Shadow on the Sand

Chapter VI Jest

Amro and Lofta stood before the Chief. He appeared to pay little attention to Lofta’s report. When Lofta had finished, the Chief said, “Go. Leave the agent here with me.”

“But I—” The Chief gave Lofta a long, frosty look. Lofta left hurriedly.

“Sit down, Amro.”

The Chief paced back and forth. “You are an intelligent man, Amro. What do you suspect is going to happen to you?”

“I’ll be relieved of the present operation and subjected to the mental adjustment test. Then I’ll be killed.”

“You seem pretty certain of the results of the test, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you wonder why I’m wasting my time with a condemned agent.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Chief sat down. “This woman — this Faven. Our records indicate that she was effective and reliable.”

“I believe she was.”

“You spoiled her quite thoroughly, Amro.”

“I was angry with her. She was not willing to accept me as the appointed leader of the three of us.”

“And of course she meant harm to the Earthgirl.”

“That was the important thing in my mind at the time.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Amro.”

“There hardly seems to be much point in being dishonest. I... I’ve known, somehow, that this would happen.”

“When did you start to know?”

“After I had many talks with the Earthgirl. Their way of thought is not like ours. At first I was interested because there seemed to be so little point in it. I tried to find out why they are the way they are, thinking that if I could find the reason it would be of help to us in keeping the population quiet later.

“Their histories show that the males are willing to die for principle even on the side of an obviously lost cause. Since this is new to us I wanted to get more information on what makes them that way.”

“And you found out?”

Amro looked steadily at the Chief. “I found out that in my own mind I am as important as you — or as unimportant. You will order my life taken but you have no real right to do so. And if I found that I could kill you this moment I wouldn’t attempt to. I learned that very recently. But if I were certain by killing you I could gain something for this idea of individual equality you would be drawing your last breath.”

“Indeed,” the Chief said softly. “I confess that these strange ideas of yours are quite new to me — quite new. And suppose we decide that the individual is important. What then? It seems to be an empty concept.”

“If we decided, yes. But if we decided and the League decided to follow that philosophy would not the importance of the individuals on any planet — the little people we have ignored — be such that neither the League nor the Center would bring to bear any weapons which would destroy the planet or any major part of it?”

“Continue.”

“And if that fact were recognized by both sides wouldn’t we soon see the foolishness of continuing on the basis of assassination, since the only purpose in that has been to gain such an edge that it would be safe to bring major weapons to bear?”

“And the last step?”

“If violence can no longer be used, then we can only proceed by non-violent means. By discussion, debate, compromise. And that means that you and I, equally important or unimportant people, can walk on the streets of any city.

“I haven’t walked on city streets since I was a child. I haven’t been entirely unafraid since I was a child, not until I went to the twin world. You might go there, sir. You might find it curiously interesting to walk among the others.”

“But,” the Chief asked softly, “haven’t we gone too far along a particular path to attempt to change now?”

“Yes, sir. But maybe some time it will be different.”

“But you won’t see it.”

“I know that. And I would die to bring that day closer, even knowing that I will never see it.”

The Chief made an abrupt change in the conversation. “They have wars there, I believe.”

“They do. But in more than half the nation there are men who hold this belief about the rights of the individual and who want all problems settled without the use of force.”

“And what will happen to this twin world, Amro?”

“They’ll put up a hopeless fight. In the end it will be ours.”

“I am giving Lofta orders to have you held. You will speak to no one.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake Ingram explained who he was.

He said, “I heard you people were here on some kind of a special case and I don’t have enough to go on to call you in but just something funny I want to talk over.”

The two F.B.I. men were young and dark haired, with curiously expressionless faces and the general appearance of bank tellers.

“Sit down,” the taller one said.

“I’ll take it right from the beginning,” Jake said, sitting down and pulling out his notebook. “This girl from New York named Martha Kaynan came in and reported...” His voice droned on and on in the small office. “...and then, without knowing how I got there, I was in my car and on the outskirts of Port Isabel.”

“Sun pretty hot?” the taller one said.

Jake gave him a shamefaced smile. “Thought the same thing myself. But it bothered me. I know the roads in that section pretty well. So after I thought it over for a time I stopped in the office and picked up some good eight-power binoculars.

“I took a farm road and left the car and walked across through the scrub and wormed up as close as I could to see what I could see. I’d say I was about a hundred and fifty yards southwest of the house. With the glasses that made ’em look about fifty feet away and I could see good.

“They ate outside. There was some kind of an argument going on. The Kaynan girl went into the house. The tall one, French, left the table and walked out on the sea side of the house, just like he was going someplace special. He walked along and I held the glasses on him. A big dark oblong sprang up right in front of him.

“And this French, he walked right through it and he was gone. I took a quick look without the glasses to make sure he hadn’t walked out of the field of vision but he hadn’t. That beach was just as empty as the top of this table. I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong. I saw it.”

“And then what did you do, Ingram?”

“It didn’t make me feel too good but I kept watching. Pretty soon Mr. Raymond went swimming and his wife went in the house with the Kaynan girl. I watched him wade out and dive in. And he didn’t come up. He didn’t come up at all. I waited and I’d say it was five minutes later he came up about two hundred yards out.”

“Was the sun in your eyes?”

“It was behind me. I could see good. He played around out there and then he headed for shore. A man just can’t swim as fast as that fella did. The spray flew up ten feet in the air. He came out of that water at a dead run, and I mean he was moving.

“Now you people can take it or leave it, I’ve given you the dope. It’s off my chest. Something very damn funny is going on out there and to tell you the truth I just don’t want another damn thing to do with it.”

“Why did you come to us?”

“I just don’t think those people there are human. If they aren’t human, then they come from some other place. Hell or Mars or the Moon. And if they do, that’s your problem, boys. Not mine.”

“Are you making this report officially?”

“Any way you want me to make it.”

The tall one said, “So far there’s no violation of any federal statute. We’re winding up a case here. I’ll request permission to go take a look. Ingram, I’ve heard weird ones but your yarn — if you weren’t a police officer I’d have the little men with the nets out looking for you.”

“Wouldn’t blame you a bit,” Jake said. “If you can take time off right now, I could drive you out there. Take about an hour from here, and then you’d know how to get to where you can watch them.”

The taller one reached for his hat and said, “Let’s go.”

The door had been sealed shut. Amro lay on his back on the cot in the tiny windowless room, trying to amuse himself by opening his mind to the most extreme limits of receptivity. Through the thickness of the walls he could catch random fleeting impressions. Somewhere far above him there was tension. It took him a long time to find out that it was the concentrated emotion of a whole phalanx of clerks working against a report deadline.

A tangle of thoughts and emotions moved slowly closer and he knew that someone was walking down the corridor, passing the sealed door. The thoughts were vaguely of strategy and intrigue, of move and countermove, and he guessed that it was one of the monitors. He tried to find out who and felt the mind snap shut against his probe, exuding an acid aura of indignation and outraged privacy.

A bit later there was an agent passing and Amro sensed the blood-thirst in that mind, the direct and uncomplicated pleasure in anticipating the job for which the organism had been trained.

And it made him feel the extent of the change in himself. It made him think of Martha Kaynan.

They had taken the Earth clothes from him, had given him back the short kilt but with weapons pockets empty. He thought of Martha and what they might do to her and he paced back and forth by the sealed door, his fingernails biting into his palms, a sound oddly like a growl in his throat.

But even as he paced he knew his own helplessness. Even if he could force the door with his hands the doorway co the twin world was five levels below him. He would have to get by the normal complement of corridor guards, probably three between him and the steep ramp. Two guards on each level at the ramp landings. That would make eleven.

Then probably five more at intervals along the corridor leading to the area where the negative matter, the pattern of unreality, provided the exit to the twin world. There were two agents on duty at that place, controlling the switch. Sixteen guards and two agents. Eighteen armed men. No combination of luck and agility could carry him that far.

He went back to the cot and forced relaxation on his muscles. It was odd, he thought, about the Chief. The strange attitude he had taken. And equally odd that he had not yet been taken away for the test.

Maybe when they came for him... It was hard to break the established pattern of obedience to the Center, of dedication. They would expect cooperation when they came for him. And it was possible that he could provide them with a surprise.

The house was very still. She lay and listened for a long time and all she could hear was the soft sighs of the sea, sometimes the thin crackling of sand blown against the side of the house.

Quinn had not come back. No, it was a mistake to keep thinking of him as Quinn. Quinn French was dead. The three of them had told her he was dead. And Fran was dead.

It made it worse that Quinn hadn’t come back, even though she knew that he was one of them — one of the dreadful aliens. How stupid not to have seen it from the beginning! But what chance did a human have of detecting the nonhuman?

She guessed that a small child would have known almost immediately. Children are quick to feel strangeness. It is the adults, trained in skepticism, who see with blind eyes. Adults search for reasons. Children merely know.

Why be afraid because the creature horridly masquerading as Quinn has gone? Maybe because it was possible to sense the growth of compassion in him.

They looked like humans. They could make themselves look like humans. She knew that they would continue to fool the humans until they had won. And then probably it would be safe for them to resume their own guise. How would they look? Dreadful slimed sea-depths things? Or scaled, and coiled? Alien, anyway — alien and horrible.

She wondered if it were some trick of light that made them able to look like people. No, not the light alone. There had been that moment on the beach when the thing calling itself Quinn had kissed her. They had felt like human lips and his arms like human arms. But too strong, of course. So strong that her mouth was bruised and her ribs ached afterward.

Now? No, not quite yet. She felt his name on her lips. “Quinn!”

They had admitted it. They had told her!

Or was all this another facet of madness. The family had always spoken in careful casual ways about Aunt Harriet. No, Aunt Harriet hadn’t been a blood relative. No point in thinking along those lines. But remember Alice at school? What was her name?

Alice Masters, Masterson, Mathews, Mathewson — Mathers! That was it — Alice Mathers. Perfectly all right and then they found her all curled up in the fireplace with the ashes she had rubbed into her hair and all over her face, laughing and talking up the chimney, answering questions they couldn’t hear.

No, this wasn’t like that at all. It couldn’t be! But didn’t all the crazy people claim they are perfectly sane. It’s only when you recognize the possibility of your being a bit whacked that you aren’t.

Now? Try now, Martha — carefully, slowly, three steps to the door. Stand and wait. No moon tonight. Dress? Don’t take the time. Breathe softly, slowly. The pounding of the heart will wake them surely. A Congo drum. Slowly — There! Now you can see the door, that dim oblong. One, two, three, four steps. Reach out. Touch the screen. Now all you have to do is push it open slowly and...

“Go back to your bed!” Fran said.

Martha held both hands tightly against her mouth. She turned without a word and went back to her bed.

The Chief stood once again with his arms crossed and looked across the black void to the misty dot of light that was Strada. After he had listened to that agent, Amro, he had felt that it was time to be alone, to think long careful thoughts. And so he had come at once to the asteroid.

Back on Strada the problem was too close. It surrounded and smothered him. It echoed in the corridors, chattered in the billion upon billion of electronic relays in the calculators and computers. Five hundred and sixty-one planets dependent on Strada. Ceaseless flow of orders. Move the exploration crews to sector fourteen hundred ten.

Eight hundred tons of Compound Seven to Planet 6003-11 — Emergency. Two hundred thousand Stradai awaiting passage to 6118-?b. Conduct search for missing freighter in sector thirteen hundred seventy. Send specialists to 6202-?c to determine cause of resistance to atmospheric envelope. Send food at once. Send hate. Send envy. Send death.

Strada — nerve center. Brain and head — record center of plans, inventories, census, secret agents of League and Center. Loyalty records.

And what if the beast was headless? No food, no specialists, no transportation for those who waited. Five hundred and sixty-one orphaned planet Children, rapidly growing unkempt, thrust into freedom.

“What then?” he said aloud.

One could guess. Endless and crippling confusion as each planet slowly strove for self-sufficiency, staggering under the continually increasing burden of population. The ancient adjustments — famine, disease and war. Each planet busily scrubbing its own laundry, then at last, home task completed, turning to stare with avidity at a neighbor world.

In the struggle some of them would lose the knack, the skill, for space travel. They might go for generations, never visited. The language slowly changing, even the physical form of the Stradai changing, once limited to the specific planet, to a specific set of environmental influences. Then vast combines and wars and empires rising and falling.

An enormous setback to the unified efficient Stradian civilization. Or, he thought, could it really be called a setback. It was rumored that there had once been a golden age before the Stradai had lifted themselves from the surface of their home planet. But the histories had been lost, of course. What had the Stradai believed in then?

Slowly the plan was forming itself in his mind and he knew that it was either wisdom — or the most foul stupidity. And he knew that somehow he would carry it through.

Then he went back to the port and into the tunnel and shut himself in the small craft. The large port behind him opened and the imprisoned air gouted out. The craft moved backward, scraping at first and then lifting free of the tunnel floor as it crossed into the ungravitated area.

He emerged on manual controls, turned slowly and set the control table for the proper oscillation, cutting into his own headquarters frequently with a rough disregard for his own comfort. Acceleration stood with leaden feet on his chest and thumbed back his eyes and plunged a gnarled fist into his belly. And then it eased off.

On the tenth minute of his trip a space-worn freighter blundered up out of the atmosphere of Strada, too common a ship to warrant more than a glance from the guard crew who had already plotted their Chief’s course and time of arrival.

On the seventy-third minute of his trip the Chief stopped daydreaming and gasped as the collision screen showed him that some blind fool of a freighter pilot was staggering into an interception course.

As his hand flicked out to make the shift from automatic to manual he felt the motor nerves deaden. His hand touched the edge of the control table, lay there. The utmost power of his will could not move it. He sat forward in the seat, able to change the focus but not the direction of his eyes. Fear was suddenly gone in his savage appreciation of the wryness of the jest.