IV

They landed on a small field while it was still dark. Hustled out into

a glare of lights Dalgetty did not have much chance to study his

surroundings. There were men standing on guard with magnum rifles,

tough-looking professional goons in loose gray uniforms. Dalgetty

followed obediently across the concrete, along a walk and through a

garden to the looming curved bulk of a house.

He paused just a second as the door opened for them and stood looking

out into darkness. The sea rolled and hissed there on a wide beach. He

caught the clean salt smell of it and filled his lungs. It might be

the last time he ever breathed such air.

"Get along with you." An arm jerked him into motion again.

Down a bare coldly-lit hallway, down an escalator, into the guts of

the island. Another door, a room beyond it, an ungentle shove. The

door clashed to behind him.

Dalgetty looked around. The cell was small, bleakly furnished with

bunk, toilet and washstand, had a ventilator grille in one wall.

Nothing else. He tried listening with maximum sensitivity but there

were only remote confused murmurs.

_Dad!_ he thought. _You're here somewhere too._

He flopped on the bunk and spent a moment analyzing the aesthetics of

the layout. It had a certain pleasing severity, the unconscious

balance of complete functionalism. Soon Dalgetty went back to sleep.

A guard with a breakfast tray woke him. Dalgetty tried to read the

man's thoughts but there weren't any to speak of. He ate ravenously

under a gun muzzle, gave the tray back and returned to sleep. It was

the same at lunch time.

His time-sense told him that it was 1435 hours when he was roused

again. There were three men this time, husky specimens. "Come on,"

said one of them. "Never saw such a guy for pounding his ear."

Dalgetty stood up, running a hand through his hair. The red bristles

were scratchy on his palm. It was a cover-up, a substitute symbol to

bring his nervous system back under full control. The process felt as

if he were being tumbled through a huge gulf.

"Just how many of your fellows are there here?" he asked.

"Enough. Now get going!"

He caught the whisper of thought--_fifty of us guards, is it? Yeah,

fifty, I guess._

Fifty! Dalgetty felt taut as he walked out between two of them. Fifty

goons. And they were trained, he knew that. The Institute had learned

that Bertrand Meade's private army was well-drilled. Nothing obtrusive

about it--officially they were only servants and bodyguards--but they

knew how to shoot.

And he was alone in mid-ocean with them. He was alone and no one knew

where he was and anything could be done to him. He felt cold, walking

down the corridor.

There was a room beyond with benches and a desk. One of the guards

gestured to a chair at one end. "Sit," he grunted.

Dalgetty submitted. The straps went around his wrists and ankles,

holding him to the arms and legs of the heavy chair. Another buckled

about his waist. He looked down and saw that the chair was bolted to

the floor. One of the guards crossed to the desk and started up a tape

recorder.

A door opened in the far end of the room. Thomas Bancroft came in. He

was a big man, fleshy but in well-scrubbed health, his clothes

designed with quiet good taste. The head was white-maned, leonine,

with handsome florid features and sharp blue eyes. He smiled ever so

faintly and sat down behind the desk.

The woman was with him--Dalgetty looked harder at her. She was new to

him. She was medium tall, a little on the compact side, her blond hair

cut too short, no makeup on her broad Slavic features. Young, in hard

condition, moving with a firm masculine stride. With those tilted gray

eyes, that delicately curved nose and wide sullen mouth, she could

have been a beauty had she wanted to be.

_One of the modern type_, thought Dalgetty. _A flesh-and-blood

machine, trying to outmale men, frustrated and unhappy without knowing

it and all the more bitter for that._

Briefly there was sorrow in him, an enormous pity for the millions of

mankind. They did not know themselves, they fought themselves like

wild beasts, tied up in knots, locked in nightmare. Man could be so

much if he had the chance.

He glanced at Bancroft. "I know you," he said, "but I'm afraid the

lady has the advantage of me."

"My secretary and general assistant, Miss Casimir." The politician's

voice was sonorous, a beautifully controlled instrument. He leaned

across the desk. The recorder by his elbow whirred in the flat

soundproofed stillness.

"Mr. Dalgetty," he said, "I want you to understand that we aren't

fiends. There are things too important for ordinary rules though. Wars

have been fought over them in the past and may well be fought again.

It will be easier for all concerned if you cooperate with us now. No

one need ever know that you have done so."

"Suppose I answer your questions," said Dalgetty. "How do you know

I'll be telling the truth?"

"Neoscopolamine, of course. I don't think you've been immunized. It

confuses the mind too much for us to interrogate you about these

complex matters under its influence but we will surely find out if you

have been answering our present questions correctly."

"And what then? Do you just let me go?"

Bancroft shrugged. "Why shouldn't we? We may have to keep you here for

awhile but soon you will have ceased to matter and can safely be

released."

Dalgetty considered. Not even he could do much against truth drugs.

And there were still more radical procedures, prefrontal lobotomy for

instance. He shivered. The leatherite straps felt damp against his

thin clothing.

He looked at Bancroft. "What do you really want?" he asked. "Why are

you working for Bertrand Meade?"

Bancroft's heavy mouth lifted in a smile. "I thought you were supposed

to answer the questions," he said.

"Whether I do or not depends on whose questions they are," said

Dalgetty. _Stall for time! Put it off, the moment of terror, put it

off!_ "Frankly, what I know of Meade doesn't make me friendly. But I

could be wrong."

"Mr. Meade is a distinguished executive."

"Uh-huh. He's also the power behind a hell of a lot of political

figures, including you. He's the real boss of the Actionist movement."

"What do you know of that?" asked the woman sharply.

"It's a complicated story," said Dalgetty, "but essentially Actionism

is a--a _Weltanschauung_. We're still recovering from the World Wars

and their aftermath. People everywhere are swinging away from great

vague capitalized causes toward a cooler and clearer view of life.

"It's analogous to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which also

followed a period of turmoil between conflicting fanaticisms. A belief

in reason is growing up even in the popular mind, a spirit of

moderation and tolerance. There's a wait-and-see attitude toward

everything, including the sciences and particularly the new

half-finished science of psychodynamics. The world wants to rest for

awhile.

"Well, such a state of mind has its own drawbacks. It produces

wonderful structures of thought but there's something cold about them.

There is so little real passion, so much caution--the arts, for

instance, are becoming ever more stylized. Old symbols like religion

and the sovereign state and a particular form of government, for which

men once died, are openly jeered at. We can formulate the semantic

condition at the Institute in a very neat equation.

"And you don't like it. Your kind of man needs something big. And mere

concrete bigness isn't enough. You could give your lives to the

sciences or to inter-planetary colonization or to social correction,

as many people are cheerfully doing--but those aren't for you. Down

underneath you miss the universal father-image.

"You want an almighty Church or an almighty State or an almighty

_anything_, a huge misty symbol which demands everything you've got

and gives in return only a feeling of belonging." Dalgetty's voice was

harsh. "In short, you can't stand on your own psychic feet. You can't

face the truth that man is a lonely creature and that his purpose must

come from within himself."

Bancroft scowled. "I didn't come here to be lectured," he said.

"Have it your way," answered Dalgetty. "I thought you wanted to know

what I knew of Actionism. That's it in unprecise verbal language.

Essentially you want to be a Leader in a Cause. Your men, such as

aren't merely hired, want to be Followers. Only there isn't a Cause

around, these days, except the common-sense one of improving human

life."

The woman, Casimir, leaned over the desk. There was a curious

intensity in her eyes. "You just pointed out the drawbacks yourself,"

she said. "This _is_ a decadent period."

"No," said Dalgetty. "Unless you insist on loaded connotations. It's a

necessary period of rest. Recoil time for a whole society--well, it

all works out neatly in Tighe's formulation. The present state of

affairs should continue for about seventy-five years, we feel at the

Institute. In that time, reason can--we hope--be so firmly implanted

in the basic structure of society that when the next great wave of

passion comes it won't turn men against each other.

"The present is, well, analytic. While we catch our breath we can

begin to understand ourselves. When the next synthetic--or creative or

crusading period, if you wish--comes, it will be saner than all which

have gone before. And man can't afford to go insane again. Not in the

same world with the lithium bomb."

Bancroft nodded. "And you in the Institute are trying to control this

process," he said. "You're trying to stretch out the period of--damn

it, of decadence! Oh, I've studied the modern school system too,

Dalgetty. I know how subtly the rising generation is being

indoctrinated--through policies formulated by _your_ men in the

government."

"Indoctrinated? Trained, I would say. Trained in self-restraint and

critical thinking." Dalgetty grinned with one side of his mouth.

"Well, we aren't here to argue generalities. Specifically Meade feels

he has a mission. He is the natural leader of America--ultimately,

through the U.N., in which we are still powerful, the world. He wants

to restore what he calls 'ancestral virtues'--you see, I've listened

to his speeches and yours, Bancroft.

"These virtues consist of obedience, physical _and_ mental, to

'constituted authority'--of 'dynamism,' which operationally speaking

means people ought to jump when he gives an order--of .... Oh, why go

on? It's the old story. Power hunger, the recreation of the Absolute

State, this time on a planetary scale.

"With psychological appeals to some and with promises of reward to

others he's built up quite a following. But he's shrewd enough to know

that he can't just stage a revolution. He has to make people want him.

He has to reverse the social current until it swings back to

authoritarianism--with him riding the crest.

"And that of course is where the Institute comes in. Yes, we have

developed theories which make at least a beginning at explaining the

facts of history. It was a matter not so much of gathering data as of

inventing a rigorous self-correcting symbology and our paramathematics

seems to be just that. We haven't published all of our findings

because of the uses to which they could be put. If you know exactly

how to go about it you can shape world society into almost any image

you want--in fifty years or less! You want that knowledge of ours for

your purposes!"

Dalgetty fell silent. There was a long quietness. His own breathing

seemed unnaturally loud.

"All right." Bancroft nodded again, slowly. "You haven't told us

anything we don't know."

"I'm well aware of that," said Dalgetty.

"Your phrasing was rather unfriendly," said Bancroft. "What you don't

appreciate is the revolting stagnation and cynicism of this age."

"Now you're using the loaded words," said Dalgetty. "Facts just _are_.

There's no use passing moral judgments on reality, the only thing you

can do is try to change it."

"Yes," said Bancroft. "All right then, we're trying. Do you want to

help us?"

"You could beat the hell out of me," said Dalgetty, "but it wouldn't

teach you a science that it takes years to learn."

"No, but we'd know just what you have and where to find it. We have

some good brains on our side. Given your data and equations they can

figure it out." The pale eyes grew wholly chill. "You don't seem to

appreciate your situation. You're a prisoner, understand?"

Dalgetty braced his muscles. He didn't reply.

Bancroft sighed. "Bring him in," he said.

One of the guards went out. Dalgetty's heart stumbled. _Dad_, he

thought. It was anguish in him. Casimir walked over to stand in front

of him. Her eyes searched his.

"Don't be a fool," she said. "It hurts worse than you know. Tell us."

He looked up at her. _I'm afraid_, he thought. _God knows I'm afraid._

His own sweat was acrid in his nostrils. "No," he said.

"I tell you they'll do everything!" She had a nice voice, low and

soft, but it roughened now. Her face was colorless with strain. "Go on

man, don't condemn yourself to--mindlessness!"

There was something strange here. Dalgetty's senses began to reach

out. She was leaning close and he knew the signs of horror even if she

tried to hide them. _She's not so hard as she makes out--but then why

is she with them?_

He threw a bluff. "I know who you are," he said. "Shall I tell your

friends?"

"No, you don't!" She stepped back, rigid, and his whetted senses

caught the fear-smell. In a moment there was control and she said,

"All right then, have it your way."

And underneath, the thought, slowed by the gluiness of panic, _Does he

know I'm FBI?_

_FBI!_ He jerked against the straps. Ye gods!

Calmness returned to him as she walked to her chief but his mind

whirred. Yes, why not? Institute men had little connection with the

Federal detectives, who, since the abolition of a discredited

Security, had resumed a broad function. They might easily have become

dubious about Bertrand Meade on their own, have planted operatives

with him. They had women among them too and a woman was always less

conspicuous than a man.

He felt a chill. The last thing he wanted was a Federal agent here.

The door opened again. A quartet of guards brought in Michael Tighe.

The Briton halted, staring before him. "_Simon!_" It was a harsh

sound, full of pain.

"Have they hurt you, Dad?" asked Dalgetty very gently.

"No, no--not till now." The gray head shook. "But you...."

"Take it easy, Dad," said Dalgetty.

The guards hustled Tighe over to a front-row bench and sat him down.

Old man and young locked eyes across the bare space.

Tighe spoke to him in the hidden way. _What are you going to do? I

can't sit and let them--_

Dalgetty could not reply unheard but he shook his head. "I'll be

okay," he answered aloud.

_Do you think you can make a break? I'll try to help you._

"No," said Dalgetty. "Whatever happens you lie low. That's an order."

He blocked off sensitivity as Bancroft snapped, "Enough. One of you is

going to yield. If Dr. Tighe won't, then we'll work on him and see if

Mr. Dalgetty can hold out."

He waved his hand as he took out a cigar. Two of the goons stepped up

to the chair. They had rubberite hoses in their hands.

The first blow thudded against Dalgetty's ribs. He didn't feel it--he

had thrown up a nerve bloc--but it rattled his teeth together. And

while he was insensitive he'd be unable to listen in on....

Another thud, and another. Dalgetty clenched his fists. What to do,

what to do? He looked over to the desk. Bancroft was smoking and

watching as dispassionately as if it were some mildly interesting

experiment. Casimir had turned her back.

"Something funny here, chief." One of the goons straightened. "I don't

think he's feeling nothing."

"Doped?" Bancroft frowned. "No, that's hardly possible." He rubbed his

chin, regarding Dalgetty with wondering eyes. Casimir wheeled around

to stare. Sweat filmed Michael Tighe's face, glistening in the chill

white light.

"He can still be hurt," said the guard.

Bancroft winced. "I don't like outright mutilation," he said. "But

still--I've warned you, Dalgetty."

"_Get out, Simon_," whispered Tighe. "_Get out of here._"

Dalgetty's red head lifted. Decision crystalized within him. He would

be no use to anyone with a broken leg, a crushed foot, an eye knocked

out, seared lungs--and Casimir was FBI, she might be able to do

something at this end in spite of all.

He tested the straps. A quarter inch of leatherite--he could snap them

but would he break his bones doing it?

_Only one way to find out_, he thought bleakly.

"I'll get a blowtorch," said one of the guards in the rear of the

room. His face was wholly impassive. Most of these goons must be

moronic, thought Dalgetty. Most of the guards in the twentieth-century

extermination camps had been. No inconvenient empathy with the human

flesh they broke and flayed and burned.

He gathered himself. This time it was rage, a cloud of fury rising in

his mind, a ragged red haze across his vision. That they would _dare_!

He snarled as the strength surged up in him. He didn't even feel the

straps as they popped across. The same movement hurtled him across the

room toward the door.

Someone yelled. A guard leaped in his path, a giant of a man.

Dalgetty's fist sprang before him, there was a cracking sound and the

goon's head snapped back against his own spine. Dalgetty was already

past him. The door was shut in his face. Wood crashed as he went

through it.

A bullet wailed after him. He dodged down the corridor, up the nearest

steps, the walls blurred with his own speed. Another slug smacked into

the paneling beside him. He rounded a corner, saw a window and covered

his eyes with an arm as he leaped.

The plastic was tough but a hundred and seventy pounds hit it at

fifteen feet per second. Dalgetty went through!

Sunlight flamed in his eyes as he hit the ground. Rolling over and

bouncing to his feet he set out across lawn and garden. As he ran his

vision swept the landscape. In that state of fear and wrath he could

not command much thought but his memory stored the data for

re-examination.

V

The house was a rambling two-story affair, all curves and planes

between palm trees, the island sloping swiftly from its front to a

beach and dock. On one side was the airfield, on another the guard

barracks. To the rear, in the direction of Dalgetty's movement, the

ground became rough and wild, stones and sand and saw-grass and clumps

of palmettos, climbing upward for a good two miles. On every side, he

could see the infinite blue sparkle of ocean. Where could he hide?

He didn't notice the slashing blades through which he raced and the

dry gulping of his lungs was something dreadfully remote. But when a

bullet went past one ear, he heard that and drew more speed from some

unknown depth. A glance behind revealed his pursuers boiling out of

the house, men in gray with the hot sunlight blinking off their guns.

He ducked around a thicket, flopped and belly-crawled over a rise of

land. On the farther side he straightened again and ran up the long

slope. Another slug and another. They were almost a mile behind now

but their guns had a long reach. He bent low, zigzagging as he ran.

The bullets kicked up spurts of sand around him.

A six-foot bluff loomed in his path, black volcanic rock shining like

wet glass. He hit it at full speed. He almost _walked_ up its face and

in the instant when his momentum was gone caught a root and yanked

himself to the top. Again he was out of their sight. He sprang around

another hulk of stone and skidded to a halt. At his feet, a sheer

cliff dropped nearly a hundred feet to a white smother of surf.

Dalgetty gulped air, working his lungs like a bellows. A long jump

down, he thought dizzily. If he didn't crack his skull open on a reef

he might well be clawed under by the sea. But there was no other place

for him to go.

He made a swift estimate. He had run the upward two miles in a little

over nine minutes, surely a record for such terrain. It would take the

pursuit another ten or fifteen to reach him. But he couldn't double

back without being seen and this time they'd be close enough to fill

him with lead.

_Okay, son_, he told himself. _You're going to duck now, in more than

one sense._

His light waterproof clothes, tattered by the island growth, would be

no hindrance down there, but he took off his sandals and stuck them in

his belt pouch. Praise all gods, the physical side of his training had

included water sports. He moved along the cliff edge, looking for a

place to dive. The wind whined at his feet.

There--down there. No visible rocks though the surf boiled and smoked.

He willed full energy back into himself, bent his knees, jack-knifed

into the air.

The sea was a hammer blow against his body. He came up threshing and

tumbling, gasped a mouthful of air that was half salt spray, was

pulled under again. A rock scraped his ribs. He took long strokes,

always upward to the blind white shimmer of light. He got to the crest

of one wave and rode it in, surfing over a razorback reef.

Shallow water. Blinded by the steady rain of salt mist, deafened by

the roar and crash of the sea, he groped toward shore. A narrow pebbly

beach ran along the foot of the cliff. He moved along it, hunting a

place to hide.

There--a sea-worn cave, some ten feet inward, with a yard or so of

fairly quiet water covering its bottom. He splashed inside and lay

down, exhaustion clamping a hand on him.

It was noisy. The hollow resonance of sound filled the cave like the

inside of a drum but he didn't notice. He lay on the rocks and sand,

his mind spiraling toward unconsciousness, and let his body make its

own recovery.

Presently he regained awareness and looked about him. The cave was

dim, with only a filtered greenish light to pick out black wall's and

slowly swirling water. Nobody could see much below the surface--good.

He studied himself. Lacerated clothes, bruised flesh and a long

bleeding gash in one side. That was not good. A stain of blood on the

water would give him away like a shout.

Grimacing, he pressed the edges of the wound together and willed that

the bleeding stop. By the time a good enough clot was formed for him

to relax his concentration the guards were scrambling down to find

him. He didn't have many minutes left. Now he had to do the opposite

of energizing. He had to slow metabolism down, ease his heartbeat,

lower his body temperature, dull his racing brain.

He began to move his hands, swaying back and forth, muttering the

autohypnotic formulas. His incantations, Tighe had called them. But

they were only stylized gestures leading to conditioned reflexes deep

in the medulla. _Now I lay me down to sleep_....

Heavy, heavy--his eyelids were drooping; the wet walls receding into a

great darkness, a hand cradling his head. The noise of surf dimmed,

became a rustle, the skirts of the mother he had never known, come in

to bid him goodnight. Coolness stole over him like veils dropping one

by one inside his head. There was winter outside and his bed was snug.

When Dalgetty heard the nearing rattle of boots--just barely through

the ocean and his own drowsiness--he almost forgot what he had to do.

No, yes, now he knew. Take several long, deep breaths, oxygenate the

bloodstream, then fill the lungs once and slide down under the

surface.

He lay there in darkness hardly conscious of the voices, dimly

perceived.

"A cave here--a place for him to hide."

"Nah, I don't see nothing."

Scrunch of feet on stone. "Ouch! Stubbed my damn toe. Nah, it's a

closed cave. He ain't in here."

"Hm? Look at this, then. Bloodstains on this rock, right? He's _been_

here, at least."

"Under water?" Rifle butts probed but could not sound the inlet.

The woman's voice. "If he is hiding down below he'll have to come up

for air."

"When? We gotta search this whole damn beach. Here, I'll just give the

water a burst."

Casimir, sharply--"Don't be a fool. You won't even know if you hit

him. Nobody can hold his breath more than three minutes."

"Yeah, that's right, Joe. How long we been in here?"

"One minute, I guess. Give him a couple more. Cripes! D'ja see how he

ran? He ain't human!"

"He's killable, though. Me, I think he's just rolling around in the

surf out there. This could be fish blood. A 'cuda chased another fish

in here and bit it."

Casimir: "Or if his body drifted in, it's safely under. Got a

cigarette?"

"Here y'are, Miss. But say, I never thought to ask. How come you come

with us?"

Casimir: "I'm as good a shot as you are, buster, and I want to be sure

this job's done right."

Pause.

Casimir: "Almost five minutes. If he can come up now he's a seal.

Especially with his body oxygen-starved after all that running."

In the slowness of Dalgetty's brain there was a chill wonder about the

woman. He had read her thought, she was FBI, but she seemed strangely

eager to hunt him down.

"Okay, le's get outta here."

Casimir: "You go on. I'll wait here just in case and come up to the

house pretty soon. I'm tired of following you around."

"Okay. Le's go, Joe."

It was another four minutes or so before the pain and tension in his

lungs became unendurable. Dalgetty knew he would be helpless as he

rose, still in his semi-hibernating state, but his body was shrieking

for air. Slowly he broke the surface.

The woman gasped. Then the automatic jumped into her hand and leveled

between his eyes. "All right, friend. Come on out." Her voice was very

low and shook a trifle but there was grimness in it.

Dalgetty climbed onto the ledge beside her and sat with his legs

dangling, hunched in the misery of returning strength. When full

wakefulness was achieved he looked at her and found she had moved to

the farther end of the cave.

"Don't try to jump," she said. Her eyes caught the vague light in a

wide glimmer, half frightened. "I don't know what to make of you."

Dalgetty drew a long breath and sat upright, bracing himself on the

cold slippery stone. "I know who you are," he said.

"Who, then?" she challenged.

"You're an FBI agent planted on Bancroft."