On the thirty-second day of his stay with the tribe, Slade lay at ease on a knoll above the marsh. From his position, he could see the caves about a mile away. It was a marvelous day. It had rained a little in the morning, but now the sky was as clear and blue as could be. Before him, in a garden-like vista, the green, green grass and shrubbery still sparkled with raindrops that hung heavy on every blade and sprig and leaf and branch.
The whole world around him was as wonderful as ever, and yet Slade was conscious of dissatisfaction. "I'm an active person," he thought. "My nerves are still afflicted with the neurotic desire to do things."
He even had an impulse pushing at him. That odd metal device that he had found half-buried in the ground near his farm the night he had seen Leear in a shadowed corridor of an old spaceship-it would be interesting to go and get it, and examine it.
He did not move. He had to admit that the previous month had, in its way, been exciting. The world of relaxation was an inward world of unending discovery. His knowledge began with the muscles, lectures about and exercises with. Exercises? It was not exactly the right word for what he was doing. Slade had decided, but he continued to use it for want of a better. Exercise suggested physical activity, but the relaxation exercises were the reverse of movement. They were stillness. They were inhalation and exhalation as effortlessly as possible. They were long minutes of lying upon carefully arranged pillows while the mind concentrated gently upon certain muscles, and always the message his brain sent was: "Let go, let go, let go."
Gradually, over the weeks, he learned the basic philosophy behind the relaxation. A correct posture and good breathing habits. When at fault, those two things alone caused tension repercussions that affected the entire body. Tension made for bad vision and poor hearing. Tension was responsible for quick fatigue, for lack of strength and for narcotic cravings. Tension caused the kidneys to inject a fluid into the blood which caused high blood pressure, melancholy and a negative attitude towards life. Tension subtly changed the acid content of the digestive fluids. Tension was literally, the devil of the nervous system, but getting rid of it was merely the first, preliminary step to the control of the body.
The second phase was normalization of the nerves. Every nerve, individually and collectively, was capable of a positive or negative action. It could pass an impulse to seek another path to the brain. It was doubtful if more than five percent of an ordinary person's nerve impulses followed direct routes. It was true, of course, that many of the detours were used over and over again, but it was no justification for a bad habit to point out that it was repeated endlessly, particularly when the cumulative results were insanity, early old age and a confused mind.
The entire ninety-five percent of misdirected nervous energy had to be re-channeled along direct routes and this was done by concentrating on key nerve paths. In every case, positive training was necessary. As with muscular relaxation, one could not just seek out a lazy environment and take it easy. Definite things had to be done. Muscles consistently relaxed by a system eventually stayed relaxed. Nerves repeatedly told to establish a direct channel, with a picture of that channel clearly visualized, did eventually make the exact channel demanded.
Nerve control led to the third or molecular phase, about which, when Slade had asked him, Danbar merely said, "You will see. You will see."
Lying there on the knoll above the marsh, it seemed to Slade that he knew the muscular relaxation exercises sufficiently well to be able to do them for a short time without an instructor standing by. He should be able to walk to the area where his farm existed on the Earth plane, and get the machine buried in the ground there.
He climbed to his feet with sudden decision. I'll ask Danbar or Malenkens, he thought.
Danbar, to whom Slade made the request, after the evening exercises, looked disturbed. Then he glanced questioningly at Malenkens. It was the latter who said:
"Leear told us you would be restless." He paused, frowning. Then he looked at Slade from under lowered lashes. "I've decided to be fairly frank with you, Slade. We are training you to help Leear against Naze. You must not think that we are parties to her plan. We merely exercise certain restraints upon her. You may wonder what that means, so I will explain.
"It is Leear's intention," he went on, "to involve you again in Naze. We have no power to prevent her from doing that, nor actually do we want to. Somehow, Geean must be killed, and the people of Naze freed. According to Leear, only you can do this, how she has never explained.
"What we did was to delay her plans until you could be given at least preliminary training in our marvelous system."
He finished quietly, "I think you will agree that, under these circumstances, you would be wise not to involve yourself in minor side issues."
Slade was shocked. The more he thought about it the greater grew his shock. It was curious but, though he had not for a minute forgotten Leear or Naze-incredible Naze-somehow the long sweet month of pastoral existence had blurred the darker potentialities of that memory.
Now, here it was, plainly stated. On occasion in his past life, he had had a reputation for facing facts with a brutal honesty, and his comparisons had startled his business associates. That was the way he finally looked at his present position. The comparison that occurred to him was that he was like a pig being fatted for the slaughter.
He spent the night, narrow-eyed, sleeping fitfully, and in a fury every time he woke up. By morning his mind was made up.
So Malenkens and the others had only persuaded Leear with difficulty to delay putting him immediately in jeopardy. Well, that was just fine. He owed her nothing anyway but a punch in the nose for being indirectly responsible for the death of Amor and Caldra.
Since her intention was to use him without so much as a by your leave, his purpose could only be to prevent her by every possible means from involving him.
The determination gave him considerable satisfaction until near morning, when it occurred to him that it might not be any too easy to prevent her machinations. The trouble was he knew so little, so desperately little. He had not the faintest idea what methods might be available to these people who knew the innermost secrets of the human nervous system, and in addition had a spaceship loaded with gadgets, one at least of which was capable of transmitting material objects from this plane of the Earth plane and back again.
The new possibilities calmed him. He would have to be very clever indeed, to ensure that she didn't get him into Naze again. And anger would be his poorest asset in carrying out that purpose.
At breakfast time, he emerged from his cave, seated himself beside Malenkens, and said:
"I think it's time that I find out something about the history behind the war between the ship and the city."
Malenkens said, "I see that you have been thinking of what I told you last night." Slade waited, and Malenkens went on, "I do not regret having said it, but I cannot say more. We promised Leear that we would let her tell you the entire story."
"Then tell me," said Slade savagely, "who is Leear?"
"She is one of the silver belts."
"One of the what?'
Malenkens was grave. "Her personal plans for you would suffer a psychological defeat if I told you more. You must wait. I can say this. If you survive the destruction of Naze, the universe will be yours for the taking."
Temporarily that silenced Slade. Coming from Malenkens, those were momentous words. They brought his first sense of exhilaration at the greatness of the adventure into which his destiny had brought him.
The exhilaration was brief. The tremendousness of the reward implied by Malenkens suggested an enormous compensating sacrifice. Slade stiffened slowly. He disliked the thought of being on an unfriendly basis with these kindly people, but it was time he stated his position without equivocation.
He did so, pretty much as he had already decided. No co-operation with Leear until he was good and ready. It was ridiculous for her to assume that a man could be shoved blindly into a situation, again and again, and told to get out as best he could, each time without having more than a sketchy idea as to what was going on. He for one refused to have anything to do with such a plan. And if he ever went in, it would be on the basis of full information with his eyes wide open.
"You will have to kill a man," said Malenkens in a strangely drab voice. "You have never killed a human being. It is Leear's unalterable conviction that you could not bring yourself to commit a cold-blooded murder, and that only under the stress of violent danger could you be nerved to kill. Such is her opinion, and, having observed you for an entire moon period, I agree with her."
"Thanks," said Slade dryly. "I'm still not interested." He finished his meal in silence. He felt uncertain as to just what his position was with the tribe, but he decided in the end that what had happened was not a breakup. He would remain for a while at least, and make his plans on the basis of careful thought. There was no use rushing off, half cocked.
He attended his morning relaxation exercises as usual. During the second month, the tempo of his life seemed faster to Slade. He realized what it was. He was more alert, more wary, eager to learn things. He kept a watchful eye on the men, and slept with a gun under his pillow.
Towards the end of the month, it struck him that no one in the tribe had ever seen the automatics in action. And that it might be a good idea to fire one of his precious bullets as a sort of a deterrent. He hesitated about that, because even one bullet might be important in a crisis. And yet, it seemed clear that Leear would never get him into Naze against his will unless male members of the tribe trussed him up and gave him into her power.
It was a month of several discoveries. He had been wondering about the animal life of this plane, "It's there," Malenkens assured him, with an odd smile. "It all depends on whether they decide to find out your reaction to seeing them."
That didn't quite make sense, but over a period of four weeks he had glimpses. And, finally, every time, the glimpse revealed the animal watching him. There was a tiny, dark creature too fast for a clear picture to form of its shape. A long, slim, spotted beast, too thin to be well muscled, and resembling a dog, trotted off disdainfully into the brush, after looking Slade over with an aloof eye. There was a horselike beast that peered at him thoughtfully for several seconds, and then galloped off snorting. And then, finally, there was a really shocking meeting with an animal.
Slade was walking along in a pathless valley adjoining the valley of the caves when a chance glance to the rear revealed a beast bigger than himself trotting along not more than ten yards behind him. It had a head that had both cat and bear features, and its body was long, and sleek, and grayish-brown.
It was the same type of beast that had bent over him that night in Caldra's and Amor's apartment.
Slade felt a thrill as sharp as fear, and snatched at his automatic. The animal's teeth glinted like knives as it snarled at him. Its great paws came up. It whirled, and dived into concealing brush.
A nith, Danbar told him, and then was silent when Slade described what had happened in the apartment in Naze. Later, Slade saw him talking earnestly to Malenkens. The two men fell silent as Slade approached, so he was pretty certain they had been talking about him. It was startling, that sudden discovery that he was being discussed. It emphasized the unsatisfactoriness of his position, and made immediately necessary, it seemed to Slade, a demonstration of his powerful weapons.
He had been thinking about the best method for doing that, and finally it seemed to him that he had it. A bird. For two months he had watched birds with gay plumage frisking through the foliage over and around the marsh. Wary were those birds. He could spend an hour crawling towards a flock. And then, just before he got close enough for a good look, the birds would take off towards a remote destination. Gradually, his desire to have a close look at a winged creature with three eyes became almost an obsession.
It seemed to him, now that if he could shoot one from the ledge, he would, figuratively, kill two birds with one stone.
On the following morning, he brought a chair out of his cave, laid one of his automatics on his lap, and sat watching the brush below. After ten minutes, he noted that people were glancing at him from the corner of their eyes. A few minutes after that, Danbar pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.
"What makes you think," he asked, "that your weapon will fire in this plane of existence?"
"Eh!" said Slade.
After a moment, the possibilities stunned him. He took careful aim at a distant flock of birds. He paused to say, "This gun makes a loud noise, so prepare yourself." Then he squeezed the trigger.
Click!
It was an empty sound. It left Slade with the chilled feeling that he was naked and helpless. The sun was as warm as ever, but for two months his two automatics had given him confidence and courage. They buttressed his spirit every time he thought of how easily the several dozen tribesmen could overpower him and give him to Leear. Now, that buttress was gone.
For a moment, Slade sat quite still, then he ejected the cartridge into his palm, and began to pry out the bullet. He spilled the powder onto the cement sidewalk in a little pile, and then walked over to the nearest fire and picked up a burning faggot. He touched the flame to the powder. It burned with a slow sputter, like thick paper. Beside him Danbar said:
"The chemical combination will have to be slightly different. I have no doubt it could be made to work." Slade had no intention of waiting to find out. His protection was gone. Without a word, he entered his cave, strapped on his second automatic, stuffed into his pockets the smaller articles he had brought from Earth and returned to the outside. Danbar fell into step beside him.
"You are leaving us, Slade?"
Slade said, "Where is Malenkens?"
"He's gone."
That was the second great shock. "Gone! Where to?" He saw that Danbar was looking at him oddly. "Malenkens is not one of us, Slade. He visits us occasionally. He is one of the . . . silver belts."
Slade was silent. He realized what had happened. He had been handed over to one of the Leear hierarchy. For the first time it struck him how consistently Malenkens had been in the foreground of his tribal life. Danbar was speaking again:
"Do not blame us too severely, Slade, for anything that happens. None of us here have attained further than the molecular phase of body control. We are helpless in this struggle between the ship and the city, and so long as the city exists we can never attain the final stage of self-control.
"It is a jarring factor. Its existence prevents certain basic rhythms. The thought that people like ourselves are caught behind its barrier, forever unable to escape - and that is the main purpose of the barrier-to keep those people there under Geean's control-weighs upon our spirit, and makes it impossible for us to realize our potentialities. And the result of that is that we, too, are at the mercy of Geean."
Slade had the impression that he was listening to an apology. It thawed him. "Thank you," he said, "I have nothing but friendship for your people here."
Danbar said, "Go with luck, my friend." It took more than an hour before the cave ledge was finally out of sight.