was Stoneham right? Had he grown
so conservative in his job that he could no longer function as he
should? Had the world really passed him by as completely as he feared?
And was Stoneham's remark a threat to have him replaced at the next
election, or even sooner, if results were not forthcoming? Stoneham had
the power to do it, Maschen knew.

"Maybe so," the sheriff admitted, "but in the meantime I'm still in
charge here, and I'll do things my own way until I'm relieved of my
duties. And speaking of them, I'd like to get a statement from you
about the murder."

"I already gave a statement to one of your deputies…"

"Well, now you can have the fun of giving it to me personally. I
like to have as many of the facts first-hand as possible, stodgy old
coot that I am."

Stoneham grumbled a bit, but repeated his story. He had arrived at
his seacliff cabin at about two-thirty in the morning. Inside, he had
discovered the body of his wife, hacked up horribly, and that bloody
message inscribed on the wall. He tried to phone the sheriff's office
immediately, but discovered that the phone lines had been cut. So he
had driven over to the house of the nearest neighbor, Abraham Whyte,
and called from there at about three o'clock. Then he had gone back to
the cabin to meet the sheriff's deputy at the door.

Maschen pretended to take notes, but actually he was barely paying
attention to what Stoneham was saying. His mind was still pondering the
very personal problem of his fitness for office. What if he were proven
unfit and were not reelected next year? What could he do? He would be
sixty only a couple of months before the election. A few years too
young to retire, but what else was there for him? Law enforcement was
the only career he knew. He had recruited into the Sheriff's Department
when he was twenty-two, and had stayed with it continuously for
thirty-seven years. He didn't know anything else. And no other police
force was likely to hire a sixty-year-old rookie. The only other option
was retirement. He had a couple of dollars stored away in the bank, and
a sheriffs pension was better than some others. He and his wife would
be able to live, though they'd hardly be wealthy.

But what would he do with the rest of his life?

He was aware that Stoneham had stopped talking and was looking at
him. To fill the silence, Maschen asked quickly, "You didn't touch
anything in the cabin?"

"I might have sat on the sofa for a moment to steady myself, I don't
recall. It was quite a shock."

"Yes, I can well imagine. Why was your wife up at the cabin?"

"She was a very high-strung woman, quite prone to tension headaches
and that sort of thing. Whenever the strain of living got to her, she'd
go up to the cabin. I built it specially for her, you know. She always
found it restful up there, and it was cheaper than therapy."

"Why did you arrive at the cabin so late at night?"

"I had some business to attend to up in 'Frisco. I didn't finish it
until seven or so, and then I drove back down to our house here in San
Marcos. When I got home, I found my wife's note saying that she was
going up to spend the night at the cabin. I decided to join her, so I
packed a suitcase and went. You know the rest."

"Do you still have your wife's note?"

Surprisingly, Stoneham seemed momentarily stunned, and he had to
think carefully before he answered. "Why, uh, no, I threw it out."

Maybe I could be a bank guard or a night watchman, Maschen
thought, then discarded the idea immediately. It would be too great a
jump in prestige from Sheriff to guard and, if nothing else, he would
have to maintain the dignity of the office. "Is there anyone who can
substantiate your story?"

Stoneham exploded. "No! I don't need any substantiation. Why should
I want to kill my wife? There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that
I did it."

"There's no real evidence against Polaski, either."

"You keep telling me about all the evidence you don't have,"
Stoneham ranted. "Why don't you go out and get some? Don't bother me
with all these ridiculous questions—ask a man who can answer them:
Polaski."

Maschen bit his lower lip. Stoneham, with his wild carrying on, was
hindering the investigation by wasting the sheriff's time. Polaski had
actually been far more cooperative. "All right, I will." He punched at
the intercom button. "Carroll, will you ask Mr. Polaski to come in,
please?"

"Do you mind if I stay and watch?" Stoneham asked.

"I don't think that would be advisable…"

The question was made academic, however, as Polaski entered the
room. "Your secretary is still out getting your sandwiches," the
psychologist said, "but I'll come in anyway."

Maschen rose to make the introductions. "Mr. Stoneham, I'd like you
to meet Mr. Polaski."

"Doctor Polaski," the psychologist corrected, holding out
his hand. Stoneham looked up and down Polaski's tall, thin body with
unshaven face and unkempt hair and just glowered, refusing to make any
move of friendship. "Suit yourself," said Polaski after it became
obvious that Stoneham was not going to shake his hand. "I probably
would have gotten your germs, anyway."

"Glib son-of-a-bitch, aren't you?" Stoneham growled.

"Is he always this friendly?" Polaski asked the sheriff.

"His wife was killed this morning," Maschen said by way of
explanation. "Won't you have a seat, doctor?"

"Thank you." Although there were three other empty chairs scattered
about the office, Polaski deliberately sat down in the one next to
Stoneham. The lawyer's face grew darker.

At that moment, the sheriff's secretary came in, carrying two
sandwiches. "Here you are," she said. "One's roast beef, the other's
turkey. You owe me a dollar sixty-eight."

"Thanks, Carroll. I'll settle with you later." The secretary nodded
and left. "I hope you fellows won't mind my eating in front of you,"
Maschen apologized. "I haven't had anything to eat in almost
twenty-four hours. Doctor Polaski, how well did you know Mrs.
Stoneham?"

"Not terribly well. I met her once while I was hiking through the
hills and I stopped at her cabin for a drink of water. She thought I
was rather old to be doing the hippie bit, and I explained that it was
research for my psychology project. We talked a little about psychology
and the world in general, and I explained some of my projects to her. I
complained that sometimes I didn't get as much privacy as I would like
at the commune for typing up my reports, and she volunteered to let me
use the cabin whenever I wanted for typing. I made her agree to let me
do odd jobs around the cabin to pay for the privilege. That's about it.
Usually when I went up to the cabin it was deserted, with a note from
Mrs. Stoneham telling me what she'd like done. I would do it, then type
for awhile and leave. I only saw her twice after our initial meeting.
Both times we had short, intelligent conversations. That's the extent
of it. I thought she was a very nice person, and I am sorry to hear
that she's dead."

"Very touching," Stoneham muttered.

"If, as you say, the cabin was usually deserted when you got there,
how did you get in?" the sheriff asked.

"She gave me a key," Polaski said.

Stoneham shot the sheriff a significant glance, which Maschen chose
to ignore. "And you say that you were in bed asleep all last night?"

"That's right. I can't say for sure the exact time I turned in, but
it couldn't have been later than eleven."

"Can anyone substantiate that?" Stoneham interrupted, a sneer on his
face.

"Well, just about everyone at the commune saw me go to my cabin at
about that time. But they couldn't swear that I didn't leave it again
during the night, if that's what you mean."

"That's exactly what I mean," Stoneham said.

"And where were you all last night?" Polaski asked suddenly.

The quickness of the question put Stoneham off balance. "Why, I…"
Then he caught hold of himself, and his brusqueness returned. "Don't
try to change the subject. That's totally irrelevant. I'm not on trial
here."

"And I am?" Polaski's voice rose barely enough at the end to make it
a question instead of a declaration.

"Yes, you murdering bastard!" And without warning, Stoneham sprang
out of his chair and launched himself at Polaski. The startled
psychologist could do nothing at first to defend himself. Stoneham's
body crashed into him, knocking over the chair and sending them both to
the floor. Stoneham's hands were around his throat pressing in on his
windpipe.

Maschen moved quickly. He swallowed a mouthful of sandwich, moved
around his desk and tried to put himself between the two combatants.
Stoneham was a big, powerful man while the sheriff was short and squat,
but Maschen was trained in fighting and knew how to use his weight to
best effect. He was able to get his arms in at the right angle and
apply leverage. Slowly, he managed to pry Stoneham away from Polaski
and pulled him off to one side of the room a few feet away. "If you
don't learn to control yourself a little better than this," he warned,
"I'm going to book you for assault."

Stoneham glared at him. "You wouldn't dare."

Maschen felt the heat in that gaze, but he could be stubborn, too.
"Try me."

A change came over the big man. He shrugged his shoulders and his
face became tranquil. "I'm sorry, John. I didn't mean to do that. It's
just that I couldn't bear to sit there and listen to all those lies
from the guy who hacked my wife to pieces."

Polaski was rubbing at his throat, still lying on the floor. He
looked up at the sheriff, puzzled. "Hacked to pieces? I thought you
told me she was strangled."

"Both," Maschen said gruffly. "Now I want the two of you to sit down
and behave yourselves, or I'll have you both locked up."

Polaski opened his mouth to protest that he hadn't done anything,
then thought better of it. Instead, he picked himself up and went to a
chair that was well across the room from Stoneham. "I wasn't aware that
I was going to be put on trial down here," he said.

"You're not," Maschen said, returning to his desk and renewing his
attack on his sandwich.

"Stoneham's already judged and sentenced me," Polaski argued. "And
he was quite willing to execute the sentence as well."

"Mr. Stoneham will behave himself from now on," Maschen promised.
"I'll see to that."

"Why don't you like me?" Polaski asked, looking straight at Stoneham.

"Because you're a member of that weird hippie cult."

Polaski smiled. "What's so funny?" Stoneham demanded.

"Just an idle thought. I'm not very religious right now, but I was
raised a Catholic. I was thinking that the Church hasn't been accused
of being a 'weird hippie cult' in at least sixteen hundred years."

"You know good and well I mean that damn commune."

"I am a psychologist, Mr. Stoneham. I happen, at the moment, to be
making a scientific study of this commune phenomenon that has taken
hold in our country. In order to do this, I have to actually live at
one and accept their life style. It is not my chosen way to live, but
it is forced on me by the conditions of my work. When I have finished
with my research, I will go back to my nice little house with its
mortgage, its television, its stereo and all the other decadent
comforts of Western Civilization. I admit to being a member of the
commune, but that is only a temporary status."

"Humpf. Everyone knows you're the leader of that mob."

"They're all over twenty-one. When they ask me for advice I give it,
but I refuse to take the responsibility if they decide to follow it."

"What sort of advice?"

"Oh, not to take drugs, not to steal things. That sort."

Maschen had decided to let the other two men do the talking for
awhile, while he ate and made sure that the situation did not get out
of hand again. Now he had finished one of his two sandwiches and he
decided it was time to get back into the conversation. Polaski's remark
had left Stoneham temporarily at a loss for words, giving the sheriff
the perfect opportunity to speak again. "Are you finished with your
little interrogation?" he jibed Stoneham.

The attorney turned his glower to Maschen. "All I can say, sheriff,
is that there'd better be some action on this case soon."

There it was. Not an explicit threat. When you had the power of a
Wesley Stoneham, you didn't need to make explicit threats. You simply
let people know how you felt about matters. The wise ones would bend to
your will, and the foolish would fall by the wayside.

Maschen sighed quietly. He was being forced into a position he
didn't like. He could see the push coming, and there was no way to
avoid it. To disobey Stoneham's will would be to set in motion titanic
forces far beyond the sheriff's ability to control. He did not like
politics entering the realm of police work. He had fought against it
for years, with moderate success. But, like it or not, the politics was
here now, and he would have to cope with it.

He did not like the idea of retiring next year or even this.

"Dr. Polaski," he Intoned so quietly that both of the men had to
strain to hear him, "I am afraid I'm going to have to put you under
arrest. The charge is suspicion of murder." He took the warrant from
his shirt pocket. "Here. You may read it if you like. I'm sure it's in
order."

"I'll take your word for it," Polaski said. His lips were stretched
thin and tight across his teeth, his facial expression was unreadable.

"I am supposed to apprise you of your rights…" Maschen began.

"Let me see," Polaski interruppted. "I have the right to remain
silent and anything I say may be used as evidence against me. I have
the right to have an attorney present whenever I'm being questioned,
and if I don't have one or can't afford one, a lawyer will be assigned
to me. Is that about right?"

"I think you've got the gist of it."

"My lawyer's down in L.A. It's a long-distance call."

"You can make it at county expense." The sheriff glanced over at
Stoneham, who was actually smiling. That was the first time today
Maschen had seen him smile, and he didn't like it. It was a cold smile,
a satisfied smile, not a happy smile.

I hope I'm doing the right thing, Maschen thought as he
reached for the intercom. "Carroll, get one of the boys from downstairs
to come on up here. We've got a suspect to book for murder."

CHAPTER VII

Garnna had had a rough night. First there had been his impotence and
the accompanying sickness. Then, lying there in the darkness with
Aliyenna's body pressed warmly up against his own, it had been
impossible to relax. Sleep eluded him for several hours. When it
finally did come, it held within it strange and disturbing dreams.
Garnna was back on that planet, witnessing the killing ail over again.
This time, though, it was in slow-motion, with all the details
painfully exaggerated. He tried to move in and stop it, and each time
he tried he bumped against an invisible solid wall. He looked around
for some way to sidestep the wall, but there was none. As he watched,
he saw the wall being built higher and higher by Yari and Rettin, with
the rest of his iff-group lending their support to the construction.
Then he was falling, falling into a large vat filled with all kinds of
living creatures. There were Zarticku and those aliens he had seen that
day, plus all the other types of creatures he had ever seen on his
Explorations. There were even… even Offasü. All of them in there
together, talking, screaming, trying to get out, even as a giant ladle
began to dip into the vat and stir them all around…

He awoke in a cold sweat. A little ray of natural light seeped into
the room. It must be slightly after sunup, then. Even though he was
still tired, he knew it would do no good to try to go back to sleep
again—the rest of the iff-group would be waking up shortly, and then
he would have to have breakfast with them. So instead he lay in the
cubicle with Aliyenna's still-sleeping body pressed against him and
thought some more about his problem and about the dream he had had.
What did it mean? Or did it mean anything?

He was still thinking when the wake-up bell rang. Aliyenna, reacting
instinctively, stretched, yawned and opened her eyes. She gave Garnna a
pleasant nod and asked about his health. He replied slowly, saying that
he hadn't had much sleep during the night but that his stomachs at
least no longer felt queasy. They went through the ritual of combing
each other's manes, went off together to the lavatory pool and then to
the dining room.

Breakfast was a noisy buzz. Garnna stood quietly at his position
along the trough and ate mechanically, not even noticing what it was
he was eating. The other members of the iff-group talked easily among
themselves, discussing the various projects they were each working on
and what their schedule was for the day. Garnna did not join in the
conversation. When someone asked, out of politeness, what he would be
doing that day, he mumbled something automatically. His answer was
accepted and he was not required to say anything else.

Of all the iff-brothers and iff-sisters at the trough, only Aliyenna
took note of Garnna's disturbed preoccupation. She made no comment, but
continued watching him intently throughout the meal.

Garnna's waking trance continued all the way in to the Project
headquarters where he worked. He gave no thought at all to the tram
that took him across the city to his job. All transport in Zartic
cities was public and free, for the good of the Herd. All the streets
were crisscrossed by the routes of the quiet and completely automatic
electric trams. The trams were never crowded, because one would pass
each stop every few minutes and the waiting period was slight. The
inefficiency was high, for the trams frequently ran empty, but it was
for the good of the Herd that transportation be made readily available
to all, and so it was.

When he arrived at the building, Garnna went immediately to the
office of Rettin iff-Laziel. The short Coordinator looked up from his
desk as Garnna entered. "Yes? What can I do for you, Garnna
iff-Almanic?"

Garnna self-consciously shifted his weight from foot to foot to foot
to foot. "I've had some further thoughts about the conversation we had
yesterday after my return."

"Indeed?" The Coordinator's brisk efficiency was only making it more
difficult for Garnna.

"I also discussed the problem with the rest of the iff-group."

"Very commendable. What was the decision?"

"They decided that I should forget about the matter of the alien
killing."

"A wise decision," Rettin nodded, pleased that it had coincided with
his own. "I trust that you will now get down to the business of writing
a detailed report on your Exploration."

"I think they are wrong," Garnna stated, so quietly that his voice
was barely audible.

"What did you say?"

"I said, I disagree with them," Garnna said a little louder.

"You're challenging the combined wisdom of your iff-group?" Rettin
asked, startled. Such an act, while not unprecedented, was strikingly
unusual and generally indicated a disturbed mentality.

"Not their wisdom, no," Garnna said hastily, hoping that the
Coordinator would not get the wrong impression of him. "I just feel
that they—and you—have made their decisions based on incomplete
evidence."

"I made my decision based on what you told me yesterday. Was there
some significant detail you neglected to mention?"

Garnna's face took on a pained expression. "Well, it's… it's not a
detail, exactly. I gave you all the facts, precisely as it happened.
But you got the facts only, in a vicarious way. You didn't feel it.
Your mind didn't touch the mind of this killer. You didn't see the
hatred, the rage, the duplicity that boiled in there. I did. It was
like a sickness, one that must be wiped out."

He paused, considering the words he had just spoken. "Yes, that's
it. It's a sickness. That's the best way to describe it. And like any
sickness, we must control it quickly, or it may get out of hand. Here
on Zarti we're quick to control any diseases we find, even among the
lower animals, because we know that a balance must be maintained within
the ecology. This case is just a larger scale version of the same
thing, only the disease is mental and it's occurring on another planet.
But we must act to control it, all the same."

Rettin did not answer immediately. He stood staring at Garnna
intently and thinking over what the Explorer had said. After a minute
he spoke. "Let me take your argument to its logical conclusion. What
you are, in effect, saying is that we should become the doctors to the
entire Galaxy. That we should patrol the stars, administering cultural
remedies to everyone we think has problems. It can't be done. For one
thing, Zarti doesn't have the resources to handle something like that.
We've strained ourselves to the very limits just to establish and
maintain this Project, and only because it is so very vital to our own
interests. Our capacity is severely limited."

Garnna tried to interrupt with a protest, but Rettin would not let
him. "And even if we could, should we? Who are we to set
ourselves up as the moral judges of the rest of the intelligent life
forms of the Universe? We are a single race on a single planet. We
number about seven hundred million, total population. Is it in our
destiny to rule the lives of all those trillions of trillions of
creatures that live on other worlds? It takes enough effort to run our
own planet—we can't spare the time for others.

"You've been an Explorer for two years now. You've been Trained, you
know that morals differ from culture to
culture. We have no right to impose our own moral solutions on races
that have situations to which our own standards may not even apply."

"But they must apply here!" Garnna finally managed to protest. "No
viable society could survive if it permitted such behavior as I
witnessed. It would fall apart from disunity; as you said, I've been
Trained. Elementary social dynamics tells me that."

"All right," Rettin said with an effortless shift of mental gears,
"but maybe their culture is supposed to fall apart. Maybe it's a sick
race, a cancer on the face of its planet. Your report indicates that
there is already a sickness there. Maybe we should quarantine them
before their mental disorder spreads. Maybe it would be best for the
Universe if their culture did fall apart."

Garnna gasped. That particular notion had not occurred to him.

"And besides," Rettin pressed, seeing that he had a momentary
advantage, "you may be making this whole fuss for nothing. This deviant
individual might already have been caught and punished by its peers. I
know you told me that it made plans to avoid that, but that doesn't
mean they were successful. This whole big problem that you're so
concerned about might be meaningless."

"In that case, I'd like to request permission to revisit that planet
and observe the situation for myself, to see whether it's been
satisfactorily resolved."

Rettin shook his head sadly. "You don't understand. We can't allow
ourselves to become involved with an alien race. The risks are too
great. Right now they are. in ignorance of us and we are safe. If they
were to learn about us, they might become our enemies. Remember, it's
in the nature of omnivores and carnivores to prey on herbivores like
ourselves. For our own survival, we cannot allow that to happen."

Garnna stood his ground stubbornly. "I know that what I am trying to
do is right. I could feel it the moment I touched minds with that
killer."

Rettin's manner changed back into the efficient administrator. "Your
job, Garnna iff-Almanic, is as an Explorer. You are to observe other
worlds and report back on all you've learned, particularly if you've
noticed any traces of the Offasü. That is your duty. You have been
specially trained not to let your personal prejudices interfere with
this duty. There was a reason for this, a double reason. Perhaps you
thought it was only to keep your fear instincts of flight under control
so that you could stay and watch what might seem to you to be horrible
practices among the aliens. But it was also meant to keep you from
becoming involved in alien problems that you are powerless to change.

"You appear to have violated these precepts and disobeyed your duty.
You've allowed your personal feelings to color your observations,
thereby decreasing your effectiveness as an Explorer. You have also
allowed yourself to become involved in an individual situation, with
the same result. Have you anything further to say to me?"

Garnna looked at him and his mouth moved several times, but no
sounds came out. Finally, he said, "No, I guess not."

Rettin smiled, having triumphed again. "Good. Then I suggest that
you return to your duties. Go to your office and prepare a detailed
report on your last Exploration. I'll expect to see it finished within
five days."

Garnna turned slowly to leave, stopped and turned his head back to
look at Rettin. The Coordinator was no longer paying him the slightest
bit of attention, having returned to other matters on his desk. With a
faint sigh, Garnna left and walked slowly down the corridor to his own
office.

The interior of Garnna's office was in direct contrast to the chilly
efficiency of his Coordinator's. There was the ubiquitous chalkboard on
one wall, but on the other three hung bright seascape paintings that
normally gave the room an atmosphere of quiet restlessness. But today,
everything appeared dull and bland. The top of the desk was neatly laid
out and ready for work. The light was constant and brighter than usual,
putting too much glare on the paintings. Garnna had always felt alive
and secure in his office before, but now he felt cramped, restricted,
chained in. His head was pounding, as though some giant fist had
grabbed it and were squeezing all his brains out through his ears.

He moved slowly to the desk and took out a pen and a writing pad. He
set them down in front of him and stared for perhaps half an hour at
the empty sheet before him. Nothing came. His mind was a total blank.

Finally he could take no more of this self-inflicted torture.
Picking up the pad, he flung it violently across the room. The pen
followed a moment later. Garnna raced out the door, down the stairs and
out of the building.

Outside, the air already smelled fresher. Garnna inhaled large
lungsful of it, savoring the vitality in every molecule. The few
pedestrians who were out on the street ignored him as he capered in the
sunshine for several minutes, delighting in the experience of his minor
rebellion.

But his elation was short-lived. He had done nothing except escape
his office for a few moments. The report would still have to be written
when he went back in. Worse, he had done nothing toward solving what he
was beginning to consider was his own personal problem. He had been
unable to persuade Rettin to allow him to return to that planet. Maybe
he wouldn't have to interfere in the alien situation. Maybe, as Rettin
himself had suggested, the aliens had resolved the matter themselves.
But he had to know. Why couldn't they let him just go back and look?
What would be the harm in that?

He did not go back into the building. Instead, he wandered along the
street aimlessly, letting his feet guide him in whatever path seemed
most convenient. I can't do my job efficiently if they insist on
shackling me,
he thought. I've been Trained to Explore, I have all the instincts
for it. Why don't they let me do my job the way I deem it best?

His eye chanced upon a sign and it held his attention. Three
concentric circles, symbol of a Counselor. He stared at it for a moment
unaware before the idea inveigled its way into his mind that what he
needed most, at the moment, was spiritual guidance. He walked
resolutely across the street to the small shop and entered.

The Zarticku did not have anything that could be called a formal
religion. Their culture had been brought from a very primitive herd
level to a sophisticated scientific one in the space of a few
horror-filled generations. Their ancestors had lived too simple a life
to have need of supernatural beings and, after the Offasü had left, the
new Zarticku were of a high level of technical competence. They did not
need to explain lightning bolts as spears of the gods when a few basic
experiments showed them to be simply phenomena attributable to an
ionized atmosphere. Their Universe became a rational one, in which all
things had logical explanations. The supernatural was unknown on Zarti;
gods, devils, imps and fairies were nonexistent. And if it's true that
everyone needs a bogeyman why, they had the Offasü, a very real, very
horrifying menace.

But even though the Zarticku belonged to the Herd, each Zartic was
capable of thinking and acting as an individual. And for every
individual, there is always the fear of death lurking at the back of
his mind. An intelligent creature is aware., of the inevitability of
death and knows that it will come to him one day. This knowledge
conflicts with the individual's drive for self-preservation; all his
natural instincts make him want to live forever. In order to maintain
his sanity, the intelligent creature must find some way to reconcile
these two forces.

Without a belief in the supernatural, the Zarticku had no conception
of an afterlife. Death was final in the real world, and they saw
nothing that would indicate the existence of some other plane of
existence. They could not imagine any part of themselves surviving
after death in some imaginary land, or even being reborn into some
other creature back home on Zarti. Death was simply the end of the
individual.

But if the individual died, the Herd lived on. It was a constant
thing in a Universe of changes. Barring the end of the world, the Herd
would continue to exist regardless of what happened to its members. It,
the collective identity of all the people on Zarti, was immortal. The
individual could sublimate his own drive for immorality into the Herd.
And so, it was for the life of the Herd that the Zartieku lived. Each
Zartic, by doing his utmost to ensure the welfare and survival of the
Herd, was achieving his own immorality. He was part of the Herd and the
Herd was immortal, therefore he was immortal. Thus the Zartic lived
out his life, content to know that his efforts would keep the Herd
alive.

The Counselors were the closest thing Zarti had to priests. They
served in part as spiritual guides, in part as judges, and in part as
lawmakers. It was they who decided what the ultimate welfare of the
Herd was and what means should be used to achieve it. Occasionally,
disputes would arise between groups or individuals as to how something
was to be done, and the Counselors would be asked to adjudicate. And on
the personal level. The Counselors could be consulted by any individual
who was in need of advice or guidance, to help him reconcile his own
personal desires with the needs of the Herd. For this reason, all
Counselors maintained offices open for anyone who required assistance.
The offices were identified by the sign of the three concentric
circles, symbol of the Zartic beliefs. The outer circle signified the
Herd, the greatest of all things and encompassing the rest. The middle
circle represented the iff-group, enclosed within the Herd and yet an
entity unto itself, holding inside it the third circle which stood for
the individual. This was the smallest circle, but it was in the center,
guarded securely by the iff-group and the Herd so that it was doubly
safe.

Garnna entered the waiting room and found that there were three
other people ahead of him. The waiting room had a series of numbered
stalls. He stood in the fourth stall and waited. After awhile, someone
left the Counselor's chamber and the person in the first stall was
called in. The Zarticku waiting outside each moved up to the next
highest number.

The line moved surprisingly quickly, and within an hour Garnna found
himself being summoned into the inner office. The Counselor was a
female, standing behind an impressive dark wood desk. On the walls of
the office were long rows of books covering nearly every imaginable
topic. The room had the odor of wisdom about it, and the lighting was
dim.

Garnna looked more carefully at the Counselor. She was old, but her
exact age was indeterminate. There were patches missing from the
bristly hair that adorned the back of her long neck, and the silvered
mane at the base of her neck was scraggly and unkempt. She had a look
of peace in her eyes and self-assurance in her stance. Garnna trusted
her instantly, and knew he would abide by whatever decision she made.

"I am Norlak iff-Delicon," she said. Her voice was quiet, but the
sound carried quite well in the atmosphere of the darkened room. There
was a presence to the voice that made itself heard.

"I am Garnna iff-Almanic," he returned. "I have come to seek advice."

"A well-advised individual serves the Herd best." Her voice had a
tingle to it that made even that platitude sound fresh when she said it.

Her calm gaze remained level, staring into his eyes as he struggled
to find a way to begin. "My problem is involved and entails a tangle of
ethics."

"They're the ones I enjoy best," she said. For a brief instant, she
stepped out of the Counselor-role and Garnna could see the living
person within her. "They're the ones that deal with people,
rather than things. People are so much more interesting." Then she
slipped the mask back on and she was once again the impersonal
Counselor. But the momentary glimpse of her as a person was strongly
reassuring and put him instantly at ease.

Garnna was particularly worried about Rettin's suggestion that the
alien society might deserve to be destroyed as a cancer. If that were
so, then he ought not to interfere, and let their society disintegrate
naturally. He needed a Counselor's advise, and so he tried to explain
the situation in analogues that the Counselor could easily understand.

"Let me give a hypothetical situation," he said. "Suppose a person
found an iff-group that was, for one reason or another, badly put
together and on the verge of a dissociation. What should he do?"

"Take the matter to a Counselor immediately so that the individuals
could be rearranged into other iff-groups."

"No, suppose there are no Counselors around and the iff-group is on
the verge of imminent break-up. If the individual doesn't act, the
break-up will surely occur, although there is no certainty that the
break-up will be avoided if he acts."

Norlak barely had to think to answer that one. "The individual
should still try. A broken iff-group is a harm to the Herd."

"Even a badly formed iff-group that was not working properly
together?"

"Even that. Such an iff-group, even without a Counselor around to
help it, is better than no group at all. Without the group, there would
be nothing but individuals, and the result would be chaos. The
iff-group gives unity and direction. Without them, the individuals are
random forces in a patterned society. They could nave a deleterious
effect on the Herd."

Garnna sighed. That was the answer he'd been hoping to hear, and it
reassured him coming from a Counselor. "Now I have a slightly more
difficult question to ask you. What is the Herd?"

Her sharp eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What makes you ask a thing
like that?"

"I have my reasons. Please, the answer is important to my problem."

"The Herd is the collection of all the Zarticku, all Zartic thought
and deed, the sum total of all the Zarticku who have ever lived as well
as the aspirations and dreams of the Zarticku for the future."

Garnna watched her as she spoke. She was reciting, giving the
traditional answer that was taught to children at the Academies before
they were even assigned names. When she finished, he shook his head.
"That isn't enough. There must be more."

Again, she gave him a suspicious glance. "How much more should there
be?"

"Are you aware that there are intelligent races living on other
planets?"

"Yes, I've heard some of the tales of the Explorations. I never gave
them much thought, though; my duty demands that I keep most of my
attention for matters here on Zarti."

"Are these other intelligences also part of the Herd?"

Norlak did not answer immediately. Instead, she backed away from the
table and paced around behind it. She did not look at Garnna while
doing so. Garnna waited patiently for her to reach a decision. Finally,
she returned to the table and looked him straight in the eye. "You're a
strange man, Garnna iff-Almanic. You come to me with a question that
has never been asked before and expect an answer on the spot. Even your
more routine questions are tinged with the bizarre."

"Does my question have an answer?" Garnna persisted.

"If it does, I think it must depend on the specific circumstances
you have in mind. Would you care to relate them to me?"

Garnna shook his head again. "No. I've already explained the
circumstances to my iff-group and the Coordinator at my job. I think
the nature of the specifics has blinded them to the real problem. If
there is an answer to my question, it must be a general one."

Norlak sighed. "Then I'll give you a general answer, but I won't
guarantee that there won't be exceptions to it. In general, I would say
that these other intelligent beings are not members of the Herd. They
have not contributed anything to the welfare of the Herd, nor have they
derived any benefits from it. They exist independent of the activities
of the Herd and thus cannot be a part of it."

Garnna pondered this decision for several minutes while Norlak
watched him, observing his reactions. He liked the way she had
delivered her decision; not like Rettin and Yari, who had treated it as
a personal triumph. She had stated it simply and factually. He might
not like the verdict, but he could not fault the Counselor. She's
a shrewd old woman, Garnna thought. Aloud, he said, "Is there
anything greater than the Herd?"

"In what way greater? If you mean more powerful, the Offasü are
undoubtedly so, and there are probably numerous races…"

"No, I was speaking in terms of organizational heirarchy. Is it
possible that there is some organization—a… a Superherd—that is related
to the Herd in the same way that the Herd is related to the iff-group?"

Norlak spread her hands. "Anything is possible."

"You're evading me," Garnna said. "You're deliberately refusing to
answer my question."

"You didn't come here for answers," the Counselor replied, and her
voice was even. "You had decided on the answers to these questions
before you even came into my office. What you want me to do is confirm
your answers, to lend the authority of a Counselor to the conclusions
you have already reached. I do not function that way. My duty is to
settle problems and give advice. If you need me in that capacity, I'll
be pleased to serve you. But I will not demean my position by allowing
it to be used as a tool with which you can combat your Coordinator and
your iff-group. Is that clear?"

"Yes," Garnna mumbled as he headed for the door. "I thank you for
your assistance, Counselor."

"Garnna iff-Almanic," she called.

He stopped right on the threshold of her doorway and turned. "Yes?"

"If you do have a falling out with your Coordinator and iff-group,
you will definitely be needing the services of a Counselor. Please
don't hesitate to call on me." There was a tender warmth to her voice.

Garnna gave her a smile. "Thank you," he said, and left the office.

CHAPTER VIII

"You're not sick, are you Debby?" Joanne Kefauver asked. Ever since
Polaski had driven off with the sheriff that morning, Debby had sat
apart from the rest of the commune group, unable to do any work or talk
to her friends. Now the sun had set and dinner was being eaten by most
of the commune, but Debby still sat alone on her rock, staring unseeing
at the trees on the nearby mountainside. Joanne, her best friend in the
camp, was concerned.

"No, I'm not sick," Debby answered in a monotone.

"Then what's the matter?"

"I'm worried."

"About what?"

"About everything." She turned to face her friend and there were
tears in her eyes. "Joanne, it's been eight hours since the sheriff
took Carl away."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. Some old bat was probably
missing her socks again and they're holding him for questioning until
they find them. It's happened before. Remember what Carl always says
about sticks and stones. He'll be back all right in a little while."

"But it's never been the sheriff before," Debby protested. "It's
always one of the deputies who comes. And I have this Feeling, like a
total disaster. You know how my Feelings are, they're almost always
right. Something bad's going to happen today. I told Carl and he didn't
believe me and now he's in jail. It's going to happen soon, now, a
total disaster."

Joanne looked worried, but more for Debby's sake than the camp's. "I
think maybe you should eat something or go lie down. Whatever this
thing is, it can't be all that bad."

A pair of headlights could be seen coming along the road. No one in
the camp was alarmed, because they knew it would be one of their own
people. The commune as a group possessed one vehicle, a jeep, for
occasional trips into San Marcos. Evan Carpinton's ax handle had
splintered that afternoon, and he'd had to go into town to get a new
one. Now he was on his way back, driving recklessly at top speed along
the winding dirt road that led to the commune. "I wonder what's on his
tail?" someone commented as they watched him drive up.

Evan pulled into the central cleared area of the camp and screeched
to a stop. "They've arrested Carl!" he cried.

There was an awkward silence as people digested that. Then someone
asked, "How bad is it?"

"The worst," Evan said. "They've accused him of murder."

Joanne shot a quick glance at Debby. The younger girl seemed barely
to have heard, but was nodding quietly to herself.

The camp's reaction was an uproar. "That's impossible!"

"He'd never do anything like that."

"They're against us, we all knew it."

"How'd they ever arrive at a crazy thing like that?"

"It's all in here," Evan said bitterly, holding up a copy of the San
Marcos Clarion. "That old lady Stoneham, you know, where Carl
goes up to type, she got knocked off in her cabin. I mean really hacked
to bits. Her husband's the big chicken-shitter of the town, he owns the
whole thing and tells everybody what to do. So because Carl's from the
commune and he's up at the cabin a lot, Stoneham decides that he's the
killer. He had his buddy the sheriff lock Carl up, and now they're
holding him incommunicado. I tried to go in to see him and they
wouldn't let me."

The enormity of the situation took time to filter through the
collective consciousness of the group. There had been arrests before,
but always of a trivial nature, more for harassment of the communites
than anything else. Nothing this serious had ever happened. And
especially not to Carl, who took great pains to be the straightest of
the group. He was the one who kept everyone else in line, and now he
was the one in trouble.

The confusion was total. People turned to their neighbors and
babbled meaninglessly. One voice was finally heard above the general
racket asking, "What do we do now?"

"I'll tell you what we do," Evan said, standing up on the hood of
the jeep and subconsciously striking a pose. "They've declared war on
us and taken one of our best guys prisoner. So we fight back. We all
march down into the town and storm the sheriff's office. We tell those
mothers exactly what we think of them, and we demand that they release
Carl. If they don't, we show them what real war is. We'll tear that
town to pieces until they give him back and let us alone. Why should we
be the ones who are always getting harrassed? Let's harrass them for a
change!"

A loud cheer went up, and the general level of conversation
increased as the members discussed the idea of a march. From the other
side of the camp, someone said, "No, that won't work." Heads turned,
and people saw that the speaker was Bob Preston.

"What do you mean, it won't work?" Evan called. "We've got
thirty-seven good, strong young people, all angry, against a small
townful of old fogeys who don't even have their own teeth."

"They may not have teeth, but they've got guns and rifles. And
they'll be just as angry as we are if we go tearing up their homes. I'd
rather not invade a hornet's nest without adequate protection."

"Coward!" sneered Evan.

"No, just sensible," Bob retorted evenly. "Everybody, think for a
minute. What would Carl tell us to do if he were here now? Have
patience, wait and see how the situation develops, then work through
legal channels. The old sticks and stones bit. I don't like it either,
but that's Carl's way of doing things and he's never been wrong about
something major yet."

"Yeah? Well, while you're waiting for situations to develop, the
people of the town are going to be holding a 'citizens' rally' tonight.
How much do you want to bet that it doesn't turn into a lynch mob? If
we don't act first, there won't be any Carl Polaski left to save."

"He's quite capable of taking care of himself," Bob persisted. "And
our place is here. We came to this camp because we were trying to get
away from the corruption of the world. We musn't lose sight of that
purpose."

"I agree there," said one of the girls. "The less we have to do with
those bastards out there, the better I like it.''

"Sure," Evan replied. "Under ideal circumstances, I'd agree with
you. But the outside world won't leave us alone. They keep poking their
noses into our affairs. It's time we taught them that if they keep
poking at us, they'll have to expect to get their noses cut off."

"We musn't stoop to their level," Bob said, trying hard to project a
reasonable quality to his voice. "If we got out and riot, then we'll be
no better than the lynch mob you were talking about a second ago, and
the whole point of the commune—all these months we've worked here—all
that will have been wasted."

"We could argue all night and not get anywhere," Evan said. "Look,
I'm going into town and do what I can to help Carl. Anybody who wants
to come along will be more than welcome. As for the rest of you who'd
stay behind when one of our comrades is in deadly danger, I say the
hell with you!"

Throughout the argument, Deborah Bauer continued to sit on her rock.
The general confusion was taking a ferocious toll on her psyche. She
had always been extremely sensitive to the feelings and emotions of the
people around her, and now, with misunderstanding rampant and tempers
at the boiling point, the sheer volume of emotional static was a
cannonade against her brain. The fears, frustrations, anxieties and
angers of those around her, reinforced by the fact that these were all
close friends, were drumming a psychic tattoo on her mind. She started
to reach her hands up to her ears to shut it out, then realized that
would be useless. So she sat and endured the silent torture as the
roiling of emotional forces continued unchecked around her.

* * *

It had been impossible to conceal the fact that an arrest had been
made in the Stella Stoneham murder. Less than an hour after the charges
had been filed, the networks and wire services had all learned that a
Dr. Carl Polaski had been taken into custody. That was all the
sheriff's office would say on the issue, but the reporters had other
sources of information. Within another hour, it was known that Polaski
was the leading member of a youth commune outside of town in Totido
Canyon, and the feelings that the townsfolk had for the communites were
well documented. Within still another hour, all of the pertinent data
about Polaski—aged 39, associate professor of Psychology at UCLA,
married but separated from his wife—had been ascertained and a quick
interview made with his estranged wife. Thus, by the time the networks
were ready to take to the air with their nightly news broadcasts, they
had quite a tidy story to report. They explained the details of the
gruesome tragedy, emphasizing the gory description of the body. There
was footage from Maschen's morning press conference. And there was the
Polaski angle. The networks, of course, were very careful not to say he
was guilty, while at the same time lauding the efficiency of the
Sheriff's Department for making an arrest so quickly. It all made for
five minutes of coverage on nationwide TV.

Shortly before the newscast, the Clarion came out with a
special edition, headlining in the largest type available the biggest
news story ever to originate from San Marcos. After the broadcast,
telephone lines were humming with conversations concerning the murder.
Between the three sources—paper, television and gossip—there was not a
soul in San Marcos who hadn't heard about the crime in some version or
other by six-thirty. Nor was there a person in town who had escaped the
general feeling of rage that had enveloped the normally peaceful
community.

Nobody afterwards was precisely sure whose idea it was to call the
citizens' rally in the small auditorium. There was nothing in the paper
about it, no notices circulated. Those accused of it afterward
vigorously denied the charges, and no blame could be placed. But it was
a fact that, at eight p.m., the town's small auditorium was jammed with
more than a hundred of San Marcos' most irate citizens.

The buzzing of angry conversations was so loud that the floor of the
stage rattled. Wesley Stoneham shifted his weight in the chair to
minimize the vibrations he could feel through the floorboards. He
allowed himself a grim smile as he looked over the gathering. Most of
the people here he knew personally; there wasn't a one of them that had
ever entertained a thought that hadn't first come from someone else.
That was good—it meant they'd be easily led tonight. And they were
already worked up into a mood of righteous anger, which would diminish
their critical faculties even further.

He was equally as sure of the men on the stage with him. Len Frugal
was the city manager, a man who could be counted on for fiery oratory
as long as he was not required to know what he was talking about. He
was a good friend of Stoneham's. Next to him was Ike Lassky, one of the
county Supervisors. Stoneham had financed his last, tough campaign
three years ago almost single-handed, and Lassky knew to whom he owed
his political life. Then there was Sam Ingram who, like Stoneham, had
no official position at all, yet was influential in the minds of the
citizens of San Marcos. Stoneham had no hold over him, but the two men
thought so much alike that he didn't need one.

The meeting did not come to order when Len Frugal banged his gavel,
but the noise level did dip to a gentle din. Frugal began with a
general introduction, praising the moral fiber and fervor of the men of
San Marcos and thanking everyone for showing up that evening. He then
launched into a long speech which no one afterward could remember very
well except that it was very passionate, denouncing a lot of bad
qualities such as Violence and pleading the citizenry of San Marcos to
a crusade to obliterate all purveyors of such unhealthy dogma. Finally,
at the end, he said, "Now I would like to introduce a man who will fill
us in on the specifics of why we are here tonight, a man who is
demonstrating enormous personal courage and strength merely by
appearing in public at such a time of overwhelming private tragedy:
Wesley Stoneham."

Stoneham arose and walked slowly to the microphone. As he did so,
the room settled into a deathly hush. All faces were on his, and
Stoneham knew, from years of public speaking, how to hold them. When he
reached the podium he stopped, turned slowly forward and did not speak
for the space of several long heartbeats.

"As all of you know," he intoned, "my wife was murdered last night."
He paused to let that line have effect. "It sounds so neat, all
compacted into one sentence like that. But the act itself was not neat.
It was the work of a madman, or perhaps several. And we tonight are
faced with the debris left in the killer's wake.

"I don't know how many of you ever met Stella. Those who did, I'm
sure, must treasure their acquaintance with her as one of the best in
their lives. I know I did. We were married for almost fifteen years,
and every day of it was the best day of my life. Stella's smiles were
sunshine and to me she was always as beautiful as the day I married
her. She loved children very much, and it was our great misfortune that
we never had any. And now we never will."

He paused again and gazed placidly over the audience. People shifted
uncomfortably in their seats, but the stillness continued. "Stella was
a very sensitive woman," he went on. "She was very well attuned to the
world around her. She was involved in at least half a dozen charities,
and there was no one so badly off that Stella wouldn't try to help.
This very sensitivity caused some of her worst problems. The pressures
of day-to-day living, even in a comparatively quiet town like San
Marcos, would often affect her. She would become jittery and she smoked
a lot. There would be times when she would need complete relaxation. I
built her a cabin overlooking the ocean especially so that she would
have someplace to go when the world upset her too badly.

"She was there alone last night while I was driving back home late
from San Francisco. Sometime after midnight, the killer or killers
arrived. They must have knocked, because there was no sign that the
door was forced. She let them in because she was a very trusting
person. Then suddenly, without either reason or warning, they turned on
her. They grabbed her by the throat and calmly choked the life out of
her. She must have struggled some, but it was no use. They were
stronger than she was and there was no contest.

"She probably died quickly. But the killers were not through.
Actually, I dignify them with the word 'killers'. They were beasts!
Deranged, blood-crazed animals! They weren't satisfied just to leave
her lifeless body lying on the floor. They were on an orgy of death,
and nothing would fill their ghoulish cravings but gore. They tied her
up, then took a knife from the wall and began butchering her as though
she were a hog in a meat market." The crowd buzzed slightly, and
Stoneham raised his voice to match. "They slit her throat. They gouged
her belly and slashed her breasts. Then they…" His voice faltered.
"They cut her eyes out."

He stopped talking suddenly, turned and went back to his seat. His
face was buried in his hands. The audience's buzzing became a roar of
indignation. Each man turned to his neighbor to express his shock and
disgust, and tumult reigned in the small hall.

Stoneham was well satisfied. As a lawyer, he knew that there
wouldn't be sufficient evidence to convict Polaski of the murder. What
he was trying to do was confuse the issue as much as possible. There
would never be any way to prove that he did it, either, but he had to
make sure that the finger of suspicion would not point even slightly in
his direction; at least until Chottman retired and Stoneham was
officially a member of the Board of Supervisors. Then he'd be able to
sneer at any suspicions with impunity. But Chottman was a puritan and a
stickler for primness in the private lives of public men. To keep even
the hint of suspicion away from himself until Chottman forwarded his
name to the Governor, he had to create as much chaos as possible.

Ike Lassky spoke next. He pointed out that Mrs. Stoneham's murder
was not the work of any normal man. It had to be done by a person or
persons whose mind was twisted away from the normal standards of
decency and rightness, someone who wanted to flaunt his perversion to
the entire world. And in all of San Marcos County, there was only one
group of people like that—the hippies living up in Totido Canyon. They
rejoiced in doing things that were unwholesome and far from decent
standards of behavior. They defied traditions and thumbed their noses
at respectable people.

Finally, Sam Ingram got up to speak. He reminded them of all the
trouble the hippies had been ever since they had arrived, and of all
the times they'd been questioned by the police. They were no-good
troublemakers, and now possibly killers. Because the townsfolk had been
soft in dealing with these upstart youngsters, San Marcos now had a
rattlesnake den right outside of town. Who knew where these hippies
might strike next? If something was not done, they might kill your wife
while she was alone. The time had come for righteous citizens to take
action. Sam Ingram was going up to Totido Canyon and show those hippies
that they couldn't intimidate decent people. Did anyone want to come
with him?

A roar filled the auditorium and shook the walls as a spontaneous
cheer arose from the audience.

"Would you mind if I go off duty now?" Deputy Simpson asked. "I
doubt that anything further can be learned tonight, and my wife has
been phoning to ask when I'll be coming home."

Maschen yawned and looked at the reports on his desk. The coroner
had concluded that Mrs. Stoneham had died sometime between midnight and
two o'clock. As Simpson had surmised, the cause of death was
strangulation, and the body had been tied up and mutilated afterward.
Crazy. Simpson's studies had shown that the lipstick prints on the
cigarette that had been dropped on the floor belonged to Mrs. Stoneham.
The blue paper match that was in the ashtray had obviously come from a
book, but there was none in evidence. The door to the cabin had not
been forced. There was no indication of sexual assault. Other attempts
at finding evidence were equally inconclusive. Fingerprints of three
people had so far been found in the cabin—the victim's, Stoneham's and
Polaski's… all of which could rightfully be expected there if their
stories were correct.

The sheriff looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. It had been a very
long and exasperating day, with little to show for it except
aggravation. Simpson was right, they should both be getting back to
their wives. Nothing further could be gained by staying here tonight.

"Sure, Don, go ahead. And give my love to Karen. Tell her I'm sorry
to keep monopolizing you, but that's what she gets for marrying a
brilliant husband."

Simpson departed, and Maschen made a pretense at straightening out
the mess of papers in front of him. Oh hell, he finally
decide, what's the use? There'll only be more of them tomorrow,
anyhow. He left the mess piled on the desk and walked out of his
office.

Just as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Deputy Whitmore called
to him. "Oh, Sheriff, I was just about to buzz your office. There's a
call for you, supposed to be urgent."

"Who is it?"

"She wouldn't say. Just keeps asking for you and saying it's urgent."

With a sigh, Maschen took the receiver. "Hello?"

"Is this the sheriff?" asked the female voice at the other end.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

"It's about my husband. I'm afraid he might be getting himself into
trouble."

"Who is your husband, and what kind of trouble?"

"He went to attend the rally, and…"

"What rally?"

"The citizens' rally about the murder. He came back from the
auditorium to get his car and said they were finally going to do
something about the hippies. I asked him what, and he didn't say, only
that a lot of people were going up to Totido Canyon."

A mob, thought Maschen. The perfect end to a perfect
day. "Thank you for letting me know about it," he said into the
phone.

"My husband won't get arrested for doing what he's doing, will he?"
asked the anxious voice.

"That depends on what he does," Maschen said as he hung up. He
turned to his deputy. "How many men do we have on duty at the moment,
Tom?"

"Let's see, Simpson just went off, so that leaves us with nineteen,
including you and me."

Nineteen men, plus another dozen off duty that could be called. And
no riot control equipment—San Marcos had never needed any. There was
some tear gas and a bullhorn. Other than that, the deputies all had
standard armament, which was not the best for handling a rampaging mob.
Once more, modem times were popping up at him and catching him
unprepared.

"Well, I guess that should be enough men. Send out a message to all
units to meet up in Totido Canyon. Tell them there's a mob of people
headed in that direction, and they are to stop it by any means short of
shooting. I'll be heading out there myself with the tear gas. You stay
here and handle communications. Oh, and alert the Fire Department that
they'll probably be needed. Mobs like to set fire to things."

As he drove up along the coast alone, Maschen blamed himself for
allowing this situation to get out of hand. He was responsible for
keeping the peace in San Marcos, and that entailed knowing everything
that was going on. Under normal circumstances, he would have known
about this rally and taken precautions beforehand to make sure it
stayed within control. But today he had been swamped with the details
of the murder and had almost forgotten that the outside world existed.
Had he done it as a defense mechanism, purposely burying himself in
work so that he wouldn't have to face reality? Whether that was so or
not, he was still responsible for the domestic tranquility and he had
failed in his duty.

As he swung into the dirt road that led to the canyon, he could see
the sky lit red with fires. He had been right in notifying the Fire
Department, then. He comforted himself in the fact that he was not
totally incompetent, just slightly out of touch.

He was only able to drive halfway up the road, though, for it was
blocked with parked cars, both police and civilian, so that the road
was impassable. He saw some activity up ahead.

"Tom," he called to Deputy Whitmore over the radio, "tell the Fire
Department to hurry on out here. And tell them to come around by the
east road—the south one is clogged with cars and they won't be able to
get through." Then he left his car and walked up the road to see what
was happening.

Just beyond the barricade of cars, a clump of people was milling.
Two deputies and slightly over a dozen very abashed civilians were
standing around peacefully. Maschen went up to one of his men, Larmer,
and asked what had happened.

"We got here too late," the deputy explained. "Everything was over.
There was a skirmish right here, where the group from San Marcos
encountered a small number of hippies coming into town. One of the
hippies got hurt in the fight," and he pointed to a body lying beside
the road, "I've called for an ambulance for him. The rest of the
hippies scattered into the underbrush and we don't know where they are.
The main body of the mob moved on into the canyon itself, and the rest
of our men went after them. We stayed back here to take care of these
few stragglers."

Maschen patted him on the back and muttered a few words of praise,
then walked on along the road to the camp. He had his flashlight to
guide him, although it wasn't necessary; the red flickering from the
fires provided enough of a glow to enable him to see his way.

It took him half an hour to make it up to the commune in his
exhausted condition. By the time he arrived, the county fire fighting
units were on the scene and efficiently dealing with the blazes. In the
central clearing stood the main body of the mob, milling aimlessly and
looking rather pathetic. They were being kept in line by the rest of
the deputies. There was no sign of the communites.

"The mob chased the hippies out," a deputy reported. "They came in
with guns, but I don't think they shot anyone. They mostly threw stones
and sticks, and the hippies ran into the woods. Then they started
setting fire to the buildings. By the time we got here, they had pretty
much used up all their anger and were looking confused, like they
didn't know what to do next."

Maschen walked over to the fire chief who was supervising the
operations of his own men. "Everything all right, Ned?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think we got here in time. I was worried. We haven't had
any rain in months, and this whole mountainside could have gone up. As
it is, we'll lose these cabins and some of the brush around the
immediate vicinity, but we'll have it under control in an hour or so."
He shook his head and looked back at the mob of confused townsfolk.
"Damn fools! What did they think they were accomplishing, anyway?"

Maschen patted the fire chief on the shoulder and let him go back to
his business. Walking idly around, the sheriff surveyed what was left
of the camp. All the buildings were ablaze, and the firemen were
trampling through a grain field that had made an abortive start over to
the side. The small vegetable and herb gardens that had been everywhere
on Maschen's earlier visit were now trodden into oblivion by the
heedless feet of the rioters. Where before there had been the
excitement of youthful energy, there was now only a scene of tragedy
left. The sheriff shook his head. He had not been in sympathy with the
aims of the commune members, but at least they had been trying to do
something. Now the air was bitter with the taste of destruction.

Suddenly Maschen stopped. Facing him, about ten yards away,
was one of the girls from the commune. She was short and a bit plump,
and her hair was stringy and disheveled. Her lips were swollen and
there were numerous cuts and bruises on her face, one, particularly,
under her left eye. Her dress was dirty and torn open in several
places. She was looking straight at him with an expression he could not
decipher.

They continued to stare at one another for a long moment. Then
Maschen took a step toward her and the tableau broke. The girl turned
and bolted back into the woods. "Wait," the sheriff called. "Come back.
I'd like to help you." He started after her through the brush, but she
was much faster and he quickly gave up. Fear was her motivation, and he
would never be able to reach her. He hoped she wouldn't catch cold
during the night in that torn dress.

Maschen turned back in the direction of the rest of the people.
Sadly, he began walking through the ruins of the camp on his way back
to his car.

CHAPTER IX

Garnna found a note on his desk when he arrived back at his office.
He also noticed that the pen and the writing pad had been picked up
from where he'd thrown them and placed neatly on the desk top.

He picked up the note and looked at it. It was neatly written and
precise, not just a casual memo. It read:

For the good of the Herd:

It has come to our attention that your
behavior since your last
Exploration has been erratic. You have questioned the decisions of your
Coordinator and your iff-group, both without sufficient cause. You have
broken the rule against observing individual situations during an
Exploration. You have betrayed your duty as an Explorer by breaking the
primary principle and allowing your emotions to prejudice your
observations. In view of these abuses, it is no longer in the best
interests of the Herd for you to remain in your present position as an
Explorer. Effective immediately, you will assume probationary status as
an Exploration Evaluater. Should you prove incapable in that position,
you will be sent to the Academy of your choice for reTesting and
reTraining.

Counselor: Blauw
iff-Rackin

Coordinators: Rettin
iff-Laziel

Pogor iff-Tennamit

Nanz iff-Gohnal

Space Exploration
Project

So there it was, the retaliatory blow at least. He supposed it must
have been inevitable that some action would be taken against him after
his odd behavior, but the actuality shocked him. He was no longer an
Explorer. No more would his mind run free through the Universe,
thrilling to the discovery of a new planet and a new race. Now he would
be only an Evaluater at best. He would read the reports made by other
Explorers and file them according to various dull rules. The excitement
would belong to others, while he would examine and catalogue their
experiences.

Was this action really for the good of the Herd? Possibly, from
their point of view. Looking dispassionately back on his actions,
Garnna himself was shocked by them. By all normal standards of social
behavior, he had acted like a misfit, almost an outlaw. By the working
definition of insanity in Zartic society, he could be considered mad.
If he were to spot anyone else behaving the way he had, he would have
requested that the fellow be held for intensive psychiatric treatment
at once.

But Garnna was no longer shackled to the standard mode of behavior.
True, he would still act for the welfare of the Herd under all
advisable conditions—that training was strong, and he had no quarrel
with the concept. But he had just come to realize that there was
something bigger to which he owed his first loyalty.

He had thought, on his way back from the Counselor's office, about
what she had told him. She had been right about his motivation—he
hadn't gone to her for answers or advice, but because he wanted
support, ammunition to use in his arguments against Rettin. The
authority of a Counselor agreeing with him would have ensured his
getting what he wanted.

When he had asked his question about the Superherd, he had already
made up his mind that there was such a group. It was certainly not a
formal organization—perhaps he was the only being in the Universe who
was aware that it existed at all—but that would not alter the fact that
it did exist. All intelligent life in the Universe belonged to it,
because all intelligent life shared a common bond; it was their very
intelligence, the questing to understand the workings of the Universe.
It was this common factor that had created the need for a Superherd.
When one race found an answer to some cosmic question, it had to be for
the benefit of the entire Superherd because all intelligence wanted to
know it.

There was a tie between all races, then, a brotherhood that ignored
planetary barriers. As long as one sought after knowledge he was a
member, and any small piece of information, no matter how seemingly
insignificant, was an enrichment to the entire Superherd. And it was
this tie of kinship that demanded that Garnna act in the case of the
killing he had witnessed on that alien planet, for to leave such an
incident unchecked would be to the detriment of the Superherd.

There was only one flaw he could find in his theory. In order for it
to be universal, it would have to include the Offasü as well, since
they were obviously intelligent creatures. But no member of the Zartic
race, no matter how unprejudiced, would ever be able to consider a
kinship between himself and the tyrannical race of former masters.
Could the Offasü be a race of degenerates within the Superherd, much
like that alien killer was degenerate within his own Herd? Garnna
didn't know, but he refused to let the problem worry him too much at
present; no cosmic philosophy could be constructed entirely in the
space of one afternoon. That problem could be reasoned out later.

Garnna weighed his alternatives. Those around him had ordered him
not to take action because to do so might be detrimental to the Herd;
and perhaps the alien society was corrupt anyway and should be allowed
to disintegrate. But Norlak had told him that any order, even corrupt
order, was better than chaos, and that all attempts must be made to
preserve it. Perhaps allowing the aliens to learn about the Herd would
be harmful, although Garnna doubted that very much. But allowing a
crime to go unpunished would be harmful to the Superherd, for it would
spread disorder. It was a question of which took precedence. On Zarti,
one acted for the welfare of the Herd, even though it might have bad
effects on any particular iff-group. The Herd always took precedence
over the iff-group and the individual. In the larger scheme of things,
the Herd was in the same relation to the Superherd that the iff-group
occupied with respect to the Herd. Therefore, matters pertaining to the
welfare of the Superherd would naturally take precedence over those of
the Herd.

Garnna reread the note that had removed him from his job. By
changing his position, Rettin and the others in charge of the Project
were trying to neutralize his effectiveness in implementing his new
philosophy. They were putting him in a position of impotence. He
crushed the piece of paper angrily and threw it to the floor. Can't
they see what I'm trying to accomplish? he moaned silently.

Or maybe that was the problem. Maybe they could see the same thing
he saw. They need not be aware of it consciously, but down in the
bottom of their minds they might see the basic structure rising. And
they were afraid of it. It was big, it was new, it was different. They
had lived all their lives for the Herd. Now they were asked to replace
that concept with a bigger one, and their minds rebelled.

It had been the same with his iff-group, of course. The Superherd
was unknown and therefore dangerous. It represented something that was
not substantial, something they had not seen with their own eyes and
could not believe in. The Herd was safe and secure. Their
responsibilities to it were well defined, and the benefits they derived
from it were equally well delineated. It was a constant quality that
gave them stability because it was familiar.

His new theory had seemed to threaten that stability. They saw it as
an attempt to topple the Herd and put some new entity in its place.
That was why both Yari and Rettin had been so ferocious in their
attacks on his ideas—they treated them, not as concepts to be debated,
but as enemies of all they stood for and believed.

This was wrong. Garnna was not trying to do away with the Herd or
the individual's responsibility to it. He was merely trying to put it
in its proper perspective in the universal picture. Instead of being of
primary importance in every single instance, the Herd must now
occasionally take a secondary role to the Superherd in deciding some
issues.

There was a crucial difference between himself and the others. He
had been Trained to observe impartially, to look at facts without
prejudice or emotion and draw conclusions from them. It was necessary
for being an Explorer, for the normal Zartic instincts rebelled at the
sight of anything strange. Flight was the herbivore defense mechanism.
In order to study aliens, he had to disconnect this mechanism and
observe without fear. And this same training enabled him to accept the
concept of the Superherd without being frightened by it.

But people who were not Trained as Explorers could not do this. They
were still prey to all the fearful instincts that the ancestral herds
had possessed in the forests and grasslands of Zarti. Anything new was
a threat, to be run from or, if necessary, fought. And this was why
Garnna's plans faced such stiff competition.

But what was there to do now? Garnna stood at his desk and thought.
He could not allow this neutralization of his abilities to succeed, for
that would be detrimental to the Superherd. Action had to be taken. It
would have to be both incisive and decisive, with no wasted motion.

As he saw it, he had two duties to the Superherd. The first,
obviously, was to find out whether the killer on that alien planet had
been brought to justice and, if not, take some steps (he didn't know
what) to make sure that it was. This was his duty to the other Herd so
that the whole of the Superherd would remain harmonious.

But his second duty was much grander. He must teach the rest of his
fellows about the existence of the Superherd, make them face the
reality until they could accept it. They must be made to realize that
they had a higher responsibility than just to the Herd, that they were
guilty of regionalism. An iff-group that set itself apart from the Herd
could not be tolerated, nor could a Herd that tried to isolate itself
from the Superherd. The Zarticku had knowledge and abilities that could
be useful to the community of intelligence, and this knowledge must be
shared. If nothing else, the Zarticku seemed unique in their ability to
project minds through space. The other races must be informed of this
so that they, too, could explore the vast reaches of space which they
also inhabited. As long as the Zarticku held back this information, the
community of intelligence would be diminished by that much.

As he stood there at his desk, a plan started forming within his
mind. Again he amazed himself, for the plan called for the
contravention of the express orders of the Herd as rendered by a
Counselor and three Coordinators. His determination wavered for an
instant—had anyone else behaved this way, he would have labeled them
insane or degenerate. For a moment, he harbored doubts about his own
mental state. But he bolstered himself with the thought of the
Superherd, and his resolution returned. He knew he was right, arid so
his plan could not be wrong.

He left the building at quitting time and went directly home. The
tram ride seemed abnormally long, and he had to fight the temptation to
get out and run instead. To calm himself, he forced his mind back to
the plan, contemplating it and turning it over mentally, reviewing it
from all angles. He would need an accomplice for it, but he thought he
knew where he could find one.

He paid as little attention to dinner as he had to breakfast, but
for a slightly different reason. Conversation flew over and around him
as he ate silently. When the subject could no longer be avoided, he
informed the rest of his iff-group that his position had been changed
from Explorer to Evaluater. There was the shock and surprise he had
expected, and he fielded the questions that naturally came at him as
easily as he could. The people in charge, he explained, had noted his
strange behavior since his return yesterday and decided that further
Exploration might have an even worse effect on his psyche, reducing his
usefulness to the Herd. Therefore, he had been switched to a new
position. No, he didn't know much about it, but he would learn.

He noticed Yari standing at the end of the trough and looking smug.
Once again, no doubt, he thought he had triumphed over the forces of
change and chaos. He would be sorry for his younger, iff-brother, of
course, but he would feel that this way would be of greatest benefit to
the Herd. Garnna, in turn, felt sorry for someone with such a narrowly
ruled mind that he couldn't see the bigger and more glorious order that
was confronting him.

After dinner was through and everyone had retired to their sleeping
cubicles, Garnna spoke to his mate. "I'd like you to help me," he said.

"What do you want?" Aliyenna asked innocently.

"I want you to help me go on another Exploration."

"But you're no longer an Explorer. You're not allowed to go any
more."

"But I must go. It's my duty!"

"Your duty to the Herd is not to go. Yari proved yesterday that…"

"Not my duty to the Herd, but my duty to a larger body, the
Superherd. There is something greater than the Herd, Aliyenna. It's
composed of every intelligent creature in the Galaxy. The Herd is to it
what an iff-group is to the Herd. It's to this Superherd that we owe
our first allegience."

"But the Herd has forbidden you from making any more Explorations!"

"When the Superherd's welfare is at stake, the Herd has no authority
to order me to do anything. If the Herd tries to stop me, then the Herd
is wrong. I can't let that deter me from following my responsibility to
the Superherd."

"You're mad," Aliyenna said, and there was a note of fear in her
voice. "There is nothing greater than the Herd. We owe everything to
the Herd."

"It's time we broadened our horizons, then. You do accept the fact
that there are other intelligent beings in the Galaxy, don't you?"

She calmed down again as he took a more reasonable tone, but there
was still wariness in her mien. "You and all the other Explorers have
said there are. I see no reason to doubt your collective word."

"Do you doubt that these other beings have Herds of their own, in
one form or another?"

Aliyenna hesitated. "I've never given it much thought. I suppose
they must have something that keeps them in order. A Herd is probably
necessary in, as you said, one form or another to keep them together."

"Good. But let's look at this situation on a larger scale. What
happens when there is an interaction between two of these Herds? What
power is it that will decide the pattern of behavior? Who will define
the morals for different cultures? Where is the principle of order to
be found between Herds?"

Aliyenna was shaking with fright again as the sheer size of his
concept overwhelmed her. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know."

Garnna held his mate tenderly, stroking the bristles along the back
of her neck and moving his body closer to hers to reassure her. "From
the Superherd. It isn't a functional organization, at least not yet,
but it must exist as a fundamental principle to stave off disorder.
Just as members of the Herd owe their primary obligations to the Herd
rather than the iff-group, so members of the Superherd must give it
their first consideration, rather than their Herd. Do you understand
what I'm saying?"

Aliyenna closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. "Individually, every
word you say makes sense, but when I try to put them all together… It's
so big, Garnna. I can't grasp hold of it. It's too frightening."

Garnna sighed. His process of educating all of Zarti was going to
take quite a bit of time if he couldn't even explain things well to his
own mate. "Will you help me, though?"

She moved away from him and turned her head to the side so that she
wouldn't have to look at him. "I… I don't know. You're asking me to
disobey the direct wishes of the Herd…"

"For the good of the Superherd," Garnna said softly.

"I can't believe in your Superherd. The words sound logical, but I
can't bring my emotions to believe them."

"Then believe in me. Do you believe me capable of disobeying the
Herd without some good reason?"

"No." Her voice was barely audible.

"Then help me."

"I don't know how," she protested, trying to fight her way clear of
the dilemma. "I can't operate the machines or tend to you once you're
on the Exploration."

"You don't have to," Garnna explained. "Once the process is Started,
the Exploration box functions automatically. I'll show you how to set
the mechanism. But I can't do it alone. There are controls that have to
be set after I enter the box. I need someone on the outside to start
the process in motion. Will you help me?"

In the darkness, her silence seemed to stretch for years. Then her
whole body trembled, as though from one icy blast of wind. "All right,"
she whispered.

"Let's go, then."

"Now? But it's nighttime!"

"If we tried to do it during the day, they'd stop us. We have to do
it when no one else is there."

Reluctantly, Aliyenna went with him. They slipped silently out of
the house without rousing anyone else. The public trams worked all
night as well as all day in case some emergency should arise, and they
took one that was otherwise deserted to the Space Exploration Project
headquarters building. The city streets were exceptionally dark
and gloomy—except for those few who provided essential services, all
Zarticku worked during the day and slept at night. There was very
little night lighting, and very few people wandered about after
darkness fell. They saw no one else, and no one saw them.

The building was unlocked and unguarded because there was no need
for such precautions. Crime, particularly theft, was unknown on Zarti
and there were no "enemies of the state" from whom the information had
to be kept. The Project was for the good of the Herd, and every member
was entitled to know exactly what was going on. If very few of them
stopped by to find out, it was only because their interests were
absorbed by more immediate problems and they had no time to wonder what
the stars were up to.

Garnna turned the lights on upon entering, totally unmindful of the
possibility of detection. His thoughts were with the Exploration box on
the second floor. He and Aliyenna went in silence up the stairs,
turning on lights as they went. The light, as well as making it easier
for them to see, also helped bolster Aliyenna's courage, for she felt
that Garnna was banishing the darkness, and anything done in the light
couldn't be wrong.

They went straight to the Exploration chamber. "You've been here
before," Garnna said as they entered.

"Yes, to help you come out of the Exploration box."

"Well, now you're going to help me go in. There it is over there."

He took her over to it and let her feel and touch it so that it
would become more familiar to her. Then he took her to the control
panel at one side of the room. The complexity of the console frightened
her at first and she despaired that she would ever be able to make it
function correctly. But he took his time in showing the knobs and dials
to her and explaining what each one was meant to do and how it worked.
He had her repeat what he said, and then he had her go over the board,
explaining it to him, until he was sure she had a working knowledge of
all its functions. Then he explained the procedure that was necessary
to make the machinery operate, and the two of them went over it until
both were sure that Aliyenna could handle what was required of her.

Finally, Garnna went back to the Exploration box. With his mate's
help he climbed in, attached all the wires to the correct places and
made sure all systems were in working order. At last, he was ready to
go.

"Be careful," Aliyenna told him before she closed the lid.

"There's no need," he reminded her. "Nothing can hurt me as long as
all systems are functioning properly. I'll be a pure mind, remember?"

She nodded and closed the lid. Garnna closed his eyes and tried to
relax in the cramped confines of the box. It would just be a couple of
minutes more, and he tried to control his eager emotions.

He felt the tingling that started in his hooves and rapidly spread
throughout the rest of his body. Then jarring vibrations. He could feel
the drugs that were automatically injected into his bloodstream
starting to work, to relax the body and free the mind. He began his
mental exercises to help facilitate the separation. All his training
came to the fore. His mind gave an orderly push against the confines of
his brain. There was a shock…

And he was free. He didn't waste a second. At the speed of thought,
he streaked up through the atmosphere and away from Zarti, bent on a
mission that would take him back to that double third planet of the
yellow star over a hundred parsecs away.

CHAPTER X

Throughout the long and bitter argument, Debby sat on her stone. She
absorbed the emotions of the people around her like a dry sponge
soaking up water. Anger and fear were both prevalent, well mixed with
the indecision of not knowing where to turn or what to do. Debby
trembled slightly but did not react physically in any other way.
Mentally, she was feeling sick.

The debate ended with animosity between the communities as well as
against the townspeople. Evan Carpinton and a group of people left to
go into town, disgusted with their fellows who had felt it was
advisable to stay back at the camp and await further developments. Evan
let it be known that he had little sympathy for those who were afraid
to stand up and fight for their convictions, and that he was sorry he
had ever hitched up with such a group of cowards. Bob Preston reminded
him that membership in the commune was voluntary, and that he was free
to leave at any time. Evan replied that he just might do that, but
first he had work to do—getting a friend out of jail.

After Evan and his followers had left, the camp became very quiet.
It did not require a psychic to sense the terrible vibrations in the
air, and no one wanted to speak for fear of making it worse. They tried
to resume eating the dinner that had been interrupted by the news of
Polaski's arrest, but too much had occurred in the meantime and their
meal had a dusty flavor. The remaining communites ended up sitting
around the campsite and staring dejectedly at one another.

Then the sound of people walking up the road to the camp was heard.
The first thought was that it was Evan and his bunch returning, after
having had a sudden attack of common sense. But that impression was
dispelled almost instantly. There were too many people in this new
group for it to he that; and besides, they were carrying
flashlights, which none of the communites possessed. The commune
members gathered at the edge of the road in puzzlement, trying to see
who the newcomers might be.

A collective holler rang out as the townspeople caught sight of
their enemies and charged ahead. Before the commune members quite
realized what was going on, they were in the middle of a donnybrook.
The villagers, who outnumbered them more than four to one, had guns and
rifles with them, but in the excitement of the melee they forgot to use
them. The fighting brought itself down to a very personal level. Fists,
sticks and rocks were the major weapons used, as well as barbed
epithets from both sides. Emotions erupted as the townspeople pounded
the communites mercilessly with any solid objects they could lay their
hands on.

Caught by surprise and outnumbered, the members of the commune had
only one tactic open to them—retreat. They fled into the hills
surrounding the camp like animals before a forest fire. They were
bleeding, battered and bruised, their clothes were torn and their
spirits dashed. They ran blindly from their persecutors, through the
brush and into the darkness.

The mob of townspeople was left standing in the middle of the
deserted camp, still filled with anger and no longer having anyone to
vent it on. In unthinking rage, they set fire to the camp cabins,
cheering on the flames as they began burning with crackling orange
luminescence. Then came the arrival of the sheriffs deputies. The mob's
rage had been totally spent on the fires, and now they were only a
confused group of people that the deputies could round up into a small
herd in the center of the clearing. They bleated that they were only
trying to protect themselves or their wives or their property from the
hippies, but the deputies remained laconic and continued to keep them
under guard.

Debby had fled the commune with the rest, more confused and stunned
than any of them. One of the townsmen had hit her across the face with
a tree branch, leaving a plethora of tiny bleeding cuts all across her
features. There had been several other blows with the branch, too, but
they had fallen on her body leaving bruises and torn clothing in their
wake. In escaping that man, she had run into another group who
proceeded to throw rocks at her; one of the projectiles had hit her
ankle, making a large purple bruise and causing her to limp slightly.
Other stones had left marks over other portions of her body. Another
man had struck her in the face with the butt of his pistol. As a
result, there was a deep gash under her left eye that was bleeding
profusely and making seeing difficult.

She ran from the camp, but more slowly than the others. She moved as
if in a trance. The tidal wave of raw emotion had caught her
unprepared, just after her sensitivity had been strained by the
argument in the camp. She barely had control of her limbs as her mind
was swimming for survival in this flood of feelings.

She stumbled a couple of times as she went, picked herself up
automatically and continued on. She did not go very far. She was still
tied to the camp by emotional bonds and the feelings that surrounded it
and her. She moved into the bushes just out of range of the clearing,
hidden from the sight of the townspeople. Then she stopped and watched
them, without any emotion of her own. She watched as the people below
her set fire to the buildings she had shared with others for the past
three months. She watched as the deputies came and rounded up the
rioters. She watched as the fire units arrived and began working
frantically to keep the flames from spreading into the hills.

A man started walking in her direction. She stood up quickly but
didn't move from the spot. It was Sheriff Maschen. He saw her and
stopped. The two stared at one another for what seemed to Debby like an
eternity. The flickering red light of the fires below lit up his face
in an eerie, demonic way. He suddenly seemed to her like Satan risen
out of the depths of Hell to claim her soul. She stood rigid on the
spot, paralyzed by fear.

He took a step toward her, and her paralysis broke. He is the
enemy. He took Carl away. He'll take you too. Run! RUN!

In panic, she ran. She didn't even notice the soreness in her ankle
where the stone had hit. Up, up, into the hills, that was her only
thought. Outstretched branches and bushes reached for her, grabbed at
her skin and clothing, leaving scratches and tears as she pulled away
from them in instinctive horror. The night was closing in around her, a
black ogre with a menacing stare, trying to smother her with its dark
pillow. She ran and the night followed, growing darker and darker the
further she got from the fires at the camp. The sea air was cold, damp,
heavy; she could barely manage to inhale enough to sustain her on her
flight. There was a cramp in her side, but she ran. She cared not where
her feet took her, as long as it was away, away from that pit of mental
vipers.

She tripped over a rock and fell, and could not find the strength to
get back on her feet to run some more. She lay there with her face in
the dirt and cried. Her tears mixed with the blood from the gash under
her eye and moistened the dry ground beneath her face. The cramp in her
side was now a spear twisting through her guts. Her ankle throbbed with
pain at the abuse it had received. She clenched her fists to ward off
some of the pain, but it did little good.

In time, the pain eased. She recovered her breath and a portion of
her strength. With a great effort, she leaned on her arms and drew her
legs up under her in a sitting position. She inhaled great lungsful of
air, though each breath was a fire in her chest. The muscles in her
side relaxed and the cramp faded away. Her ankle did not throb quite so
fiercely. Her brain started functioning again as the adrenalin in her
bloodstream sank to an acceptable level.

She was aware of a million tiny stings and sores all over her body,
and she was having trouble keeping her left eye open. She reached up a
hand to touch it, and it came away sticky from half-dried blood. She
bent over and tore off a piece of cloth from the bottom of her dress,
then daubed it gently over the gash until the blood seemed dry.

It was a while before she moved again. She sat on the ground,
thinking bitter thoughts. She had warned them that something tragic had
been about to happen. They had refused to listen. The full fury of the
riot had even caught her unprepared. I ought to be named Cassandra,
she thought ruefully.

Her muscles complained strenuously as she stood up. She looked
around her, wondering where she would go now. Down at the bottom of the
hill, it seemed like miles, the red fires at the camp were flickering
feebly and illuminating the night with their hellish glow. Part of her
mind wanted to go back, but another part rebelled. As long as the fires
were still there, the firemen would be trying to put them out. At the
moment, she wanted no contact with anyone, least of all anyone from San
Marcos. She needed time just to be alone with her own mind, to let the
mental scars heal themselves over and return her to a semblance of
normalcy.

She wandered around the mountainside without direction, her way lit
by the gradually dying light of the fires at the camp. She favored her
bruised ankle and picked her way carefully around the bushes. She was
in no hurry, she was not going anywhere specific. She just let her feet
pick the path they wanted to go, while she divested her mind of all
thoughts.

The night now had changed from an ogre to an ally. The stars were
gleaming smartly down, assuring her of their amity with their steady
light. The night insects sang her a chorus of warmth and peace as she
walked, and a bird—was it an owl?—hooted softly at her passing. The
bushes no longer grabbed at her, and even seemed to part slightly as
she stepped between them.

After awhile, she realized that she was walking in a big circle
through the hills, keeping herself about the same distance from the
campsite, afraid to approach it, unable to leave. She filed the
information indifferently in her mind and continued walking.

Several hours passed. The county fire fighting units extinguished
the last of the fires, searched the area thoroughly to make sure that
there were no hot spots smoldering secretly, and left. With the fires
gone, most of the light had departed but the waning moon had finally
risen and was providing a modicum of light for Debby to see by. She
walked some more, a trifle slower as she had to pick her way with less
light. She found that her feet were leading her down to the now-empty
camp. She let them go in that direction. Emotionally, she was still
numb and subject to the whims of her subconscious.

The night was no longer quite as friendly by the time Debby reached
the bottom of the hill. A cold wind had picked up from the sea less
than a mile away, blowing a wet breeze through the tatters of Debby's
dress and chilling her to the bone. She picked her way through the
wreckage of the camp, hugging herself tightly to conserve the warmth.
She made her way to the exact center of the clearing and sat down
cross-legged on the damp ground. Her eyes roamed over the moonlit
devastation as she surveyed the past, the dismal present and the
beautiful might-have-beens.

It had been a dream they had all believed in, that people could live
in a simple, natural way even in the midst of the technological age.
They had all worked to make it a reality, perhaps worked too hard. Now
only ashes remained. The wooden buildings were charred and empty, their
roofs gone and their walls threatening to collapse in a stiff breeze.
The fields and gardens that she and the others had tended were trampled
under by a parade of uncaring feet. But, while it had lasted, the
commune had provided all of its members with a security few of them had
known before. It had been comforting to know that, whatever your
problem, you had thirty-seven good friends with whom you could share
it, who wouldn't laugh at you or turn away from you just because you
were in trouble. Was it inevitable, as Carl seemed to think, that the
commune would be destroyed? Even though he had done his best to help,
he had always been convinced that the experiment would fail, like all
the other communes that had ever been tried. He had been looking for a
reason, to try to determine why they kept failing.

The dream lay in ruins now. Debby missed it more than anything else
in her entire life. But she could not cry for it. Her reservoir of
emotions had been drained too badly that night.

A familiar hulk came jogging up to her—Chairman Mao, the Irish
setter that had been the unofficial mascot of the commune. He sat down
beside her with his tongue lolling out, and she stroked his back and
said soothing words to him—words that she herself could not believe.
She had more intelligence than a dog. But if the animal drew comfort
from her words, she supposed that was enough.

The chill was getting worse. She pulled the dog over to her and
tried to snuggle against it for warmth, but the dog was not very
snuggly. It tried its best, but it did nothing to assuage the cold that
was seeping through Debby's torn clothing.

It's the loneliness, she thought. It's not enough.
It's a loud loneliness, echoing with the shouts of past memories and
the jading din of dreams. Being without anyone else here isn't enough.
I have to be at ease with myself, too.

She "got up slowly and went over to the lightning-blasted cypress at
the south end of the camp where her stash of grass was buried. Now,
more than ever, she needed the soothing effect that only pot seemed to
give her, the ability to calm her raw nerves and protect her from the
hostile world around her. Even though Carl had made a rule absolutely
forbidding the use of illegal drugs at the commune, she had hidden her
stash by this tree just in case she might someday need it. Carl had
known all along that she had had it somewhere, but he'd never bothered
her about it. All he was concerned with was that it remain hidden and
unused, so that the commune wouldn't get in trouble with the law.

Her lips twisted in an ironic smile. Poor Carl, who had been such a
stickler for obeying the law, was the one who had gotten busted. And
now, because of that, the entire commune had been destroyed. There was
no one to care and no one to worry if she were to light up a joint now.
Only Chairman Mao would be a silent witness to her crime. The irony was
that her smoking the pot was the result of the camp's destruction, not
the cause of it.

She was half afraid that the stash wouldn't be there, that all the
trampling around the area had led to its discovery. She pawed at the
loose dirt at the base of the cypress, and it was with great relief
that her fingers found the small metal cookie tin. The box felt rusty
as she pried it out of the ground with trembling hands and took it with
her to the center of the camp where the dog sat waiting.

She opened the cookie box. Inside was a baby food jar that contained
a plastic bag full of grass, a small packet of papers and a package of
waterproof hunter's matches. Debby sighed, wishing she'd thought to
bury a Bambu roller, too. This joint would have to be hand-rolled.

After laying the papers out on the cookie tin lid, she nervously
took out the grass, pleased to see that it was still dry. Her fingers
were shaking and she spilled more than a joint's worth on the top of
the cookie tin before she managed to get it right. Finally she had it
rolled, and it was with positive pleasure that she licked the paper and
twisted the ends shut.

She looked around for, and finally found, a small rock on which to
strike her matches. The first three matches snapped in her frantic
attempts to light them, but the fourth one caught. She lit her joint,
then sat cross-legged on the ground, waiting for the marijuana to take
effect and trying to ignore the chilling blasts of wind that roared
through Totido Canyon.

After the fourth toke she began to feel the customary tingling in
her toes and fingertips that marked the start of a high. The grass
began to massage her temples with a slow, rhythmic throbbing. As she
continued to smoke, she could feel the cutting of her puppet strings
and the freedom flowing up from her fingers. The involuntary tension
lessened as all her muscles melted. By the time she was totally high,
all of her was feeling warm and safe in the pleasant easiness induced
by the drug.

At first she had been worried that she might have a bummer because
of being depressed when she started, but this one was good and she felt
just the gentle relaxation that always accompanied a high. Even the
myriad of tiny pains vanished under the balm of the drug's influence.
She became very aware of the palms of her hands, the arches of her feet
and the skin between her eyebrows. She became aware that she was alone,
really alone, at last, with no one to bug her. She had forgotten how
good it could feel to be absolutely alone with oneself after three
months of drug abstinence in the friendly but crowded atmosphere of the
commune. Too much company, she decided in a flash of insight, is as bad
as none at all. There has to be a balance struck somewhere. She had
been too long with other people, worrying about their problems and
involving them in her own. It was time to be alone, now, to meditate.

She was sitting alone and peaceful in the center of the camp. Beside
her, she could hear Chairman Mao panting doggishly, sounding like an
old steam locomotive climbing a hill. She opened her eyes (which she
hadn't realized she'd closed) and looked at him. No longer was he just
a big red dog. He was a cut-out from some coloring book done in burnt
sienna crayon. He was the living essence of burnt sienna, all the
red-brown aspects merged into one being. She stared at him for a long
time, wondering how she could possibly have missed the connection
before. Not red; burnt sienna. Now they'd have to rename him. But what
kind of a name would go with burnt sienna?

Then she remembered that "they" wouldn't be doing anything any more.
The commune was over. Done. Kaput. Finis. She found a lonely tear
curled up within her tear ducts and pushed it out, letting it fall in
memory of the nice things that had been in camp.

She pushed her mind from that subject. It was still too tender a
wound to touch, even under the influence of grass. Think about other
things.

(An image formed of Carl Polaski, a perfect likeness down to the
tiny scar beside his nose. His mouse-brown beard and mustache were a
slightly darker shade than his hair. He was smiling in his polite,
friendly way, and she saw his tall, lean body stripped to the waist for
washing in the morning.)

No! That's the past! Think about nows, the present.

Debby looked around the camp and tried to ignore all the ghosts that
kept popping out at her from behind the deserted buildings. Ghosts of
past friendships and dead events. Echoes of old laughter. No more.
She put the brakes to those thoughts as she caught the incipient
bummer. Think of now.

One cold and lonely little girl sitting in the dirt next to a burnt
sienna coloring book dog late at night in the middle of fire-charred
ruins. That was the now. How sad. How very, very sad. She searched her
tear ducts but try as she would she could not find another tear to
spare.

She lay back against the ground and stared up at the stars. She had
never looked at the stars while she was high before. It was as though
she'd never seen them at all. She moved her head quickly to the side
and the stars flashed past in blurs and streaks. Like comets arching
their bright tails across the dark sky. She whipped her head back the
other way. More comets answered. A cluster of comets, a corps of
comets, a cavalcade of comets. Debby Bauer, comet maker, she
thought gleefully.

She spent half an eternity shaking her head before she finally tired
of the comets. She relaxed, lay back and just admired the star show
overhead. Why had she never looked at the sky before? "Hello stars,"
she said. "You've come to keep me company, haven't you? I don't need
company, but you're welcome anyway."

They were so close, the stars. If she sat up suddenly, she'd bump
her head on them. She wondered if her comets would feel all sparkly on
her fingers. Would they fly around her knuckles as rings? She closed
her eyes and reached up for them…

BUMP.

For a moment she was startled. She opened her eyes and looked around
her for something that might have caused that sensation. But there was
nothing near her that could have done it—even the burnt sienna coloring
book dog had wandered over by one of the charred cabins. She was alone
on the ground, with nothing nearby to disturb her.

But she had felt something. Something had bumped into her, or she
into it. If she hadn't actually touched anything, then it had to be in
her head. She'd never felt anything like it before. Closing her eyes
again, she settled back. Maybe it was still there and she could find
out what it was.

She reached out once more for the stars…

BUMP.

There it was again, the same thing she'd hit before. It was as
though her mind were a car driving in fog and continuing to run into
some solid object. She tried a third time and bumped once more.

She was suddenly frightened. What can it be? How can there be
anything there when I'm alone with my own mind? Is… is it a ghost? I've
never heard of anyone finding anything like this before.

She was determined to find out what it was. Out of sheer
stubbornness she banged the fringes of her mind against it repeatedly,
and got only a mild headache for her efforts. Whatever it was, it could
not be touched by brute force.

She decided that a second joint might help her reach it. Very
calmly, she began rolling herself another. This time her hands were
steady, no nervousness left. She rolled the joint effortlessly, without
a shake of the hand or a particle spilled. She eyed her final creation
with pride. Not even John Wayne could have rolled a better one,
she thought.

As she smoked it, she continued her earlier analogy. All right,
I'm in a car that keeps knocking into something. I can't see what it
is. So the smart thing to do is get out and investigate, right?

Only how could she get out of her own mind? She puzzled on that for
long eons as the joint burned down to nothing. Well, her mind was far
from solid, perhaps she could find a crack and ooze out through it,
though what she would do when she got outside was a complete mystery to
her. Perhaps she would never be able to get back in again. That thought
made her hesitate, but only briefly. Well, what have I got to lose?
she finally decided.

Very gingerly, she pushed at the boundaries of her mind, exploring
for the nooks and crannies that she was sure must be there. When she
got up close and took a good look, it surprised her exactly how porous
it was. There was no problem at all of being able to find a hole and
slip through into the eerie void beyond. When she was completely free,
she looked around and…

CONTACT!

CHAPTER XI

Twenty-five hours, Maschen thought as he rubbed a hand
through his already-mussed hair. Twenty-five goddamned consecutive
hours at this job. I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. I really
am.

His eyes were refusing point-blank to focus on the wall in front of
him. He was sure that they must be glowing like red embers by this
time, he felt so bloodshot. He had had very little sleep the night
before, being awakened early because of the Stoneham case. Then he had
worked hard on that all day, and when he had been about to leave, the
riot started. He had spent the rest of the night taking care of the
administrative details that always followed in the wake of mass
arrests. The cells at the Sheriff's Station had never been made to hold
seventy-three people at one time, and so he had had to go through the
exhausting process of weeding out the ones who had actually done damage
from those who had just been along for the ride. That entailed
elaborate questioning and crosschecking of stories, prodding people's
memories and threatening them with perjury if they lied. None of the
commune members was around to testify, so the only evidence was the
word of the rioters themselves, and their stories conflicted more often
than not. He had finally booked all of them and remanded the ones he
thought were slightly less guilty than others to their own custody.
They were all, under normal circumstances, respectable citizens, and he
knew he'd be able to find them when he wanted to.

In listening to all the stories of the rally and the riot, Maschen
thought he had detected a false note. Something that had been said
jarred with what he knew was right. He pored over the transcripts,
searching for the clue he knew instinctively was there. But whatever it
was remained hidden by fatigue, buried at the base of his. subconscious
and stubbornly refusing to surface.

And in the meantime, while he'd been busy with that, the night had
completely escaped him. The sky was lightening in the east outside his
window, and his mouth was stretched in an almost perpetual yawn.
"That's it, Tom, I've had it for today," he told his deputy. "I'm going
home now and I'll probably sleep for eighteen hours solid. Try not to
interrupt me for anything short of the end of the world. Come to think
of it, I'd rather sleep through that, too."

As he was walking out the door, he nearly stepped on the girl who
was coming in. He asked her to excuse him and was halfway down the
steps before he recognized her. She was the girl he had seen at the
camp, the one who had run from him when he'd tried to help her. She had
not changed her clothes, which were dirtier and grubbier than before,
as well as more torn. The cut under her left eye had closed up, leaving
just a blue swelling and a line of dried blood. She walked with a limp
that he didn't recall, but Maschen was sure she was the same girl.

What's she doing coming in here now? he wondered. The very
tired man in him said that the reason wasn't important and that he
needed some sleep, while the peace officer part of his soul was saying
that this might be a very significant event. The sheriff section won.
With a weary sigh, he turned around and walked back into the station.

The girl was in the process of arguing with the Deputy Whitmore as
Maschen entered. "Okay, what seems to be the problem here?" the sheriff
asked, trying his best to keep the fatigue out of his voice.

Whitmore looked up, surprised and relieved to spot his superior. "I
thought you were on your way home, sir."

"I'm not. Now what's this lady's problem?"

"She wants to see Polaski, and I told her that you said no visitors
were allowed except his lawyer."

Maschen had made that rule to keep reporters out, hoping to keep the
sensationalism of the press to a minimum. He also wanted to foil any
possible escapes, on the off chance that the commune had planned any.
But the commune was no longer a viable force, and the press were all
busy with riot stories. Maschen looked at the girl. "Are you any
relation to the prisoner?" he asked.

"Just a friend," she replied. "It's very important that I talk to
him."

"Can you tell me why?"

"I'd rather tell him."

Maschen sighed. "All right, Tom, you can let her see him, I suppose.
Have her sign in, then take her to the visiting room."

The deputy complied, and Maschen waited in the outer room. It's
probably something trivial, he thought to himself, But just
in case it isn't, I suppose I should be here to find out.

* * *

Polaski was surprised to be awakened at this early hour for a
visitor. All the commotion with the mass arrests several hours ago had
woken him up, and he had learned from the general conversation that
there had been a riot and that the townspeople had busted up the
commune. He had been anxious to learn more specific details, but no one
had wanted to talk with him. He had worried about it privately for
awhile, until he had finally decided that such concern was useless in
his present circumstances. He had lain down again and had just fallen
asleep, it seemed, when they woke him up and told him he had a visitor.
The sheriff had said that only his lawyer would be allowed in and this
was an awfully early hour for lawyers. He started wondering whether
they were actually trying some of the Oriental brainwashing techniques
on him. But his doubts were dispelled when he entered the plain white
visiting room and saw who was waiting there.

"Debby!" he cried, delighted to see a friendly face. "How did you
get them to let you in here?" Then he took a closer look and saw her
battle scars. "My God, what's happened to you?"

"I got hit with sticks and stones," she said sarcastically. The
deputy who had brought Polaski in left the room, closing the door
behind him. "That's not important at the moment, though. I've come to
help you get out of here."

"Not a jailbreak, I hope," Polaski said warily. He had enough
confidence in the fact that he didn't commit the crime, and that there
didn't appear to be very substantial evidence against him. He didn't
want to jeopardize his position by doing anything foolish.

Debby shook her head. "No, nothing like that. I've found someone who
was a witness to the crime, who actually saw the man who did it."

"Great!" Polaski exclaimed, leaping up from his chair. "Have you
told the sheriff about this yet?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you about it first."

The psychologist looked at her, puzzled. "Why?"

Debby seemed pained. On closer inspection, Polaski noticed that her
eyes were dilated and bloodshot. She's been smoking grass again,
he thought. He wondered whether that would have any bearing on what she
was about to tell him, and he hoped that the sheriff wouldn't notice
her stoned condition.

"Well," Debby explained, "he's not exactly the type of witness that
you can use very easily. He couldn't be called into a courtroom to
testify, or…"

"Who is he?" Polaski interrupted.

"His… his name is Garnna, and he's from outer space."

Polaski just stared at her. He felt that some reaction was called
for, but he honestly didn't know what. Should he laugh or cry or tell
her she was crazy?

"I know it sounds dumb, but it's the truth, I swear it," Debby
continued hurriedly. "He talks to me through my mind, like telepathy
only it's very garbled."

"Can he talk to anyone else?"

"I don't think so. I think it's very lucky that he was able to talk
to me. You've always said I have some form of latent ESP powers, and
last night I was…" She looked self-consciously around her and lowered
her voice. "Last night I was smoking some pot, which helped me project
my mind further. And I ran into him. It's very hard to understand him,
because he doesn't think in the same way we do, but he's been able to
get some ideas across."

Polaski paced about the room, avoiding looking at the girl. "Can you
tell me anything more about this spaceman?"

"Like I said, it's hard for him to get his ideas across. But he
comes from a far away planet. He's a space explorer—the way they do it
is to separate their minds from their bodies and send the minds out to
explore, so what I'm in contact with is a pure mind. He says he was
exploring our planet two nights ago and just happened to witness the
murder."

"What's taken him so long to come forward?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's very hard for him to contact us. Like I
said, I think it was sheer luck that the conditions happened to be
right for him to reach me."

The psychologist paced some more. He was aware that Debby was
watching him, but he didn't speak for some time. Finally, he said,
"Debby, we can't tell the sheriff a story like that."

"Why not? I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth."

He sat down beside her and looked at her intently. "I know you're
hearing voices that say I'm innocent. But I have to look at the
phenomenon from a psychological standpoint. Because of your strong
feelings toward me, you may be susceptible to suggestions from your
subconscious telling you things that you want to hear…"

"In other words," Debby said bitterly, "you think I'm faking all
this because I love you."

"No, not faking. I believe that you're really hearing something;
you're too honest a person to fake it. But the subconscious is a clever
beast, it plays tricks on all of us. You want very much for me to be
found innocent, don't you?"

"Yes," Debby admitted, "but…"

"Well, your subconscious is trying to give you what you want. It's
invented a hypothetical man from outer space, a deus ex machina
who is going to solve all your problems by proving me innocent. Only he
isn't real. He's a product of your wishes and dreams."

"If I were going to make something up, don't you think I would have
made it a little more logical and believable than this?"

"The subconscious is not always logical," Polaski said quietly.

There was another long silence. Then Debby said, "Isn't there some
way that I can prove to you he does exist?"

"I don't know. I suppose there must be some scientific procedure
that could establish whether this voice was real or imagined. But that
isn't my field. I'm not sure exactly how to go about it."

"You've always been saying that you'd like to test me with some
cards. Wouldn't that work?"

"The Rhine cards are meant to show whether you have telepathic or
precognitive abilities. I don't know whether they could be used to
indicate whether you are actually in communication with someone from
outer space." He thought it over for a moment. "Hmm, maybe. But I don't
have any cards with me. I'd have to ask the sheriff for them, and we'd
have to prove to him that this communication is genuine. Would you be
willing to do that? Are you so sure that this voice is real that you
would risk proving it in front of witnesses?"

Debby didn't even blink. "Sure. I'll prove it in front of anybody
you want. Just give me the chance."

Polaski hesitated. "Debby, there's something you ought to be made
aware of. If this is a subconscious phenomenon, as I'm afraid it is,
then these tests could hurt you. If they should prove that you aren't
in contact with this… what did you say his name was?"

"Garnna."

"If we prove that there is no Garnna, it will put you in a bad
position. The subconscious mind doesn't like to be proved wrong.
Bringing you into a direct confrontation with your subconscious could
trigger an emotional shock that would leave you in a pretty bad way."

"I know this voice is real," Debby insisted.

The psychologist sighed. "Okay, but remember what I said about the
consequences."

Polaski called for the sheriff. To the psychologist, Maschen was
looking more bedraggled than he had yesterday. His face was covered
with a two-day growth of stubble, his hair was mussed and his eyes
looked like they could barely manage to stay open. His uniform was
sweatstained and soiled, with dirt firmly embedded in the many creases
and wrinkles. He must have had a pretty rough time over this past
twenty-four hours, Polaski thought.

"All right," Maschen said, "I'm here. Tell me what's going on."

Polaski did most of the talking, with occasional comment or
corrections by Debby. He told the sheriff first about the girl's
sensitivity to psychic phenomena, then told him about the voice she
claimed to hear. He omitted all reference to her smoking marijuana—the
sheriff did not need to know that, and it would only complicate the
situation. He explained that Debby's contact claimed to have witnessed
the murder. Then he gave his own interpretation of the phenomenon.

Maschen was silent for the whole time and for quite a while
afterward. When he did speak, all the fatigue of the previous day
showed in his voice. "How can I possibly believe a story like this? You
don't even sound as though you believe it."

"I don't," Polaski admitted, ignoring the startled glance Debby
threw at him. "But I'm willing to give it a test, under conditions that
are as scientific as possible."

"And you want me to help?"

"The more impartial witnesses we have, the better we can assure
ourselves that there is no fraud involved. If I were to do this myself
and find that Debby was right, you wouldn't believe me. You'd have to
see the proof for yourself, anyway."

Maschen was still skeptical. "I don't know whether I should lend the
dignity of my office to stunts like this. It's highly unorthodox…"

"We're dealing with an unorthodox situation," Polaski pressed. "And
if it doesn't work out, all you'll have lost will be a little time.
Debby is the one who is taking the risk here. Because if this is just a
manifestation of her subconscious and not an extraterrestrial visitor
as she claims, it would be psychologically damaging to her. A lot of
hard can be done by forcing someone to face up to their subconscious
too suddenly. If she's willing to take that chance, then we should be
willing to test her."

The sheriff exhaled loudly. "Things just aren't very simple
nowadays, are they? All right, we'll test her. Do we need any kind of
equipment?"

"Just an ordinary deck of cards should do, if you can find us one."

"That shouldn't be too hard. Somewhere in this entire Sheriff's
Station there ought to be a deck of cards."

* * *

Garnna was becoming edgy. His time here on this planet was limited,
and it was being wasted with games. The minds of these creatures seemed
filled with suspicions of all sorts. It made him wonder for a moment
whether he was right after all in his theories about the Superherd.
Were these creatures truly kinsmen of his, iff-sibs in a larger group?
Soon he would have to return to his body and he had accomplished
nothing so far.

He had despaired, at first, of ever being able to make contact at
all. Theoretically it couldn't be done, and he had never heard of any
other instances of it occuring in practice. He was just a pure mind,
without any reality upon this world and thus, supposedly, just a viewer
of what went on. That had been one of Rettin's best arguments, that a
trip back to this planet would be useless and therefore a waste of time
and energy.

He had come back first to the initial spot of the crime, but it was
deserted. He could not be sure what that had meant, but someone must
have removed the body and so he supposed that the crime had been
discovered. He had next to check and see whether the guilty party had
been apprehended and punished. He had spread himself like a net over
the entire surrounding area for a hundred square miles—not a difficult
feat, when he was accustomed to spreading over much vaster distances
than that in the initial stages of Exploration. And he had found the
killer, still free and exercising power over the actions of others of
its race. By tuning in on the killer's thoughts, Garnna could see that
the other's plan was working, that some innocent person had been
charged with the crime and that the killer was taking further steps to
confuse its fellows.

So his fears had proven justified after all. But now came the hard
part. He would have to do something, somehow, to show these aliens that
they were wrong in their thinking and that another creature was
responsible for the crime. But how was he to do that? He was a pure
mentality. He could not affect substance in any way. He could not try
making clues or leaving a note, because he could not touch anything.
The only possible way would be through the minds of others. He had a
telepathic ability of a sort, in that he could see what passed through
other people's minds. Was there some way he could reverse that, make
someone see what was in his mind? He had to try.

He had tried, first, to contact an alien whose mind showed it to be
responsible for maintaining the peace within the community. There was
not the faintest response. He also had tried to contact the innocent
victim of the deception, likewise without success. He went from mind to
mind at random throughout the small town, and each time it was the
same. It was as though their minds were huddled deep within themselves,
separated from him not only by a barrier but also by a mental distance.
One or the other obstacle might be surmountable, but not both.

He had watched helplessly as the mob from town had stormed the small
commune. He hadn't been able to detect a logical motive in their
efforts, but feelings of anger, fear and frustration were strong. As
he'd watched the destruction and chaos, Rettin's argument had returned
to haunt him. Perhaps this civilization would be better off if it were
allowed to disintegrate. They did not have a very cohesive Herd,
perhaps no Herd at all. Maybe he shouldn't interfere and instead allow
darkness to gobble up this tiny corner of the Universe. These beings
would hardly be missed in the larger order of things.

But there was Norlak's advice to counter that. Any order,
however imperfect, was better than chaos. It had sounded right when she
had said it, it must be right in practice. And so even this culture,
with its deceits and iniquities, must be worth salvaging, if only so
that it could perhaps grow into something better.

After the riot, Garnna had stayed on the scene until all had
departed. All but one. A smaller one of the creatures, feeling very
hurt, and despairing almost as much as Garnna himself. This one was
different from the others. Its mind was not quite so distant. He tried
shouting to it, but still it could not hear him. Then it did something
unexpected—it took a drug. Garnna had never seen a drug ingested by
inhalation—he was only acquainted with injection and digestion—but the
effects on the individual were unmistakable. The drug acted on the
nervous system much like those that were used in Zartic space
exploration. The alien's mind drifted up, and Garnna's rushed down to
meet it. They touched…

But there was still the barrier, a wall around the alien's mind. No
two-way communication could pass through that. The creature could sense
his presence, for it kept throwing its mind at the barrier, trying to
get through. Garnna yelled at it, saying that that was not the way.
Perhaps the creature heard him, for it stopped those efforts, took more
of the drug and tried to squeeze through the barrier. In a short time,
it had made it and Garnna lunged forward to embrace it eagerly.

CONTACT!

That first rippling explosion of minds had startled both of them.
Initially, the alien mind tried to flee from his in panic, but he held
it firmly, talking to it in words it could not possibly understand and
soothing it until eventually its panic subsided. Then Garnna
explained—or tried to—exactly who he was and what he wanted to do. The
other
listened; skeptically, at first, but then with more and more conviction
that he was telling it the truth. It had agreed to go to the proper
authority and tell the story, and Garnna had followed along with it to
make sure that everything went as it should.

But now there were all these delays, and he was finding it hard to
understand the motivation. The alien he had contacted knew the story of
what had happened, but first the others would have to test for his
existence before they could believe. He had to detach his own
preconceptions and use all his Explorer's Training in thinking along
alien lines before he could even partway satisfy himself as to their
behavior.

Alien contacts obviously did not come along as an everyday
occurrence here, just as they did not on Zarti. Therefore, this one was
new and highly unusual for them. Then, too, these creatures lived on a
world where deception was, if not an ideal, then at least a reality
that had to be accounted for. When examining a phenomenon so utterly
unique, suspicion was called for as a matter of necessity. On Zarti, if
any individual had claimed mental contact with a member of an alien
race, he would have been readily believed and questioned about it at
once. It would have been implicitly assumed that he was acting for the
good of the Herd and therefore could not be lying. Here, though, all
motives were suspect. Garnna did not like these conditions, but there
was nothing he could do to change them.

They had set up a test, his alien explained. One of the other
aliens—the Peacekeeper, as closely as Garnna could read its
function—would be in one room holding a stack of papers on which were
printed symbols of various types and colors. Garnna's alien would be in
another room. The Peacekeeper-alien would hold up one of the papers at
a time. Garnna was to observe what was printed on it and give a mental
image of it to his alien, who would then record what it was. By
comparing the reported designs with the actual, the aliens hoped that
they could confirm Garnna's existence.

Garnna acceded to their requests for the test, even though he
regretted the need for it. It seemed at least logical, if simpleminded.

The test proceeded with agonizing slowness. They went one design at
a time, with Garnna relaying the picture to his alien who then
proceeded to write it down. Design after design after design he looked
at, growing angrier and more impatient with each one.

"I don't believe it," Maschen said.

"Neither do I," Polaski agreed, his voice resonating subdued
incredulity. "But you and I set up the test. There was no way Debby
could have cheated or known the answers in advance."

"Don't keep me in suspense," Debby said. "Did I do all right?"

"You got a hundred percent," Polaski told her. "Not only did you get
all the numbers right, but the suits as well."

Debby beamed. "It was easy. Garnna didn't know anything about cards,
but all he had to do was show me a picture of it and I could figure out
what it was. Most of our conversation has been in pictures."

Maschen was shaking his head. "Even so, this doesn't prove that
there's any little spaceman talking to her."

"No," Polaski agreed. "All it shows is that she's got some kind of
psychic power operating for her that we don't know anything about. I'm
not up on previous cases, but I'm positive that a score of a hundred
percent is completely unheard of. Even fifty percent would probably
have been phenomenal. You'll have to admit, sheriff, that whatever is
responsible for her performance this morning, she has access to
informational sources that normal people don't."

Maschen nodded and rubbed at his eyes. He was feeling more tired
than ever before in his life. "All right, Miss Bauer, you say that
this… this creature tells you that Dr. Polaski did not kill Mrs.
Stoneham. Does he know who did?"

"Yes, sir. Her husband, Mr. Stoneham."

CHAPTER XII

Maschen sat down hard in the chair behind him, letting the concept
sink into his brain. Wesley Stoneham, the murderer. The thought was
intriguing; he did not like the big attorney at all. The man was
certainly capable of murder, with that huge, muscular body and
hair-trigger temper. But Stoneham was a respected citizen, and a
powerful one. Before taking any irresponsible—and irreversible—actions,
Maschen had better be sure of what he was doing.

"You could still be lying," he said, and his voice sounded hoarse
even to himself. "Just because you have ESP doesn't necessarily make
you any more truthful than anyone else. Or maybe your spaceman friend
is lying."

"Why should he do that?" Debby protested. "Maybe it's all part of a
plot to take over the world!" Maschen exploded. Then he lowered his
head and rested his forehead on his hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
yell. I've been up for more than a day without any sleep, and I'm tired
and grumpy and I'm saying things I shouldn't say. The whole world is
changing around me, and I'm having to hold on for my life, not to
mention my sanity." He raised his head again and gave her a
grandfatherly look. "Would you please describe the circumstances of the
murder as your friend saw it?"

Garnna had given the story to her in the form of a silent movie, and
Debby relayed it as he had shown it to her. She described Stoneham
getting angry and strangling his wife, then becoming overwhelmed by
what he had done and sitting on the sofa for a minute to think. Then he
had come up with a plan for fooling everybody, taken the handkerchief
from his pocket and used the knife from the utensil set on the wall to
slice up his wife's body. And that was exactly how the crime was done.

Maschen listened very intently to her story. When she had finished,
he stood up and walked about the room. "That's a very interesting
story, Miss Bauer. And not a word of it is provable in a court of law."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the state would have to prove its case against Stoneham
'beyond a reasonable doubt'. Those are the words that are always used.
The facts as you have presented them are filled with reasonable doubt.
There were no fingerprints on the knife, which means that anyone could
have done it. Stoneham's fingerprints are in the cabin, but it's his
cabin, they have every right to be there. Stoneham claims that at the
time of the murder, he was driving down the coast from San Francisco
alone. No one can vouch for the truth of that claim, but no one can
prove otherwise, either, which would be what we'd have to do. Nobody
saw him during that time."

"Garnna saw him," Debby said meekly.

" 'Garnna saw him'!" Maschen threw up his hands. "And would you
please tell me how I am to go into a court of law and present an
invisible witness from outer space? We'd be laughed right out of the
courtroom."

"I could testify that Garnna told me…"

"Hearsay evidence," Maschen said, dismissing it with a wave of his
hand. "Even if the jury believed it, it wouldn't be admissable."

"Isn't there anything in what she's said that can give you a clue?"
Polaski wanted to know.

"Let's hear your story again, Miss Bauer," the sheriff sighed. He
was tired. What he wanted most in the world was to fall into a bed and
go to sleep. But he couldn't shuck his duty, no matter how hard he
tried.

Debby repeated what Garnna had told her, going very carefully and
trying not to miss the slightest detail. When she'd finished, Maschen
said slowly, "Well, your story does confirm what we had discovered
independently, namely that Mrs. Stoneham was strangled before
she was tied up and mutilated. I never released that detail to the
press; it's been kept a secret between the coroner, my deputy and me."

"Then the fact that she knows this detail is proof that her story is
correct," Polaski said triumphantly.

"Not necessarily. For example, if you were the murderer you could
have told her about it when the two of you were alone in the visiting
room. That story is very nice, but it is completely inconclu…"

His voice trailed off as an idea suddenly came to him. It was the
clue that had eluded him earlier when he had been reading over the
stories of the men from the riot. All of them stated than Stoneham had
addressed the rally, and several of them had reported what he'd said.

"You know, it's funny," Maschen mused aloud, "but when Stoneham
spoke at the rally last night he described the murder the same way. He
said that his wife had been strangled first and then mutilated. Yet, as
I said, that particular detail has been kept a secret until now."

Polaski and Debby both jumped on that fact. "Then there's your
proof. Stoneham couldn't have known that unless he was the murderer."

Maschen was silent for a moment, then shook his head sadly. "No,
even that won't work. Stoneham could simply say he deduced it the same
way Simpson did, from the small amount of blood. I wouldn't believe it,
but it is possible. It's the problem of 'reasonable doubt' again. I
need facts, raw, hard facts, that can be shoved down a jury's throat,
proving beyond question that Stoneham was with his wife when she died
and not driving alone down the coast as he says."

"What kind of facts would it take?" Debby asked bitterly.

"I don't know. They come in all sizes, shapes and colors. Give me
the right ones, and I'll tell you what they are."

"This is impossible," the girl said, getting up and starting to walk
out of the room. "You don't want to believe the truth, even if it's
hitting you on the head. You arrested Carl without having half as many
facts as I've just given you. I think you're afraid to arrest one of
your own townspeople."

"Come back here, young lady, and sit down!" Maschen bellowed. The
strength of his voice surprised even him, and Debby meekly complied. "I
arrested Dr. Polaski on suspicion. If no new clues had come in within
the next forty-eight hours, I would have been compelled to release him.
I could arrest Wesley Stoneham under the same circumstances…"

"Then why don't you?"

"Because it would be futile, based on what we know at present. In
two days, he would be out on the street again, and we'd be no better
off than we were before. There are also certain realities of the
situation which I doubt you're aware of. Wesley Stoneham is one of the
most important men in the county."

"And that makes him immune to arrest," Debby declared.

"No. But it does mean that I will have to tread very carefully and
make sure that all my bets are covered before I can take action against
him. I value my job, and I can't perform it efficiently if I'm having
to fight for my life at the same time."

My God, he thought suddenly as he listened to himself
speaking. Do I really believe that? Am I that big a hypocrite?
The girl's charges had disturbed him deeply. He had been quick enough
to arrest Polaski on almost no evidence at all, just because Stoneham
had threatened him subtly with the loss of his job. But wasn't he
losing his job now? Wasn't betrayal a loss? He was admitting through
his words and actions that he was enforcing the law unequally, with
some people being sheltered by it while others were left out in the
storm. He was using his job as a tool to his own personal advantage,
which was a corruption of the law he had sworn to uphold.

"I have been unfair," he went on more quietly, "in my treatment of
Dr. Polaski. I'll talk to the District Attorney as soon as he gets in
this morning and have the charges dropped for insufficient evidence.
But I'm afraid I still can't arrest Stoneham until I have more to go
on." He settled back in his chair and rubbed at his eyelids with his
knuckles. "Now, Miss Bauer, let's have your story once again, please."

* * *

Garnna was rapidly becoming disgusted with the petty stubbornness of
these alien creatures. They had heard his story several times over, in
great and exaggerated detail. They even believed it—he could tell that
from surface glances at their minds. But they refused to act. They made
him go over and over the details of the killing like a child reciting
its lessons. How obtuse could these creatures be? Finally, on the
fourth repetition, he balked. He would not say the same things over one
more time.

The alien he was in contact with sympathized with his refusal. It
relayed the decision to the others, who were annoyed. Reluctantly, his
alien implored him to continue.

Garnna relayed to his contact an image of confusion, of not knowing
what was desired of him. The creature informed him that proof of some
tangible sort was needed before punishment could be meted out.

Garnna's anger flared. Proof! What kind of cheap, piteously
deceitful creatures were these that needed proof before anything could
be done? The word of one member of the Herd should be more than
sufficient. Both the Peacekeeper and the Psychologist believed his
story, and both of them occupied important positions in their society.
Didn't that in itself make them trustworthy? Or did these creatures
actually give positions of responsibility to corrupt individuals? Could
it be possible that this world was so embedded in lies that it couldn't
even accept the truth from two intelligent men of authority? Then
Rettin had been right. This world deserved to dissolve and
disintegrate under its own deceitfulness;

The first warning bell rang in his mind, cutting off his thoughts.
His alien contact asked him what that "sound" had been, and he told it
that the warning meant that he had only a short time left before he
would have to return to his body. That seemed to panic the other. It
conversed hurriedly with its fellows and pleaded with Garnna to try to
think of any detail, however slight, that might have been overlooked.

This is useless, Garnna decided. They want more than I
can give them. Maybe my story is being garbled in the translation. It's
certainly of poor enough quality. But whatever the problem, I can do no
more. I have done my best. They must resolve the situation themselves.
He informed his contact that he was about to leave.

The alien protested. They still had to try as long as possible.
There must be something more. Garnna replied that their connection was
not very good, and that he was having enough trouble making himself
understood without having to try his patience any longer with trivial
details. The alien shot back that they should then try to improve the
quality of their communication. Garnna thought it was worth the effort,
but he wondered how to do it. Closer contact, the alien suggested.

The two minds strained at invisible bonds as they tried to draw
nearer each other. They kept bumping into outer shells of their minds
that prohibited them from coming closer. Like surface tension holds a
drop of water together, these shells held in the minds of the two
different creatures, keeping them from spilling into the barren
continuum around them. The minds danced slowly around each other like
two dogs circling before a fight. Then, on cue, they simultaneously
leapt at one another, each trying to penetrate the defensive barriers
that kept their minds apart.

And like surface tension when two water droplets run into one
another, the shells split and formed a single large shell that would
encompass both minds. The two became incorporated into one and formed,
for an instant, a single entity.

Garnna-Debby. Debby-Garnna. It was equal parts of each with some of
neither. It/they existed and merged within the one shell, one mind,
combined memories of two entirely different lives on two widely
separated planets, combined thought patterns, shared experiences. It
was a commune/iff-group in miniature, but more compact and close-knit
than either of those could ever hope to be. It was a union of essences
more complete than any known before.

The second warning bell rang. Return was necessary, or the
Garnna-mind might not survive. Dissolution was called for. He/she
fought it vigorously, even knowing how essential it was for survival.
The union was too complete, they could never be separated again. But
even as they thought that, they were pulled apart. Debby became Debby,
Garnna became Garnna. The two who had been one were now apart again,
dual entities exactly as they had been before the merger took place.

Well, almost.

With fear and a hasty farewell, Garnna sped away from Earth and back
to his own planet, Zarti.

CHAPTER XIII

When Debby shrieked and fainted on the floor, both men rushed to her
side. Polaski got there first and knelt beside her. Her breathing was
shallow, her body still. Her opened eyes gazed upward with a dreamy
quality to them. They seemed very tranquil, very at peace with the rest
of life. "Get me a blanket, quick," he told the sheriff. "I think she's
gone into shock of some sort."

Maschen hurried off to comply, and suddenly the tranquil girl
erupted in Polaski's arms. She shrieked some more. She kicked and spit
and wriggled. She scratched at him with her fingernails and even tried
to bite. She writhed in convulsions that were as violent as they were
sudden. Her voice reverberated off the walls with its shrill protests,
"No, don't! We can't! Let us alone!"

Then the fit stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Debby's body
relaxed and her breathing gradually reduced itself to normal. Her
eyelids fluttered and her head lolled from side to side. Maschen
returned with a woolen blanket, and Polaski wrapped it around the
girl's prostrate form. Awareness was once again beginning to make an
appearance in her eyes. She looked at the psychologist with
recognition. "Are you all right?" Polaski asked.

Debby took a moment to answer, as though speaking in a foreign
language. "Yes, I think so. Can I have a glass of water, please?"

The sheriff had one for her inside a minute. Debby propped herself
up on her elbows and took the glass with her own hand, declining
Polaski's assistance. She drank the entire glassful without stopping
for breath. "That's better," she said as she handed the glass back to
Maschen.

"What happened to you?" Polaski asked.

"Well, Garnna and I were having a communications gap, you might say.
Our entire conversation was hard because a lot of thoughts were in
words that I didn't understand or in abstract concepts that I could
only get a vague idea of. We had to deal mainly with pictures and
sensual impressions. He was getting angry at having to repeat his story
so many times, and he was thinking that maybe the fault was in the
telling. So we tried to bring our minds closer so that we could bridge
the gap a little better. And boy, did we ever succeed!

"What happened was that our minds… came together. I can't think of a
much better term than that. They sort of melted into a union so that
there was only one mind left, a combination of mine and his. I've never
felt anything so fantastic in my whole life. There was this whole new
part of me that had lived an entirely different life. It wasn't as if
something had been added on; it felt like it had been there all my
life, only I'd never noticed it. I could see everything he'd ever done
or seen or felt or thought, and he could see the same about me. Only
there wasn't any him or me, there was only us.

"Then his time for Exploration was up, and he had to leave. You see,
they can project their minds completely out of their bodies to explore
space, but the minds can't stay away for too long or the bodies might
die. He had to get back, and I had to stay with my body here. We had to
break apart again, which was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But
now he's gone again, and I'm alone in my mind. I do have his memories,
though, so I can tell you more clearly about the murder."

"What can you tell us?" Maschen asked.

"There's not too much more about the murder itself—Garnna did a
pretty thorough job of picturing that for me already." She suddenly
slapped her forehead with her open palm. "Why didn't I think of that
earlier?"

"What is it?"

"Well, you see, Garnna was unfamiliar with the way our system of
justice works. So am I, for that matter, but I've at least got the
cultural background. Garnna thought that all that was necessary was to
describe exactly how the crime took place. He didn't even think to
mention what happened afterward, but that's the most important thing."

"What happened afterward?" Maschen prodded.

"Stoneham's clothes got all bloody from hacking up his wife, so he
changed into some clean ones. Then he buried the bloody ones in the
woods about a mile from the cabin."

Maschen jumped up from his chair. "That could be it. If we found
those clothes, we could probably find some way to tie them to Stoneham.
Did your spaceman friend remember where the clothes were buried?"

"He's not exactly a 'man'," Debby corrected. "He looks more like a
short-necked brown giraffe with two arms at his shoulders. But yes, he
saw where Stoneham buried them. I can take you there."

Maschen punched a button on his intercom. "Has Simpson reported in
yet?"

"No," replied a deputy's voice from the other end. "He isn't due in
until ten o'clock."

"Well, call him at home and tell him we've gotten a break on the
Stoneham murder case, and that I'd like him to accompany me out to the
site. I promise he'll get time off for all the overtime he's put in in
the past two days, and if he discovers any convincing clues I'll get
him a citation. Tell him I'll pick him up in front of his house like I
did yesterday." He turned to Debby. "Come on, we'll go out there and
you can show me where those clothes are."

"What about me?" asked Polaski. "I'd like to come too, if you don't
mind."

"Well, technically you're still in custody, but I think you have a
stake in this, too. Will you give me your word that you won't try to
escape?"

"Of course. If I did try, it would prove my guilt, wouldn't it?"

"It might not prove it, but it would look awfully funny in view of
other things. All right, come along."

They got into the sheriff's car, with Maschen and Polaski in the
front seat and Debby in the rear. They stopped at Simpson's house and
waited until he was ready, then drove off up the coast to the site of
the Stoneham cabin.

To fill the time as he drove—and to help keep himself awake—Maschen
asked, "Dr. Polaski, there's something I've been wondering. How did a
man with your background and talents become involved with that commune
project? You seemed awfully out of place there to me."

"There were times when I felt awfully out of place there, myself,
despite all my efforts. It was part of a research project I was working
on. I'm a psychologist, and my specialty is social psychology. I study
the behavior of people in groups. And what better place for me to do it
than among a group of people?"

"But why a commune in particular?"

"Because it's part of the syndrome I'm investigating. If you could
boil all the current troubles of the world down into a single word,
sheriff, what would it be?"

Maschen thought as best he could, but his brain was not functioning
at its sharpest this morning. "I don't know. What?"

"Divisiveness. The splintering off of groups from the whole, the
alienation of the individual from his group, and the sheer polarity
between groups. Have you noticed that moderation has seemed to become a
thing of the past? People are no longer able to agree to disagree any
more; they're either violently in favor of something or just as
violently opposed. Individuals are feeling more and more set apart from
the society in which they're living, which increases tensions. The
groups, instead of trying to settle differences, actually go around
looking for new ways to disagree. Each group becomes hardened against
the problems of another, and then each one splinters into a myriad of
subgroups, and the cycle is repeated.

"This is what I'm investigating. I'm trying to find out what the
factors are that cause this phenomenon. It's becoming too common to be
considered mere chance. There must be social pressures being applied to
individuals that are causing them to behave this way.

"I picked the commune for two reasons. First, it's a group that has
formally split itself off from the rest of society. Why? No doubt each
of the individual members had his own private reason, but by examining
all of their motives I was hoping to find some element or elements in
common that I could say was a root cause.

"Second, I was treating the commune itself as a microcosm, a
miniature version of society at large. I wanted to see what the
stresses would be within the group, and whether the commune would split
into subgroups via the same process that society as a whole does. Each
of the communites was already infected with 'breakaway fever', and I
thought that by studying such 'contaminated' people during their social
interactions, I could spot what the pressures were that exist in the
larger society. By observing the analogues, I might be able to pinpoint
the real problems."

"Did you have any results with your investigations?" Simpson asked
from the back seat.

"Nothing I can point at conclusively," Polaski said with regret.
"And Debby tells me that the commune is now dead for all practical
purposes. I wish I had been there to witness its demise, but if I'd
been there, the disruption wouldn't have happened—at least, not in the
same way. It's scientifically embarrassing to be the cause of the
disruption I was trying to observe naturally. I suppose all my notes
will just have to go down as a case history, and be used by someone
else, or myself at a later date, as supportive evidence."

"But you must have some theory as to causes," Simpson persisted.

"I do, yes, but I hesitate to state them when I can't substantiate
them. It would be a ridiculous oversimplification to blame any one
factor, but I think that one of the primary causes is modern rapid
communications. In the space of just a few generations, we have moved
into a position where we can know instantaneously what is going on
anywhere else in the world. We never had that ability before, and
consequently we find ourselves faced with worries over food riots in
Kurdistan that we would never have even thought about a century ago.
There are suddenly to many things that must be cared about, and our
minds, which are unused to so many complications, rebel. In order to
preserve sanity, they narrow their attention to one specific field and
ignore—or worse, despise—all others. Society, which should be a
cohesive whole in order to be most effective, is breaking down to a
collection of narrow-minded individuals who care nothing for anyone but
themselves and their group. And we're going to have to learn how to
treat this problem on an immense scale before our world becomes any
saner."

Debby spoke up for the first time since getting in the car. "I think
you might be interested in Garnna's society then, Carl."

Polaski turned his head and body halfway around to look at the girl
in the back seat. "Oh? What's it like?"

"Well, I suppose you'd call it communistic—that's the closest
analogy we have here on Earth. They were originally plant-eating
animals, and they consider everyone in their race as belonging to an
enormous Herd. There isn't any selfishness or lying… everybody does
things for the good of the Herd, and no one would think of putting his
own needs first. That's why Garnna was getting so impatient with us for
having to tell his story over and over again. He couldn't believe that
other people on Earth wouldn't believe us when we told them the truth,
that we needed tangible proof. He knew intellectually that we did not
always act for the good of our own Herd, but he couldn't bring himself
to admit it to his instincts."

Debby went on to describe the rest of Zartic society, the Tests that
were given to determine an individual's best area for work, the system
of Counselors, and most importantly, the iff-group. Polaski was
particularly impressed with that institution, and asked Debby a series
of sharp, probing questions which she fielded sometimes easily, other
times with more difficulty. She also mentioned Garnna's concept of the
Superherd that encompassed all intelligent beings.

Polaski was bursting with excitement, the quest for Stoneham's
buried clothes all but forgotten in his mind. "This is fantastic. I'm
going to have to get notes on all of this. They've been able to set up
a working communistic society that is not static, where the government
is decentralized and yet they keep moving ahead. And that iff-group
concept is fascinating. It looks as thought they've found a method for
providing the individual with a stable base from which he gains
security. It sounds like a cross between the commune we were trying to
achieve and the extended family concept that is worked in other
societies here on Earth. Except they seem to do it without any kinship
ties at all, am I right?"

"Blood relationships mean almost nothing," Debby agreed. "They do
keep records, to avoid problems of incest, but other than that there is
no thought given to it at all. Children are raised and taught in
Academies until they are mature enough to join an iff-group. Their
biological mother's role in their lives ends at birth."

"Of course," Polaski mused aloud, "we won't be able to apply their
techniques to our own problems.

They are different creatures entirely. The concept of the Herd is
apparently more instinctive with them than it could ever be with us,
making it easier for them to attain that kind of a balance. They have
different drives and a different historical background than we do.
Human beings could never adapt to that society. But they have some
answers that we don't have. Maybe by making some diligent
investigations of them, we could achieve some insights into solutions
of our own. Something that's a combination of the two, a little more
human than Zartic. I'm going to have to get a lot of details from you…"

"You'll have to get them some other time," Maschen interrupted.
"We're here."

They had arrived at the Stoneham cabin. "Bring a shovel," Debby
advised as they got out of the car. Maschen got the shovel from his
trunk, and the three men stood waiting while the girl looked around to
get her bearings. After a moment, she said, "Follow me."

They walked through the woods, weaving a seemingly random path
through the trees. Every hundred yards or so, Debby would stop again to
check her direction. "It was night when Garnna was seeing this, and he
was 'seeing' in a different way. I've got to remember what he saw and
then translate it into something that I can understand," she explained.

At last they came to a spot that looked no different from any of the
others around them. The area was a bit more open, but the cypress trees
were still thick and scattered bushes sprinkled the ground. "It's
around here somewhere," Debby informed them.

Simpson's eyes roamed the area. He pointed. "Over there. The ground
is all hard from lack of rain, which is why we couldn't find any
footprints. But over there the dirt is loose. It's been dug up
recently."

He began digging as the other three watched. It was easy work, for
the area had already been dug up before and he was only going over the
previous work. In just a couple of minutes, he hit something soft and,
bending down, he picked up a bundle of bloodstained clothes all wrapped
together.

"That's it!" Debby exclaimed.

Simpson eyed the bundle critically. "This in itself is hardly
conclusive. There might be laundry marks or witnesses that attest to
this being Stoneham's suit. The bloodstains will probably test out as
matching Mrs. Stoneham's type. Let's see what else we can find."

He began searching the pockets. "Ah, here we have something more
promising." He pulled out a folded piece of paper on which a note had
been scribbled by a feminine hand. It was addressed to "Wes" and told
of the person's desire to obtain a divorce. "It's unsigned," Simpson
said, "but analysis will probably show it to be in Mrs. Stoneham's
handwriting. Besides, there would likely be few other people who would
write a note to Stoneham suggesting such a thing."

"That's enough for me," Maschen said. "That gives up a motive for
the murder."

"You mean he killed his wife so she wouldn't divorce him?" Debby
asked. "That sounds dumb to me."

"Normally it might be. But Leonard Chottman, the Chairman of the
county Board of Supervisors, will be retiring from the Board at the end
of the week, and the Governor then appoints a successor for him until
the next regular election. The rumors have been flying that Chottman
was going to recommend Stoneham as the man he wanted to follow him, and
his nominee would most likely be accepted by the Governor. But Chottman
is extremely old-fashioned about marital affairs, and he looks on
divorce as a sin. If news of this had leaked out, Stoneham wouldn't
have gotten the position." He started walking back to the car and the
rest followed him. "I'll have a crew of men look over the area later
today to see if there's anything else we missed, but the clothes and
the note are enough of a basis for me to have Stoneham picked up."

"There's more," Simpson said. As they walked, he had continued
searching through the pockets of the suit and had found something else.
A matchbook, very fancy and personalized, proclaiming Stoneham already
a member of the Board of Supervisors. "See," he went on, "the matches
inside alternate red, white and blue. There's one match missing, a blue
one. I would suspect that the used match found in the cabin will prove
to be the missing one."

"That's enough proof for me," Debby said.

They reached the cabin again, and Sheriff Maschen leaned inside the
car and turned on the radio transmitter. "This is Maschen," he said.
"I'm at the Stoneham cabin now, and I'm on my way back. I want a car
dispatched to Wesley Stoneham's residence. Have the deputy take him in
on charges of murdering his wife. Out."

As Maschen clicked off, he was feeling very good. For the first time
in over a day, the universe looked as though it might have a positive
side to it, after all. He hummed to himself as he politely opened the
car for Debby to get in.

CHAPTER XIV

They spent a long afternoon at the Sheriff's Station. It had been
getting toward lunchtime as they had come into town, and Maschen was
feeling so happy that he had bought lunch for everyone. By the time
they had gotten to the Station, Stoneham had already been taken into
custody and was awaiting questioning in one of the cells. Howard
Willsey, the DA, was also there, looking as nervous as a chicken in a
weasel cage. Maschen excused himself and talked to the prosecutor in
private.

"What are you trying to do?" Willsey asked hysterically. "Ruin us
all?"

"Stoneham's a murderer," Maschen said. "It was him who killed his
wife. I'm dropping the charges against Polaski."

"Do you have proof?"

"Yes, I'll show it to you shortly. Right now, I'd like to question
Stoneham personally. Care to come along?"

The district attorney hesitated, wondering whether it would be safer
not to go, thereby not appearing to be against Stoneham, or to go and
try to appear sympathetic. As the sheriff walked toward the cells,
Willsey made up his mind and moved to follow.

Stoneham was in a furious mood, his black eyes storming as he paced
around his cell. As Maschen came in, Stoneham towered over him,
red-faced and angry. "Just what are you trying to pull on me, Maschen?"
he bellowed.

"That's funny, I was about to ask you the same question," the
sheriff returned. He was feeling strangely calm, and Stoneham's bluster
could no longer affect him.

"Don't worry, Wes," Willsey soothed the big man. "I'm sure we'll get
all this taken care of before long."

"Both your jobs are on the line," Stoneham went on unappeased. "When
I get on the Board of Supervisors, I plan to conduct a lengthy
investigation into the efficiency of both your offices."

Willsey blanched, but Maschen just smiled and said, "You're not
going to be on the Board. You're going to be in prison for the murder
of your wife."

"What are you talking about? You haven't got any evidence against
me," Stoneham bluffed.

"Oh, no? I have several depositions from people who were at the
rally last night. They all agree that you described the way the murder
took place, saying that your wife was strangled first and then tied up
and dismembered. I never made that information public, so, aside from
myself, the coroner and a few deputies, no one but the murderer knew
that fact."

"You'll never even be able to get an indictment against me on
evidence like that, let alone a conviction," Stoneham sneered.

"He's right," Willsey put it. "I can't…"

"I have more concrete evidence, which I will show to Mr. Willsey as
soon as we are finished in here. I am under no obligation to tell you
what it is until the the trial. Would you care to make any statements
in the meantime?"

Stoneham sat down on the bunk and folded his arms across his chest.
"I refuse to say anything until I've had a chance to confer with my
lawyer."

"I somehow thought you would," Maschen smiled. He went to the door
of the cell and opened it. "I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of each
other in the next few days. Meanwhile, I have other things to attend
to. Coming, Howard?"

Maschen led Willsey out and back upstairs to his office. There, with
the help of Debby, Polaski and Simpson, he described the case he had
against Stoneham. He omitted any references to Garnna's involvement,
saying merely that Debby had come by her information through psychic
means. He showed the bloodstained suit, the note and the matchbook to
Willsey. The DA sat through the presentation nervous and twittery,
stammering a lot and asking inane questions at intervals. Even when all
the facts had been presented to him, he was afraid to believe them.
Maschen had to coax him, soothe him, wheedle him into agreeing that
there was enough evidence to seek an indictment Willsey left the
office a very troubled man.

"What's the matter with that worm?" Debby asked.

"He's frightened, and I suppose he has a right to be. He's an
incompetent prosecutor, and what's worse, he knows it. He's been able
to survive here because nothing of major consequence has ever happened
in San Marcos before. Now he's out of his depth. Added to that,
Stoneham was pulling his usual routine about using his political
influence to kick us out of our jobs. Without his job, Willsey knows he
has nothing."

"What about you?" Polaski asked quietly. "Aren't you worried about
yours?"

"Not any more," Maschen said. "I've decided not to run for
reelection next year. I'm getting old, and the events of the past day
have convinced me that I've been passed by. Law enforcement isn't what
it was when I got my training, and I've been too afraid of change to
keep up with it. I don't know what I'll do with myself yet, but I know
I don't deserve to stay here any longer. San Marcos needs someone
better than me."

There was an awkward silence as the other people in the room
digested the sheriffs admission. Finally, to fill the void, Polaski
asked, "What about Stoneham? Do you really think that little pipsqueak
of a DA will be able to convict him of murder?"

Maschen frowned. "That will be a problem. I'll be there to kick him
in the butt if he tries to go too easy, of course, but it will be a
struggle. Stoneham's a lawyer himself, and he knows what his best
chances are in court. He won't say one word that will help put him
away. And our evidence is awfully damning, but it isn't necessarily
conclusive. We can prove that he did more in the cabin than he
originally told us he did, got his wife's blood all over his clothes
and then buried them in the woods. But there are those words
again—'reasonable doubt'. Stoneham's lawyer can come up with a
convincing
enough story to explain those facts, a jury just might let him off. And
Stoneham can afford the best lawyer in the country. Pitted against a
man like Willsey, I suppose there is a slight chance that he might get
off."

Debby started to protest that that was unfair, but Maschen raised a
hand to silence her. "However, if that fails, there are other things we
can do. Men like Stoneham have made sure that there are an awful lot of
laws on the books against incitement to riot. We have an ironclad case
against him there—plus there is the fact that a number of those laws
are at the federal level, which means he will face a federal
prosecutor, who would have to be better than ours.

"And if that fails, Dr. Polaski can file a complaint against
Stoneham for assault. I was in here yesterday when Stoneham tried it,
and I would be one hell of a witness. These other two charges, though,
are harrassment tactics; I'm still going to dig up all I can and shoot
for the murder conviction. Who knows, we may dig up even more evidence
before the trial.

"But regardless of what happens on the legal level, we've already
given him the worst punishment of all. Stoneham is an ambitious man,
mad for power. Now he won't ever get any. Chottman certainly won't
recommend him as his successor, not with the murder charges up against
him. And his chances of ever winning an elective office are nil; people
won't vote for a man who has been charged with a capital crime, even if
he's innocent. Stoneham's political career is dead as of now, and he
knows it. That must be an awfully bitter pill for him to swallow."

The rest of the afternoon was occupied with a string of endless
formalities. The charges against Polaski had to be officially dropped,
and he signed a waiver of any claims to false arrest he might choose to
make later. Then he, Debby, Simpson and the sheriff all wrote up
statements of their activities during the day. It was nearly quitting
time before everything was straightened out. Maschen took Polaski and
Debby to the door.

"I had my doubts about you yesterday, sheriff," Polaski said,
shaking Maschen's hand, "but I believe now that you're an honest man.
Whatever happens to you, I wish you the best of luck."

"Thanks," Maschen replied. "I only wish we'd never had to meet under
circumstances like these. What will you be doing with yourself now?"

"Well, the commune's no longer in existence, so my project there is
ended. I'll write up my notes and file a report with some technical
journal or other. But I've got a new project now, maybe the most
exciting one in Man's history. Garnna gave us a whole new universe to
play with. It would take a whole team of sociologists years just to
digest all the information about Garnna's world that Debby has locked
up inside her mind. And there's more than just that. Debby tells me
that Garnna knew something about the technology behind the
mind-projection method. Working with her, we may learn how to do it for
ourselves. Just imagine the human mind being able to roam through the
stars at will."

"I can't," Maschen said. "I'm just a dumb, unimaginative
small-county cop who has to struggle to understand the morning
newspaper. On top of all that, I have been up for thirty-seven
consecutive hours, and I am about to suffer an exhaustion breakdown.
Now that everything has finally been taken care of to my satisfaction,
I am going to go home and sleep for a full day solid. I'll leave the
exploration of the universe to you."

"Sheriff!" called his secretary from upstairs.

Maschen closed his eyes. "What is it, Carroll?"

"You've got a call from Leonard Chottman."

"Chottman? I wonder what he could be wanting. Oh well, I guess we
say goodbye here then. Good luck with your project, professor." And he
turned and went wearily up the stairs to his office.

As Polaski and Debby walked down the stairs to the street, the
psychologist turned to his companion and asked, "I hope I wasn't
presuming on you when I spoke about the project. Would you mind being
an idiot savante at the center of a study like that?"

"I want to very much," she replied. "In fact, I have an even
stronger reason for wanting it that you do. You see, when Garnna's and
my mind united it was something totally unique. Sort of like sex, but
much closer. It was like being married, too, but even that doesn't
explain it. The two of us were one mind, and now that I'm apart from
him I don't feel exactly complete. I don't think I can explain it
adequately…"

"Probably not, but I think I can grasp it on an intellectual level.
I also think it's done you some good. You've changed, matured since
that meeting with him."

Traces of a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. "He's been
a good influence, I think. But you see why I've got to help with that
project. I've got to get back to him. How long do you think it will
take?"

Polaski shrugged. "That depends on a number of factors. How much do
you know about the procedure?"

"I know everything Garnna knew, which is nearly everything. I know
about the machinery that keeps the body alive while the mind's away, I
know about the drugs that separate body and mind, and I know the mental
discipline involved in making the jump. I also know gobs of stuff about
astronomy, geology, chemistry, alienology…"

"There are still a lot of ifs. The government's bound to get
involved in something of this magnitude, which would mean
appropriations hassles, red tape and all the other blessings of a
benevolent bureaucracy. I know a couple of people I can approach to get
the ball rolling, but once we start it in motion we'll have damned
little control over it. The most optimistic minimum time I could give
you is a year and a half. Probably much longer."

"A year and a half!" Debby looked pained. "But what's going to
happen to Garnna during that time? He broke his law by coming back here
to help us. What will they do to him? Will he be able to convince his
people that there is a Superherd? Will..."

Polaski put his arm around the girl's shoulders to steady her.
"There's no way we can answer those questions tonight, and in the
meantime I'm starving. I'm also tired of all those vegetarian meals
we've had for the last three months. Come on, let me treat you to a
steak dinner."

CHAPTER XV

Garnna's reunion with his body was doubly confusing this time, both
because of the normal reassociation with the bodily functions and
because of the fact that his mind had undergone a drastic change in the
last few minutes after merging with the mind of the Earth girl, Debby.
He floundered in a sea of chaos and some of his reaction was
physical—he was kicking at the bottom of the Exploration box with his
hooves. This caused someone to lift the lid of the box to check on his
situation.

Garnna blinked as the bright light invaded his eyes. Hands reached
in, grabbing his own roughly and yanking him up. He struggled, but
whether in opposition or assistance to those hands he himself could not
say.

His iff-group was not present at this awakening. Even Aliyenna was
not there; presumably, she had been discovered and removed from the
room. There were only four others gathered around him—Blauw iff-Rackin,
Counselor for the Project, and the three main Coordinators: Rettin
iff-Laziel, Pogor iff-Tennamit and Nanz iff-Gohnal.

Rettin gave him no time to reorient himself. "Garnna iff-Almanic,"
he said stiffly, "how do you justify this completely unauthorized
Exploration you have made?"

"I revisited the planet I Explored two days ago in order to expose
the killer I told you about."

"This was against my express command. In fact, you are no longer
classified as an Explorer at all, so any Explorations are forbidden."

"I know all this," Garnna said quietly. "But my duty to the
Superherd compelled my actions."

"Duty to the what?" asked Blauw, startled.

"The Superherd, the universal gathering of intelligence to which our
own Herd is but an iff-group."

"Nonsense," Pogor stated flatly. "There is no such thing."

Garnna did not feel up to arguing philosophy at the moment.
Explorations were never supposed to be made closer than twelve days
apart, and the sheer physical strain had worn him down. The union with
Debby's mind had left him with an even deeper feeling of
disorientation. Coupled with this was his frustration over the
Earthmen's stubborn refusal to believe what he had told them. The
reasons for their disbelief were in the memories he had inherited from
Debby, but he would need time to sort and comprehend them. He didn't
even know whether his mission had succeeded, which was the most
frustrating thing of all. Consequently, he let Pogor's remark fall
unchallenged.

"You were showing deep signs of instability yesterday," said Rettin,
"which prompted us to remove you from the position of Explorer for the
good of the Herd. Obviously we were too lenient with you; your
instability has reached dangerous proportions, threatening the Project.
Tell us what happened, quickly."

Garnna related his story of returning to the planet, of contacting a
member of the race and of telling it about the crime he had witnessed.
He was about to mention the mind merger but something—was it the Debby
part of his mind?—made him stop.

The four listeners were horrorstruck. "Then… these other beings know
of our existence?" Nanz asked. Garnna nodded.

There was a pause that weighed heavily on them all as the meaning of
that sunk in. Finally Rettin spoke up. "Do they know our location?"

"No," Garnna lied. "Translation problems made it impossible to
communicate anything more than simple concepts and pictures." Inwardly
the Zartic was horrified at what he was doing. Have I been
contaminated with the deceit of the Earth people? he wondered.

But the others accepted his statement with genuine relief. "Then we
are not in too much danger," Pogor said. "They may know that we exist
somewhere, but space is large and they have no interstellar drive as
yet. It would probably take them centuries to find us, even if they
began a concerted effort at once."

"There is still," Rettin pointed out, "the problem of what to do
with Garnna. He must be removed from the Project completely, of
course—we cannot risk ourselves again with someone so demonstrably
unstable. But beyond that, there are additional steps we must take.
Garnna's actions, whatever his motivation, have threatened the security
of the Herd. I feel a Counselor should be consulted for further action,
including possible reTesting and reTraining."

The others concurred in the verdict. Blauw turned to Garnna. "Would
you prefer to consult me or some other Counselor of your choice?"

Garnna barely hesitated. "I choose Norlak iff-Delicon," he said,
remembering how helpful she had been yesterday.

Blauw nodded and went to phone Norlak to tell her to come to the
Space Exploration Project building on a matter of urgency. While
waiting, Garnna stood silently. His mind was assimilating the new set
of memories he had received from the Earth girl, Debby. This new mode
of thinking, an omnivore mode, was both repulsive and exciting. It
opened new vistas of comprehension, which the Explorer part of him
loved. But at the same time there was evidence that it was influencing
his behavior to some extent, making him deceive his superiors for
reasons that even he didn't know, except a general feeling that it
might be wise to "hold something back" until later.

Frustration was also bothering him. He had risked his job, his
reputation and everything he valued to return to Earth, yet the success
of his mission was still in doubt. Had he managed to persuade the
sheriff that Polaski was innocent? Debby's mind was convinced of the
sheriff's prejudice against the psychologist. Would she, with Garnna's
memories, be able to convince him otherwise?

There was a larger question, too. Debby would know perfectly well
where Zarti was—she had all of Garnna's memories, just as he had hers.
She would know how to make the machines and drugs that would enable her
mind to travel through space and come here to visit. Would she and her
race make use of this knowledge?

His thoughts were interrupted as Norlak came into the room. She
recognized him instantly. "Garnna iff-Almanic!" she exclaimed.

"You remember my name despite all the people you see every day," he
said. "I'm flattered."

"Don't be," she replied. "I make it a point to remember potential
trouble spots." She returned to her colleague, Blauw. "What's the
problem with him?"

Blauw explained the officials' version of the story. Norlak listened
with interest. She nodded occasionally, but never interrupted. When
Blauw had finished, she paced the room once, then said, "I would like
to speak privately with Garnna. Would you all please leave?"

When they'd gone, she turned to the Explorer. "You're in serious
trouble—but I'm sure you know that. You have violated the orders of
your Coordinator, seduced your mate into helping you with your illicit
acts, and betrayed the Herd to outsiders. That's a lot for one day.
Would you care to explain yourself?"

Slowly, with as much detail as he could, Garnna told her everything
that had happened since his initial Exploration to Earth except his
merger with Debby's mind. He explained his theory of the Superherd and
told why it had compelled him to behave the way he'd done. As before,
Norlak listened without interruption.

When he'd finished she said slowly, "Your concept of the Superherd
fascinates me. Logically, the idea of joining all intelligences
together in one such group is a sensible one, though how practical it
would be is another matter. Can predators and prey become iff-brothers
merely because they share the attribute of intelligence? And what of
the Offasü? Are we their iff-brothers as well?"

Garnna started to speak, but Norlak waved him to silence. "I said
your concept was interesting, not that it was an excuse. As a
Counselor, I am appointed by the Herd, not the Superherd. Just as you
felt compelled to do your duty to the Superherd, I must do mine to the
Herd. Your mate, Aliyenna, is not guilty of anything more than
misplaced faith, so she'll get a reprimand but no real punishment. You,
on the other hand, pose a more serious threat. Your actions were
reckless, dangerous and, in the official view of the Herd, totally
inexcusable. You performed these acts with deliberation and
forethought, which leads inescapably to the conclusion that you are
suffering from a dangerous and severe aberration. It's not even safe to
allow you to associate with others in close contact, because of your
demonstrated ability to lead them astray."

She paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I have only had
to do this once before, and it's a heavy burden on me. I see no other
choice, though. I must declare you iff-less."

Iff-less! The word embedded itself in his brain. No more
would he be allowed to share closeness and intimacy with the Almanic
iff-group—or any other. The stability and security that the iff-groups
gave any normal Zartic would be denied him. He would have to get food
where he could scrounge it, find shelter where he could. He was not cut
off from the Herd itself—ostracism was a punishment for only the most
severe of trespasses, and the offender usually committed suicide—but
his life would be devoid of the little pleasantries that made it
livable. He could still work and speak with other Herd members, but
there would always be a gap. He was a social outcast, to be treated
with scorn and derision anywhere he went.

"But because of your motivations," Norlak went on, "I find it
difficult to make my sentence permanent. Therefore, I decree that you
shall consult with me periodically, and I will continually review your
fitness for decent society. If your behavior shows a return to normal,
you will be reinstated to an appropriate iff-group. In addition, since
you are no longer in any way connected with the Space Exploration
Project, I shall arrange for you to be reTested and reTrained so that
you can work at some other job for the good of the Herd."

She came over to him and laid a hand on the back of his neck. "I'm
sorry for you," she said softly. "You were compelled to do your duty
and I was compelled to do mine. Service to conscience is the hardest
task of all, and I have the distinct feeling that yours is only
beginning." She started to say something else, then thought better of
it. Turning away, she walked with dignity out of the room.

Garnna was left with his thoughts. Norlak, as she admitted, had been
compelled to do what she had done. He could not blame her, and he still
somehow had the feeling that she believed his theories about the
Superherd. But at the moment that did not matter. What did matter was
what he chose to do with the rest of his life.

As he saw it he had two options. He could repudiate his theory of
the Superherd and carry on as though none of this business had
happened. By becoming a model member of the Herd, he was sure that
Norlak would reinstate him with an iff-group in the near future.

But could he ignore what he had done? Even as he thought that, his
mind rebelled. And it was not his mind alone, either; there was a ghost
in the background, the ghost of a young alien female. He was no longer
a simple Zartic, and he could not pretend to be. For better or worse,
his mind had been "tainted" and he could not return to the ordinary.

Then the only alternative left was to fight, a strange choice for a
peaceful herbivore. He had convinced Norlak of the truth of his
theories—or at least, she was sympathetic to them. There would be
others who would listen to him if he spoke loudly enough. He would
explain about the Superherd to anyone who would listen, and even some
who wouldn't. He would become a zitfly, stinging their tails until they
were forced to pay attention to him.

Time was on his side, he knew. Earth now had the secret of mind
projection and, from what he had seen in Debby's memory, the Earth
people enjoyed exploring. Sooner or later, with Debby leading them,
they would be coming to Zarti. And then the authorities would have no
choice—they would have to turn to Garnna, their only expert on this
other race, to tell them what to do. On the other hand, if some
Explorer should finally find the Offasü, the omnivore part of Garnna's
mind would help him face the enemy better than any other Zartic could.
He was, he realized, carrying a secret weapon around in his mind.

But could he last until it was needed? Iff-less as he was, the
loneliness might bring him to despair and suicide. And then he realized
he was not alone. There was always Debby looking over his shoulder, and
with her was an entire new world of memories to be sampled and
explored. How could he be lonely when he had another person's lifetime
to share?

Come when you can, Debby, he thought out into space. I'll
be waiting for you.

On Earth, Debby Bauer smiled in her sleep.

End

eBook Info

Identifier:

BVGFQCRPKI

Title:

Goldin-Herds

Creator:

Goldin, Stephen - Herds (v2.0)

Date:

9/10/2005