Lynne lay down on her simple cot and tried to flash a personal message
through to Revere. But all she got was an increase of agony that almost
blacked her out.
Then she tried to reach Rolf Marcein. Although she lacked the advantage
of being high in her tower-post, the emotional urgency of the moment
more than compensated for this adverse factor. She got through to him
quickly, discovered his mind was open. So intense was his concentration
that he seemed momentarily unaware of her probing.
He was sitting in a hospital room, an operating room, and Revere lay
in front of him, stretched out on a surgical table. Sight of him made
Lynne feel another wave of nausea. An anestherator had been attached to
his nose and mouth and an alert nurse stood by the regulator. Revere's
temples had been slit by twin incisions, from which tubes were attached
to an odd and complex piece of machinery that seemed to support a
visual-grid.
Rolf Marcein was digging at her twin mentally, at the same time seeking
to receive whatever messages came from his tortured brain. Lynne could
read Rolf's thoughts clearly as he waved to her twin, _Their shape--you
of all of us must have received some vision of their appearance_.
Crehut, _Fenlay, we've got to know how they think of themselves!_
* * * * *
Then came a chaotic jumble of answering thoughts from Revere's damaged
brain. And even as she suffered sympathetic anguish Lynne understood
that with full anesthesia the mind itself would be dulled so that no
messages would be possible. It was a hideous moment.
_I'm trying, Rolf--I'm trying...._ In spite of the agony he was
undergoing Lynne's brother was beginning to formulate his thoughts.
Little by little a picture was building itself on the screen. It
was a wispy fragmentary picture, like a vidarscreen suffering from
old-fashioned television "ghosts." The figures he projected looked
wispy, blurred, repeated side by side in overlapping focus.
Lynne noted that Rolf and the alert attendants present were using
stereoscopic devices, forced herself to see through the mind of one
of them, to learn the impressions they were getting of the infra-red
portions of the picture.
It was like some of the images Lynne had seen earlier on the Martian
mural--but all balled up. It looked like one of the near-human dominant
species, yet had the multiple body of one of their disgusting pets. Its
antics were even more suggestive than the mural.
Lynne quickly re-transferred herself. She remembered all at once what
Tony Willis had told her about women being better able to resist the
aliens than men. They were incredible, impossible, she thought, yet
there was a hint of intense pleasure in their....
All at once she lost the entire image in a flash of worry, confusion
and finally frustration. Yet her headache persisted, grew worse, and
she got a definite impression that Revere was dying, that Rolf was
mercilessly goading him on to destruction. Outraged, she tried to key
furious thoughts in Rolf's direction--but so greatly was she herself
suffering that she was unable to focus her powers.
Then, abruptly, the agony was over. Whatever had happened was finished,
done with. Lynne sat up on her bed, feeling limp and sore all over,
as if she had taken a physical beating. She ran an acti-comb through
her blond hair, freshened up her looks generally, though she felt like
the proverbial wrath of Satan, went out to the recreation room. At the
moment she needed human company.
Through a window she saw that the sun was low in the west, looked
in awe at the brilliant colors of the Martian sunset. Thanks to the
thinner atmosphere and its high impregnation of dust, the brilliance
far exceeded anything on Earth, even though the sun looked far-away and
cold.
Someone offered her a colafizz, which she accepted gratefully. She
tried to reach Revere but got only a wall of blankness. He was either
unconscious--or dead, she decided. She didn't know whether to be
relieved or grief-stricken at the prospect. True, Revere was her
identical twin--yet she barely knew him, had no real close ties.
Then Lao appeared and under the artificial lighting of the chemilamps,
Lynne was surprised to note how tired the Eurasio-Martian girl
looked. She appeared thin enough to be blown away by the first breeze
and there were deep purple circles under her slightly tilted black
almond-eyes--yet the fingers that gripped her skinless cigarette were
rock-steady.