The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 3

Tappy's touch on his arm jogged him back to their immediate predicament. The sounds of pursuit, if that was what they were, were drawing erratically closer. Jack did not know what was going on, but he was pretty sure they did not want to fall into the hands of whatever might be after them. Tappy's urgency indicated that she felt the same.

But the great ring of the base of the ship surrounded them. The thing had come down on them like a monstrous cage— which was what it probably was. Somehow it had known where they were, approximately, and enclosed them so that its personnel could canvass the limited region and make them captive. Exactly as he would have done to capture a moving bug he did not want to squish: set a jar over it first.

So how could the bug get free before the end? Tunnel under the rim of the jar? Fly up into the center? Surely not!

He looked again at the brace in his hand. The scarlet button was faintly glowing; he had not noticed that before. That could be the on/off switch— and the device was still on. Ready to fire again.

That notion made him freeze. He pointed it upward and used his pencil to touch the largest button again.

The glow faded. Right: now it was off. He resumed breathing.

Tappy was tugging at his arm again. He looked the way she was facing. "But that's toward the rim!" he protested, keeping his voice low. "You haven't seen it, but take my word: that thing is two hundred feet thick! No way we can get by it without mountain-climbing gear. We'd be better off dodging them in the center, and using this thing if we have to. It just sheared off a tree!"

She knew; she had heard the tree crash down. She pointed toward the rim and touched the brace he held.

"Wait, wait, Tappy!" he protested. "I guess you know what this thing is— did you always know?" She shook her head no. "You remember now? Our entry into this world jogged your memory?" She nodded yes. "So now you know how to control it? You know how dangerous it is?" Yes.

"Then you will have to show me," he said. "This thing is so powerful I don't dare use it ignorantly. It was just luck I didn't have it pointing toward one of us instead of that tree!"

He got down and scraped the leaves and twigs away from a section of the ground. "Here's a diagram of the buttons on this thing," he said, taking her hand and using her finger to draw it, so she would know exactly what he was doing. "Here is a big scarlet button, which is the on/off switch; it glows faintly when it's on." He pressed her finger into the dirt. "Here are six smaller orange buttons, one-two-three, one-two-three. When I turned the big one on and touched this one, zap! It cut through that tree."

Tappy disengaged her hand and took his instead. She was going to make him point to a button! He extended his finger.

"You have me over the orange buttons," he told her as the tip of his finger moved. "The scarlet one is farther over." But she knew where the buttons were; she seemed to have a good memory for what she had touched. She pushed his hand down. "That's the third orange one in the right-hand row. That's the one you mean?" She pushed his hand down harder. "Okay, I got it, Tappy! Third button!" But still she pushed.

What was wrong here? "Look, Tappy, I don't think this will do anything unless the scarlet one is turned on first, so—"

She nodded affirmatively, but still kept his hand down. "There's something different about this? I can't let go of it?" She nodded yes. "But of course I can let go-oh! Do you mean sustained fire?" She nodded again and finally let his hand go.

"Got it," he said. "Turn it on, touch that button, and treat it like a gushing fire hose. Don't point anywhere I don't want to cut, even if I'm no longer touching the button. Thanks for warning me!"

Once more she pointed urgently toward the rim. It was high time; the searchers were uncomfortably close, by the sounds.

"Okay, Tappy! On our way!" He took her hand with his free one and set off for the rim. They weaved around trees and bushes, keeping low, and left the sounds of pursuit behind.

This was interesting, he thought as he moved. He had assumed that the most dangerous place was nearest the rim. But maybe they figured the bugs would not go near the glass of the jar, so they were concentrating on the center. The bugs were moving in an unexpected direction.

How was it that their pursuers knew in a general way where they were, but not specifically? If there was a bug on them— a radio frequency emitter— it should enable others to close on them readily enough. Not that there should be a bug. Unless—

Unless that honker had planted it! That marble under Tappy's skin, between her breasts: what about that? First the marble, then the giant ship, one-two.

But several things made him doubt it. That honker had seemed friendly rather than threatening, despite what he had done. And if that had been a location device, why was it so ineffective at close range? And why so obvious? It would have been easier simply to plant it in Tappy's clothing, so that they would never know it was there. So whatever that marble was, it was unlikely to be a bug of that kind.

Jack didn't want to think about whatever other kind of bug or grub or egg it might be.

The huge rim loomed close, as high as it was thick: about two hundred feet. It looked like a twenty-story building without windows, extending to either side, slightly concave. The wall was absolutely smooth, all too much life the glass of a gargantuan jar except for its opacity. Who could have made a flying device this large? Its mere existence suggested a technology far beyond anything known on Earth.

Since when had he believed this was anywhere close to Earth? Tappy had led him through some kind of space warp or time warp to an alien planet; that had been obvious from the start. Yet how had she known of that aperture? He was sure she had not known that anything like this was going to occur when they started. She had been too forlorn, too sensitive to the hurts of the world. Only now that they were here was she really coming to life.

Well, not exactly. That evening in the cabin, when they had made love— maybe it was statutory rape to others, but it had been love to the two of them, in those minutes. She had known what she was doing, perhaps better than he had. He had condemned himself for it, but now—

Tappy's hand was tugging him again. She knew he was losing his focus on the present. He was doing that too much! If they somehow won free of this high-tech trap, then maybe he could think about love.

"I'm aiming it at the wall," he told her. "I'm turning it on. This is what I'm supposed to do?"

She nodded yes, emphatically.

He touched the third orange button.

A circular section of the wall glowed. Then it disappeared, and some of the ground under it. Now there was a hollow in it, deepening visibly.

Jack gaped. "It's eating through the rim!" he exclaimed. "Like melting butter, only there's no vapor. The wall is just gone there!"

Tappy urged him forward, toward it.

When he stepped forward, correcting his aim so as not to intersect the ground, the circle of indentation became smaller. But the center deepened more rapidly. It was as if he held a cosmic blowtorch whose heat was greatest in the center. The original dent now and a smaller but deeper dent inside it— and as he proceeded, that inner dent developed another.

"It's a conic section!" he exclaimed. "I mean, a cone— the ray is coming from this device, and expanding, and it vaporizes— bad word— it disintegrates in an expanding circle. So as I walk into it, it seems to be getting smaller, but it's not, really. Am I making sense?"

Tappy merely urged him on. They walked into the hole he was making. It was a tunnel now, about ten feet in diameter, forming about twenty feet ahead of them. The radiator seemed indefatigable.

The radiator! Suddenly Tappy's sleep-talking words came back to him: "Alien menace— only chance is to use the radiator!" This had to be what she had meant: a weapon that radiated a cutting or dissolving beam. The aliens had trapped them, but the radiator was cutting them free. The aliens had set a jar on them, but these bugs were drilling their way out.

There was a clamor of alarms. The sound was unfamiliar, but its strident nature was unmistakable. The aliens had finally caught on to what was happening.

Tappy heard it and jogged him: hurry!

Jack broke into a run, keeping the brace aimed. The tunnel became smaller as he came closer to the site of action, but it quickened its drilling pace. He was operating closer, and the cone was smaller, so had less metal to drill and was faster. He should have thought of that before.

The tunnel became irregular. As he ran, he was waving the beam, and it showed. He tried to keep it steady, but it was impossible. It didn't matter, as long as there was a tunnel they could follow.

He turned his head, trying to look back as he ran. The tunnel started veering to the side. He had to focus ahead, but he had caught a glimpse of a shape in the tunnel behind them. They were sitting ducks, or at least running ducks, for any shot from behind!

Then at last the tunnel broke through to light. First a circle, then a full-sized disk opened ahead of them. They were through the rim! But he heard footsteps behind.

He touched the scarlet button, turning off the radiator. Then he had a better idea. He whirled to point the device back at the tunnel.

A man was there. He threw himself down, trying to get out of the line of fire. He knew what the radiator would do to his body!

Human heads appeared above the rim, peering down from its distant top. Jack aimed the radiator at them. They disappeared. He hadn't fired; they had dived out of the way. A bluff was as good as a real attack. He was glad of that, because he was no killer. He was just trying to get away.

He turned again, and ran with Tappy into the thick of the forest, which seemed to have been cut back somewhat by the landing of the ship. They skirted the huge trunks of the trees, now hidden from the ship by the interlocking canopy above. Jack was trying to put as much foliage between them and the ship as possible. They had broken out, but it would be no good if the men caught them and hauled them back.

Why hadn't someone shot at him and Tappy? There had to be weapons, and the two of them had been an easy target in that tunnel. Someone could have fired from cover above the rim, too, before they reached the trees.

The answer had to be that this was a capture mission, not a kill mission. The way the ship had come down, enclosing rather than flattening, suggested the same. This was a no-squish-bug effort. Great— it gave the bugs a real advantage. But why? What was so precious about these bugs to make them worth this phenomenal endeavor?

"Tappy," he gasped as they ran. "We seem to be getting away, but we won't stay clear long if we don't learn more! Unless you know what's going on here!"

Her face turned to him, her head shaking yes, then no. That meant that she understood some, but not enough.

"Then let's get some information!" he said. He was not what he thought of as a bold man, but the past few days had shaken him loose from every preconception he could think of.

Tappy didn't object, so he set up his trap. "Wait here," he told her. He turned, on the radiator and dissolved a tunnel through the thickest part of the forest, where the trees were small and set closely. He followed the developing opening, running behind the cone. The smell of peppermint came from the cut plants. He hoped he wasn't extirpating some animals along with the foliage; he hadn't thought of that in time. Then he curved it until the tunnel end was just out of sight of its beginning. He turned the radiator off and ran back to Tappy. "Now we hide!" he gasped, drawing her to the side.

They found a place behind a thicket of young orange-barked trees and ducked down, watching the tunnel. The normally noisy animals were quiet now; he hoped that didn't give the two of them away.

Soon enough a man came running, spied the tunnel, and charged into it. He was carrying a weapon of some sort, which startled Jack: what was the point, if it was not to be fired at the fugitives?

But he had no time to worry about that. He stepped out into the tunnel, pointing the radiator. "Hey, Joe!" he called.

The man stopped and looked back, chagrined. He started to bring his weapon to bear.

"Nuh-uh, Joe!" Jack said, putting a finger on a button of the radiator. "Drop it!"

The man let the weapon fall to the ground.

Jack strode toward him, keeping the radiator aimed. He had never intended to fire it at the man, but he was pleased with the success of his bluff. "Now talk, Joe: what's this all about? Why are you after us?"

The man's mouth tightened. He seemed to understand Jack, but be refused to answer, and the threat of the radiator was no longer persuasive. Strange. And awkward, because the man had called his bluff, and he couldn't do anything about it. It was a mistake, ultimately, to bluff, he realized, because once it was proved empty, all was lost. It was necessary either to be able to follow through on a threat or to make the bluff so bold that the other did not dare call it.

He couldn't carry through. He just couldn't kill a man who wasn't attacking him. He probably couldn't kill even if the man did attack him. He was a sensitive artist, not an insensitive goon. Only if Tappy were threatened would he—

Jack had an inspiration. He pointed the radiator at Tappy.

"Nao!" the man cried, horrified.

So he had guessed right! It was Tappy they wanted to capture. He had suspected they didn't much care about Jack himself; he was nobody, just an ignorant person who had happened to get involved with her. Tappy had known or remembered how to reach this world, so she must have been here before. The aliens must have been waiting for her— and they wanted her alive.

Larva-Chrysalis-Imago. There was something about Tappy that made her valuable— so valuable that this monstrous flying cage had been sent to catch her. But she had been given a weapon, and taught its use, so that she remembered once the situation required it. That knowledge must have been hypnotically suppressed. Her return to a more familiar environment was bringing back her memory.

But why give a blind girl a weapon that required sight for its operation? If Jack hadn't been along, Tappy would have been virtually helpless.

These thoughts were buzzing through his mind as he faced the man. He knew that they did not have much time; at any moment there would be others coming here. But there were questions that had to be answered, lest they fall into the next trap their pursuers sprang.

"So you do speak English," Jack said. "You may not care much about your own life, but you do about hers. Well, keep quiet and follow us, or I will radiate her." He was ashamed for the lie, but he was afraid Tappy would be subject to some fate worse than death if he didn't use this lever to get the truth. "Find a place we can talk," he murmured to Tappy.

Tappy immediately moved to the edge of the nulled tunnel and felt her way into the green and purple foliage. Jack followed, pointing the radiator at her. She understood what he was doing.

"Yao are naot serious!" the man said. He had a strong but indefinable accent, as if this was a language he had learned in a class and hadn't used much. "Yao are with hur! Yao will naot radiate hur."

Jack used his pencil to touch the scarlet button. The dim light came on. Don't let him call this bluff! he prayed.

"Aokay! I um caoming!" the man exclaimed, his accent worse. There was no doubt that the threat to Tappy really unnerved him, despite his suspicion that Jack didn't mean it.

Empire of the stars. Could she be the daughter of the Emperor, stolen away and now to be recovered? But surely she would want to be returned to her family and her status! Unless this was a hostile force, a usurper who wanted to hold her for ransom or brainwash her and set her up as a figurehead. If she died, they would have no chance to make a pretense of legitimacy, and the loyal subjects would rise up and throw them out.

But then why send her to a backwater region of a primitive planet like Earth? Why let her suffer as the ward of an unfriendly family all these years? Anything could have happened to her! If they had the technology to give her the radiator, why hadn't they at least fixed her sight? Jack was no psychologist, but even he had seen that she was a desperately lonely and unhappy girl. She was about as unlikely a princess as he could imagine.

Tappy was better at finding a hiding place than he would have been, because she tended to explore with her hands and body, while he depended more on sight. Soon they were in a niche in the undergrowth where the sunlight hardly penetrated. They would be able to hear any searchers before they got close.

The man sat on one side, and Jack faced Tappy on the other side, keeping the radiator pointed and his pencil poised. He knew that the moment he got careless the man could jump him. Even if Jack won the struggle, the noise would give their position away and the others would close in. With the best luck, he was unlikely to have much time. He had to make it count.

"Why are you after Tappy?" he demanded.

The man's gaze flicked to the girl, and Jack realized that he had blundered already: the man had not known her name. Not her Earth name, at any rate. But he answered. Jack was already getting used to the accent, and tuned it out in favor of the meaning. "We must restrict the Imago."

There was a key word! "What is the Imago?" Jack demanded. "Why must you restrict it?"

The man seemed at a loss. "It has to be restricted!"

"Look, Joe, I'm an ignorant lout from a primitive planet. I don't know anything about this Imago, except that it's gotten me into a lot of trouble. So you'd better give me good reason not to wipe her out, and wipe you out, and anybody else who comes after me, so that I can go home and forget all this. Tell me all about the Imago before anybody else gets here. Give me reason not to radiate everything in sight." He hardly believed himself! He was talking like a thug from a grade F movie. But he didn't have time to figure out how to act like a tormented perfectionist from a grade A film.

The man told him, somewhat awkwardly. It wasn't that he didn't know it, but that he could not believe that Jack didn't, so he kept skipping over elements that he assumed Jack already understood. In the course of this Jack picked up some background about the empire and the planet they were on.

It seemed that there were several components of the empire. It wasn't exactly an empire, but whatever it was was too complicated for Jack to assimilate at the moment, so he used the term as mental shorthand. It included so many stellar systems that there was no reliable survey listing them all. Human beings were on several of its planets, not because they were native but because they had been imported as labor from overpopulated Earth, which didn't even miss them. The alien rulers were called the Gaol, as it were the gaolers of the empire. They did not care what the human laborers did, as long as they did their jobs; they were allowed to have their own families and entertainments. One of the planets they worked on was this one, where the dominant native species was what Jack thought of as the honkers. The empire was governed by completely alien creatures who had no biological and little intellectual association with human beings, but whose technological power was such that no known force could oppose it.

Except the Imago. Therefore it was to the Gaol's interest to nullify the Imago. The Imago seemed to be another type of alien entity, possessing no body of its own, other than what for want of a better term was a spirit. It seemed to be singular, though perhaps it was that only one of its kind chose to interact with solid creatures. When it did, it manifested only by the enhancement of the powers of that person. Whether it entered other than human hosts was unknown, but probably it did, because sometimes it skipped a generation of human beings, only to reappear seemingly randomly. It seemed to associate with this honker planet, where spirits had more force than they did elsewhere.

But when it entered a person, it took time to manifest. At first it was the Larva, largely quiescent, inhabiting the person from conception into childhood. That stage seemed to last for about seven years, until the child was six, and the spirit could not be detected. Then it metamorphosed into the Chrysalis. The child did not change physically, but now the symbiotic entity manifested. The child developed mental or emotional rapport with other life, including animals and plants, and there was a faint mental aura that sophisticated sensors could detect. After another seven years it metamorphosed to its adult stage, whose nature no one knew except the Gaol who governed the empire. It was conjectured that the rapport with other forms of life expanded into full-scale telepathy and the power to modify the emotions of others. If so, it meant the Imago could take over even the minds of the Gaol and make them do its will. That would give it the capacity to rule or to destroy the empire— even if it was based in the body of a blind human girl.

"Then why don't you just kill it?" Jack demanded. "So it can't mess with your alien masters?" He still hated to talk this way, as if he didn't care about Tappy. His feeling for her was a strange and wonderful thing, not exactly love and not exactly apart from love. Already he recognized the truth of what the man was telling him: Tappy related to other life, and he felt that relation through his mind and heart. He was beginning to understand why he had made love with her, as the Chrysalis of her nature touched him. If this was only the suggestion of her mature power, what would be its full expression?

The man explained: The Imago could not be killed. If its host was destroyed, it simply sought a new host. Then, fourteen years later, the threat to the empire returned. In the early days, perhaps millennia ago, the Imago had so disrupted the empire as to cause its dissolution. Only when the Gaol had learned how to nullify the Imago had they been able to reconstitute and maintain the empire. Now they tracked the Imago diligently, and when it manifested they captured its human or other host, drugged it into unconsciousness, and maintained it in tight security within a field that scrambled any possible mental or other emanations. They kept it in that condition, carefully alive, as long as nature and technology permitted; with luck their reprieve lasted as long as a century.

When the captive Imago-host finally died, the search began again. Its occupation of a new host seemed to be random; no one could predict where on this planet it would appear next. The Gaol had the power to obliterate the planet, but feared the would only manifest on another; it was better to keep it. So this world was left in its natural state, unlike most other planets. The Gaol intended to locate and nullify the Imago as usual, forestalling any possible threat to the empire's stability. If the Imago-host was found and killed, the process would have to begin over. Therefore the empire impressed upon its minions that due care should be taken. Whoever was responsible for the loss of the Imago would suffer in ways no ordinary person could imagine— and so would his family and his community.

Now at last Jack understood. Tappy was the current host of the Imago. She had been the child of a human colonist on this honker planet. When her expanding empathy for life had manifested at age six, she had been hustled to a place where the Gaol could not quickly find her. There must have been trouble; maybe the minions of the empire had been in pursuit, and Tappy's father had been killed, and she maimed and blinded. But she had gotten free, though at the terrible price Jack had seen. Her injuries had turned out to be an advantage, because they restricted her, so that she did not call attention to herself. She had been put under a hypnotic block against even speaking the language. All this had been necessary to hide her from the notice of the Gaol, whose search methods had to be sophisticated and unscrupulous. Indeed, the empire must have searched, and finally was on the verge of locating her. So she had had to be moved— and an ignorant Earth native had been hired to transport her. Jack.

"Why didn't she return to her family here?" Jack asked.

The man grimaced. "What family? When the Gaol found out she was gone, poof! So was her community."

Jack looked at Tappy. She nodded. She had known throughout that she was orphaned. The Earth cover-story had been accurate in essence if not in detail. That was the price of being the host of the Imago.

"So where are you going?" Jack asked her. For she had certainly been headed somewhere with great urgency.

"That is what we want to know," the man said. "So we can stop her from getting there. But it no longer matters, because we have captured the Imago."

"Don't you wish!" Jack exclaimed. "You're not locking Tappy up drugged for the rest of her life! I'll radiate her into nothingness first!" This time he was telling the truth: death was better than that. He saw her nod; she agreed.

Then there was a faint flash. Jack did not lose consciousness, or even feel pain. He simply lost his volition. The minions of the empire had closed in on them and used some sort of weapon. He had talked too long, and been caught. Worse, he had betrayed Tappy into their power.

Now other men appeared. "Good job, 'Joe'." one said, mockingly using the name Jack had bestowed on the man. "You kept them distracted until we were sure of our shot."

Jack had after all played the fool. He had been so interested in what he was learning about Tappy that he had not kept properly alert, and they had crept up close. No wonder Joe had been so cooperative, once he got started talking! It hadn't mattered how much Jack learned, so long as he was kept occupied.

"Get up, follow that man," the new man said to Jack and Tappy, indicating a man who was now standing nearby.

Jack got up and followed the man, and Tappy did the same. His body was not paralyzed, just his control over it. He had to do what anyone told him.

"Go to the container and get the null dose," the leader told the one they had been talking to. Now that man got up; apparently he, too, had lost his volition.

Jack found that though his body obeyed the directive, his mind remained free. He could think anything he wanted, for what little good that might do him. So he pieced together the remaining elements of what had happened.

The weapons the men carried were not for killing or stunning, but for blocking off the mind's conscious control of the body. They probably generated an intense local field that affected all people in it, but did not extend far. So one shot had taken out all three of them in the niche, but not those standing beyond it. This was surely a necessary limitation. That explained why the men pursuing them had not fired at them before: they had to get within the short range of the will-stunner before using it. The radiator seemed to have no such limit, so had been a fearsome counterweapon. If only he had remained alert with it!

The anonymous leader made them march toward the huge cage ship, which it seemed was called the container. That made sense; it was used to contain fleeing people. But for the radiator, it would have contained them effectively enough. Now they had lost the radiator. What a mess he had made of this! He should have let the information go, and kept running with Tappy.

As they approached the ship, he saw that the hole the radiator had carved through the giant rim was smaller. No one was working on it; the thing seemed to be healing itself! At the rate it was going, in a few more hours the injury would be gone.

Injury? What was he thinking of!

The rim of the container loomed high. Then a dimple appeared before them, expanding into an opening. Inside was a ramp. They stepped in, and the ramp carried them upward in the manner of an escalator.

It deposited them somewhere in the middle of the rim. Another door irised open, and they stepped into a beautiful apartment. The walls seemed to be windows on planetary scenes; the illusion would have been perfect, except that each wall showed a different planet. One had a deep green sky with two small bright suns orbiting each other; their dual shadows were slowly changing configurations and shades as he watched. Another was night, with a few scattered stars and a monstrous nebula or galaxy seen end-on beyond them, taking up half the view, wondrously three-dimensional. Another was a cityscape whose buildings curved esthetically to touch each other at different levels; one even made a loop, which was unlooping and extending toward a different building at a fair rate. It was as if the buildings were kissing or copulating. Still another— for the walls were not set square, but angled in the manner of the interior of a faceted stone— showed a ship on a great yellow sea, and the ship flexed to accommodate the passing waves, while tiny people or creatures sported in those waves.

"Hello."

Jack would have jumped had he had control of his body. He had been standing immobile, only his eyes moving to take in the wonders of the walls. Now he looked at the woman who had spoken. She sat before a wall looking out over fairly conventional snow-covered mountains.

She was impressive. It was not that she was young, for somehow he doubted that she was, despite her remarkably firm and slender body. She wore a closed cloak that was opaque only at the fringes; her central torso showed clearly through it, her breasts so well formed that they seemed unreal, her legs slightly spread so that her manicured pubic region was plain. Jack felt an erection starting, an involuntary response to the potent suggestions of her apparel and posture.

"You may call me Malva," she said. "What may I call you?" She looked at Jack.

Now he found he could speak. "Jack." But that was all he was able to say; his mouth would not work at his own behest.

The woman's eyes flicked to Tappy, who remained silent. They returned to Jack. "Tappy," he said. "She can't—" But he was trying to go beyond the immediate directive, and stalled out.

Malva nodded. "A block. Standard procedure." Her gaze returned to Tappy. "But you will respond appropriately by nodding." Tappy nodded.

Meanwhile Jack's gaze, drawn to Malva's head when he had to answer her, noted eyes whose irises were red. Not bloodshot, but a deep esthetic cast. Her hair was the same hue, looking natural, though no living woman had ever grown that shade. Perhaps it figured: if she had gone to the trouble to have plastic surgery on her body so she could show it off, she would think nothing of dyeing her hair and using tinted contact lenses.

"Sit, and we shall talk," Malva said.

They sat on the blocks that slid out from the wall behind them, where the door had been. They looked like hard plastic, but they were soft, with just enough spring to be comfortable.

"I serve the Gaol," Malva said. "I am fifty-four Earth years old, but as you can see I am attractive. Without the Gaol I would be far inferior physically and mentally, and I would not have this pleasant residence or the privileges of rank. I say this so that you can appreciate the advantage of the favor of the Gaol. You will not be offered such favor, but you can avoid incurring their disfavor by timely cooperation."

The wall behind her abruptly changed scenes. Now it showed a classic inferno, a medieval representation of Hell, with tall fires forming the walls. In the foreground was a rack on which a naked human man was bound. A black-hooded tormenter was extending a glowing red rod toward the man's genital region.

"Any torture your mind can imagine, and a number it cannot imagine, may be visited on your body by the order of the Gaol," Malva said. Behind her the rod touched the man's penis, and the flesh blistered and smoked while the man's body struggled ineffectively, and his mouth opened in a soundless scream of agony. "So I am sure you will not hesitate to answer my simple questions so that I can make a proper report to my masters."

She looked at Jack. "How did you come to associate with the host for the Imago?"

Jack stared a moment more at the scene beyond the woman's luscious body. The red-hot rod was now cooking the victim's testicles. The scene could be a mock-up or a recording, rather than any contemporary event, but it was distressingly realistic. He suspected that this was a bluff, similar to his own threat to radiate Tappy, but he decided not to chance it. "I was hired on Earth to drive her to another address."

"What was the nature of your relationship with her there?"

Again he saw no reason to equivocate. "I was her companion, and then her lover."

Malva nodded slightly, unsurprised. The wall behind her returned to the mountainscape. "You did not know her nature, but you felt the effect. She is the Chrysalis."

"Yes."

"How did she drop from our screens?"

Jack gazed blankly at her.

"You can not answer, or you will not?" she inquired, frowning briefly.

"I can not. I don't know what you mean." But he had just learned something: there was a choice. Apparently the loss of volition extended only to the body, not the mind. He could not speak unless she asked him to, but his mouth would not say what his mind did not authorize.

"And she will not. We can not force the Imago." Malva considered a moment, crossing her legs under the cloak. Now her pubic area was not visible, but the underside of her thigh was similarly fascinating. She was an old woman with the body of a young woman, and she knew exactly how to display it. He hardly knew her, and what he was learning he didn't like, but his body had notions of leaping and plunging. "Would some information help you to answer?"

"I do not know."

"Are you willing to answer, if you can?"

Jack did not consider himself a coward, but he knew he was no hero. If they used even the crudest of tortures on him, he would scream out all he knew about anything, or say whatever they wanted him to. He knew that had been the case with the victims of the Inquisition, and he had no doubt that this woman could have him put on exactly such a rack as the wall picture had showed. He and Tappy were captive, already lost; resistance was pointless, especially when he didn't know anything anyway. "Yes."

"The Gaol supply us with certain techniques of observation," Malva said. Now the panel behind her showed the surface of a planet that looked very much like the one they were on. "The natives are hostile to the Gaol; they do not resist openly, so are allowed to exist, but neither do they volunteer any information." The honkers appeared, marching by in much the manner Jack had seen when he and Tappy had first arrived on this world. "But we do not need them. We are able to survey the natural pattern of life on the planet, and to detect net changes caused by unnatural interference. Every living thing's spirit remains with it until death, and for a time after its death. A dichotomy manifested. We traced it to the unnatural death of two salamanders. Do you understand?"

"We did kill and eat salamanders," Jack agreed. "But any animal could have done that!"

"The balance of nature is finely tuned. There was a slight excess in deaths. Next day there was a similar excess, but we could not locate it or confirm it; it was only a probability of outside interference."

So the creatures they had eaten had given away their presence! Jack had never heard of such a survey, but he had no reason to doubt it. Why should Malva lie to him, instead of torturing him?

"In due course we found their vacated spirits, and were sure," the woman continued. "We were at that point able to get a fix on the aura of the Chrysalis. Rather than intercept it immediately, we elected to wait to see where it went. That would enable us to root out whatever remaining traitors to the empire were on the planet and diminish the likelihood of any assistance being rendered to the next Imago, should it manifest here. Do you understand?"

He was appalled, but he did understand. "Yes. You intended to root out every part of the weed."

"Then, abruptly, the aura faded," Malva said. "We had to act immediately, lest the Imago be lost. We brought the container in and enclosed the region of the aura's last manifestation." She peered closely at Jack. "Something happened in that night which we do not understand. What damped out the aura of the Chrysalis?"

Suddenly it came clear. The honker! The honker had injected something into Tappy that formed a tight marble-sized ball under the skin between her breasts. A timed-release capsule of a chemical that somehow counteracted the broadcast of the aura the ship was tracking. Tappy, realizing that they were probably being tracked, had talked to the honker when she bought food from him. The honker had accepted the pretext— what need did it have of an Earthly quarter?— and made its preparations. Then it had come and done what was necessary, returning the quartet. It had not been a sexual attack; the honker had a penis which remained unused. It had been a favor to the Imago, which the honkers surely recognized and supported. Because the small operation was painful, it had anesthetized them both, giving it time to do the job, and for the chemical to circulate slowly through Tappy's body, interfering with the manifestation of the distinctive aura. Tappy had not known exactly how the honker was going to help— probably the honker had not known either, until checking with others of his kind— so had been frightened at first. As a child might be frightened of the doctor, despite knowing the doctor was trying to help.

As long as any of that ball of substance remained with Tappy, the Gaol instruments could not track her. Yet what difference did it make now? Jack had blundered them into captivity anyway.

Still, if there was any chance at all that Tappy could escape, that marble on her chest would be invaluable. It didn't show under her nightie, even with her jacket hanging open; though her breasts were nascent, the stretch of cloth between them masked the swelling. The minions of the Gaol, so certain of their power, had not bothered to search the captives at all. The marble had escaped notice. Jack was not about to tell this empire quisling about it.

"Is your silence one of ignorance or resistance?" Malva inquired.

He wanted to lie, but found he could not. That required too great an act of volition. His choice was between the truth and the refusal to answer. He refused to answer.

Malva nodded, unsurprised. "So you do know something, and the Imago has corrupted you. Let me remind you of the alternatives. There are possible advantages to cooperation—" The screen behind her showed a bed sliding out from a wall, and to this bed came the image of Malva herself, her cloak dissolving away, her breasts and buttocks quivering as she walked. From the other side came Jack, his clothing dissolving similarly away to reveal the erection he really did have. Malva lay on the bed, smiling invitingly as she spread her legs.

But Jack knew this was merely a sophisticated show. This woman had no interest in him, only in his information. She might indeed offer sex to him, to obtain it, but the moment she got it she might have his skin made into a lampshade. Meanwhile, the thought of Tappy as a drugged and imprisoned thing, kept artificially alive for most of a century, was such a horror that Malva's temptation became anathema. He remained silent.

"And disadvantages to noncooperation," Malva continued after a moment. The bed became the rack, the curtains of the room transforming to flames, and the body on the rack became Tappy, her small breasts shaking as she writhed with fear. The Jack figure donned a hood and fetched a blazing red-tipped poker. He extended that tip toward Tappy's genital region, angling it, threatening to rape her with it.

The substitution of Tappy as the object of torture was startling. Not only did it show the versatility of Malva's control of the images, it betrayed the falsity of them. There was no marble-swelling between the image's breasts. Malva didn't know about that, and he would not tell her. He was unable to look away, but he tuned out the image as irrelevant. Malva was bluffing, and he had found her out, and now his hand was greatly strengthened. He was learning about bluffs!

"What is your statement?" Malva inquired.

That gave him more latitude; he no longer had to betray Tappy or be silent. He called Malva's bluff. "You can not torture the Imago. You probably can't torture me either, or you would have done it by now. Your masters don't give you that much authority."

Malva pursed her lips as the mountains reappeared behind her. "You may be ignorant, but you are not entirely stupid. It is true that I am limited to the mechanisms of oblique persuasion. But it is also true that the end will be the same, and that you will find it far more comfortable to deal with me than with the Gaol. I will proffer one further offer, which will not be repeated. Give me the information I require— I see that you do have it— and I will grant you one year of extremely comfortable life with the woman of your choice, which may be me or a simulation of Tappy or any other you prefer, and subsequent return unharmed to your own planet. Face the Imago."

Jack obeyed the directive. He turned to face Tappy, who stood without moving. She looked like a street waif in her oversized Jacket over her nightie. Her only expression was a single small tear on one cheek.

"Imago, I can not force you to do anything," Malva said. "But I can free your host to give your companion an honest answer. You know enough of the Gaol and their human minions to judge whether my offer will be honored if Jack agrees. You know he must make his own decision, based on the truth, so you have no motive to deceive him. Answer him: is my offer valid?"

The tear accelerated. Slowly Tappy nodded yes.

"Your answer, Jack?"

It seemed like folly, since the woman would discover the marble the moment Tappy was stripped for her incarceration. Yet two things stopped Jack from capitulating. The first was that he suspected Malva was still bluffing; she was desperate to make him tell, so was pulling out all the stops, and she wouldn't do that without good reason. So there had to be reason for him not to cooperate. Maybe there was some way to save Tappy. Or maybe it was simply that Malva was expected to handle things, and the Gaol would be annoyed with her if she left a loose end, and would demote her or replace her with a rival.

The second reason was that no matter how much objective sense it might make, he could not betray Tappy, and this would be a betrayal. Her tear told him that. "No."

"Go down the ramp and enter the small craft at the exit," Malva said. "It will convey you to the Gaol." Her voice was controlled, but Jack thought he could detect a slight stress in it: the stress of fear or of fury. Whatever else he had failed to do, he had scored against her.

But his body was already moving, as was Tappy's. That single shot from the null-volition pistol had really fixed them! Apparently the effect continued until nullified, and no other restraints were needed. Not for enough time to get them safely to the Gaol. Malva had to be sure of that, or she would have taken other precautions.

Now, of course, his doubts loomed. What had he accomplished by his defiance? He hadn't saved Tappy, but he had doomed himself. He was a painter, not a hard-nosed negotiator!

There were two seats in the little vehicle, which looked like a gull-wing door car with the doors left open. They got in, but the doors did not swing down. Instead a slight scintillation indicated the presence of a force field that sealed in the car. Then it rolled forward, accelerating like a jet plane, and took off. Those gull wings really were wings! This was an airplane. Jack would have gaped, but no one had authorized him to do so, so his mouth remained closed.

The plane flew low over the forest, evidently programmed so precisely that the close clearance was no problem. Then it lifted, and Jack saw the huge crater valley where they had entered this world, with its gigantic symbols around the rim. The symbols that moved grandly around, periodically, like the elapsed-time ring on a diver's watch, making a new setting.

Now, flying over it, he saw that the depression was far too regular to be a natural crater. It was either artificial or had been excavated and reshaped after its formation, for some alien purpose.

That reminded him of another mystery: the brief redness of the river he had seen. What could have caused that? There was so much about this planet he still didn't know!

There was a touch on his shoulder. Jack turned to face it, taking it as a command for attention, before he realized the significance of it. Tappy was the only one beside him— and she had done it. She had volition!

Tappy's finger touched her lips in the signal for silence. You bet! A radio could be monitoring this cabin, as a routine precaution. If she had somehow thrown off the effect of the shot, he would keep her secret. But his own body remained helpless.

Tappy pointed to the panel before them. He looked, again obeying the implied directive. He could obey her as well as Malva; it didn't matter who gave the orders, or how they were given.

There was something like a steering wheel there, recessed into the panel. That must be for use by the pilot when this craft was not on programmed flight.

Tappy's hand extended until it touched the panel, then slid along it until she felt the wheel. She nodded. Then she found Jack's arm and guided his hand to the wheel. She made a gesture of pulling it toward him.

She was telling him to fly this thing? He looked at her, startled. She nodded yes, knowing his question.

But he couldn't do that! He had no idea how to operate a normal airplane, let alone this alien craft.

But the alternative was to let the two of them be flown to meet the Gaol. He had no idea what the aliens looked like, but formed a mental picture of huge sluglike monsters whose proboscises racked out the guts of human beings. Surely false, but it made the point: it was better to crash this craft than to suffer what the aliens had in store for them.

He had been given his directive. Now his arms and head were free. He took hold of the wheel and pulled it toward him. It didn't come. It was locked in place. Probably it required a special key or code to free it, to prevent exactly such an accident as this one.

Tappy, aware of his problem, turned around in her seat and reached behind it. In a moment she brought something from a compartment there. It was her leg brace— with the radiator! The fools had dumped it in the craft, for delivery to the Gaol along with the captives. What arrogance of assurance!

She touched another orange button with her little finger, pointing it out to him. Then she handed him the brace and touched the panel, her hand coming to rest on the wheel.

Use that on the wheel? It would null it into nonexistence, together with the entire front of the craft!

But Tappy was insistent. It was a different button she had indicated, and evidently it did a different thing. If not, did it matter? They would be better off to crash and die than to fall into the hands— tentacles?— of the Gaol, he was sure.

Jack pointed the radiator at the center of the wheel, nerved himself, and touched the large scarlet button. It glowed. Then he touched the correct orange button.

There was a click. That was all. Nothing changed. He turned off the radiator, lest he brush a functioning button and do something drastic.

Tappy found his hands and took back the radiator. Jack, frustrated, gripped the wheel again and yanked, if only to show the futility of the act. It came out of its recess and locked into place— and the craft wobbled.

Jack stifled his astonishment, realizing that, once again, Tappy had known what she was doing. That setting of the radiator had evidently shorted out the locking mechanism, which might be magnetic, and freed the wheel. He had just overridden the programming, assuming manual control. It was that easy. Now all he had to do was fly this thing.

He turned the wheel, clockwise, just a bit. The craft veered right. He turned the wheel back, and the craft responded. He pushed down, and the craft dropped. He lifted, and it rose. He squeezed it, and the craft accelerated.

He had the hang of it already! This thing was made for an idiot to fly. That was fortunate, because he was an idiot in this respect.

Tappy touched his arm. He looked at her. She made a gesture of a circle, then pointed up.

Fly up? After circling? He didn't think he understood. Why the circle? Unless the circle represented the crater valley— or a compass. They had been going north from the crater, and "up" on a compass could indicate north.

He leaned toward her. "North?" he whispered.

She nodded agreement.

He turned the craft until it was flying north. At the rate it was going, they would soon get there, if it was on this planet. But where was he supposed to land? He could do so only on Tappy's directive, and she was blind.

How had she thrown off the volition nullification? Suddenly the answer was there: the honker's marble! Not only had it made it impossible for the aliens to track the Imago, it had made their weapon lose its effect on Tappy. Either she had thrown off the effects of the weapon rapidly, or she had never suffered loss of volition at all. She might have faked it, knowing that Jack had no control, until there was a chance to escape.

If he had betrayed her, and told Malva about the marble, they never would have had this chance. And Tappy had been unable to tell him that. She had had to let him decide himself, and had been afraid he would succumb.

How glad he was that he had not! He had been more of a man than he had taken himself to be.

Something flashed on the panel, attracting his gaze. Two little blips were there, blinking. Oh-oh; he had a notion what they might represent.

He looked around. There, at about seven o'clock on the dial, were two flying craft similar to this one. They were closing fast.

He knew what had happened. The alarm had been given the moment he overrode the program and assumed manual control. Other ships had been sent out to bring him in again.

He leaned toward Tappy. "We're in trouble," he whispered. Then he managed one tiny act of his own volition, with great effort: he kissed her ear. Perhaps it was possible only because he knew she would like it.