Shadow on the Sand

Chapter III Scream

Fran and Quinn French were stretched out on the sand in the full heat of the noon sun. Quinn’s brown shoulders glistened with sweat and from time to time Fran carefully greased her long slim legs.

The sun softened and melted some of the tension and apprehension that was in her. “Martha arrives this morning,” she said.

“You say that the same way you’d say the world comes to an end in the morning.”

“Well — doesn’t it?”

“Good girl!”

“Quinn, sometimes you sound as though you were trying to be all clipped and British. What sort of a pose is that?”

She saw the annoyance on his face as he propped himself up on one elbow. “Now we start to get critical, do we? A plan to make parting easier?”

“I just wondered why you did it,” she pouted. “I’d think you’d want to know about mannerisms that make you sound — well, a little phony.”

His eyes were cool as he smiled at her. “We’re a couple of phonies, you and I, my love. You picture yourself as a splendid warm passionate woman, a victim of your own warmth. Wise up, honey. You’re as selfish as they come.”

“You’re the type to end this in a dirty way, aren’t you, darling.”

She sat up. He reached up lazily and slapped her hard. “Keep a polite tongue in your pretty mouth, trollop.”

The tears of anger squeezed out of her eyes. “You... you—”

He looked beyond her. His eyes widened. He said, “Get yourself in hand, Fran. Here comes trouble.”

She knuckled the tears away with a quick gesture, adjusted a smile and rolled over. Jerry Raymond was coming down the beach toward them.

She jumped up quickly and ran to him, her arms outstretched, genuinely glad to see him. “Jerry! Oh, Jerry, where have you been? I’ve been half crazy!”

He fended her off. “Watch it, now! I don’t want that grease on my shirt.”

“We just didn’t know,” Quinn said, “whether to turn it into police business or just wait for you. I had a hunch you knew what you were doing. Now I’m glad we didn’t jump the gun.”

“Where did you go?”

Massio smiled at her and glanced at Quinn. The memories of Jerry had been just slightly vague as far as visualizations of form were concerned and very clear, in so far as color was involved.

He said, “Sometimes you have to be by yourself. When there are things to think over. You know how it is.” He reached very cautiously toward their minds, finding the expected defenselessness, desiring not to alarm them. He read the guilt, their anger at each other. Fran’s gladness to have him back, Quinn’s satisfaction that it was all winding up so neatly.

“Well,” Fran said, “if you want to be mysterious it’s all right with me. I’m just glad to have you back. Quinn, will you mix the drinks, please. This begins to look like a celebration.”

Massio took a deep breath of the alien air, finding it good after so long a time of being inside the Center buildings. These primitives gave him amusement. They were so tangled up in the rights and wrongs of their social customs. Emotional involvement was at such a frenetic peak.

He studied the look of the sea and sky. It could be the sky of Strada.

Fran, standing close beside him, said softly, “Darling, wherever you went it must have done you good. You seem more relaxed — changed.”

“Do I? Maybe I’m less nervous, Fran.”

“Can you stay this way?”

Once again he probed a cautious bit deeper. She frowned and put the back of her hand to her forehead.

They had observed carefully, he thought. This girl was built very much like Faven. Facial alterations would not have to be extreme. And this time it could be done much more quickly because the technicians had satisfied themselves, using Jerry as a specimen, that there was no basic difference in musculature, cutaneous characteristics, nerve network.

It was just that these Earthmen had realized less of their potential and were able to utilize only a fraction of muscle power and electro-chemical neuron force. And the big one was near enough to the appearance of Amro to make it a simple substitution.

He looked along the deserted shore and felt deep excitement. This planet had room. And it had a peculiar availability. The League would have a sad and sudden surprise when full utilization of this planet was made.

Quinn brought back the shaker and they sat in the sand and made conversation. Massio grinned inwardly at the hate the other two felt and concealed from each other and from him. The test that the cautious Lofta had insisted on was going well. Lofta had wanted to make absolutely certain that these Earthmen had no other means of identification than the evidence of their eyes and ears.

When he was satisfied that they accepted him as Jerry Raymond without reservation Massio stood up and sent a clear mental signal to the agent technicians who waited to activate the dark doorway between two worlds.

The shadow, erect and black, sprang into being. “What the hell is that?” Quinn gasped.

Massio reached over, clamped Quinn by the back of the neck, lifted him and hurled him, javelin fashion, toward the doorway. Quinn landed on his feet, fell to his hands and knees. He was close enough to the shadow so that when he scrambled up he was drawn irrevocably through it, disappearing from their sight.

Fran lay there, her face greenish under the deep tan. “What are you?” she whispered.

He did not want to use hypnotic control of the sort he had seen Amro use on Faven after tricking her, because there was no way to assess the mental damage that might ensue. He picked her up and put her under his arm and walked to the doorway. She fought for a moment and then began to scream tonelessly.

“Don’t put me in there, Jerry! Don’t!”

“It won’t hurt you.”

“Jerry, don’t! I couldn’t help it. He made me do it. Jerry!” The last word was a rising scream, cut off abruptly as she was drawn through the shadow. It clicked off as though a power source had been cut.

Massio, using Jerry’s memory, went to the house, changed to Jerry’s swimming trunks and went down into the water. It felt good to stretch his muscles. He cupped his hands and surged powerfully ahead, arcing the water up to sparkle in the sunshine.

Far out dark bodies rolled in the sunlight. He altered his course toward them, curious about them, driving down under water for the last hundred feet of approach. They were huge, four or five hundred pounds apiece, and he saw from the breathing holes on the tops of their heads that they were mammals. As they came up to breathe, they made a rolling motion that pleased him.

They sped away from him and he moved in again, swimming parallel to their course. He saw that he could not match their top speed, but after a time they accepted him. He probed at the beast mind, found nothing but sensory satisfaction that comes from a filled belly, the joy of motion.

He was with them when they attacked a small school of sand sharks and found in their minds the message to kill, the savage joy of killing.

When he began to tire he swam back to the shore and ran fleetly at the surf-line in thirty-foot strides.

Though the more public figures of the League managed to delude themselves into thinking that they guided the destinies of the League and made the decisions affecting basic policy, there usually came a time when they were confronted with an ultimatum from the group sometimes known as The Three.

They had no name for their small committee. They were merely three persons who worked in such obscurity that not one of each hundred underground agents of the League knew of their existence. Had there been any point in keeping records those records would show the score of times that a policy decision by this group of three had frustrated the best laid plans of the Center. Their hate for the Center was a real emotion.

Dolpha was the oldest. He was a granite-faced man who had slowly accumulated a reputation as an administrator on the most distant planets. Then he had apparently died. A body had gone into the furnaces but it had not been Dolpha’s. During the meetings he displayed a courtly dignity, particularly to Renaen.

She was an old lady, as fragile as a cameo, with a mind like the explosive lance of a farris. Her voice and her hands trembled and only Dolpha knew that during her career as an agent, long since terminated, she had made a secret collection of the photographs of those Center officials whom she had forced to commit involuntary suicide.

That had been her specialty. The youngest member, Kama, was potentially the most powerful of the three — a lank damp-looking man with coarse hair and awkward hands who possessed one of the finest conspiratorial minds in the entire League.

“Suppose you summarize, Kama,” Dolpha said.

“During the past four months, ever since the death of Strell, which we suspect but have been unable to prove, was Center work, the Center has been peculiarly inactive. This in itself is cause for grave alarm.

“The easiest way to analyze it is to think of what might cause us to withdraw agents from active operations, pull in our horns, so to speak, and play a waiting game. I can give two guesses. One — the development of a device or weapon superior to anything now existing. Two — the development of a secret base from which to use or launch existing weapons.”

“Naturally,” Dolpha said, “I do not like the sound of those two suppositions. Let us take the first one. A new weapon. I am sorry but I cannot conceive of any weapon more powerful than those now possessed by both sides. It has been pretty obvious for more years than I care to count that the only thing which keeps us alive, both the Center and the League, is the fact that we share the same geographical areas, thus making it unfeasible to use major weapons without suicidal implications.

“And that single fact has kept our civilization alive. Were we to separate and withdraw to allotted planets each side could very readily destroy the other. No new weapons are needed for that.”

“How about a selective weapon,” quavered Renaen, “that could kill League personnel without damage to Center personnel?”

Kama pursed his lips and shook his head. “No. As soon as that started to happen those of us left would release the major weapons which have no selectivity. Their thinking is clearer than that. I can see that we are face to face with the possibility of their having founded a new base.

“I have been very proud and satisfied with our system of the recording of any space-flights which could be assumed to be predominantly Center flights. During the past year not one flight has taken off for unknown areas and all arrivals have been accounted for.”

Dolpha sighed. “We have never quite caught up with their science, Kama. Could they make a certain area of one planet impregnable, withdraw their key personnel to that area and then let fly?”

“Not only would we detect any such movement but I doubt that should a planet cease to exist any area would remain unaffected. Here is another point I have just thought of and believe me it does not make me feel any better. They surely know that their best method of concealment of any advantage would be to continue their regular activities. And yet they have given us cause for suspicion. That indicates their degree of confidence. Frankly I am a bit afraid. It is too bad because things had been going very well.”

Dolpha said heavily, “It is unthinkable that this great race might eventually be subjected to the dictatorship of the scientific mind. We can safely assume that our civilization fell a hundred and fifty thousand years ago because men of that stamp were the leaders.

“Only in the hands of the League is the future of civilization safe. The faulty assumption was that a scientific group and an administrative group could work together. Should we be defeated each one of their petty little people will have untold power, live in palaces, grind down the populace.”

“You’re creating a very heavy breeze,” said Renaen in her trembling voice, “and not only that, I seem to have heard a rumor that you live very well indeed, Dolpha, in that little retreat of yours.”

Dolpha coughed and Kama said quickly, “I suggest that in view of their lack of activity in objective operations we take the risk of it being a trick and detach all League agents from preventative operations and assign them to objective operations. With sufficient manpower we may be able to snatch someone with key knowledge in this affair and drain his mind.

“And just in case we fail I suggest that we contact the A-list of all League personnel and advise them to ready themselves for basic flight procedure. We have statistically determined that even with maximum efficiency, one in ten on the A-list will be spaceborn in time but I feel that this is a necessary move.”

“Meeting adjourned,” said Dolpha. “Work out the details.”

Lofta, the monitor, was properly subdued and respectful when he entered the presence of the Chief of the Center. It was the second time in his life that he had been so honored. The Chief was a smallish negative-looking man.

“All right,” he said. “Sit down and report.”

“The three agents have been properly substituted. They are on a deserted stretch of coastline in the company of an Earth female. I thought it best not to arrange substitution for her as yet due to the possibility of their being customs not covered by the captured texts. Though, if you will forgive me the thought, I quite fail to see the necessity for this extreme caution. We could move there in force and there is nothing that could be brought against us that—”

“You are too eager, Lofta. There will be ample time for that later. Solve one problem at a time. We have made the basic and very important discovery of a twin planetary system corresponding to our own, separated from us only by a symbolic logician’s definition of reality. This is not a completely physical and technical phenomenon. It is a philosophical phenomenon.

“In simplest terms the formula can be expressed this way: The twin world exists because any definitive explanation of reality presupposes alternate realities. Thus the doorway was achieved by the creation of unreality. Call it negative matter if you will. A sphere where there is no reality must, through the application of the basic formula, be a bridge between realities. The bridge had been achieved but there is much that we don’t know.

“Are we in turn available to another reality on the opposite ‘side’ of us. And when equipment is transported to Earth can we create once again a negative matter bridge to another reality ‘beyond’ their world. Also are other planets subject to this same bridging technique?

“All we can safely say is that it is a very sound assumption that our remote ancestors found this bridge and populated Earth or the converse. We have no reason to suppose that they on Earth did not have the great knowledge in their forgotten past. To get back to the point, Lofta, the very meagerness of our knowledge requires careful and cautious procedure.

“Would there be any effect on that world of the sudden elimination of this one? Can our more complicated equipment, once transposed to that world, be made to function? Have we any hope of concealing from the League a methodical emigration to that world?

“There are many things to be decided and in this connection I do not care to have to erect defenses against the people of Earth, no matter how primitive their forms of attack may be. At the moment it is sufficient to know that we have alarmed and alerted the League.

“In their anixety they will make poor moves. We shall take advantage of those in the usual way. I anticipate that they will withdraw agents from defensive operations. We are prepared to take advantage of that.”

Lofta said, “It’s a new world beyond that doorway. It sometimes seems—” He stopped abruptly.

The Chief finished the sentence for him. “—seems as though we should go through the doorway and close it after us and forget our responsibilities here, heh?”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

“But you did. What is there for us here? A slow building of tension until at last we blow our own heads off. Oh, we prattle about the leadership of science and the venality of the administrators in the League. All it is in essence, Lofta, is two hungry groups after the same meal only large enough for one group.

“We said, five thousand years ago, ‘Reach the other planets of the system and there will be enough for all.’ So we cut up the planets. Then it was, ‘Reach the stars.’ The distant island universes, the furthest galaxies, the discovery of an almost infinite number of habitable planets — all that was not enough. Why, Lofta? Have you ever wondered why?”

“You’re talking as though — as though there might be no point in fighting for what we believe to be right. That is treason.”

“Treason, is it? To wonder why? I’m just very tired, Lofta, and a bit querulous these days. The fault is deep within us. During the periods of expansion it did not lie dormant because then space and time were the enemies to be conquered. It never lies dormant, Lofta. This is the secret of our race. There must be an enemy — always.

“The Kalla and the Shen were unsatisfactory. Their egocentricity was not deep enough. They admitted too quickly that there might be room in the universe for more than one race. We’ll never admit that. There must be an enemy! And when all other dutiful enemies fail us through lack of resistance our enemy becomes our brother.

“Go now — I talk too much. Here are your orders. Move slowly. When you are certain of secrecy in that twin world I will order you to set up a technical service there and perform the necessary tests. Then we shall build the labs underground.”

Lofta walked slowly to the tube, his face thoughtful. He stepped into the carrier, lay down and pressed the series of buttons for the trip pattern. The curved lid closed quickly and the carrier moved into the tube, gathering speed. The whine of the wind came quietly to his ears.

So lost was he in thought over what the Chief had said that when the carrier nudged gently to rest at the Center Agent Station of which he was monitor he became aware of his surroundings with a start of surprise.

The guards took him into the identity lab and he submitted quietly to the retinagram, body heat analysis, cerebral measurement and reflex index. Each test was graded as a series of magnetized areas on the test plate. At the lab exit the test plate was slipped along with his own permanent master plate into the grader. The yellow light which flashed indicated no slightest degree of deviation.

Lofta went to his own office and sat with his face in his hands for quite a long time.

Martha Kaynan knew that it had been a bit stupid to accept the Raymonds’ invitation. She knew that she would have very little in common with them. Quinn French’s phone call had come an hour after she had received the wire from Fran Raymond. Hearing Quinn’s voice on the phone it was almost possible to forget that he was definitely an unwholesome type.

But the way things had been going lately — maybe the trip would do some good.

She was a small girl with brown hair that sometimes glinted red in the sunlight. Her eyes were a soft and smoky aqua and her mouth had a childish look. A careless observer might think her a quite low-pressure little girl, possibly a bit dull. But the careless observer missed the lift of the chin, the directness of the eyes, the squared shoulders, the determined walk.

There had been a series of perfectly innocuous young men who would make fine husbands — for someone else. Each idea that this might be love had melted under close scrutiny. At one time she had thought it would be Quinn French. But he turned out to be a bit easy to read. And now she accepted the invitation because the one who had looked the best of the lot had suddenly begun to bore her.

She didn’t know what she wanted and the knowledge at twenty-six was beginning to disturb her. She had a small income and to supplement it she modeled, wrote ten-cent-a-line poetry that was a shade too precious and reviewed the cinema for a quarterly which had but recently acknowledged the existence of such a medium.

Lately she had found herself taking stock too often. The inventory was always unsatisfactory. A smallish girl with a rounded and nearly perfect figure — health and fastidiousness and a knack of making light conversation. The world was full of a number of things. Why then for the past three — no, four years had everything been so absolutely and excruciatingly dull?

And for a time she had thought that this week on the Texas coast might be just as dull as everything else. Quinn had picked her up at the Harlingen Airport in his convertible. Aside from the fact that his driving had become considerably slower and more sane she could see no difference in him. Maybe just a tiny, tiny touch more maturity. But after all a full year had passed and even the Quinn Frenches of this world have a tendency to grow up.

When she saw Mrs. Raymond she understood a bit more of Quinn’s affection for this duo. Fran Raymond was both statuesque and exotic. Her husband was dark and slight and not particularly good looking. She sensed that it was intended that her role was that of diverter of the suspicion of Jerry Raymond. So be it.

But on this second morning, as she let the sun bake her, she was conscious of being intrigued by some sort of mystery involving the Raymonds and Quinn French. They acted as though they had some enormous secret. And, during the first dinner at the rather pathetic little shack they called a house she had sensed that they seemed almost to be talking to each other without saying a word. Of course that was absurd. Maybe Quinn had known the pair of them for longer than he had let on.

And once over coffee Quinn had looked at her while she was wondering about their relationship and as he had done so an absolutely frightful pain had driven right through her head. It had made her gasp and for some strange reason Quinn had immediately looked quite guilty. Maybe the fool was taking up yogi or hypnotism or something.

Anyway it was damn poor hospitality, no matter how you looked at it. She couldn’t help but feel that they were wishing the week was over and that Martha Kaynan would go home.

She rolled up onto one elbow and looked back up toward the house. Quinn had most uncleverly stuck the nose of the car right into a sand dune when he had driven her to the house. He was by the car. The chrome made bright glints in the sun. She shaded her eyes just in time to see Quinn reach over casually, brush the sand away from the front bumper and just as casually lift the entire front of the car and swing it over to one side and let it down.

Martha lay back on the sand quickly. She told herself that she hadn’t seen any such a thing. A mirage — or the sun was affecting her mind.

When he had gone she went up quite casually and examined the tire marks. The results made her feel extremely dizzy. It was then that she heard the voices of Fran and Jerry from inside the house. They were talking together and Martha was immediately quite certain that it was some Oriental tongue.

Quinn was far down the beach. She walked rapidly after him. When she called to him he stopped and turned.

“Quinn,” she said firmly. “I demand to know what this is all about.”

“About? All about what?”

“I thought I knew you pretty well, Quinn. What have you been doing in the past year?”

“Nothing very unusual.”

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “No? Where did you learn to make my head hurt just by staring at me? That’s twice you’ve done it and I don’t like it. It feels like a nasty hand grubbing away inside my head. And who are these friends of yours?

“I heard them talking a foreign language and it wasn’t any language I ever heard before. And I saw you pick up the front end of an automobile with one hand. Quinn, I think you’ve been messing around with one of those nasty thought-control cults and I want to know all about it. Immediately!”

Amro studied the girl’s face. There was something so violent and possessive about her anger that he wanted to laugh. Those eyes were a most unusual shade. They’d give the substitution crews a lot of trouble duplicating them.

“Baby, you’d better get out of this hot sun,” he said. “It can make you imagine all sorts of things.”

“The sun doesn’t bother me a bit,” she said.

He watched her fall, then picked her up in his arms. As he carried her into the house to put her on the couch she stirred and glared up at him.

“You did that to me, Quinn French, and don’t try to deny it. There’s something queer about the three of you. My great grandmother used to tell me about people who sold their souls to the devil. What have you done to yourself, Quinn?”

“Try to take a nap, Martha. You’re tired. You’re exhausted.”

He saw the heaviness of her lids and watched her fight against it. But the fight was quickly lost. In sleep she looked more than ever like a child.

He reported the incident to Faven and Massio immediately. Faven shrugged. “Females are always more intuitive. I know Lofta wants us to keep her here. But this makes her dangerous. A little accident, maybe?”

“No,” said Amro with a quick force that surprised him.

Faven cooed and touched his cheek. “So he wants a little Earthchild plaything.”

“No, I merely meant that there’s no harm in her. She couldn’t possibly guess what we’re up to or how we got here. There’s no doubt in her mind but what I’m Quinn French. And by the way, there’s one Earthling who bequeathed me a supply of very interesting memories.”

Faven smiled. “We seem to share some of those, don’t we?”

Massio said quietly, “Jerry Raymond had it in his mind to kill his wife and Quinn French. I can detect the half-formed impulse.”

“I insist,” Faven said, “that we get rid of that creature before she makes genuine trouble.”

“You can make that suggestion to Lofta through me,” Amro said stiffly. “I’ll inform him of your desire when I report tonight.”

Massio stretched. “I, for one, like the feeling of being able to be off-guard. It is the first time in ten years that it’s been this way. The girl won’t bother me. Nothing can bother me so long as I don’t have to look at you two and wonder if you’re League substitutions.”

An hour later Martha came out onto the beach, walking unsteadily. She smiled at Quinn. “Goodness! I must have had a touch of the sun. Anyone else want a swim?”

“I do,” Quinn said. They walked down to the edge of the water. Martha fell heavily and lay dazed for a moment. Quinn turned and saw Faven standing by the house, an enigmatic smile on her lips.

“I... I must be sick,” Martha said calmly.

“No — you’re not. Swim out with me.”

“You’re angry. Why?”

“Be still and swim.”

A hundred yards from shore he turned. In his anger he had outdistanced her by a great deal. When she came up to him her eyes were wide.

“Heavens, Quinn! How on earth do you do that? You make bow waves!”

“You fell because Fran willed you to fall. You’re right. It is sort of a trick.”

“Why would she do that to — oh! I see. Well, you can tell her for me that I don’t want anything to do with you, Quinn.” “Will you please listen to me? Feel that?”

“Of course,” she said hotly. “And it’s a dirty trick. Just like a hot needle stabbing right through my forehead.”

“You don’t have any resistance at all — none. But I have a hunch I can teach you through visualization. Think of something strong — a barrier.”

“Like a brick wall?”

“Exactly. Now pretend it is right behind your eyes so that you’re seeing it with the back of your eyes. Just imagine a small area of it and individualize the bricks. Identify them along with the cement between them. Make as clear a picture as you can and think of it as hard as you can.”

He tried again, and felt a fractional resistance, a faint rubberiness before the probe slid through. “I could feel you push against the wall,” she said, with wonder. “But you got through.”

“Try again — try harder. Every brick — the pores in the bricks.”

They floated in the buoyant water and slowly she acquired the necessary barrier. It was stronger each time. And finally he knew that the resistance was such that the thrust necessary to get through it would surge into her brain with such force as to permanently damage her. He explained that to her.

“Make me insane just by — whatever it is that you do? Well — if you think so, please don’t try it. Now teach me how to do that to someone else, Quinn.”

“You can’t possibly learn it.”

“You did.”

“Say I had special aptitude.”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“I know you don’t. Be glad that I’ve at least taught you how to keep Faven from knocking you down at will.”

“Faven?”

“A pet name. I mean to say Fran.”

“I hope she tries again. Have I got news for her!”

“Remember, you have to anticipate her attempt, otherwise it’s no good. She and Jerry and I keep the shields erected at all times. It’s considered to be bad taste to try to violate the privacy of someone’s mind unless, of course, conditions make it such that that’s the only way you can converse.”

He slowed to let her catch up with him. “Then that’s what you were doing the first night I was here. Say, that’s only last night, isn’t it? What were you talking about, Quinn?”

“Primitive women.”

“Really! Are there some around here?”

“Quite nearby,” he said softly.

She walked ahead of him up the slope of the beach. He could not resist the impulse. She stumbled and turned sharply.

“See what I mean?” he said, grinning. “You have to anticipate it, or else walk around thinking of nothing but that wall.”