Hand from the Void

Chapter Five Two Against the Universe

Borden means had firmly suggested Mexico City as the site of the conference. The leaders of the nations of the world had no intention of humoring this man who could be fitted into no known pattern. But trusted advisors whispered into the ears of the leaders. “For every radio we confiscate, another thousand seem to find a way to hear him.” “The people are restless.” “There is feeling among the combat divisions.”

And each day, in nine tongues, Borden Means named the nations who still held out. Each day there were fewer. At an emergency meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations a resolution for the heads of all member nations to attend the Means Conference was made and passed.

Three holdouts — and then only two. And then one. The one that all expected. And finally, incredibly, that last nation accepted.

For three days the state aircraft arrived at Mexico City and the big sedans, flying the appropriate flags and symbols, made a long siren-scream into the heart of the city, to the suites reserved at the Del Prado on Juarez, the Reforma. A thousand drab little men filled the city, nosing like ferrets for any sign of danger. Fighter planes of seven nations cooperated to make an impenetrable ring around the city, a protected circle with a radius of five hundred kilometers.

The meeting was scheduled for two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in the enormous main ballroom of the Del Prado. At nine in the morning Julie O’Reilly and Jeffrey Rayden decided that they could do nothing further to the very short speech that Borden Means was to give to the heads of nations. It had to be short because it could not be entrusted to translators. It was going out of international radio, and he would give it in each one of nine languages. The semantic equator, product of the planet of their training, resembled a portable typewriter. Each version of the speech checked perfectly on the scale of emotional intensity and had the optimum reference-value rating.

He looked at Julie. Her thought came clear into his mind — so clear that in receiving it he made the inadvertent translation to the sound of her voice. “So now we give it to him, it, or whatever he ought to be called. Darling, I can’t get used to him.”

Projection was simpler than reception. The trick was to soften the projection down to the point where it was on a language level. To project without restrain was akin to screaming in a person’s ear.

“We’ll get used to him. In time.”

They went into the bedroom. The decoy lay on the bed. Jeff took it over. It sat up, glanced at them and smiled. The smile was reflex. When they were alone, they never spoke to it. To speak to it would have been as strained and self-conscious as speaking aloud to oneself. It took no effort to make it talk. But such were the blocks imposed in the artificial reaction pattern that it could not be made to say anything outside of its created character.

Julie handed it the speech. It read it. The memory was flawless. Jeff also received Julie’s order to it to give the speech in English. It stood up. The nobility of the face was such as to tear at your heart.

The voice thickened with emotion at the proper places. The few gestures were made in exactly the right places, with beautiful timing and effect. Jeff clocked the speech at three minutes, twenty seconds. It went through the other language versions flawlessly.

Julie’s thought came to Jeff. “Why do I cry when he gives the speech in English? I know we wrote it. I know... what he is.”

“He’s just effective, Julie. Damnably effective. And he’s going to have to be.”

Jeff sat off to the side of the small platform and watched Means walk on. He was like a mechanical toy. If he required direction for every move, the strain of control would be too much for the two of them. But once set in motion on an overall command, Means could handle the details without further direction.

The President of Mexico introduced him. Then that voice filled the room. That incredible voice, that was somehow mother and father and elder brother to every man. It said nothing that the minority among mankind had not been saying for generations. But somehow it was different. Peace became possible. Peace and abundance for all peoples.

Jeff forced the sound of the voice out of his mind and began flicking his perception across the minds of those world leaders in the room. In every mind he found acceptance. In every mind but one.

When Means had finished the last version of his speech, sixty-one heads of nations applauded. Some wept. The sixty-second did not weep, nor did he applaud.

Jeff felt Julie’s mind join his and together they searched that recalcitrant brain. The brush of Julie’s thought was like the touch of her hair against his throat.

“See it, Jeff? Malformed. Insane. We can’t reach him, ever.”

“Erase, then.”

“Do we dare?”

“Why not. What will they call it? Help me. Now!”

The applause still went on. They twined their forces and thrust. They saw the blocky, stolid face go grey. Five years of life gone on that thrust. He would not know where he was, or why he was there. Again! Five years more. Back to a softness against which it was easier to push. Another ten years Another twenty!

Applause faltered and died as the chunky man fell from his chair. Hands reached to help him He grinned at them and he sat on the floor on his old haunches and he made cooing sounds and sucked on his fingers while the spittle swung in a long strand from his chin.

It was three in the morning. Most of the delegates had insisted on a private conference with Borden Means. Even though Jeff and Julie had taken turns guiding Means, they were exhausted.

Now the last conference was over. They had taken no care with Means. He lay tumbled across the bed like a doll flung there by a careless child.

“We’re going to win,” he projected.

“Say it aloud, darling,” she said, “I want to hear it.”

“We’re going to win. They’ll vote tomorrow.”

“And after tomorrow, Jeff?”

“The real work begins. And thank God we can delegate it. An economic board to determine the steps toward an optimum world standard of living. Immediate relief for backward areas. We’ve known how for a long time. All the skills have been available. But unused. The Means Program will give authority to go with the know-how. Once our own back yard is cleaned up, we can so channel all techniques and wealth that Division Three will be within our grasp. They said our index of ingenuity was phenomenally high. Wait until they measure the time span from Division Two to Division Three!”

“It frightens me, Jeff,” she said softly, “and I suppose part of that is because I know we’re on our own. We can’t scream for help.”

He probed very delicately into the transverse layers of conscious though, felt her instinctive tightening of defenses, and then the relaxation that let him through, down into the warm instinctual depths. His hand was on her shoulder and she turned blindly away from him, but still probed and found the thought image that duplicated what he felt in his own mind.

“No, Jeff!” she said hoarsely, “Not that way. Say it.”

“I’ll say it, Julie. We’re both thinking and wondering the same thing. And in a sense it means that Vinthar was right. They gave us an incredible life span. They gave us the use of that portion of the brain which, in all other men of this planet, still sleeps. They gave us skills beyond the comprehension of this planet. But they did not give us one thing. They did not give us loyalty to the Covenant or to Reeth. Our loyalty is still with Earth. In their creed it may be the one unforgivable sin, this egocentric concern with race origin. But in my heart I cannot help but believe that Earth was meant to be the new focal point of galactic civilization. And we were meant to implement it.”

“But Jeff! I know that emotionally I feel that way too. But objectively, think how many thousands of years ahead of us they are!”

“But, Julie, we have that index of ingenuity. In men of this planet there is something quicker, tougher, more elastic. We started later than the others, but we’ll move faster. Those arbitrary divisions of theirs will fly by like mileposts on a road. And beyond their ultimate point of progress we will find yet a new division.”

“Nine thousand years of grace,” she said. She shuddered.

He turned her around and took her wrists. “Look at me, Julie. If we face it, we can both function more accurately. Put it into the crudest language. We plan to double-cross them. Once we can attain Division Four, all their techniques will become available. We can select and train others like ourselves. We can out-think them, if we must. We will become a polite and cooperative member of the Covenant. But we will continue to grow. And then, when the struggle comes at last, when the older species drops into the galaxy, it will be Earth which has the knowledge and skills to halt the conflict and take its rightful place.”

“I think that too, but maybe it’s just the typical emotional pattern of any primitive race, Jeff,” she said bitterly.

“Downstairs in the main dining room of this hotel, Julie, a world-famous muralist, a man of great genius and great bitterness, was asked to do a mural on one wall. He painted the mural, and in one small portion of it he wrote, ‘Dios no existe.’ Students defaced the mural and the management boarded it up. I don’t want to be a mystic. Before this all happened I had become as embittered as that muralist. But what he wrote was not as important as the fact that for many years He had turned his back on us. I’m not saying this well. Now there is a chance for us again.”

“And for the immediate future?”

“Our plans must be the same as theirs. Reach Division Four as soon as possible. That will be our point of divergence.”

Now together they had found their motive, and Syala had given them the means. The interlude on the far planet was a step that had been taken — a step that could never be retraced. It committed both of them to a vast lifetime of being intensely on guard. On guard against the little men on Earth who would fight Means and all he stood for. On guard against those of Syala and the other planets of Reeth who would quietly crush any attempt at Covenant domination.

She came, shivering, into his arms. “Suppose they hadn’t... come here?”

“Then we would have gone on, I suppose, with a rather poor possibility of living out even a normal life span.”

He caught her thought before she vocalized the words. “What will happen to us when they begin to notice that as the years go by, we stay the same?”

“New identities for us. New names and new histories, with all the proper coordinate memories planted in the minds of whatever group we select.”

She suddenly became very feminine. “And we’ll have time to grow very weary of each other, Jeff?”

“If we could know each other only as normal people do, yes. But now there are other thresholds of consciousness and contact and knowledge. Maybe there won’t be time to explore all of them.”

She blushed hotly, and with one accord they turned and glanced at the thing on the bed. The bedlamp slanted across the empty face. The mouth was like something carved of wood.

Julie yawned, stretched like a small silky cat.

And what they had to say to each other was better said without words. Each day and each night made words seem cruder, more awkward.

They left the decoy alone in its mindlessness, in its almost obscene emptiness of face. They shut the door softly behind them.

And then, because even the supermen do not hold themselves above double-checking even the most proven operational methods, the decoy raised itself on one elbow and stared long at the closed door, its eyes as cold as dead stars in their orbits, then slumped back into the position in which they had left it — the perfect and exact position, even to the curl of the thick white fingers of the hands that had once dug ten thousand post holes in the harsh drumbeat of the Texas sun.