Gordon R. Dickson (13 page)

"It's
quite safe," replied Mali, with a gentle wave of his hand. "Your
loyalty won't permit you to give me away. Will it?" He smiled; and Kil,
feeling the emotions surging within him, discovered that this was only too
true. "I can talk as freely in front of you as I could in front of—a dog,
say.
Though that's putting it a little harshly."

Kil
stared at him, realizing with an empty horror that he could not even hate the
man.

"Yes,"
said Mali, reaching for a bunch of grapes that still lay in the fruit bowl in
the center of the breakfast table-"But to get back to the subject—want a
grape? No? The search uncovered nothing; just as if there had been nothing to
uncover. And I know differently. Don't I? Does your new loyalty have any
suggestions that might help me with this problem?"

"I
don't know what you're talking about," said Kil, numbly. He sat down
heavily. Mali gazed at him, curiously.

"To
a certain extent, that's probably correct," he said, agreeably, eating
grapes one by one from the bunch. "You fill a rather odd position, Kil,
whether you know it or not. For some reason—by some accident or design—you've
become the focal point of our struggle at the present moment."

"What struggle?"

"What
struggle?" repeated Mali. "Why, the same struggle that's been going
on since the world began: to see who's going to be the one to control things.
There's at least two— and I think three—of us busy at it right now. And you're
in the middle. It's sort of as if you were a chess piece being manipulated in
turn by three opposing players, all of them hidden from each other. We all try
to figure out from what you do just who it was made you do it, and what his
reasons were for exactly that move."

Kil shook his head
disbelievingly.

"Oh,
yes," said Mali. "Yes indeed, Kil. The two most important men in the
world today are McElroy and
myself
. It wasn't just
chance that led you first to him and then to me. It couldn't be. I'm the most
powerful individual on Earth and McEIroy is the—most elusive, certainly. Yet
you trot from him to me with no more difficulty than going from one store to
another. How did you manage that? Can you tell me?"

Kil felt the compulsion on
him to answer.

"Dekko," he said
reluctantly.

"Hmm,"
said Mali, holding the grapes forgotten in one hand, "as far as that goes,
I'm pretty sure that Dekko of yours belongs to McEIroy. He's another mystery.
But a minor one.
You're the big one, you and—" he broke
off suddenly, staring out the window. After a moment, he turned back to Kil.

"What
do you know about The Project?" he demanded.
"And
Sub-E?"

Kil lifted his head in
amazement.

"Nothing," he
said.

"And yet," said Mali, looking at
him olosely, "your wife's certainly a member and knows all about it."
Kil felt a sudden small stir of excitement in him.
"A
member?
What—?" he said. .

"Exactly.
What?" Mali leaned toward him, his eyes oddly compelling.
"The Project's an organization that has something called Sub-E. And Sub-E
is maybe the secret of their ability to do things that are physically
impossible, like hiding from myself and the Police, on this Earth where there's
no place to hide. Does that jog your memory? Answer met"

"Don't the Police
know?"

"No.
The Police do
not
know.
Any more than I know.
And I have to know. I could crush the Police like that, tomorrow, Kil,"
and Mali closed his hand before Kil's face, "and they know it. But they
know I don't dare try it as long as this question mark exists, this other power
that may have a weapon in
it's
Sub-E that I can't
match. Now answer me, does this,
all this,
make you
remember anything?"

"No," said Kil.

Mali
drew a deep breath and straightened up. His eyes went away from Kil and focused
on the middle distance as his attention turned inward. Kil saw a valuable
moment slipping away from him.

"I don't believe
you," he said.

Mali's attention came back
with a jerk.

"Don't believe what?" he said.

"What you said about
being able to crush' the Police."

Mali
smiled at him. He became conscious of the grapes still in his hand and threw
them down on the table.

"
There's
only six million of them, Kil," he said. "And
the world is sick of them, and Files, and a Key on every wrist. Your little
group of A. Stabs
are
the exception, and there's
nothing wonderful in that. Under almost any system there's bound to be found
some people who are suited to it. What it boils down to is we've been living in
a temporary state of emergency for a hundred years. The wonder is that it
hasn't cracked before now."

"War!"
said Kil. He pronounced the word with the deep, almost instinctive intonation
of shock and horror typical in a man of'his time.

"No
such thing," replied Mali, swiftly.
"Skirmishes,
maybe, but only to help along the shift in balance of power.
The organized
Societies are inevitably bound to follow a situation of Police control and
supplant it."

"Why?"

"Because,"
said Mali, quite earnestly, "they offer man what Files has taken away from
him: a social structure, a solid social structure to build his own life
inside."

Kil
shook his head, not knowing exactly why he was disagreeing, but disagreeing
reflexively.

"Believe
me," said Mali, looking at him. "Files
was
a
mistake. They thought then that man couldn't go on living and developing with
the threat of atomic annihilation constantly hanging over him. They forgot that
men have built on the sides of a volcano before. More important than the
volcano is the building. We all need it—something solid to tie to—a place to He
down. And that's what none of us have now, under Files and the Police, all four
billions of us, wanderers over the face of the globe."

For
a moment, Mali's easy voice rang with a true note of idealism.

"So that's why you do these
things?" said Kil.

Mali laughed and slipped back into-his
customary manner.

"No," he said. "In my case,
conviction followed conversion. No, Kil, you probably think I've got delusions
of grandeur, a Napoleon, an Alexander complex. It's a lot more prosaic than
that. I just happen to be capable and started, out wanting little things. Then
as I got those, I wanted bigger and bigger things, more and more, until now. .
. ."

"Until now you want the world."

"Why not?" asked Mali.

Kil shook his head, again,
stubbornly.

"Why not just ignore
the Project?" he said.

"Because,"
answered Mali, quietly, "they seem to be capable of doing all sorts of
impossible things; and not the least of these is the fact that they seem to be
already free of Files. They don't wear Keys—" he checked himself suddenly,
his eyes pouncing on Kil. "What is it?"

"Nothing," said
Kil, hastily.

"Must I appeal to your
new sense of loyalty for an answer?"

"The—"
the words struggled from Kil's throat, "the old man had no Key."

"The old man who took your wife off with him?"
Mali considered Kil, no longer smiling.
"Now why, I wonder, didn't that come out under the
Search.
The Project may have—" He let the words trail off. Abruptly, he turned.

"Keep
thinking, Kil," he said. "Somewhere in you there's enough information
buried in five years of association with your wife to tell us where the Project
hides itself. We'll get it eventually. If you think of anything more that might
be useful to me, come and find me. Meanwhile, stay on the grounds."

He walked out through the
door, and was gone.

Kil
stared after him for a short moment; and then turned to Melee. She had also
turned and was facing him with one of her strange, unreadable expressions.

"Let's
go for a walk," she said. "Come on, Kil. We'll go down by the lake
and get away from this place and everything."

He nodded, scarcely listening. His mind was
whirling with thoughts of Ellen and the old man who had worn no Key on his
wrist.

Almost in a daze, he followed Melee, as she
once more opened the window and stepped through it to the turf below. Side by
side and saying nothing, they cut across to the gravel path slanting downhill
from the lodge, and followed it around its curve past the row of cabins.

They
passed the cabin in which Kil and Dekko had been lodged the day before. The
ghost of that yesterday seemed more than twenty-four hours old as Kil looked at
it. Almost it seemed as if it might have been weeks back that he and Dekko had
rested here, waiting for night so that they could go up to spy on the Lodge.
Thinking of the little man reminded Kil.

"What happened to Dekko?" he asked
Melee.

"He
hasn't been caught yet," she answered absently, walking along with her
eyes fixed on the path. A momentary concern and sympathy for the slight
hunchback stirred briefly in Kil's mind and was drowned immediately by his
conditioning.

They
passed the other cabins and drew level with the one that housed Anton
Bolievsky. As before, the old man that looked so young was sitting cross-legged
in the doorway.

"Good
morning," he said, as they came up. Kil stopped. Melee continued on as if
she had not heard.

"Hello," said
Kil.

They looked at each other.

"Your particular aura of
purposefulness," said
Anton,
"seems dimmed,
but not extinguished. You are a very fortunate young man."

"What do you
mean?" asked Kil.

"Merely trying to put into words a
feeling I get," replied the other. "You remember our talk
yesterday?"
"Of course."

"It made me think. Did
it make you think?"

"Kil!"
called Melee, impatiently, from the bend in the path where it headed into the
belt of trees that hid the lake.

"I—I've
got to go," said Kil. "Maybe we can get together for a talk,
later."

"Yes," said
Anton.

Kil
turned and hurried off, wondering at himself. Melee had already gone on again
down the path and disappeared into the woods. He hurried ahead, caught a
glimpse of her silver tunic through the green branches, and increased his pace.
The path wound about, now that it was among the trees, and she was nowhere to
be seen. Twenty yards further on, however, he came suddenly around a sharp turn
and literally ran into her. She was standing with her back to him, staring out
over the lake; but as they collided, she turned swiftly and clung to him. And
he saw with astonishment that she was crying, silently and fiercely.
"Melee—" he said.

"Oh, Kil," she
moaned. "Why do I do these things? Why?"

But
then her words were lost to him; for, even as he put his arms instinctively
around her, he looked over her shoulder and saw the lake. Water . . . water . .
. for the third time a body of water spread before him. And as it had been before,
when he looked out McElroy's window on Lake Superior, and when he came up from
the meeting place of the Panthers and faced the Pacific, the world weaved
around him. And the deep and crying need for Ellen, only Ellen, rose
irresistibly within him. Stronger . . . stronger . . . stronger by far than the
time before, which had been stronger than the first time, stronger than any
hypnotic condition that ever had been or could be, it called him. Ellen . . .
Ellen . . . Ellen. . . .

Dimly,
he was conscious of a flash of silver tunic before his eyes and a woman's
scream. And then he was free and running, running, running. . . .

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

The
first few hours were blurred. After that,
when he at last came fully to himself again, he was riding down an ancient
highway in an all-purpose bug, its squashy flotons humming merrily as it buzzed
along at somewhere around a hundred and ten kilometers an hour. The driver was
a wiry old botanical technician whose love for his bug was unbounded and
voluble.