John D. MacDonald

Hand from the Void

Chapter One

Jeff Rayden had picked up the latest copy of Crux at the airline terminal. As the airport tilted and fled off behind the big liner and as the motor sounds altered, he unfastened the safety belt and opened the magazine, holding it so that Julie O’Reilly beside him could see the pages. He found what he wanted on pages sixteen through nineteen.

Borough Boss — Pictures by Julie O’Reilly, Picture and Text by Jeff Rayden.

It was typical Rayden and O’Reilly. The pictures and text fitted together like a hand in a glove. The assignment had been a small-fry political thief named Schonderhauzen.

They had covered his home life, his official life and his amusements. The coverage was wry, tolerant, skeptical and amused. It did not damn Mr. Schonderhauzen, but it very neatly booted him out of public life.

“Number sixty-nine,” Julie said in her gamin’s voice, huskiness like a streak of rust along a gleaming wire.

“That many! Deliver me from the statistical mind.”

“Crux,” she said primly, “owes a large part of its two and a half million circulation to the deft dismembering of major and minor public figures by those two cynical whiz-kids of modern journalismБ"

“Knock it off.”

“Just quoting, darling.”

For a time they studied the article again. It was Julie who reached over and snapped the middle of the final page with an oval, blood-red fingernail. It was a gesture of dismissal.

“Shall I say it, or will you, Jeff?” She looked at him, almost without expression. She was a small trim girl with oversized gray eyes and a shade too heavy a mouth, set in a small pale face framed by chestnut hair that sometimes glinted red in the sun. The morning light above the haze of the city struck diagonally and cruelly at her, and he saw the tiny lines of strain the past two years had etched at the outer comers of her eyes. In the beginning, when it had been fun — a vast lark — there had been no lines. He felt an almost overpowering tenderness for a moment, and thrust it away from him.

“So I’ll say it. So it stinks. And so did the one before, and the one before that. We’re losing the touch, baby.”

“Because we’ve lost each other?”

“Trust a woman to hoke it up.”

Her grey eyes narrowed. “Trust a man to overlook the obvious. Darn it, Jeff, we were in love. What happened to us?”

The knife-edge smile was a part of him. “Too much dough and too much reputation and too many assignments. An international beat is a little outsized for the delicate emotions. Love has to be incarcerated in a cottage in order to survive, I believe.”

She turned to face him more directly. She put both small capable hands on his forearm. “Please, Jeff. It’s more than that. Something in you has spoiled it for us. You used to believe in a certain amount of fundamental decency in people. Somewhere along the line you’ve lost that belief andБ"

“Pardon me,” the pretty hostess said, bending over the seat, “Mr. Rayden and Miss O’Reilly? We’ve had a CD order on you.”

Jeff frowned. “But our tickets are right through to San Ramon.”

“I know, sir. But you had an appointment with Mr. Borden Means in San Ramon at seven this evening. To get materials for an article about him, I believe. Mr. Means has made arrangements to have you left off at Dos Almas. You can see him there.”

“I thought this was a scheduled flight,” Jeff said curiously. “And I don’t remember any stop to be made at Dos Almas. Won’t the CAA have something to say about that? Is it far out of the way?”

The hostess looked dubious for a moment. “It is odd, but Mr. Means is a very important man in that part of Texas. In the whole country too, I guess. It’s about twenty-five minutes flying time out of our way.”

The hostess went back up the aisle. Jeff winked at Julie. “A special deal is always nice. This Texas spellbinder must have some weight to fling around, eh?”

He put the latest copy of Crux into the briefcase on his lap. As he did so, he saw the manila folder containing the copies of speeches made over national network time by Mr. Borden Means. He was becoming a national figure with almost alarming rapidity. Now it was time for Rayden and O’Reilly to chip away at his feet until the clay was exposed for all the readers of Crux to see. There is a big market for proof that all men are second-rate. It makes the second-raters feel so much more self-satisfied.

The manila folder of speeches had begun to irritate Jeffrey Rayden. Means certainly had nothing to contribute to the field of human knowledge. In fact, he could be called a glorification of the word crank. A muscular bachelor of fifty-two, he had accumulated a fat fortune in Texas oil lands. Now he had given up the accumulation of more money arid had purchased network time to lecture to America.

No, the man had nothing to say, and yet — in the way he said it... Each time Jeff read the speeches he had felt his heart begin to pound, felt the flush of excitement on his face, felt a rebirth of confidence in himself and in the world. He knew that it was puerile to be aroused by tag words and emotional cliches. Yet all Means had to do was say something about home and mother — and he took you back to the summer evenings of childhood, the dusk walk to the corner store for ice cream, the murmur of voices on the front porches, the aimless lazy slap of a screen door...

Well, he thought, no matter how competent this Means is in the semantics department, Julie and I will bust his little myth. Then he will be like all the others. Loud little men with egocentric ideas and concentrated lust for power.

The aircraft had let down to a few hundred feet over the baked rock, sand and sage of the Texas flats due east of San Ramon. The other passengers, checking their watches, had begun to complain loudly, and the hostess was kept busy placating them. Jeff looked curiously out the side window and saw a group of dazzling white frame buildings wheel by, saw beyond them the wide main street of a small town, the road narrowing toward the crested horizon.

Safety belts were fastened and the plane faltered as the wheels came down. Rubber keened against concrete and the big plane came at last to rest. Stairs were wheeled against the side door and Jeff and Julie, intensely conscious of the annoyed stares of the other passengers, descended. It took a few minutes to get their luggage out. Julie hovered over the big shabby suitcase containing her photographic supplies with all the earnestness of a mother hen.

The stairs were wheeled back and a blond young man in chauffeur’s uniform took Julie’s two bags and guided them over to a black sedan of foreign make. A man was standing beside the sedan. Jeff recognized Means from his pictures. Those pictures had shown an almost theatrical ugliness, but they had been unable to capture the softness and brooding quality of the deep-set eyes under the short shelving brow, the warmth and personal quality of the smile.

His voice had a richness to match his smile. He held out one hand to each of them. “I’m sorry I changed your plans this way. But I thought it would give us a better chance to get acquainted. We’re leaving shortly to drive into San Ramon for my lecture tonight. We can talk in the car. No one will interrupt us.”

Jeff fought against his instantaneous liking for the man. “It takes a pretty big wheel to divert a scheduled airliner, Mr. Means.”

Means turned to Julie. “My dear, I’ve admired your work for a long time. It has heart. I want to be able to help the two of you. Both of you are frightened. I want to see you both doing the sort of work you were doing a year ago.”

The blonde, aqua-eyed chauffeur had stowed the bags away. “Ready, sir,” he said.

“We’ll talk about that later then,” Means said. His eyes twinkled. “I can see that Jeffrey is itching to take issue with me. Let’s get in the car. After you, Jeffrey. We’ll go out to my place here and pick up my secretary. I keep a small place here at Dos Almas. Sometimes I have to get away from people. My real home outside San Ramon has become a sort of office, I guess.”

The car purred along smoothly. Means’ place was not far from the airstrip. They turned in the curving drive and parked under a porte-cochere. They went in. The adobe house was furnished in Spanish motif. A tall girl of the same coloring as the chauffeur stood by the huge stone fireplace.

Means said, “This is Laura, my good right arm. Laura, meet the team of Ray-den and O’Reilly. They’ve come to dissect me with a dull scalpel.”

Jeff blushed. “But we aren’t planningБ"

Means put his arm around Jeff’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate pat. It had an odd effect. Jeff hated to be touched. But this seemed different. This gesture seemed to spring from a vast warmth, and it made him think of his father, dead now for ten, nearly eleven years. The gesture and the memory made the corners of Jeff’s eyes sting, and made him turn almost rudely away from Borden Means.

“Nice layout here, Mr. Means,” Jeff said harshly, conscious of Julie’s angry glance in his direction. “Very plush. The oilfields did right by you, eh?”

Means gave him a peculiarly boyish smile. “Now I should say something about luck, I suppose. Luck had nothing to do with it. I just spent thirty-three years being quicker and shrewder and smarter than my fellow men. I guess you know enough about the norm to realize that mine isn’t too much of a feat.”

Laura said, “Mr. Means, if I could have a minute.”

“Surely, my dear,” he said. “Excuse us for a moment.” He went out with the girl.

Jeff winked at Julie. “Now I’d call that secretary a dish. Isn’t it funny the way all these bachelor millionaires seem to grab off secretaries that are a shade on the exotic side.”

“Your dirty mind is showing, darling,” Julie said acidly.

“So you’ve fallen under his spell! Fancy that!”

“Please,” she said. She walked away from him.

“Maybe you can get to be his personal photographer, honey.”

She turned and her eyes blazed. “Will you shut up?”

Means came back with Laura. “We’re ready to go, children.” Laura sat in the front seat with the chauffeur. Means sat in back between Jeff and Julie.

“I can make with the questions now?” Jeff asked as soon as the car had nosed through the village street and begun to pick up speed on the two-lane highway.

“Of course,” Borden Means said.

Jeff leaned forward and worked the crank which glassed off the chauffeur’s compartment.

Jeff took out his notebook. “Mr. Means, you’ve never stated your purpose. Your talks are making quite a dent in America. You have a following. Some say you’re after political office. Others say you’re merely in love with the sound of your own voice. I’m being blunt to save time. Just what are you after?”

“A better world, Jeff.” And his words seemed to make it almost attainable.

“Oh, come off it!” Jeff said crossly. “Thousands of messiahs have gone around bleating about that. It’s a nice goal. But I wouldn’t call it very specific. What do you want — as an individual?”

“To live in a better world. And that’s the same thing both of you want, I’m sure. Now I’ll be a bit personal. In a better world maybe you two would not have lost each other. You had a relationship that was good. Now where is it?”

Jeff looked across him at Julie. She sat with a forgotten camera in her hands, her eyes far away. Tear paths glittered on her cheeks.

“We could have used a better world, Mr. Means,” she said. Her voice shook.

“All right then,” Jeff said harshly. “Let’s talk about methods.”

“I talk to people,” Means said calmly. “That’s rather simple, isn’t it? I talk to them about the things every man wants. We’ve lost sight of our objective. I help people regain their faith in this world and in a good future for mankind. When enough of them realize, through me, that a better world is attainable, then they will band together to make that world possible.”

“You’ve swayed a lot of people, Mr. Means. Do you have any idea of the enormous power that gives you?”

“I have a very excellent understanding of that power, Jeff. And I intend to use it.”

Jeff hunched forward in his seat, turning more directly toward Means. “Now we’re getting somewhere! How are you going to use it?”

“To create a better world for man to live in,” Means said softly.

Jeff threw himself back in the seat. “The same old merry-go-round,” he said bitterly. “You keep that guard too high.”

Means stared directly into Jeff’s face. His whole appearance changed. There was a look of almost unearthly power and purpose about him. “Has your mind grown so thin and small, Jeffrey Rayden, that you cannot comprehend a just motive? Must you forever search for the tarnish on the reverse face of truth, find foolishness and guilt in a dream of a better world? Must you complicate simplicity?”

The heavy voice was like the toll of a distant bell. The hair at the back of Jeff’s neck prickled and his breath came short.

“It... sounds too good to be true,” he said weakly.

The miles spun by in silence. Borden Means was himself again. He talked to them each in turn about their work. He displayed an amazingly exact memory, quoting verbatim from articles as much as a year old.

They entered the outskirts of the boom city of San Ramon at ten minutes after seven, rather than at the hour of four o’clock when the plane would have dropped them there. Off to the right was the vast new San Ramon amphitheatre, an open air structure of great size and seating capacity. Already the big parking lots were almost filled and loaded buses were discharging passengers near the gates.

“They’re coming early to hear you,” Jeff said. “It doesn’t start until eight thirty, does it?”

“The ones who come later than this will have to stand,” Means said. There was no glimmer of pride in his tone. It was just a statement of fact.

He rolled the window down and spoke to Laura. She turned and handed back two tickets. “These are for you,” Means said. “In the only reserved section. I guess it will be best to drop you at your hotel. The Blue Bonnet House, please, Paul. They’re holding your rooms. You can take a taxi out from there.”

“Now wait a minute!” Jeff said, his mind spinning. “How would you know we had reservations? And how would you know the hotel?”

“Laura checked for me and told them you’d register later than your wire stated. The Blue Bonnet was the first place she tried. It’s the newest and the best.”

The cab deposited them at the main gate of the amphitheatre at eight-twenty-five. An unbelievable number of thousands stood outside, unable to see the stage, waiting for the voice of Borden Means to ring out from the amplifiers. As they went down the aisle the size of the seated multitude stunned and bewildered Jeff. Television technicians readied their cameras. The stage, under its arch, was brightly lighted.

It was only seconds after they were seated that Jeff realized miserably that he and Julie were quarreling again.

“But, Jeff,” she said, “couldn’t you even feel his sincerity?”

“Forceful, yes. Sincere? I can’t say. Neither can you. Look at the surface of it. A crackpot oil millionaire with a messiah complex. How can you or I tell whether he believes what he says?”

“I know he does!”

“Don’t you see what I mean, Julie? You’re believing the evidence of your senses. Nothing more. Sight, hearing. You don’t have a special sense for detecting sincerity. And anything you can see or hear can be faked. Believe me. Reality is a pretty darn flexible thing when all you’ve got to detect it is a set of electro-chemical reactions in the brain.”

“But he’s special!”

“He has a special amount of animal magnetism. But what did he say? A lot of people band together and do something. Do what? Make him president? Make a special Borden Means Day when everybody goes around kissing each other and giving gifts?”

“That Laura has odd eyes. Did you notice?”

“You’re a specialist at the non sequitur, baby.”

“I’ll bet that chauffeur is her brother. And I’ll betБ"

“Here’s that man again,” Jeff said.

It was twenty long paces from the wings to the microphones. The crowd roar swelled with each step he took until at last when he stood in front of the microphones, the volume of sound had reached an almost incredible peak. Everyone was on his feet.

Borden Means stood for long seconds. He stared out at the crowd. He wore a somber, brooding expression. He looked tiny on the vast stage, and yet larger than life. Suddenly he flung both arms up, palms outward. An unseen knife cut all the sound down to an unearthly stillness. Means slowly lowered his arms to his sides.

“I know each one of you,” he said in a quiet voice. The amplifiers picked up the sound and flung it out across the sea of faces.

“I stand here and I look into each human heart. I see an aching fear. I see uncertainty. If I saw nothing else, I should give up my plan.”

As the roar started again, he quieted it immediately.

“What is this other thing I see in each heart? It is a small and timid thing. It shrinks from the cruelties and banalities of this world. Some call it love. Some call it hope. Whatever it is called, it is the small indomitable thing that enables us to go on... and on.”

At that point Jeff ceased being able to follow the speech as words. It was as though Means spoke with some new tongue that reached directly into his mind. It played with emotions rather than with the intellect. The great voice rose and fell, more delicate at times than a violin, and suddenly as powerful as the northern seas.

Jeff had the feeling that Means talked to him alone. He would die for Borden Means.

Being an adult is a lonely affair. Means took away the loneliness.

And at the end Jeff was on his feet with all the others, screaming his approval, yelling out his eternal dedication to Borden Means and all he stood for or wanted to stand for. As Means left the stage Jeff managed to disengage himself from the spell. He looked around. Near him a plump housewife held her clasped hands at her breast and wept. A burly, pimpled young man wore a look of dedication. Beside him Julie stood with her head bowed, almost as though she prayed.

When Jeff let himself into his hotel room, Canada Haskill, Managing Editor of Crux, was standing by the windows. Haskill, ten years before, had been a “boy” editor. Now he clung, with an almost feverish intensity, to all he could retain of the mannerisms and appearance of a Harvard senior. He was lean and languid, with colorless eyes and long anemic fingers, which were forever at work on a pipe.

“Good boy, Rayden. O’Reilly around? Phone her for me, will you? Tell her to pop over. Impromptu conference, you know.”

“The office didn’t tell me you’d be in town, Mr. Haskill.” Jeff said, reaching for the phone.

“Last minute affair, Rayden. Just a cross-check. Wanted to check my own impressions with what you’d do on this Means fella.”

It was the first positive clue that Haskill was not as pleased as he once had been with the teamwork of Rayden and O’Reilly. Jeff got her on the line. It would have been simpler to go across the hall and get her, but easier to warn her this way.

“Julie? Mr. Haskill’s here in my room. Want to drop over?”

Julie arrived five minutes later, her manner quite normal. Haskill sat in the biggest chair, reaming out his pipe. “Ah, O’Reilly! Nice to see you. Want to get your slant on this Means fella, children. I heard him tonight.”

Julie gave Jeff a warning glance. “I personally think he is a great man,” she said.

Haskill coughed. “Then you wouldn’t cut him up into little pieces when you do the article?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Jeff cut in, his voice angry. “Now let’s get the record straight, chief. This is a peculiar thing. Julie has her impression. I have mine. You heard the guy tonight. All right. Then you know what he’s after. He stated it tonight. He’s forming his own third party. You know what that means. He’s a spellbinder. Give him enough rope and he’ll cut established voting lines to bits. Hell, he might even get to be president.”

Haskill was expressionless. “So?”

“So I think he’s dangerous. I think he’s a fake and a phoney. I think he needs cutting down to size.”

The silence lengthened. Julie walked aimlessly over to the bureau. She said in a thin voice. “I think that when Jeff thinks it over he mightБ"

“Please,” Canada Haskill said softly.

More silence. He got out a pouch, filled the pipe, tamped it down with his finger. Staring into the bowl he said, “I heard the talk and afterward I spent a half hour with Mr. Means. I guess I’ve gotten pretty cynical.” He looked up with a startling swiftness, meeting Jeff’s eye. “But I revere that man! I feel he is thoroughly sincere. I have pledged the support of Crux. I am with him as a man and as an editor every last inch of the way.”

“But did he say anything? Did he have any specific suggestions?” Jeff said angrily.

“He is a modern Lincoln,” Canada Haskill said reverently.

“Now look here. Lincoln was a smart statesman. He had concrete proposals. He was aБ"

“I came up here, Rayden, because when I pledged the support of Crux I told Mr. Means that I would place the team of Rayden and O’Reilly at his disposal. You two would have been the nerve channel between the greatest man and the greatest publication of our times. I had hoped that you both would be sufficiently perceptive to see a great man and recognize him as such. But I find that O’Reilly is the only one to see it.”

“I can prove he’s a phoney!” Jeff said. His tone was hot and he knew that his face was unpleasantly red.

Canada Haskill’s sneer was gentle, “I’m afraid not, Rayden. O’Reilly, do you have any objection to reporting to Mr. Means? I’ll assign a writer to work with you. We want the best possible photographic coverage of Borden Means.”

“I would be glad to, if JeffБ"

Haskill silenced her with a wave of his pipe. He lit the pipe with a trick lighter, puffed out a cloud of smoke. “My dear O’Reilly, Mr. Rayden is no longer employed by Crux.”

“Down the garden path,” Jeff said.

“Please, Rayden. This isn’t a decision I suddenly made. I spent two hours yesterday reading your work in back issues. You’ve slipped, Rayden. Rather badly. I had hoped to work you into this new idea...” He sucked hard on the pipe, peered down into it again and then knocked it out into the ashtray.

“I won’t beg for another chance,” Jeff said stiffly.

“It would be awkward.”

“Then I quit too!” Julie said hotly.

“Don’t be a complete sap,” Jeff said. “If you quit on my account, I’ll feel responsible for you. And I’d rather be free to make my own decisions.”

Her face flamed red for a moment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Haskill,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. It was just a gesture.”

“If I’m no longer working for you, Haskill,” Jeff said, “I’m sure you won’t mind taking your little conference someplace else.”

Haskill stood up, yawned. “Come on, O’Reilly. We’ll mail your final check to your bank as usual, Rayden. The contract calls for six month’s pay in case of termination without notice. Your desk will be cleaned out for you. Advise the office where you want the contents shipped. And please don’t make the mistake of asking for the release of any of the rights we hold on your past work.”

They left the room. Forty minutes later Rayden was opening a bottle of prime bourbon.

Chapter Two

The Memory Veil

Kiddle was a sleazy little man who looked as though he were fashioned of suet. He wet his lips constantly and masked furtiveness with jerky expansive gestures.

“It’s the investment,” he said with an attempt at firmness.

Jeff made marks on the tablecloth with his knife. “Okay,” he sighed, “but please come off the pose that you’re publishing a respectable magazine. That rag of yours is a classic example of poor taste, girlies and ax murders. I’ve got the dough to finance my own investigations. I’ve been digging into Means’ past for the last three weeks. I’ll be frank. I’ve been trying to peddle my wares, but Means has picked up such powerful backing in the last month that nobody wants to touch it. I had to come to you, Kiddle. Even though I despise your rag, it does have a circulation of almost a million.”

“I got to be sure of your stuff, Rayden.”

“You know my reputation, Kiddle. So I’ll finance myself and you won’t reimburse. Now, what about the rate? I’ll feed you the data in four-thousand-word chunks.”

“Maybe five hundred?” Kiddle said cautiously.

Jeff snorted. “Maybe twenty-five hundred.”

They settled for fourteen-hundred and fifty, dependent on Kiddle acceptance of Jeff’s material as acceptable for the readers of Unveiled.

“Now what you got so far?” Kiddle asked.

For a moment Jeff felt a touch of wild laughter in his brain. How would Kiddle react if he heard about the first step of the investigation? Kiddle would send for the little men with the nets.

And, Jeff thought, it might be the right answer.

He could still not quite believe what had happened that first morning after he had been fired. He had wanted to find out how Means could divert an airliner on a scheduled run. He had gone to the big desk at the San Ramon Terminal and had talked to the clerk.

“What was the answer on Flight 49 coming in late yesterday?”

The clerk stared at him. “Late? It was right on the button.”

“Oh, they were able to make up the time, I guess.”

“I don’t get it, sir. Make up what time?”

“Look,” said Jeff. “Don’t play dumb with me. I’m Jeffrey Rayden. We were on Flight 49, westbound, yesterday. There was a Change of Destination for the two of us and Flight 49 let down at the strip at Dos Almas. The stewardess said it was twenty-five minutes flying time out of the way. I’m trying to find out how Means could do such a thing.”

“Dos Almas?” the clerk said with infuriating blankness, “Strip?”

“Check your records, will you please? I don’t like your attitude.”

The clerk flushed and went away. He came back with the terminal manager, a big man with a hearty manner. Jeff explained it all again.

The man laughed uneasily. “I don’t understand all this, Mr. Rayden. You see, just by coincidence, I was on that flight myself. A little conference up the line. There were no unscheduled stops, and I never heard of Dos Almas, believe me. If there’s a strip there, I’d know about it, wouldn’t I?”

“Where’s that stewardess?”

“She went on with the flight, of course. Shell be laying over in Los Angeles, I expect, Mr. Rayden.”

“Okay,” Jeff had said, smiling thinly, “we’ll try a new approach. Miss O’Reilly and I were certainly on the manifest. So how come we didn’t get off the plane here? Did we get out at ten thousand feet and walk down to Dos Almas?”

The clerk coughed. He said, “The full manifest list arrived here, Mr. Blaid.”

“And you’re lying!” Jeff said hotly. “I get it now. You boys did Means a favor but you don’t want it on the records. You might catch hell. So you’re trying to snowjob me. I’m not that simple.”

Mr. Blaid had immediately lost his hearty manner. His eyes turned ugly and small. “Friend, I don’t know what your game is. If you’re serious, you better hunt up a good doctor. This airline doesn’t make unscheduled stops except under emergency conditions. Borden Means couldn’t force us to make a stop hike that. I was on the flight. I remember you.”

“And you saw me get off here?”

“My dear fellow, where else would you have gotten off?”

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

When he reached the door he looked back across the terminal and saw Blaid and the clerk staring after him with the look of angry pity with which the incomprehensibly insane are usually favored.

No, it wouldn’t do to tell Kiddle that episode and then follow it up with the real twist — the real kickeroo — the parsley on top. It made him dizzy to think of it. Two hours in the public library at San Ramon, and finding that according to all the reference books, there was no such place as Dos Almas. It didn’t exist. It never had.

“What’s the matter?” Kiddle asked. “You look funny. You gonna give me the dope you got, or aren’t you?”

There was other information for Kiddle. Information he would find it easier to accept.

“When the letter from you is in my hand setting forth the terms of our agreement, I’ll tell you what I’ve got,” Jeff said.

“So we go to my office now?”

Kiddle’s personal office was overly flamboyant. On the rest of the floor of the office building occupied by the staff of Unveiled, the offices were dim little plywood cubicles.

Jeff read the letter carefully, insisted on two changes, then folded the altered copy neatly and put it in his pocket. He leaned forward.

“Now listen to this. Borden Means was born in eighteen ninety-eight in a shack near Bandera on the Guadeloupe River northwest of San Antonio. He was the third of seven children. His pappy raised sheep and goats. They didn’t have a dime. I talked to some old settlers there. The Means family was dirty, sullen, unfriendly and pretty damn touchy. The birth of the seventh kid killed his old lady. Borden Means took off when he was thirteen. He was big for his age. He got a job as a ranch hand south of Kerrville. I found a guy who worked for the same ranch. Means was truculent, quarrelsome and tough. Big for his age. He got into one jam after another until he enlisted. He went to France in the first war. He never got above corporal. Coming back on the ship he cleaned up in a crap game. Several thousand bucks. He hung onto it and bought himself a spread near San Ramon. He didn’t make any friends. He worked like a fool and plowed every nickel back into more land and more stock. By the time he was twenty-five he had a good ranch. I talked to the guy who was his foreman. Man named Ike Looder. Looder said every hand on the place hated Means’ guts but they couldn’t do anything about it because he could lick every last one of them. Turnover was high. Now we begin to see the business talent cropping out. Say that his childhood gave him a big yen for monetary security. He had no time for women, games, liquor. He saw his chance and unloaded the ranch at a profit. He sank the dough into more land. Then the Barnton Field was proved. His spread was just off the dome. He got a neighbor drunk. Nobody knows what happened. When the guy recovered, Borden Means had his land deeds and claimed he won ’em. They were properly signed over and witnessed and the witnesses wouldn’t talk. Five wells were brought in on the land he took over, Now again we see a new development. He went off to a damn good mining engineering school and hammered enough geology and such into his thick skull, so that he equipped himself to find oil. He got his own crews together and began sinking holes. His luck went sour and he was down to his last buck when he brought in the first well on the Hobarth Field. He’d taken options all over the place. From that day on he’s never had a minute of financial worry.”

“So what can I do with a biography?”

“Use your head. I talked to everybody I could find who has known him for the past twenty years. What do I get? A picture of a sour, tight-fisted, greedy man. He didn’t have a friend in the world up to the time he started those broadcasts. He snapped everybody’s head off, bullied his employees, chiseled whenever he could get away with it. He built himself the equivalent of a feudal castle eighteen miles outside San Ramon right in the middle of the pumped-out field he chiseled to get his initial start in the oil business. All of a sudden he turns into a guy so warm and human he makes your heart bleed. Why? How? It has to be an act. If it is an act, then he could have made more money on the stage and in the movies than he ever made out of oil. He’s phoney all the way through.”

Kiddle shook his head sadly. “Not good enough.”

“Here comes the funny business, Kiddle. Remember I told you about his first foreman, Ike Looder? I went back to see Ike. He’s a nice old guy. Lives on a government pension. I wanted to recheck a few points. Ike couldn’t even remember Borden Means. At first I thought somebody had gotten to Ike and fixed him with money. In an hour of talking with Ike I convinced myself that he’s sincere. I decided that it was just the faulty mind of approaching senility. So I tried to recheck with a few other people. They are all sincere too. But they can’t remember a thing. They acted like I was crazy. Something or somebody got to them and did something, somehow, to their memories. Right now I’m in a funny position. The research was going fine — and now the sources are suddenly going sour.”

“You feel okay?” Kiddle asked nervously.

“I feel fine. Just look at the dimensions of the story. Somebody is so anxious to cover up the real Borden Means that they’re willing to tamper with the minds and memories of the people who knew him as he used to be. You ever see this?” He took a thick folder out of his side pocket and threw it on the desk in front of Kiddle.

The picture on the front was of Borden Means. It captured that odd warmth that had so impressed Jeff.

“Nice photo,” Kiddle said.

“It’s an O’Reilly. You can always recognize the touch. Anyway, this purports to be a true biography of Borden Means. It was written up at his hideaway, which has become a sort of headquarters, and it was printed in Dallas. According to this thing, Means never said an unkind word or did an underhanded thing in his life. It’s devilishly clever. It sticks close enough to the truth so that it checks with public records, and yet it changes the whole personality of the man to what he is right now.”

Kiddle scratched a sagging third chin. “I want something hot and you give me this memory stuff. I don’t get it. We can’t use that. It sounds like some of the stuff we print in one of our fiction books. Weird Adventures. Who can prove this mind business?”

“Okay. Here’s something. In nineteen thirty-seven Means got sore at a guy working for him. He beat him up, broke his jaw, threw him off the place. The guy sued. It hit the front pages in the San Ramon papers. The court awarded the guy six thousand bucks damages. I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the paper. It’s in a safety deposit box here in New York. I can show it to you. Somebody has gotten into the library files in San Ramon, and into the newspaper files.”

“Aha! It’s missing now?” Kiddle said eagerly.

“More than that, Kiddle. The papers have been changed. According to the changes, the case was thrown out of court and the judges gave the plaintiff hell for trying to work a fake suit on Means. I hired a lawyer and had him check the actual court records. They’d been altered too. I dug up the plaintiff. His name is Harry Lamke. Now he thinks it was thrown out of court. The judge is dead. I think technical experts could examine the newspapers and the court records and find that they’ve been altered. The paper I managed to get hold of is a true copy of the edition that day.”

“Or maybe you got a copy that was run off by some bum who hated Means, eh?”

“Whose side are you on, Kiddle?”

“The side of my readers. You get me notarized statements from qualified experts stating that the library and newspaper copies and the court records have been altered. You give me those and your copy you got in a box. Then I give it the lead position in the first issue I can get it into and I pay you five thousand dollars.”

“You’ve got a deal, Kiddle.”

Jeff waited nervously in his room at the Blue Bonnet in San Ramon. It was a smaller cheaper room than when Crux had been paying for the accommodations. Lately he had felt the strengthening of the suspicion that he was being watched carefully. In the wastebasket was the crumpled wire from Kiddle which said, “Wire date when I can expect documentation.”

There was a knock at the room door. Jeff jumped nervously. He hurried to the door and pulled it open. Dr. Clinton Powyth and his assistant came in. Dr. Powyth, Jeff thought, was eyeing him peculiarly.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” Jeff said, smiling. “I’m glad this is over. I’ve made arrangements to have a public stenographer who is also a notary come up and take your report.”

Powyth didn’t sit down, nor did his assistant. Powyth smiled wanly. “I suppose we have nothing to complain about, Mr. Rayden. Your fee was generous.”

“What do you mean?”

“The newspaper people were very pleasant. They even located an extra copy and turned it over to us. A duplicate of the one in their files. I suppose your object is to find some way to smear Mr. Borden Means. I shan’t quarrel with your objective, even though I find it a bit... distasteful.”

“Would it be too much trouble to get to the point?”

“We used all the standard tests and even some special ones applicable to this situation. The newspaper we examined was printed in nineteen thirty-seven. An age test of the ink and the paper showed that. There is no sign of alteration. We examined closely the suspected passages. The type conforms to the type of other issues of that year. I am sorry to say that this has been a wild goose chase.”

“You’re crazy!” Jeff shouted.

Powyth shook his head, almost sadly. “My dear young man! If you are sincere in believing that statement, I suggest that you are the one who should see a competent psychiatrist.”

The two men trooped out and closed the room door gently.

Jeff sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, grinding his palms against his eye sockets. After a time he went for a walk. He felt numb. He remembered reading of the experimentations with rats. When the scientists present healthy rats with clearly insoluble problems, the rats develop a very clear and observable anxiety neurosis. Now he was faced with a clear and inexplicable contradiction of fact. He had gone through seven attics in San Ramon before finding the copy he wanted. There was no chance that it had been planted there for him to find. Nor was it within the realm of possibility that as early as 1937 someone had been altering filed data in preparation for Means’ current campaign.

He walked in the city and was shocked to see the way the little pins had taken hold. Men wore them in their lapels. Women wore them on their blouses. Each was small and green with a white border and the white letters spelling out MEANS. Without exception, the persons who wore the buttons also wore a look of concealed exaltation. Their step was springy, their eyes keen. And Jeff knew that this same phenomenon was being repeated in all the major cities of the entire country. One man, with a voice that could be fire, or honey, or thunder, or silk, had worked this magic.

Already fanatics were talking about a national petition to the president asking him to resign in favor of Borden Means. In the papers the births were listed. Little girls named Bordeen and Borda and Bordette. Thousands of little boys named Borden Means Smith, Borden Means Cohen, Borden Means Levandowski, Borden Means Vanderkamp, Borden Means Mulligan. Unsolicited funds were pouring into the Means’ coffers. The thing was like a gigantic wave that starts far out near the horizon. At first it was just a rounded swelling against the flat sea. Then it began to arc up, moving faster. Now Jeff knew, it had begun to near the shore. Soon the actual crest would appear. The wave would tower higher and higher...

Deep in thought he blundered against a girl who had come out of a shop doorway. He trod heavily on her foot. He saw her wince with pain.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

He saw the green pin on her blouse. Though tears of pain stood in her eyes, she gave him a crooked smile and said, “Borden Means.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t you know? Whenever you’re angry or upset or want to snap somebody’s head off, you just say His name. It’s better than counting to ten. Much better. You know that He wouldn’t ever let himself be angry.” In her eyes there was a deep and fervent glow.

“I think he’s a phoney,” Jeff said.

Her eyes narrowed with quick anger and then softened again. “If you really think that, mister, why don’t you go out and talk to him? Then you’ll believe, too. And you’ll be happier. Much, much happier.”

“Don’t you feel a little silly, worshiping a man?”

“No, it isn’t worship, mister. It’s something else. He doesn’t take the place of my church or my God. He just seems to make me a better person so that I can begin to get some real benefit out of my religion.”

The girl walked on. She had a slight limp which began to correct itself as she walked. Jeff stood and watched her. He said, “Why not? I’ll see what Means says.”

Chapter Three

The Citadel

The main building was of tan stone. It was huge. The narrow windows showed that it was only two stories high. Though the high stone fence encircling the main building and the outbuildings was topped with broken glass and what appeared to be electrified wire, the main gate was unguarded. Jeff drove the small rented sedan through the gates and parked in a lot that contained over twenty other cars. He recognized the long powerful car which Means used, riding in back behind a uniformed chauffeur. You had to give the man that much. He didn’t make any secret of his wealth.

As he entered the huge baronial hallway he heard the busy clacking of office equipment. There was no guard in the hall. He stepped to the doorway of what had apparently been an enormous dining room. There were black carved beams overhead. A dozen girls sat before key punches making cards from the stacked letters before each one of them. An office boy was gathering up the punched cards and taking them to the tabulator operators and to the sorters. Facing the key punch operators was a long row of secretarial desks. There was a girl at each desk, typing busily, referring to the letters which had been indexed by the key punch operators.

So Means was organized effectively, Jeff decided. On his three last broadcasts he had made an appeal for letters from all those who believed in him. The stack of mail sacks, ten feet square, in the corner of the room was ample evidence of that. By feeding the letters through an IBM setup, Means was making himself a list of all his supporters. With that list he would have a most effective direct mailing listing.

A cultured voice at Jeff’s elbow said, “Can I help you, sir?”

He turned quickly. The girl was very fair, with eyes of an odd shade of aqua. “Why, I think so. I’d like to talk to Means.”

“There are so many demands on his time. Are you representing anyone?”

“My name is Jeffrey Rayden. If you could tell him that...”

“Oh, of course. Mr. Means is expecting you.”

“Huh! Are you quite certain of that?”

The girl smiled. “He’s been expecting you for several days, I believe.” She turned and smiled back over her shoulder. “Please follow me, Mr. Rayden.”

He was so numbed by surprise that he walked behind her like an automaton, almost oblivious to his surroundings. The semi-trance faded as the girl, still smiling, stepped aside and indicated a closed door.

Jeff knocked at the door. Means’ voice was remote, but clear. “Come right in, Jeff.”

He turned the knob and walked in. The room was not large. It was not as luxurious as the study in the San Ramon apartment, but it was on the same order.

Means came to meet him and clasped Jeff’s unwilling hand in both of his. “Come and sit down and get it all off your chest, my son.”

Jeff kept his eyes away from Borden Means so as to give him time to collect his thoughts. He lit a cigarette, leaned back in the deep leather chair, and said, “To put it all into one sentence, Means, I just want to tell you I’m convinced that you’re very cleverly covering up your past history, and that past history is more than a bit unsavory.”

Means gave him a puzzled frown. “Unsavory? I fail to remember any shameful act in my past, Jeff. I’ve done some silly things, some foolish things. Every man has. I’ve hurt people through a lack of sufficient understanding, I may hurt people in the same way in the future. The word unsavory does seem a bit stiff, though.”

Jeff leaned forward. “Remember the time you promised Ike Looder sixty a month and then paid him forty at the end of the roundup season?”

“Ike Looder! You know, Jeff, I’d almost forgotten him! Old Ike. Now there’s an oversight. Is he still alive? Good! You see, I’ve probably hurt him without meaning to, merely by forgetting him. I remember that year well. Ike was helping. We had a bad year. I wanted to give him his full pay and a bonus, but he knew how things were. He wouldn’t take over forty a month. When I brought in my first well I sent Ike the back pay plus a thousand dollar bonus. I’ve still got the letter he wrote, thanking me.”

“And that letter is just as valid as the newspaper files in San Ramon, I suppose.”

“I wish I could cure that basic bitterness within you, Jeff. If you give me half a chance I think I can.”

“Now let’s see you worm out of the Harry Lamke incident.”

Means threw back his massive head and laughed. His laughter had the clear ring of a boy’s merriment. “Poor Harry! He’s worked harder all his life on get-rich-quick schemes than he would have on honest living. Did you see him when you came in?”

“See him?”

“Yes. I suppose I’m something of a sucker, Jeff. I hired him to work around the place.”

Jeff flipped his cigarette into the fireplace. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Why can’t we stop sparring, Means? There are no witnesses here. You are a bluff and a phoney, and just to make you more dangerous, you’ve got a couple of special talents that I don’t understand. Did you think I wouldn’t find out that no such place as Dos Almas exists? And those memories you’ve been tampering with. It’s all cut out of the same cloth. What do you want? What are you after?”

Means gave him a puzzled smile. “But I told you that before. On our ride to San Ramon from... Dos Almas. I want a better world. A thousand years ago a man with that wish would have to go into the countryside. In all his lifetime he might speak to one million people. Now better tools are available. I have enough money to use those tools. I have trained myself. I speak nine tongues fluently. Nine important tongues. English, of course, plus Russian, Chinese, Hindustani, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Arabic. At this moment, through recordings, I am speaking to tens of millions all over the world.”

He stood up, his expression exalted. “They are listening to me! They hear me! We shall have a peaceful and united world. Violence will die. Man will live with man in peace and security. This house is the nerve center of an international network. There is talk of my being president. I shall not settle for that. I shall be President of the United and Federated States of the World!” His voice softened. “Do you blame me for using every known weapon at my command, and a few ones new to this world to bring that about?”

“You are a witch or a madman, Means.”

The rich voice spoke so softly that Jeff had to lean forward in order to hear. “Are you quite, quite certain which one of us is mad, my son?”

Jeff’s mind seemed to separate into two distinct parts. In the coldly objective portion he saw to his disgust and quasi-horror that he was weeping, that Borden Means stood by his chair, his hand resting, warm and steady, on Jeff’s shoulder.

And, through his tears, he said an odd thing. He said brokenly, “If all that is true, then you are not the man I’ve investigated. There are two of you, two of you...”

The pressure left his shoulder. He looked up quickly. For a fraction of a second Means’ face was as cold and empty as a rifled tomb. It was a face so dead that it made death itself seem like a quieter form of life. The shocking impact of it turned Jeff’s brain to coldest stone.

And the look was gone as quickly as it had come. But it left behind, in Jeff’s mind, a knowledge of danger more acute than any he had ever faced. For the face he had seen was as merciless as the emptiness of extra-galactic space.

“You are troubled, my son,” Means said.

And now he could sense the ominousness of those words. It was like being forced to run across an unknown swamp. A hummock directly ahead might be safe, or it might let him down into the blackness.

“I feel... as though this has all been a bad dream.”

“Of course it has, Jeff.”

“I want you to forgive me.”

“For what? For being skeptical? That is one of the privileges of youth, I believe. I would admire you less, Jeff, if you hadn’t been uncertain of my motives. We could use you, you know. You have a... remarkable intelligence.” And for a tiny moment the teeth had shown again.

“I would like to think it over, Mr. Means.”

“Of course.”

Jeff stood up, and he hoped that his smile was convincing. “Could I see Julie?”

He went to the desk and pressed a button set into the edge. A far door opened. A blond young man came in and stood waiting respectfully. He looked to be a brother of the girl who had approached Jeff in the lower hallway. His eyes, too, were of that aqua shade.

“Mike, could you send Julie O’Reilly in?”

“Camera too, sir?”

“Not this time, Mike.”

Julie came in a few moments later. She wore a sweater and skirt. She looked not over fifteen. “Hi there, Jeff,” she said casually, “Nice to see you again.”

Jeff was looking into Julie’s eyes when Means said, jovially, “Jeff is considering joining the organization, Julie.”

Jeff saw the odd expression flit across her face. The fear-widening of her eyes and compression of her lips. “That would be fine,” she said, “you’ll get a kick out of it, Jeff. We could have as much fun as we did when we wrote up Lucas Washington.”

The warning was clever, and clear. It was one of Lucas Washington’s men who, while the article was in progress, had put Jeff in the Racine hospital with one of the worst physical beatings he had ever taken.

“Well, Mr. Means told me I could think it over.”

“Like to see you aboard, Cap’n,” Julie said. She looked at her watch. “Mr. Means, I was going to head into town for some supplies. Would it be all right if Jeff took me in?”

“Of course, my dear. How did the shots come out?”

“A little disappointing. There’s one good one though. You on that roan stallion.”

Means sighed. “There are so many peoples of this world who demand that their heroes arrive on horseback. Tell Mike to bring the proof in on your way out.”

“Ready, Jeff?” she said.

They went out together. Julie paused in the hall to give Mike the instructions. She kept up a bright line of chatter all the way down to the rented car. As soon as they had driven out the gate she began to tremble visibly.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “R-r-reaction, probably. Keep driving. Find some place we can turn off and park the car out of sight, J-J-Jeff.”

Within five minutes he found a side road. It wandered over hard-pan to a clump of live oaks beside a dry arroyo. He pulled on the parking brake and cut the motor. She came quickly into his arms. The tears came. He smoothed the chestnut hair and murmured to her and let her cry herself out. It did not take long. He gave her his handkerchief. Soon she sat up, dug a mirror out of her purse and looked at herself.

“I’m a mess,” she said.

“Sure. And I’ve missed you like I’d miss both arms and legs.”

“Mean it?”

“So you can smile, eh?”

“Oh, Jeff, how right you were! How desperately and incredibly right!”

“Can we take it from the beginning?”

“I was sore at you. What you said about being responsible for me. I know why you said that now. But I didn’t, then. I went out to work there for Mr. Means. I have a lovely room. Nobody bothers me. All the money I want for special equipment. I worked hard, trying to forget you. You know how I can get so wound up in a thing that I forget everything?”

“I remember, darling.”

“It’s so good to hear you say that again. It started when I was trying to get a picture for the cover of that biography. It was important. It had to have just the right flavor. Not arty at all. Honest. Lincolnesque. Humble and proud at the same time. I took a hundred shots. None of them were right. I took a second batch. It was midmorning a month ago. One of the shots came out just right. I didn’t think. I went running to his room with it. It was still damp. I didn’t knock or anything. I just piled right in. He was sitting by the desk, bolt upright. I started to gabble about the picture and I didn’t notice at first. Then I saw his face. Jeff, it was empty, empty, empty. Dead. Dead forever, since the beginning of time. He wasn’t breathing. A little spider had made a web from his ear lobe to his shoulder. I backed toward the door, the back of my hand to my mouth. I guess I was going to scream the moment I got into the hall. And suddenly he came to life, and he was himself. It frightened the pie out of me. But somehow I managed to keep a grip on myself. It was just as though he were a windup toy. I don’t think he noticed anything.”

Jeff exhaled noisily. “A robot! By God, a robot!”

“I thought I was going crazy. I began to wonder that too. So I began to watch him. Do robots eat? Do they breathe out warm air? Do they smoke cigars? Does a robot’s stomach rumble sometimes? No, Jeff. It’s something worse than that. Worse!”

“What’s worse than that?”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “The walking dead, Jeff. He’s dead and somehow they use him.”

“They?”

“Those people. The blond ones. Two men and two women. They said they were distantly related. That was to explain the funny eye color. They’re running him, Jeff. Mike and Paul the two men call themselves. I can hardly tell them apart. The two women call themselves Laura and Elaine. Laura is the taller one, the one we saw at the apartment. Elaine probably took you upstairs to his room back there. Jeff, they’re not people. Not as we know people. I don’t know what they are. I’d never have noticed anything funny if I hadn’t seen Mr. Means looking dead. I started being more observant then. And I’m really frightened. Terribly frightened. They can do — odd things.”

“Like what?”

“They don’t have to talk to each other. Oh, they do, when somebody’s around. It isn’t necessary to them. I saw Laura glance at Elaine one day. Elaine was just walking in, not saying a word. Laura opened the desk drawer and took out a file and handed it to her.”

“Maybe there was some previous talk about that file?”

“No, because I had given it to Laura just fifteen minutes earlier and I hadn’t left the room. Elaine took it, said thank you, and left. I know that Laura sent for her somehow. And there’s a building there on the grounds that no one can go in but those four. The closer I’ve watched them, the more differences I’ve seen. Something about their wrists are funny. More — what’s the word — articulation. They bend back further than ours. But you seldom see them use them that way. As though they were imitating... us. And sometimes they’ll look terribly amused, all of them, without a word being spoken. They’re... just terribly, terribly odd. Oh, and another thing. There are little things Laura and Elaine don’t know that — goodness! — every girl knows. They always seem to be watching me for clues. Because of my work I’m with them more than the office girls downstairs. Laura had a little piece of costume jewelry. Any woman would have known how to wear it. She wore it way over on her shoulder, sort of. When I noticed it she left the room. When she came back it was in the right place. I left my lighter on the table. Just a plain old one. Everybody knows about those. Laura tried to use it and she kept spinning the wheel backward. Then suddenly she seemed to know how to work it.”

“What are you trying to get at?”

“Jeff, believe me. They come from someplace else!”

“Oh, come now! Martians, maybe?”

“Don’t act like that! They’re funny. They remind me of people in a zoo, looking around at the funny animals. They seem to have a good time, but there’s a coldness in them. A ruthlessness about them.”

“I’d like to get in that building you mentioned. Is it guarded?”

“No. Just locked. I went and tried the door once. It’s a thick door. Heavy. What are they trying to do, Jeff?”

“Whatever it is,” he said bitterly, “they seem to be doing it very effectively. You saw the cover story in Tempo last week? You know how Tempo takes the most exalted people and always lets that sour little edge of wit appear. The whole cover story sounded like it had been written by a Wellesley girl writing up the professor on whom she has a large crush. And how about the TV networks fighting to give him free time just to get a bigger audience on the preceding and following programs? And those darn buttons!”

“Twenty-four million of them have been distributed so far, Jeff. It’s... frightening.”

“Have you tried to talk to anybody else about this?”

She frowned. “Yes. And the funniest thing happened. There’s a really bright girl running the letter section. I hinted around. She began to catch on. We compared notes on the four... blond things. She began to get excited. And then one day she couldn’t remember anything about it. At least she pretended not to remember. I guess she thought I was missing a few marbles or something.”

He told her about his investigations. He told her of the odd losses of memory, of the tampering with the files. As he spoke, her eyes got rounder and rounder.

“Then — Myra! She really didn’t remember! They tampered with her somehow!”

He cupped her cheeks in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I can’t let you go back there, darling.”

“Think a moment, Jeff. Think hard. They seem to be able to do all sorts of things. If I run from them, I think they will find me.”

He cursed softly. “They might, at that.”

“I have to go back. I can’t let them guess that I’m suspicious. Honestly, Jeff, I won’t be frightened any more now that I know you’re on my side. I can do my work and watch them and maybe find out enough so that you can turn it over to the FBI or the UN or whoever you turn a thing like this over to.”

“Nothing must happen to you.”

“Nothing will. There’s no reason for them to... hurt me.”

“Be careful, baby. I’m going to take up his offer, you know. Then I’ll be on the inside, too. I’ll be able to watch over you.”

“I thought you once said that you didn’t want that responsibility, Mr. Rayden.”

He punched her very lightly on the point of her chin. “Touché, baby.”

They kissed and they talked of other things which had absolutely nothing to do with Means. In some odd way things had gone right for them again. Time passed. She glanced at her watch and jumped. “Goodness! They’ll get suspicious. Take me back, Jeff.”

“Weren’t you going after supplies?”

She opened her purse and held it so that he could look in. “All purchased. When I heard you were in with him, I went to my room and got this film. I never got around to unwrapping it after I bought it the other day.”

“Why do I trust you at all?” he said wonderingly.

He drove her back, watched her walk up to the front door, then turned around and drove back to San Ramon. He turned the car in at the garage where he had rented it. As he was paying his bill in the office the mechanic came in, gave him a surly look and said, “Come on out in the shop, bud. I want to show you something.”

Jeff, puzzled, followed the man out. The hood of the car was raised.

The man walked to the car, pointed inside the hood and said, in a sarcastic voice, “Now suppose you tell me just what kinda toy you had installed on ourБ" He stopped abruptly, looked more closely and then softly called himself a dirty word.

“What’s the matter?” Jeff asked.

“It was there a minute ago!” the mechanic protested weakly.

“What was?”

“Damn if I know what it was. A round gray thing. Fastened right there. Big as a grapefruit. Flattish. I figured it was some kind of trick horn you had put on.”

“I didn’t have anything put on the car, friend.”

“But I — hey! Look here!”

Jeff bent over beside him. Down beside the motor was a pile of grayish, metallic powder. The mechanic picked up a pinch of it. It was as fine as talc. Even as he held it in his hand it seemed to grow more fine. It diffused in the air. Soon his hand was empty and the grayish cloud dissipated. More grayness like smoke welled up out of the hood and was gone.

In a strained voice Jeff asked, “Did the thing look at all like a microphone? A pickup?”

“It could have been. Look, mister. I didn’t see anything. You didn’t see anything. It was never there. I work for a living. I don’t like things on my mind. Go and pay your bill. Don’t come back. Ever.”

At eight o’clock that night Jeff found his man in the beer joint where he had been told to look. The man’s name was Phil Sargo. He was as tall and broad as the average doorway, but with an indefinably cat-like way of moving. His brown hard face looked at though it couldn’t be hurt with an eight-pound sledge, and it also looked as though somebody had tested that theory a few times.

His voice had a rasp. “What you want, doc?”

Jeff sat down at the empty chair at the table for two. “I want to hire you.”

“Tonight I feel like drinking beer. So I come high.”

“Suppose I tell you what I want and you name the fee.”

“Don’t take up the whole evening telling me, doc. I’m expecting the girl friend.”

“I’m a reporter. I think Borden Means is trying to work some kind of a racket. He has a building on his place that I want to get a look at. It’s locked, but not guarded. That building may contain something that can smear Means all over this end of the country. Any objections?”

“You mean do I like Means? I think he ought to go out to Southern California with the rest of the swamis. He’s not selling me a thing. I’m just a poor, hardworking private investigator. He’s making everybody so happy that business is beginning to stink, confidentially. No nice juicy divorce jobs in three weeks.”

“I want to get a look in that building. Then I want to go inside the main building and come out with a girl who lives there and works for Means. I think I can get her outside all right. Then it will be up to you to help me get her back here to town.”

“Not a snatch, is it, doc?”

“No. She’ll be willing to come. I have reason to believe she’s in danger. I think that Means and his... people, know that she’s trying to spy on them. They had a chance to hear her talk to me today, and I think they took that chance.”

Phil Sargo put two fists the size of boulders on the tabletop. He squinted at Jeff. “On account of how Mary will be scorched at being stood up, it’ll cost you one bill now and one bill afterward.”

Jeff took out his wallet and counted out four twenties and two tens. Sargo crumpled them and shoved them in his pocket. “Come on. We’ll stop by the office. I’ll have to pick up a gun.”

“Pick up two.”

“You got a license?”

“No. But if you should drop one once we go there and I should happen to pick it up, it wouldn’t be your fault. And it might come in handy.”

Chapter Four

Call to Arms

Sargo pulled his old car off the road five hundred yards from Means’ place. It was midnight. One light was on in the main building. The moon was almost full, and the landscape was thickly silvered.

Sargo quickly unloaded his equipment. A light collapsible ladder, a thick old blanket, wire cutters with rubber grips. He hummed softly. He handed Jeff one of the revolvers. Jeff stuffed it inside his belt without a word.

Stones rattled under their steps with startlingly loud sounds. Sargo shushed him a few times. At last they reached that portion of the wall that Sargo had selected based on the crude map Jeff had drawn for him.

Sargo, once they were at the wall, acted as casual as any plumber. He hummed under his breath, extended the ladder, joggled it into a solid position and went up with a quick agility surprising in a man of his bulk. He reached up with the wire cutters and snipped the strand. It was taut enough to making a swish and ping as it parted. He spread the blanket over the broken glass, eased himself down on top of the wall and motioned to Jeff. When Jeff was beside him he pulled up the ladder and lowered it on the inside of the wall. “No current in the wire,” he said in that low tone that doesn’t carry half as far as a whisper.

Moments later they walked cautiously across the grounds, staying out of the bright bands of moonlight. Jeff was half sick with worry about Julie. Her claim that Mike, Paul, Laura and Elaine were not of this earth had been enormously strenghthened by the incredible decomposition of the unknown object that had been affixed to his car. With human opponents it is possible to make assumptions regarding possible future courses of action. But no assumptions are valid when dealing with the unknown. There is no pattern to extrapolate.

They reached the outbuilding without seeing any movement or sign of life. It was of the same stone as the main building. It was a flat-roofed twenty-foot cube with one door. Sargo began to hum again. A coyote howled and sobbed off in the wasteland. They stood in the black shadows of the doorway. Sargo took a pencil flash out of his pocket and began to examine the door. He grunted.

“What’s the matter?”

“Put your hand on the door.”

Jeff did so. He snatched his hand away, replaced it cautiously. The door had warmth that was not warmth. It was a-tingle, pulsating with a current of some sort.

“And no keyhole. No knob. No nothing,” Sargo said with intense disgust.

Under the thin beam of the light the door had an opalescence about it, as though it had been recently oiled. Sargo began to run his hands around the frame, searching for some hidden catch.

“I don’t think that’s going to do any good,” Jeff whispered.

“What do you mean, doc?”

“I don’t think it’s a door... as we know doors.”

“So what is it, now? A window maybe?”

“Don’t clown, Sargo. This is a serious thing.”

Sargo continued searching. At last he gave up. They circled the building, hurrying where the moonlight was brightest. There were no windows.

“Now what, doc?” Sargo asked.

“Now we’ll see if we can get the girl.”

“Lead on.”

In the shadows near the doorway to the big house Jeff whispered, “I’ll try to get in and see her. That main gate is open. If and when I come out with her, we’ll get her to the car as fast as we can. If I don’t come out in five minutes, come on in after me.”

“I hope you know what this is all about, doc. I certainly don’t.”

Jeff straightened his shoulders and walked to the main door. He raised his hand to the massive bronze knocker and paused with his fingers against the cool metal. He lowered his hand and tried the big knob. It turned and the heavy door swung in without sound. The hallway was dark. He slipped in and closed the door, stood with his back to it, his breathing shallow, his skin prickling.

It took several moments before his eyes were accustomed to the lesser light of the hallway. He knew that Julie’s room was upstairs. He knew in which end of the building it was. He did not know which door would be hers.

For a time he doubted the wisdom of his decision to take her out of there. It had seemed wiser for her to stay there... until he had found out about the device affixed to the car.

Yes, the world was a big place and surely a small girl could be hidden where no one — human or alien — could find her.

He drifted silently by the doorway of the room containing all the office equipment. He looked in and saw the military alignment of the desks, silent in a mild shaft of moonlight.

He reached the stairs and remembered reading somewhere that the center of the treads were most likely to squeak.

When he reached the fifth stair, staying close to the edge, sliding his hand up the railing, the lights came on. For a moment they blinded him. He turned. The one called Mike stood by the light switch, his back against the wall, his smile lazy and contained. The taller girl stood a few feet from him. In panic he looked up the stairs. The other man, the one who must be called Paul, sat on the top step, indolent, his forearms on his knees, his hands hanging limp from his wrists. The other girl stood so close to Paul that his shoulder brushed her skirt.

There was nothing specifically threatening about their attitude. Jeff had seen a cat act the same way, bored with playing with a mouse, yawning and looking away before making another dutiful pounce.

“Where’s Julie?” he demanded.

The tall girl — Laura — made a most peculiar gesture with one hand. It utilized the extraordinary flexibility of her wrist. The other three smiled with cool delight, as though it were a joke that was slightly improper.

“Where is she?”

“Sleeping,” said Mike. He cocked his head on one side. “No. Now she’s half awake. She moaned a little. Very interesting. Transmission on the alpha level. Not many of you have that, you know.”

Jeff carefully slid his hand down the railing a few inches and tightened his grip. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet.

“You would land where the floor is very slippery,” Elaine said.

Mike made a tiny shrug. Laura turned and looked at him and Jeff thought he saw a trace of anger in her face. The total effect of four of them together was overwhelming. It intensified their alien appearance and manner.

Laura said, “You see, Jeffrey Rayden, we are still divided. Mike is our conformist. He detests untried solutions. He despises this whole assignment. Very primitive of him. We’ve given the two of you some very exhaustive tests, you know. Dos Almas is one of those tests. It did not exist before the aircraft landed. And it exists no longer. But for a time it was as real as this house. Mike wants us to erase your memories back to the point where you both became aware of something ‘odd’ about our Mister Borden Means. The rest of us think we can make our solution work.”

“Make what work?” He heard the blankness of his own tone.

The main door swung open and Sargo came in. He walked with bent-kneed cat-stride, the revolver looking the more deadly from the casual way he held it. Jeff was annoyed with himself for forgetting the gun stuffed inside his own belt.

“Okay, folks,” Sargo said, “Line up right over there along the wall.”

Not one of them moved. Sargo made an angry motion with the gun. “Move! You think I got faucet water in this thing?”

Jeff saw Laura glance at Mike. Mike looked steadily at Sargo. The lines of anger and resolution faded from Sargo’s face. He stared stupidly down at the gun in his hand. Then he looked at each of them in turn. “What makes?” he asked thickly. “Who...”

“That was a very neat erasure that Mike just performed,” Laura said.

“I’m sorry, Sargo,” Jeff said wanly.

“And who might you be, doc? Where am I? I’m sitting waiting for Mary and here I am inside some hallway pointing guns. Either I’m going nuts or Willis is spiking the beer.”

Laura gave Sargo a charming smile. “The hot sun will do that, Mister Sargo. Your ladder and tools are in the brush right outside the door and to the right. You can pick them up and go out the main gate and turn right. You’ll find your car not too far down the road.”

Sargo turned to go, shaking his head in a bewildered fashion.

Something grasped Jeff’s brain so strongly that it misted all his senses. He was conscious of his hand taking the gun out, reversing it, of his feet starting to carry him down the steps. Then the pressure was gone. Three of them were looking angrily at Mike. He had staggered back against the wall, his face pale, a film of sweat on his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Jeffrey Rayden,” Elaine said from the head of the stars. “We didn’t let him guide you long enough for any mental damage to occur. He shouldn’t have done it. He won’t do it again. Please take the gun to Mister Sargo.”

Sargo took the gun, looked blankly at it, recognized it as his own and left without another word.

“I’ll have Julie come down,” Laura said.

“This erasing,” Jeff said thickly. “That’s what you did to Looder and Lamke and the others.”

“That, too, causes a certain functional damage,” Paul said, speaking for the first time, “but not enough to make them less effective in their restricted existences. With you that damage would make a difference.”

“Only,” said Mike icily, “if their plan is approved.”

“Our plan will be approved,” Paul said. He turned to look at Julie who had appeared behind him, a pale green terry-cloth robe belted around her, her hair in disarray, her eyes sleepy and puzzled.

“Somebody called me and — Jeff! Jeff, what are you doing here! Why are all of you...” She made a sound suspiciously like a sob, hurried past Elaine and Paul and ran down the steps into Jeff’s arms, clinging to him, her fingers digging into his arms just above the elbows.

“We’re taking you to that building you’ve been so curious about. Don’t be alarmed. It will be easier to talk to you there,” Laura said. “Your... understanding will be improved.”

“But not enough,” Mike said.

The six of them walked through the moonlight. Jeff kept his arm around Julie. He could feel her tremble. Laura reached the door first. She touched it and it slid to one side. A subdued orange radiance shone out onto the ground. They went through a narrow hallway six feet long, smoothly metallic, and came into a small room in which the air seemed to throb.

As Jeff started to look around, the intense exhilaration struck him. He heard himself begin to giggle helplessly. Julie was laughing, the tears running down her face. It was like the contagion of laughter.

Paul had hurried to a small panel set into the smooth wall. The drunken feeling faded, but it didn’t go away completely. There was an old sensation of lightness, clarity and well-being. There was no room in his mind for fear.

Mike looked on with a sardonic expression.

“It was set just a bit too high for you,” Laura said.

The room, except for the regularly placed panel inserts, was featureless. There seemed to be no source for the soft orange radiance. Paul stepped to another panel and a thin, haunting, atonal melody began to fill the air, more felt than heard.

“We are far more comfortable here than in your — forgive us — crude environment,” Elaine said.

Paul had made yet another adjustment. One entire wall changed abruptly to utter blackness. Mike said, “Understand that they have no approval for this, you two.”

When Jeff looked behind him he saw six odd chair-like objects formed of coils of a soft substance. He had not seen them appear.

They were told to sit down. Paul brought Laura a gleaming circlet of metal and set it gently on her shining hair. All six of them sat, facing the dark wall.

Laura said, “I am explaining all this to you because I am in charge of this team. I will use your speech and visual explanation. I can cause any image I wish to appear on that wall. So do not let it frighten you. I can read your minds, and so I will adjust the speed of the explanation to suit the slowest one of you. If you have a question, please vocalize it. It makes it easier to read.”

The wall was filled with a billion shining stars.

Afterward, Jeff was to realize that the most incredible thing about the next hour was not the galactic scope of her story, nor was it the most casual references to incredible time spans, nor was it the oddness of the room in which they sat. It was his own willingness to believe — his own total lack of skepticism, as though something had caught and held his mind so that it could not twist away from facts which should normally have resulted in either a blank stare or a short laugh of incredulity.

It was a story to match the size of the sky.

She transposed the figures into the numerical system of the world of Jeff and Julie. The figures had the roar of distant thunder.

“This galaxy is called Reeth. It is like a vast hand, figures straight and close together. Your planet is at base of the palm. Our home planet, Syala, is at the fingertips. It is a hundred thousand light years from the fingertips to the base of the palm, and eleven thousand light years across the palm at its widest point. It contains forty billion suns, two hundred billion planets. Four billions of the two hundred billions of planets have had, or will have, a spontaneous generation of unicellular living creatures which will apex at last in a man-like creature — that is, an oxygen-breathing biped with articulated fingers at the ends of the other two limbs. This phenomenon is due to the origin of the galaxy. The universe began with the explosion of super-condensed matter. It continues to explode. All of the planets of Reeth, coming as they did from the same area within the super-condensed matter, have a homogeneity of basic elements which, once life is begun, must perforce funnel the life-apex into a man-like creature. Different gravities result in ‘distortions’. In more cases than not, Reethians developing independently on planets of similar gravities are so similar that when intermingled they can breed true.

“The Reeth Covenant had been in effect for thirty thousand years. The Covenant marked the end of interstellar wars. The basic philosophy of the Covenant is that each life-bearing planet shall mature independently without outside influence.

“Each primitive planet is scheduled for periodic survey and grading. The grading is as follows: Division One — all planets which have acquired the internal combustion engine. Division Two — primitive atomics. Division Three — exploration and colonization of home system planets. Division Four — a practicable interstellar drive. Division Five — the conquest of the barrier of the speed of light.

“All planet groups from Division One through Division Four are normally obsessed with the egocentric belief that they are alone in the galaxy and the universe.

“After Division Four is reached the planet is approached, acquainted with the Covenant and requested to cooperate. Minor disciplinary measures are invariably required. Then the planet becomes an autonomous member, is assigned guardianship over the primitive planets in its immediate area, is placed on trade routes, receives and gives technological information.

“There are six hundred planets which have attained Covenant Status. Each has a guardianship function over six and a half million planets of primitive status. Under normal conditions, Earth would have been left severely alone, with surveys conducted in secrecy, until Division Four had been reached. It had been estimated that Earth was within three thousand years of a practicable interstellar drive.”

Laura began to speak again, but the Syalan who called himself Mike interrupted. The wall on which had been pictured all that she had spoken of, faded to its normal orange radiance.

Mike stood in front of Jeff. He said, “I will say this aloud for your benefit, Earth-creatures. I wish to prove my conviction that my team-mates’ solution to this problem is faulty. Now tell us of any discrepancy you have noted.”

Jeff waited a moment. He said slowly, “It goes wrong in that part where you say that we would be left alone until we had achieved an interstellar drive. You are not leaving us alone. You are interfering. So there is something we haven’t been told yet. I can think of several things. Maybe you four are operating outside of this Covenant you spoke of. You do come from the opposite end of the galaxy. That means that you wouldn’t normally be responsible for us. Maybe you’re running from something. Maybe you’re operating outside of your own laws.”

He thought he saw a look of quiet triumph in Mike’s odd eyes.

Jeff bludgeoned his mind into another pattern. “Wait a minute! Maybe this precious covenant of yours has gone sour. Maybe your member planets have split up andБ"

“No, Jeff,” Julie said softly.

He glanced angrily at her. “Have you got the answer?”

“I... don’t know. Maybe they want us to... grow up faster. There’d be a reason for that, you know. But I don’t think it would come from inside the galaxy. Something from outside, maybe. Something threatening the whole structure they’ve built up, so that they want us to develop more quickly than we are and be a part of it all so that we can... help.”

Jeff saw Laura turn to Mike and give him a look of triumph. Mike turned moodily away.

Laura said, “You see, he has been telling us that despite the way this room affects the ability to perceive and to understand, you would both find it impossible to break free of petty thought patterns and think in terms of a unified galaxy. The rest of us were more certain of you. We select you carefully.”

“Selected!” Julie gasped.

Jeff turned to her. “Remember? We had the next six all planned. Means wasn’t one of them. Then Haskill jumped in and sicked us onto Means.”

“Mr. Haskill was very open to our sort of suggestion,” Elaine said.

“Why should you want us?” Jeff asked.

“You’ll be told that in due time,” Paul said.

And then, in quiet tones, with the wall once again illustrating each point, Laura told them of the thing which menaced the galaxy.

“Reeth is a young galaxy. It matured late. Consequenty the life-apex-form has had little time to develop. The nearest island universe is six hundred and eighty thousand light years away. Reethian astro-physicists have long observed the higher incidence of nova and super-nova, of fading suns in the neighbor galaxy. They knew that they observed conditions existing better than a half million light years ago, and in comparing it to Reeth as it must have existed at that time, they knew that Glayd, as they called the neighbor galaxy, was older. They guessed, and rightly, that if conditions on the planets of Glayd were such as to have caused life to exist, that life-apex would vary greatly from the man-like life-apex on Reeth, due to the divergence in basic homogeneity — Glayd having been formed from a different area within the original super-condensed matter.

“It was considered a problem of no specific importance.

“Glayd could not be visited by means of supra-light travel. The reason is simple. Think of a familiar stone by your back porch steps. You know every indentation on its surface. You know its color, size. Maybe you have lifted it. Now you are fifty parsecs from that stone. Shut your eyes. Make yourself see it, in every particular. Some part of you has returned to a position near that stone. You have vizualized a part of yourself back to that familiar yard, with its scrawny elm and the trash can with the bent cover.

“Each planet then, to the Reeth ships, is a stone. Each planet is a metallic card eight inches by four inches. It contains an unbelievable number of infinitesimal points of varying magnetization. The points define the size, shape, color, weight, topography and ‘feel’ of a planet down to the fiftieth decimal point. It takes fifty decimal places sometimes to achieve a uniqueness of one planet over another at the opposite end of the galaxy. Feed the planet card into the heart of the ship. The heart of the ship is a visualizer. It ‘sees’ that planet as described by the card. In ‘seeing’ it, it puts a portion of itself at that planet. The rest of the ship is so anchored to that fleeting portion that the ship returns as a unit to the place so delicately described.

“It is the speed of thought.

“And it is but one heartbeat from one end of the galaxy to the other.

“And that is why Glayd could not be visited by that method — not at least until a ship had gone to Glayd at less than the speed of light and had made out a visualization card on a specific Glayd planet. After that was done, Glayd would be as close as the corner store. Closer.

“So a ship was sent to Glayd at one meter per hour less than the speed of light. Six hundred and eighty thousand light years. But time contracts in transit. To the passengers it becomes, at a contraction ratio of seventy thousand to one, but ten years experienced. The ship left ten thousand years ago. Five years ago it returned. It took ten thousand Earth years to go a bit over nine thousand light years into space — counting the slow acceleration period — and a heartbeat to return.

“To return with the news of an incredible fleet driving down on Reeth. More than a million ships. More than a million gigantic grey mushrooms, driving — hood forward, squat stems pointing back toward Glayd. Each ship larger than any ever contemplated by those of Reeth. The migration of the inhabitants of a fading galaxy to one that was newer. Other news, too. News of weapons unleashed, of a coldly savage attempt to destroy without attempt at communication. News that only the fact of the visualization card being already in the slot saved the tiny Reeth ship, brought warning to the galaxy.

“Nine thousand years of grace. With deacceleration perhaps a bit more.

“No time left for orderly growth of all primitive planets.

“Time now for stimuli — for an acceleration of the growth curve.”

Jeff said, “Nine thousand years? We’ll all be dust.”

“One attribute of a civilization on the right path toward maturity,” said Laura, “is its willingness to endure present discomfort for the sake of generations unborn. Your remote descendants will curse you for the wasting of this home planet of yours.”

“Where do we fit in?” Julie asked.

“We have found,” said Paul, “a great variation in the rapidity with which primitive planets pass through the divisions. The reason lies in the index of ingenuity of the race itself. You of Earth have had an almost phenomenally short span of time between Division One and Division Two. Only one other planet, according to our records, has progressed as quickly. That planet no longer exists.”

“Why?” Jeff asked. “What happened?”

“Technistic progress so far outstripped progress in the social sciences and humanities that the planet was not psychologically equipped for an atomic era. A social stone age combined with a scientific atomic age equals inevitable self-destruction. We’ve plotted that on our calculation equipment a hundred times. The answer is always the same.”

“Under ‘normal’ conditions, then,” Jeff asked dryly, “you’d let us go ahead and destroy ourselves?”

“Under the Covenant, yes,” Laura said. “But now we have an emergency situation. Your rate of progress indicates that if we interfere we can forestall that destruction, that if we can save you, you may be able, through your basic rate of progress, to contribute something of value to the combat nine thousand years in the future.”

“And if we can’t?”

“You’ll add to our numbers. By then you’ll be an autonomous member of the group and you’ll share our techniques and be able to utilize them.”

Paul and Elaine left the room.

“Then we’re a test case, or something like that?” Jeff asked.

Laura’s smile had an unearthly coolness. “Not exactly. All members were put on an emergency basis. Our home planet was assigned the task of the acceleration of primitive planets. That assignment is a small part of the planning that is going on. We are one of four thousand trained teams. Each planet presents its own problem. We have spent nearly two of your years here, attacking the specific problem you present.”

“And you think,” Jeff said, “that Borden Means is the answer?”

“We know it,” Mike answered. “I merely object to your part in it.”

He turned away from a high table in the corner of the room. On the table was a cube of night. In the center of the cube a small sphere stood, apparently unsupported.

“What is Borden Means?” Julie asked.

“The men of your planet shoot at wild birds with a weapon based on the principle of the expansion of gases. The birds are wary. So an artificial bird is sometimes placed on the water. The men make reassuring bird sounds with instruments for that purpose.” There was an edge in Mike’s voice as he explained. “Soon the silly birds fly within range of the weapons. We merely carefully selected an artificial bird. We removed its own instincts and personality traits. We had made a study of those semantic combinations most likely to influence the people of this planet. The man-thing that was once Borden Means is easy to control. The sounds are made. The puppet moves. The flights wheel and soar in, suddenly realizing that this is sound and movement that they have yearned for all their lives.”

“We cannot be decoyed!” Jeff said hotly.

“Can’t you, though? You are a primitive species. Certain types of red ants throng to the source of an electric current. We merely take advantage of certain instincts. Your race badly needs emotional reassurance and security. An end of fear. A symbol to follow. It is very simple. We decoy you into a period of international unification. It is easier to achieve it on emotional grounds than on political. We lead you into a few decades of peace. And that is all you need. In three decades your social sciences will have bridged the gap. Should you split into autonomous nations again at the end of that period, there will no longer be the intense danger of self-elimination. Hence the puppet once known as Borden Means.

“We have given him a personal history without flaw. We found a puppet with those features most likely to appeal to the visual demands of your race. We have selected a puppet who can logically reach the greatest numbers. His skills are our skills because we control him. We bled him of every reaction pattern. He is the peak and personification of suggestibility. It is not necessary for him to breathe for his life to continue. In the new pattern there is no flaw, no possibility of his saying or doing anything to diminish his own influence. The result is a personal magnetism so intense that no one of your species can withstand it.”

Jeff stood up. “Our people will find him out,” he said.

“And have every memory of him erased.”

“Enemy nations will just think of him as a sign of weakness.”

“While their own people have begun to think of him as the greatest man in the world?”

“Please,” Julie said, “Tell us where we fit. Jeff and I. We were suspicious. You didn’t erase it out of our minds and you spoke of not wanting to because of damaging us in some way.”

“We have other planets to visit,” Laura said. “There are not enough teams. Though Vinthar... Mike... does not agree in principle, the rest of us wish to avoid years of bondage on Earth by turning the procedure into a self-sustaining circuit. In other words, by taking two people of Earth and training them to take over the guide function for Borden Means. This requires people with a knowledge of the public mind, a knowledge of human limitations and a dedication to our purpose. You two seem to have what we need.”

Jeff felt a sick nausea. He held his head in his hands for a moment. The chair adjusted to each change of position. “No,” he said. “It’s... too much power. Too much responsibility. And the thought of... controlling a thing like Means... like what you have made of Borden Means.” He stood up. “I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. Do you, Julie?”

She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t...”

“The period of training,” said Laura gently, “would take only four of your months. There would be many tangential advantages. You would be trained on our home planet. You would be transported there.”

“But it means forever thinking of all our own people as... stupid animals that can be deluded intoБ" Jeff said.

“Take a look at your planet as it is — as it has been over the past fifty years, Jeffrey Rayden,” Laura said in a tone that made him think of fractured steel.

Julie stood beside Jeff and took hold of his arm. She gave Laura the smile of a guest who wants to leave in the middle of the party. “You must see how we feel. Thank you very much. But we couldn’t possibly get on your ship, wherever it is, and go kiting off across the galaxy. I’m certain that as soon as I step out that door, everything that happened in here will seem crazy and unreal.”

The amusement that flashed between Mike and Laura was so tangible and so strong that Jeff felt the corners of his mouth lift involuntarily.

They were led to the door and it slid open.

Julie’s fingers bit into his arm. His mouth sagged open and his knees went as weak as water. They stood together in the glorious light of a strange vast yellow sun looking out across the gentle valley where, in the distance, the blood and crimson towers and minarets of an ancient city rose to half the height of the purple mountains beyond. In the middle distance a thousand fountains flung spray like diamonds into the air that smelled of strange pine.

“You will be trained here,” Laura said, “and you will prove Vinthar wrong. We have left Paul and Elaine behind. Your return will free them and the four of us can then go on to the next problem planet.”

Chapter Five

Two Against the Universe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’ll get used to him. In time.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Erase, then.”

“Do we dare?”

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re going to win,” he projected.

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

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

“And after tomorrow, Jeff?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And for the immediate future?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julie yawned, stretched like a small silky cat.

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

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

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

Content

John D. MacDonald
Hand from the Void

Chapter One

Chapter Two The Memory Veil

Chapter Three The Citadel

Chapter Four Call to Arms

Chapter Five Two Against the Universe