Shadow on the Sand

Chapter V Song

The Chief awoke from nightmare. His body was slimed with cold sweat. He felt shaken and old. The dream had not been good. They had called him and given him a long knife and sent him into the darkened room to kill. They had said, “It is your only chance for victory. It is the only way you can win.”

The figure had stood defenseless in the room and with all his strength he had swung the knife. In the instant before it struck, when it was too late to divert the stroke, the lights had become bright and he had looked into his own face. The bright steel lopped off the head, and the body, instead of falling, walked with odd dignity out the door.

The head on the floor, wearing his own face, had smiled up at him and had spoken. In the dream the words of the severed head had been the answer, the final and perfect answer which he had sought all his life. The words made the entire meaning of creation crystal clear. And the words had filled him with horror.

Now he was awake and he could not remember the words.

He bathed again and dressed. He was suddenly fiercely hungry and he stated his wants, knowing that the food he best loved was always ready, so that no matter what his choice was it would arrive within moments. To drink he requested the tart mead of Garva, made from the honey of the great insects with wingspan of ten feet.

Those who served him were the grotesques, the twisted, broken, almost mindless ones. This was a guard against any substitution in his personal staff.

The wall speaker questioned him about entertainment. “Send me what you will,” he said.

It was one of the girls from Garva. She entered with becoming modesty and shyness and took one of the cushions and placed it on the floor. She sat cross-legged, a stringed instrument on her lap, and when he did not speak to her she began to sing in a low sweet voice.

It was a ballad of her people, about a slave who had fled to the mountains and made himself king, about the delight he had created for himself in the mountain castle until at last a masked woman had come to him. She had pleased him and the king, drunk with her and with the wine had at last torn off her mask to find the white and gleaming skull of death.

“Stop!” he roared, striking the table with his fist.

The instrument was silent and her eyes were wide with fright. He realized that she could not have known of the dream and for a moment he felt shame.

“Sing something else,” he asked gently. “Sing a love song — a gay song. And smile as you sing it. Sing it to me.”

His belly full he slouched in the chair and watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. The curve of brow and hollow at her temple was very lovely. She was young and youth was far behind him — and he felt near at hand the death that would come. But not tonight.

The black asteroid moved in the perfect and geometric orbit around the sun that shone on the day side of Strada. The girl’s voice was husky and bitter-sweet and, because her training had been thorough she would not have changed her place at the moment with any Stradian woman throughout all the light-centuries of the civilization.

“Sing again that ballad of the king,” he ordered.

Amro awakened with an abrupt feeling of alarm. He lay still for a moment, the moonlight slanting through the window and across his body. He peeled away the innermost protective layers of his mind and felt as light as the touch of insect wings, the distant flow of emotions that would grow increasingly harsh as he neared the focal point.

He padded to the door of the room. Massio lay in undisturbed sleep, not yet aware of the emotional strain in the night air that had awakened Amro. He pushed the screen door open and stepped out onto the cool sand. The breakers were white froth in the moonlight.

The feeling of emotional strain came through more clearly. He turned to the left and felt it fade as he walked, so he turned quickly toward the south, quickening his step as he saw Faven, tall in the moonlight, staring down toward the line of surf.

Sixty feet away, directly in front of Faven, Martha walked toward the surf and even at that distance Amro could see the jerky uncoordinated movements. Her pajamas were a colorless paleness and her shoulders were straight. Even as he watched she reached the surf. A wave smashed at her feet, flooded halfway to her knees. The next wave crashed full against her thighs, driving her back a step.

He reached up through the higher frequencies and found the level on which Faven was directing her commands. He smashed back along that channel, made stronger by anger. Faven put her hands to her throat and turned to face him.

For a moment they fought thus, the Earthgirl forgotten. While Faven fenced with quick, darting impacts he wielded the bludgeon of his mind, smashed down her guard, smashed her to her knees with a small whimpering sound in her throat.

Once he had her helpless it did not take all of his directed will to hold her there. He turned and saw Martha walking unsteadily toward them, her mouth slack, and for a moment he was afraid that Faven had scoured clean the inside of the girl-brain with the abrasive of her will, leaving it childlike.

He turned his thoughts completely to Martha for a fraction of a second, then swept them back to Faven just as she started to scramble to her feet. The blow dropped her face down, her arms and legs spread. He knew that it had been violent enough so that the aftereffects would not wear off for minutes.

The chunk of coral was half buried in the sand.

He took control of Martha’s mind, forced her to pick up the coral. “Now you can kill her,” he said.

“No.”

“Why not? She tried to kill you.”

“No, Quinn. No!”

He exerted a stronger pressure, brought her close to Faven, the coral grasped in both hands, lifted high.

The coral slipped harmlessly to the side. Martha knelt, her hands covering her face, sobs harsh in her throat. Faven lifted herself to hands and knees.

“Why didn’t she?” Faven asked, utterly surprised.

“It’s something in their minds,” he said in his own tongue. “They can’t kill. Life is something individual and sacred to them. Also, Faven, you might be glad if she had succeeded. You know the discipline. I am in charge. Why did you try to do this thing?”

“You weren’t to know. It was to have been an accident.”

Faven got up slowly. The Earthgirl still knelt and wept. As quick as a darting cat, Faven snatched up the chunk of coral and smashed it full at the girl’s head. At the last moment Amro tried to divert it. Martha toppled over slowly. Faven stood, her feet braced, a look of defiance on her face. But he had found his way into her mind too many times now for her to defy him.

He played with her at first, letting her think she was holding him off, watching the narrowing of her eyes, the dilation of her nostrils, the hard rise and fall of her breast. Then he struck and moved back out of her mind.

“Amro!” she gasped.

He laughed, the sound wild and high in the night, and struck again. He lunged deep into the softness of her brain, twisting the blow, reaching and ripping. He sensed her wild panic and hammered at her again, this time reaching the threshold of instinct, slipping past it, ripping apart the very basis of her, the fountainhead of individuality.

The lean proud planes of her face softened and deteriorated and the mouth went slack and the eyes went dull. She stood, a living thing on the animal level, but still erect. Delicately this time, because he wanted the ultimate degradation without complete helplessness, he severed one more strand.

She slumped, apelike, her curled hands, hanging to her knees, then sagged until she stood, her legs bowed, holding herself erect by the pressure of her knuckles against the sand. Her underlip sagged so that the lower teeth showed.

She moved slowly toward him, shuffling her feet. Martha, whom he had thought dead, sighed with the utmost weariness and sat up, her cheek black with the color of moonlit blood.

“Quinn,” she said, “I dreamed that—”

Faven, attracted, animal-like, by the sound and movement, edged over, snuffling with curiosity.

Martha screamed with horror. “Fran!”

The alarmed animal scuttled back, settled on its haunches and peered at Martha. Martha Kaynan fell over in a dead faint.

Massio, three steps behind Amro, said, “I guess she planned to kill the girl. I wasn’t certain enough to tell you about it. She wanted you for herself and you were paying too much attention to the Earthgirl. What now?”

“Take her down the beach and call them and explain and put her through the doorway, Massio. Be quick. I don’t want Martha to see her again. I... I lost my head. Lofta will be annoyed. She was an effective agent.”

Massio calmed the fears of the animal thing by speaking softly and soothingly. He moved close to it, his hand outstretched. Finally it accepted him as a friend. It grasped his finger and Massio walked it down the beach. It chortled and chattered as it bounded along beside him and some of the sounds were almost like words.

He saw Massio pause and seconds later the doorway was a darker patch against the moon shadows. The thing was caught and dragged toward the oblong shadow. The last he heard of it was the distant mewling sound it made at the loss of this fine new friend.

Amro picked the Earthgirl up in his arms and carried her back to the house.

Renaen sat in the usual meeting room and said in a high quaver, “Just two of us now, Dolpha — just two of us.”

The old man belched solemnly. “And I guess our questions are answered.”

“You mean he was wrong in thinking that the Center had some new thing to use against us?”

“Quite wrong. It was a clever move on their part. They duplicated what they would do if they had possessed such a thing and then, when we withdrew agents from defensive operations, which was what they hoped we would do, they struck at one of the most dangerous men the League has. No, they have nothing new.”

Something troubled Renaen. She pursed her withered lips. “But, Dolpha, that Center agent was planted, they say, long before the Center pulled in its horns!”

“How can we be sure of that?”

“I guess you’re right. But we have to think of what to do now.”

“We go back to our usual methods. I’ll cancel all of the arrangements Kama made for escape and set up the usual balance of offensive operations.”

“Is that wise?”

“Kama was an alarmist. We can operate better without him. Maybe the Center did us a favor. Now we have to discuss a plan, a new plan, and I like the sound of it.”

She fingered her unsteady chin. “A good plan?”

“See what you think. By unwritten agreement, the asteroid home of their Chief cannot be harmed. We have studied him for four years, ever since the old Chief was... uh... removed. One of the young ones has come up with a plan. Their Chief uses a tiny one-man craft when he goes to the asteroid, but he is guarded every moment of the flight by one of their strongest ships. They track him just as carefully as we do.

“A perfect duplicate of his little craft has been made. We have had a substitute ready now for three years, with never a chance to arrange the substitution. The plan is to smuggle the substitute and the duplicate ship onto one of the big freighters. Then it depends on timing.

“The ship which guards him on the return trip from the asteroid is too fast for the duty. So it lies on the Strada side as he comes in. Our freighter will fake takeoff trouble and cut between the little craft and the guard ship. They won’t dare open up for fear of harming their own Chief.

“Our best technicians will grapple him and freeze him before he realizes what has gone wrong and then the substitute will be ejected hard enough and soon enough so that he can curve back into the path of observation by the guard ship.

“Then to allay any suspicion the freighter will request the assistance of Center technicians and by that time it will be genuinely out of order. But another of ours, a fast one, will be close enough to lay alongside and offer assistance. Their Chief will be moved into the fast ship fast and by the time the substitution is discovered we’ll have him safe.”

“Where?”

“Right here, Renaen. Right here, of course.”

“I like it!”

“I knew you would.”

“We’ll kill him?”

“After we find out how much we can get from him.”

“We won’t get much from him. I can tell you that right now.”

“You, Renaen, will have some of the pleasure of trying.”

“You are a true friend, Dolpha.”

“It is more pleasant with just the two of us, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” he said jovially. And he thought how much better it would be with only one.

A young agent announced his desire to speak to Dolpha and was admitted. He gave the traditional salute. “Reporting, sir, that we did not receive your approval in sufficient time to intercept. That is if you have decided to approve. Their Chief is now too close to attempt the operation safely.”

“It is to be put into effect when he makes his next trip out there.”

“Very well, sir.”

Jake Ingram studied the girl who sat on the oak chair beside his cigarette-scarred desk. He wore khakis with sweat darkened patches under the arms and across the broad back. His gunbelt was hung on the back of his chair.

“You said your name is Kaynan?”

“Martha Kaynan, lieutenant.”

He looked at her oddly colored level eyes. A bit more here than meets the eye. Nerve and intelligence, probably. Nice and clean looking. Probably cuddle and purr like a little old kitty-cat if the mood was right. And if the guy was right.

He laboriously forced such speculation out of his mind. “That’s quite a lump you got there, Miss.”

“It doesn’t hurt now.”

He yawned and pulled the memo pad over closer to his right hand, took the pencil stub out of the desk drawer. Last night had been rough. Two of the wetbacks had got into a cutting scrape in one of the groves east of town.

“What’s your address here?”

“I’m a house guest at a place on the beach south of Port Isabel. It was rented by Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Raymond. For six months, I believe.”

“Grey beat-up job about three and a half — four miles south?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s the old Coster place. Yeah, I remember hearing it was rented. Just the three of you out there?”

“One other guest, a Mr. Quinn French. I’ve known him for about two years. I’d never met the Raymonds before.”

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“Last night — about midnight I guess it was — Mrs. Raymond and I had a — you could call it a fight, I guess, on the beach. She — hit me with a rock.”

One of Jake Ingram’s eyebrows crawled up toward his hair line. “Want to swear out a warrant?”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that.”

Jake sighed and laid the pencil stub down. “Then what do you want?”

“I want someone to come out there and — and look around just to see if there’s anything wrong.” The words began to come in a great flood. “I was knocked out and when I came to again Quinn was there and Fran Raymond was like — like a monkey. It was horrible.

“And I fainted and when I came to again she was gone and neither Jerry nor Quinn would tell me where she went. She looked and acted insane and I don’t know what they’ve done to her. I’m sure Quinn wouldn’t do anything but the three of them have acted so funny and they can do funny things to your head just by thinking at you. But if you think hard of a brick wall or some solid thing—”

“Hey, lady! Hey, take is easy!” Jake said. “Don’t get yourself all worked up. Let us get this straight. You think something might have happened to Mrs. Raymond. Is that right?”

“Yes, lieutenant.”

“That’s better. Calm and easy does it. Now what would you like for me to do? You got a car here?”

“Mr. French’s car.”

“Okay, lady. I’ll follow you on back out there and we’ll see about this thumping people on the head with rocks. About all the rest of that thinking of brick walls stuff — I don’t want to be out of line but maybe you need a rest.”

She stood up. “I’ll be very grateful, lieutenant. And please do one other thing for me. No matter what I say or do, please don’t leave me there. I want to get my suitcases and come back into town with you. I’m — afraid.”

“Glad to do that, lady. Glad to help.” He buckled on the gun belt. “Shall we go and take a look?”

The house looked deserted when Martha drove Quinn’s convertible into the parking space beside it. The sedan was there. The lieutenant drove up beside her and they both got out, clunking the car doors shut behind them.

A tall black-haired good-looking woman came hurrying out of the house toward them, two men coming more slowly behind her. The Kaynan girl gave a little cry and moved back but the taller woman put her arms around the Kaynan girl, half-laughing and half-crying, begging the Kaynan girl to forgive her.

“Is this Mrs. Raymond?” Jake asked.

“Yes, it is,” Martha said.

Jake scowled and tucked his thumbs inside the gunbelt. He addressed himself to the two men. “Just what happened out here last night?”

The smaller man looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, officer. My wife hasn’t been herself for some time. She’s recovering now. But once in a while there’s a lapse. I don’t blame Martha for getting upset. It was my fault that it happened at all. I just didn’t hear Fran get out of bed.” He turned to Martha. “I don’t know how to tell you how sorry we are, Martha. It won’t happen again.”

The tall woman clung to Martha, smiling through her tears.

Jake said, uncomfortably, “Well, unless Miss Kaynan wants to charge Mrs. Raymond, I don’t see how I come into it at all. You want to get your bags now, Miss Kaynan? I’ll wait for you.”

Mrs. Raymond broke into fresh tears. “Martha, honey, please don’t leave just because this horrible thing happened. I’ll never forgive myself, never!”

Jake thought Miss Kaynan looked a little like a sleepwalker as she turned toward him and smiled and said, “Please forget what I said in town about going back with you no matter what I might say. I’ve just been silly about this. You can see that Mrs. Raymond is perfectly all right.”

Jake Ingram set his jaw. “No, lady — I made a promise and I’m sticking to it. Go pack up. I’ll wait.” He didn’t like the way the girl looked.

“Oh, come now, officer!” Quinn French said. “Don’t be dull about this.”

“I made a promise,” Jake said.

He was standing up as he said it. And all of a sudden he was sitting down, peering through his own windshield, the speedometer needle on sixty-five, the Port Isabelle lighthouse not far ahead.

The car swerved dangerously and he brought it under control and parked on the shoulder of the road. He had a bad case of the shakes and his head hurt. Once he had blacked out years before on Mexican tequila. But even then there were disordered impressions in his mind that he couldn’t quite sort out. But this had been a clean-cut thing, frightening in its completeness.

He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. For a moment he was firm in his resolve to turn around and head back there.

No, better think the sun had done it. For if they had done it somehow the most obvious thing in the world would be their ability to do it again. If they could make a man drive his own car they could make him pull his own gun and blow the top of his own head off.

He shrugged. The little lady had told him to go back and leave her there.

The bottle in the glove compartment was hot to the touch and the whisky was so warm as to be nauseous. But he choked down three hefty swallows. It make him feel better — but not good. His pride and his confidence had come always from his strong body and stubborn mind. He could trust in them. He wondered if he would ever feel really good, really confident again.

He badly needed an excuse to pistol-whip somebody.

Quinn and Jerry dragged a table out into the shade of the house and they ate there. Martha had no hunger. She studied Fran across the table from her with the strange idea that there was something subtly wrong. Everything had gone wrong.

She was afraid. And for the first time she began to wonder if she were losing her mind.

The woman across the table could not possibly be the drooling, chattering thing from the moonlight beach. Could not possibly be — yet if she was there was something wrong in the head of Martha Kaynan.

She looked at Fran’s hands and at her face, at the pattern of freckles the sun had brought out. She looked for the freckle on the left cheek — the one she had noticed the day before — the one shaped oddly like an hour glass.

Her fork clattered on the edge of the dish. “You’re not Fran Raymond!” Martha whispered aloud. “Thank God you’re not! Because if you should be that would mean I’m going mad — and I don’t want to be mad. Does anyone?”

“Darling!” Quinn said. “You’re upset. Horribly upset! Of course that’s Fran!”

“Freckles don’t change overnight, Quinn,” she said gayly. “They never do. And Fran is dead, isn’t she? Who killed her, Quinn? Did you or did Jerry?”

“Please, Martha,” Jerry said with a pained expression.

She looked around at the three of them. Her eyes were wide. “I just happened to think. Isn’t this stupid of me! Just as stupid as can be! If this woman isn’t Fran Raymond maybe the other one wasn’t. And that means that you’re not Jerry and you’re not Quinn. I should have guessed that a long time ago. Who are you? Where do you come from?”

They all studied her quite solemnly. She looked into their eyes and saw the eyes of cold cruel strangers.

Amro said, in his own tongue, to Drael, the agent who had replaced Faven, “They did a careless job. She has detected you.”

Drael shrugged. “There wasn’t much time, you know. And they blamed you for giving them so little time. I wish you were wearing this face. The tissues are raw and there is constant pain.”

“What are you saying?” Martha demanded. “Tell me who you are. Tell me!”

Amro glanced at Massio. Massio shrugged. “Tell her if you want to, if you think you can explain it. But remember that if you tell her it will be up to you to see that she doesn’t sneak off again.”

Amro looked at Martha. “Quinn and Fran are dead. Jerry is still alive, I believe. You are quite right. We are — strangers.”

Martha sat huddled in her chair, like a punished child. “Why? Why would a thing like that be done?”

“This is your world, Martha. It isn’t ours.”

She laughed wildly. “Oh, come now! Tell me about the Martians. Show me your space-ships!”

“You’ll have a chance to see them but they won’t come from your Mars,” Massio said. “They’ll come from Strada.” He laid his hand on the table palm down. “Strada,” he said. He flipped it over. “And Earth. Peculiarly enough we seem to be very close neighbors of yours. But we have found our way through.”

She stood up and her chair fell over. “I’m going and — tell everyone.”

Quinn smiled. “From what I have learned of this place, Martha, they would just lock you up. And if anyone should come to investigate we are a chemist and his wife on vacation with a house guest. They can take our fingerprints. They’ll match, you know. I think you’d best go inside and lie down.”

She walked into the house like a wooden doll. She had wanted to walk around to the cars but her footsteps carried her inside the house, into the bedroom, over to the bed. Amro stood up. “Watch her,” he said. “It’s time I reported on last night.”

The dark oblong formed in the sunlight as he reached it. Without altering his stride he walked through it and was gone.

Drael glanced at Massio. “He is an odd one.”

“He wasn’t until he came here. Now he is very — odd. He says strange things. We talked last night. He talked treason to me, pausing every few minutes to say that it was just speculation, of course. Just idle talk.”

“Tell me what he said.”

Massio shrugged. “That it is possible that the conflict between the League and the Center is pointless. That the individual is important. That power might be a myth. Is that enough?”

“More than enough!”

“This Earthgirl fascinates him. She has misled him. He smashed Faven’s mind because Faven wanted to hurt the girl. Amro has turned weak. And so I reported him last night after we talked. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

“Will you be in charge here?”

“I think so.”

“What will you do about the girl? If they don’t want attention attracted to this place she could be a problem.”

“Right. She can’t disappear and she can’t be killed. That’s where Faven was in error. But there is a better and an easier way. In her mental condition a much easier way.”

Drael smiled. “Clever, Massio! And so obvious that I didn’t guess it. Take her to their nearest town and break her mind as you release her.”

“It disturbs me,” he said, “that this thing could happen to Amro.”

“I have heard of similar instances. One of the female agents brought in at the same time I was tried to desert to the League. The man she was covering caught her fancy.”

“What did they do to her?”

“They solved it neatly by getting the right sort of information to the man in question and then permitting her to desert. She couldn’t make him believe her, of course. Quite a disappointing way to die, I should say.”