Lynne stirred uneasily on her plastomat. She knew she was there, felt
sure she was not asleep. Yet the dream persisted, holding her in a grip
that was tighter than reality.
She was alone in a strange crystaline chamber, high, high up in a
strange crystaline tower. Thanks to the fact there was no metal in its
construction, nowhere was there rust. Yet her chamber, like the tower
itself, showed definite signs of age and ruin.
An irregular segment of one wall had been penetrated by a missile
of some sort and patched with plastic spray to keep out the thin,
chill, unending wind. On lower levels, she knew, were larger scars of
long-forgotten destruction. Just above the transparent arched ceiling
what had been an elaborate tracery of gleaming flying buttresses, their
functional purpose long since lost, stood precariously in a pattern of
ruin.
Here and there about her, other surviving towers of the city rose in
more serious stages of decay. And far below, on the windswept square,
huddled the gleaming egg-shaped shelters of the Earthfolk. Beyond the
city area the red desert and green oases stippled off to the dark
horizon or advanced to invade the steep scarp of the far bank of the
great canal.
Lynne was alone in a tower on Mars. Instruments, strange to her
eyes but stamped with the familiar patterns of Earthly design and
manufacture, lined three walls of the chamber. She knew she should take
the downlift and return to the tiny cluster of Earth-dwellings in the
court below, that her tour of duty was ended.
Yet she could not leave. Voices whispered within her head and tugged at
her emotions, voices whose owners she could not see, whose embodiment
lurked ever just beyond the range of her eyes, no matter how quickly
she rolled them. Voices that begged for her assistance, offering
unheard-of pleasures as a reward, unthought-of torments as punishment
for her refusal to cooperate.
They were strange voices, whose message bore the corrupt cynicism
of the very old, coupled with the naïve enjoyments of long deferred
second childhood--alien voices. Or were they alien? Wasn't it rather
that _she_ was the alien, like those other Earthfolk who lived in
the cluster of pathetic little huts below, who strove to reclaim the
too-lean atmosphere of a planet, most of which had long-since escaped
into the star-studded black-velvet backdrop of space.
Yes, it was _she_ who was alien. And with the thought came another, a
_human_ picture, so horrible, so gruesome, that her mind refused to
accept it. Yet she knew it was vitally important she see it clearly.
But the others, the invisibles, kept derailing her concentration with
their whispers of joys unknown before to mortal man or woman, their
soft threats of torments beyond those conceived by Dante himself.
"Let us in," they offered softly, with the mischief of the very old.
"Let us in and we shall romp and travel and find new uses for your
bodies. We shall live side by side within you and lead you to pleasures
no souls contained by bodies can ever know. We shall...."
There was something Lynne should ask them, an answer to their
Saturnalian bribery--but like their visibility it refused to rise to
the upper level of her consciousness. She felt sudden shame at not
being able to speak, fear at her inability to marshal needed thoughts,
fear that grew quickly into terror while the all-important question
struggled vainly to make itself uttered.
Laughing like rollicking imps, the whisperers closed in a hemisphere
about and above her, dancing in weird joyous malicious rhythm and
bottling up reason as effectively as a plastivial. All at once she
found herself holding her head and screaming at them to go away....
Lynne woke up. She discovered herself already sitting erect on the
plastomat, supported by hands that dug into its pneumatic surface.
She looked wildly around her, noted the familiar tri-di picture of
Victoria Falls on the wall, the blank vidarscreen on its stand beside
the magnicloset entry, the picwindow with its familiar vista of morning
sunlight and greenery outside Mother Weedon's.
Only then did she become aware that her headache was worse. It seemed
to grow with each successive morning. During the day it lapsed at times
to mere vague discomfort, and with the aid of a couple of syntholaud
pills she was able to sleep. But when she awoke each following morning
it seemed a trifle worse.
She stepped into the bathostall, which performed all functions of
cleansing and elimination simultaneously, felt briefly better and got
into sandals, clout and bolero, polarizing them to a gaudy scarlet,
which clashed with her fair coloring but expressed her mood of
defiance, not only at her own ailments but the personal treachery of
Janet and the waverability of Ray Cornell.
Mother Weedon smiled approval of this gay gesture when Lynne took her
place at the breakfast table. "I'm glad you're feeling better, Lynne,"
she said. "I've been worried about you lately."
"Really putting it on, aren't you, honey?" Janet asked with a trace of
resentment. She had polarized her own costume to a soft pink, which was
washed out by Lynne's bold color-scheme. Nor could she change it during
the day without revealing her defeat.
"Delicious!" exclaimed Ray, ogling her with delight and pouring
paprisal instead of sucral on his Helthplankton.
Lynne laughed as she hadn't laughed in days. She wondered why she
felt so suddenly light-hearted and happy, especially after her waking
nightmare. Then, suddenly, she realised she was utterly unaware of what
the others were thinking. She was no longer telepathic. She was normal
once more!
However, it required no telepathic powers to sense that Ray was in a
sadly shattered state over whatever had happened between Janet and
himself on their date the night before. Lynne surmised that her rival
had enticed Ray into full courtship, that he was now suffering from
remorse, revulsion and a resurgence of desire for herself.
She wondered why she didn't care, then realised that Janet was no
longer her rival. Ray was a nice boy, a highly trained and talented
boy--but she wasn't in love with him any more. There were, she thought,
probably half a billion unattached males in the world at any given
moment, many of them far more interesting and attractive than Ray
Cornell. All she had to do was look for them....
Headache and nightmare receded further with each mouthful of breakfast
she ate. Her appetite was back and she kidded brightly with a miserable
Ray and a rather sullen and suspicious Janet all the way to the
brain-station. And then things began to happen that shattered her
new-found adjustment.
She was barred from entry to the studioff. The electroscreen admitted
Ray and Janet as usual but remained an invisible wall that refused her
admittance. She was no longer keyed to the group-machine. Before she
could try again a magnovox said, "Please report to Integration Chief on
Floor Eighty. Please report to Integration Chief on...."
Ray looked scared. Disruption of a team during working hours was an
emotional shock. Even Janet showed traces of fright. But she managed a
grin and said, "Give him the old treatment, Lynne, and you can't lose."
She accompanied the remark with a thoroughly carnal bump.
Lynne said nothing, being incapable of speech. She turned and made her
way to the mobilramp, had a sudden vivid recollection of the older but
far more efficient lift on the Martian tower in her dream. She felt
sick to her stomach and her headache was thumping again.
She had never been on the eightieth floor before--it was reserved for
guiding geniuses, who had no time for mere group-machine members except
in case of trouble. Lynne wondered what she had done as she entered a
room with walls of soft rolling colors.
The man on the couch, a tall lean saturnine man with dark eyes that
seemed to read right through her from out of a long lined white face,
didn't leave her long in doubt. He said, "Miss Fenlay, I'm afraid
I have bad news for you. As a result of your amazing performance
yesterday your usefulness as a group-machine worker is ended."
"But I was right," she protested. "I had the first zero-variation in
integration history."
"You needn't be so frightened," he said more gently. "I know this must
be a severe emotional shock. You were right--by the machine. We need
human factors in cybernetics to show us where the machines are wrong,
not where they are right. To come up with two successive zero-variant
answers implies some sort of rapport with the machine itself. We can't
afford to take further chances."
Lynne sat down abruptly on an empty couch. She felt empty inside, said,
"What am I to do?"
The tall dark man's smile was a trifle frosty. He said, "We've been
watching you, of course. About all I can tell you, Miss Fenlay, is that
your--er--aberration is not exactly a surprise."
"You mean you've been spying on me?" Even though Lynne was thoroughly
conditioned to accept her life as part of a complex mechano-social
integration, she found the idea of being spied upon unpleasant.
"Not really," he told her. "And don't worry. We have no intention of
letting your remarkable gifts go to waste." He paused, added, "I hope
your headache is better soon."
"Thank you," she said. She was outside before the full implications
of his parting shot sank home. How had he or anyone known she was
suffering from headache? She had reported it to no one--and the
helth-check booth machine was not geared to give confidential evidence
or to retain personality keys for checking.
It was a puzzle. She worked on it until she was almost back at Mother
Weedon's, then realised the Integration Chief had given her no hint of
a new assignment--had only suggested she was to be used. She began to
wonder if laboratory test-animals suffered from headaches like the one
which seemed to have led to her undoing.
There was no escaping Mother Weedon, who was enjoying a tri-di
vidarcast in full view of the front door as Lynne came in. Well, the
girl thought, she was going to have to be told anyway--if she hadn't
already got the news from the brain-station.
Evidently Mother Weedon had heard. She motioned the girl to sit beside
her on her couch and said, "Don't worry, Lynne. You're going to be
fine. The trouble with you is you've outgrown your job--yes, and Janet
and Ray and me too. You can't help it. You're too good for us and
that's that. They'll be moving you on."
"But I _like_ it here," cried Lynne. "I like you and Jan and Ray and
our work with the group-machine. I don't want it to change."
"But it will--everything changes," said Mother Weedon gently. "I'm
glad you've been happy here. But your happiness has meant Janet's
unhappiness and, more lately, Ray's."
"I--see," Lynne said slowly. She hadn't thought of things in that
light before. But of course it was true. The first real home she had
ever known was about to be taken from her and the experience was too
personal to allow much detached thinking.
Like most genetically-controlled children whose double-birth had
been successful, she had been brought up with functional rather than
sentimental care. Not having known her parents, not having known her
twin brother on Mars, she had never missed them. The teachers and
matrons at the seminary had been carefully selected for their warmth
and competence. There had always been plenty of playmates, plenty of
interesting things to learn.
Living at Mother Weedon's had been a new and emotionally opening
experience, as had the blossoming of her romance with Ray Cornell, her
now-fractured friendship with Janet Downes. It was not going to be easy
to leave, to tear up only recently established roots, to set down new
ones which might in time be as ruthlessly sundered.
She felt frightened and very much alone, as if she were again in the
Martian tower of her nightmare with only alien and disembodied voices
speaking to her. Mars--she wondered a little about it. Somewhere on
Mars was her twin, Revere Fenlay, the brother she could not remember.
She wondered if he too were having troubles. There were stories
floating about of twins whose rapport spanned lifetimes separated by
the distance between the planets. But she knew nothing of Mars.
She watched a vidarcast with Mother Weedon, an unreal historical
romance of love and adventure in one of the vast sprawling
industrial empires of the mid-twentieth century. There was,
for twenty-second-century folk, a vast emotional appeal in the
job-competition, the hard compulsory physical toil, the dangers of that
exciting era. But Lynne was too wrapped up in her own problem to react
as usual.
While she and Mother Weedon were lunching on pineapple soup and
Bermudasteak with shadbacon and lacticola, Ray and Janet came in. They
pretended concern at what had happened to Lynne and the team but were
obviously excited with one another and the prospect of integrating a
new member of the team in Lynne's place.
After the meal Janet and Lynne were briefly alone in the vidaroom.
Janet eyed Lynne covertly and Lynne said, "It's all right, Jan. I'm
not going to put up a fight for Ray. Under the circumstances it's only
fair. I don't know what's going to happen to me and you and him--"
"Damn you, Lynne Fenlay!" Janet's sudden flare of hot emotion was
almost frightening. "You _would_ be like this. Don't you realise that
by being noble you'll leave both of us with a guilt complex we'll never
be able to shake?"
"Sorry," said Lynne sincerely. "I can't help it."
Janet regarded her narrowly, shook her head. "Hasn't anything ever
touched you, Lynne?" she asked. "Haven't you ever wanted Ray or anyone
as I want him? Haven't you ever hated anyone as I'm beginning to hate
you? Haven't you ever been human?"
"_Jan!_" Lynne was shocked, then vaguely frightened. "I don't know--I
guess maybe not," she said. "But Jan, I can't help it. That's the way I
am."
Janet sighed and said, "In that case I'm sorry for you." She changed
the subject quickly as Ray came wandering in, gave Lynne an unhappy
look, then crossed the room and turned on the vidarscreen. Peace of an
uneasy sort reigned for the next hour.
"When are they assigning your new member?" Lynne asked as the picture,
a documentary about solar heat, came to an end.
"Not for a day or so," said Ray. He looked at her piteously. "We--we're
going to miss you, Lynne. I wish I understood...."
"You're going to be too busy," Lynne told him. "And don't worry about
me, Ray. I've already talked to Jan."
"You mean you're not angry about _us_?"
Lynne shook her head, glanced at Janet, was again startled by the
blazing hatred that was beamed her way. She wondered what it must feel
like to hate in such thorough fashion. She was relieved when she heard
Mother Weedon talking to someone at the door.
A moment later the widow entered and said, "This is Rolf Marcein, kids.
He's going to be staying with us a little while." She introduced the
three of them to the newcomer.
Lynne barely acknowledged the greeting. She was too startled. The most
recent addition to Mother Weedon's charmed circle appeared, in the
semi-dark room, to be the man who had given her her walking papers that
morning on the eightieth floor of the brain-station tower.
He was tall, dark, lanky, saturnine. His name was Marcein. At least
that was something Lynne hadn't known before. And then she noticed
that this Marcein's face was not so pale, that his eyes were brighter,
his manner and movements more athletically poised than the man on the
eightieth floor. Mother Weedon pressed the polarizer to let more light
into the room, since the vidarbox was not on. The stranger's tan, seen
in the light, was startling, especially to Lynne, who had seen his pale
double so recently.
* * * * *
His double--that meant his twin, she thought. And if his twin worked in
the brain-station, then _this_ man must be a Martian. Certainly that
would account for his tan, caused by living under the thin atmosphere
of the red planet--as it would account for an athletic poise acquired
during the hardships of Martian existence.
_You're right, of course. I am Dolf's twin and I am from Mars._
It took her almost a full second to realise the thoughts had not been
spoken. She was telepathic again, aware not only of the newcomer's
thoughts but of those of the others in the room--though not as much
aware of theirs as of Rolf Marcein's.
She looked at him with something like panic, saw his brilliant dark
eyes upon her, noted that he wore his clothes well, that there was
something almost lupine in his grace, something almost overpowering....
_You must know you're beautiful yourself, Lynne Fenlay--if soft and
unawakened. I have an idea I could turn the trick...._
It was like a blow. Not only could she read _his_ thoughts, Lynne
realised--but he could read _hers_. She felt her face flame and a
sudden surge of resentment toward his arrogance that forced her to
leave the room lest she reveal the weakness it caused. And as she left
his soft laughter rang like hailstones in her ears.