The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (43 page)

‘That was a nice speech, Rikki. Now I think we can go.’

‘Karellen! Thank God—but what have you done?’

‘Don’t worry. They’re all right. You can call it a paralysis, but it’s much subtler than that. They’re simply living a few thousand times more slowly than normal. When we’re gone, they’ll never know what happened.’

‘You’ll leave them here until the police come?’

‘No: I’ve a much better plan. I’m letting them go.’

Stormgren felt an illogical sense of relief which he did not care to analyse. He gave a last valedictory glance at the little room and its frozen occupants. Joe was standing on one foot, staring very stupidly at nothing. Suddenly Stormgren laughed and fumbled in his pockets.

‘Thanks for the hospitality Joe,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll leave a souvenir.’

On a reasonably clean sheet of paper he wrote carefully:

         
BANK OF MANHATTAN

Pay ‘Joe’ the sum of Fifteen Dollars

Thirty-five Cents ($15.35)

R. Stormgren.

As he laid the strip of paper beside the Pole, Karellen’s voice inquired: ‘Exactly what are you up to?’

‘Paying a debt of honour,’ explained Stormgren. ‘The other two cheated, but I think Joe played fair.’

He felt very gay and light-headed as he walked to the door. Hanging just outside it was a large, featureless metal sphere that moved aside to let him pass. He guessed that it was some kind of robot, and it explained how Karellen had been able to reach him through the unknown layers of rock overhead.

‘Carry on for a hundred yards,’ said the sphere, speaking in Karellen’s voice. ‘Then turn to the left until I give you further instructions.’

He ran forward eagerly, though he realised that there was no need for hurry. The sphere remained hanging in the corridor, and Stormgren guessed that it was the generator of the paralysis field.

A minute later he came across a second sphere, waiting for him at a fork in the corridor.

‘You’ve half a mile to go.’ it said. ‘Keep to the left until we meet again.’

Six times he encountered the spheres on his way to the open. At first he wondered if somehow the first robot had slipped ahead of him; then he guessed that there must be a chain of them maintaining a complete circuit down into the depths of the mine. At the entrance a group of guards formed a piece of improbable still life, watched over by yet another of the ubiquitous spheres. On the hillside a few yards away lay the little flying machine in which Stormgren had made all his journeys to Karellen.

He stood for a moment blinking in the fierce sunlight. As he climbed into the little ship, he had a last glimpse of the mine entrance and the men frozen round it. Quite suddenly a line of metal spheres raced out of the opening like silver cannon balls. Then the door closed behind him and with a sigh of relief he sank back upon the familiar couch.

For a while Stormgren waited until he had recovered his breath, then he uttered a single, heartfelt syllable:

‘Well?’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue you before. But you’ll see how very important it was to wait until all the leaders had gathered here.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ spluttered Stormgren, ‘that you knew where I was all the time? If I thought—’

‘Don’t be so hasty,’ answered Karellen, ‘or at any rate, let me finish explaining.’

‘It had better be good,’ said Stormgren darkly. He was beginning to suspect that he had been no more than the bait in an elaborate trap.

‘I’ve had a tracer on you for some time,’ began Karellen, ‘and though your late friends were correct in thinking that I couldn’t follow you underground, I was able to keep track until they brought you to the mine. That transfer in the tunnel was ingenious, but when the first car ceased to react, it gave the show away and I soon located you again. Then it was merely a matter of waiting. I knew that once they were certain I’d lost you, the leaders would come here and I’d be able to trap them all.’

‘But you’re letting them go!’

‘Until now,’ said Karellen, ‘I did not know which of the two billion men on this planet were the heads of the organisation. Now that they’re located. I can trace their movements anywhere on Earth. That’s far better than locking them up. They’re effectively neutralised, and they know it.’

That rich laugh echoed round the tiny room.

‘In some ways the whole affair was a comedy, but it had a serious purpose. It will be a valuable object lesson for any other plotters.’

Stormgren was silent for a while. He was not altogether satisfied, but he could see Karellen’s point of view and some of his anger had evaporated.

‘It’s a pity to do it in my last few weeks of office.’ he said, ‘but from now on I’m going to have a guard on my house. Pieter can be kidnapped next time. How has he managed, by the way? Are things in as big a mess as I expect?’

‘You’ll be disappointed to find how little your absence has mattered. I’ve watched Pieter carefully this past week, and have deliberately avoided helping him. On the whole he’s done very well—but he’s not the man to take your place.’

‘That’s lucky for him,’ said Stormgren, still rather aggrieved. ‘And have you had any word from your superior about—about showing yourself to us? I’m sure now that it’s the strongest argument your enemies have. Again and again, they told me, “We’ll never trust the Overlords until we can see them.”’

Karellen sighed.

‘No, I have heard nothing. But I know what the answer must be.’

Stormgren did not press the matter. Once he might have done so, but now for the first time the faint shadow of a plan had come into his mind. What he had refused to do under duress, he might yet attempt of his own free will.

Pierre Duval showed no surprise when Stormgren walked unannounced into his office. They were old friends, and there was nothing unusual in the Secretary-General paying a personal visit to the chief of the Science Bureau. Certainly Karellen would not think it odd, even if by any remote chance he turned his attention to this corner of the world.

For a while the two men talked business and exchanged political gossip; then, rather hesitantly, Stormgren came to the point. As his visitor talked, the old Frenchman leaned back in his chair and his eyebrows rose steadily millimetre by millimetre until they were almost entangled in his forelock. Once or twice he seemed about to speak but each time thought better of it.

When Stormgren had finished, the scientist looked nervously around the room.

‘Do you think he was listening?’ he said.

‘I don’t believe he can. This place is supposed to be shielded from everything, isn’t it? Karellen’s not a magician. He knows where I am, but that’s all.’

‘I hope you’re right. Apart from that, won’t there be trouble when he discovers what you’re trying to do? Because he will, you know.’

‘I’ll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well.’

The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while.

‘It’s a very pretty problem. I like it.’ he said simply. Then he dived into a drawer and produced an enormous writing-pad, the biggest Stormgren had ever seen.

‘Right,’ he began, scribbling furiously. ‘Let me make sure I have all the facts. Tell me everything you can about the room in which you have your interviews. Don’t omit any detail, however trivial it seems.’

Finally the Frenchman studied his notes with puckered brow.

‘And that’s all you can tell me?’

‘Yes.’

He snorted in disgust.

‘What about lighting? Do you sit in total darkness? And how about heating, ventilation…’

Stormgren smiled at the characteristic outburst.

‘The whole ceiling is luminous, and as far as I can tell the air comes through the speaker grille. I don’t know how it leaves; perhaps the stream reverses at intervals, but I haven’t noticed it. There’s no sign of any heaters, but the room is always at normal temperature. As for the machine that takes me up to Karellen’s ship, the room in which I travel is as featureless as an elevator cage.’

There was silence for several minutes while the physicist embroidered his writing-pad with meticulous and microscopic doodles. No one could have guessed that behind that still almost unfurrowed brow, the world’s finest technical brain was working with the icy precision that had made it famous.

Then Duval nodded to himself in satisfaction, leaned forward and pointed his pencil at Stormgren.

‘What makes you think, Rikki,’ he asked, ‘that Karellen’s vision screen, as you call it, really is what it pretends to be? Doesn’t it seem far more probable that your “vision screen” is really
nothing more complicated than a sheet of one-way glass
?’

Stormgren was so annoyed with himself that for a moment he sat in silence, retracing the past. From the beginning, he had never challenged Karellen’s story—yet now that he came to look back, when had the Supervisor ever told him that he was using a television system? He had just taken it for granted; the whole thing had been a piece of psychological trickery, and he had been completely deceived. He tried to console himself with the thought that in the same circumstances even Duval would have fallen into the trap.

‘If you’re right,’ he said, ‘all I have to do is to smash the glass—’

Duval sighed.

‘These non-technical laymen! Do you think it’s likely to be made of anything you could smash without explosives? And if you succeeded, do you imagine that Karellen is likely to breathe the same air as we do? Won’t it be nice for both of you if he flourishes in an atmosphere of chlorine?’

Stormgren turned rather pale.

‘Well, what
do
you suggest?’ he asked with some exasperation.

‘I want to think it over. First of all we’ve got to find if my theory is correct, and if so learn something about the material of the screen. I’ll put some of my best men on the job—by the way, I suppose you carry a briefcase when you visit the Supervisor? Is it the one you’ve got there?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s rather small. Will you get one at least ten centimetres deep, and use it from now on so that he becomes used to seeing it?’

‘Very well,’ said Stormgren doubtfully. ‘Do you want me to carry a concealed X-ray set?’

The physicist grinned.

‘I don’t know yet, but we’ll think of something. I’ll let you know what it is in about a month’s time.’

He gave a little laugh.

‘Do you know what this all reminds me of?’

‘Yes,’ said Stormgren promptly, ‘the time you were building illegal radio sets during the German occupation.’

Duval looked disappointed.

‘Well, I suppose I
have
mentioned that once or twice before.’

Stormgren laid down the thick folder of typescript with a sigh of relief.

‘Thank heavens that’s settled at last,’ he said. ‘It’s strange to think that those few hundred pages hold the future of Europe.’

Stormgren dropped the file into his brief-case, the back of which was now only six inches from the dark rectangle of the screen. From time to time his fingers played across the locks in a half-conscious nervous reaction, but he had no intention of pressing the concealed switch until the meeting was over. There was a chance that something might go wrong—though Duval had sworn that Karellen would detect nothing, one could never be sure.

‘Now, you said you’d some news for me,’ Stormgren continued, with scarcely concealed eagerness. ‘Is it about—’

‘Yes,’ said Karellen. ‘I received the Policy Board’s decision a few hours ago, and am authorised to make an important statement. I don’t think that the Freedom League will be very satisfied, but it should help to reduce the tension. We won’t record this, by the way.

‘You’ve often told me, Rikki, that no matter how unlike you we are physically, the human race will soon grow accustomed to us. That shows a lack of imagination on your part. It would probably be true in your case, but you must remember that most of the world is still uneducated by any reasonable standards, and is riddled with prejudices and superstitions that may take another hundred years to eradicate.

‘You will grant us that we know something of human psychology. We know rather accurately what would happen if we revealed ourselves to the world in its present state of development. I can’t go into details, even with you, so you must accept my analysis on trust. We can, however, make this definite promise, which should give you some satisfaction.
In fifty years—two generations from now—we shall come down from our ships and humanity will at last see us as we are
.’

Stormgren was silent for a while. He felt little of the satisfaction that Karellen’s statement would have once given him. Indeed, he was somewhat confused by his partial success, and for a moment his resolution faltered. The truth would come with the passage of time, and all his plotting was unnecessary and perhaps unwise. If he still went ahead, it would only be for the selfish reason that he would not be alive fifty years from now.

Karellen must have seen his irresolution for he continued:

‘I’m sorry if this disappoints you, but at least the political problems of the near future won’t be your responsibility. Perhaps you still think that our fears are unfounded, but believe me, we’ve had convincing proof of the dangers of any other course.’

Stormgren leaned forward, breathing heavily.

‘I always thought so! You
have
been seen by Man!’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Karellen answered after a short pause. ‘Your world isn’t the only planet we’ve supervised.’

Stormgren was not to he shaken off so easily.

‘There had been many legends suggesting that Earth has been visited in the past by other races.’

‘I know. I’ve read the Historical Research Section’s report. It makes Earth look like the crossroads of the Universe.’

‘There may have been visits about which you know nothing,’ said Stormgren, still angling hopefully. ‘Though since you must have been observing us for thousands of years, I suppose that’s rather unlikely.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Karellen in his most unhelpful manner. And at that moment Stormgren made up his mind.