Coburn said coldly, "No. No planes. This isn't war. It's a training
exercise, Iron-Curtain style. This outfit will strike twenty--maybe
thirty miles south. There's a town there--Kilkis. They'll take it and
loot it. By the time Athens finds out what's happened, they'll be ready
to fall back. They'll do a little fighting. They'll carry off the
people. And they'll deny everything. The West doesn't want war. Greece
couldn't fight by herself. And America wouldn't believe that such things
could happen. But they do. It's what's called cold war. Ever hear of
that?"
The main column of soldiers far below poured up to the village and went
down the straggly street in a tide of dark figures. The village was very
small. The soldiers came out of the other end of the village. They
poured on after the tanks, rippling over irregularities in the way.
They seemed innumerable.
"Three or four thousand men," said Coburn coldly. "This is a big raid.
But it's not war. Not yet."
It was not the time for full-scale war. Bulgaria and the other countries
in its satellite status were under orders to put a strain upon the
outside world. They were building up border incidents and turmoil for
the benefit of their masters. Turkey was on a war footing, after a
number of incidents like this. Indo-China was at war. Korea was an old
story. Now Greece. It always takes more men to guard against criminal
actions than to commit them. When this raid was over Greece would have
to maintain a full-size army in its northern mountains to guard against
its repetition. Which would be a strain on its treasury and might help
toward bankruptcy. This was cold war.
The infantry ended. Horse-drawn vehicles appeared in a seemingly endless
line. Motorized transport would be better, but the Bulgarians were short
of it. Shaggy, stubby animals plodded in the wake of the tanks and the
infantry. There were two-wheeled carts in single file all across the
valley. They went through the village and filed after the soldiers.
"I think," said Coburn in biting anger, "this will be all there is to
see. They'll go in until they're stopped. They'll kidnap Greek civilians
and later work them to death in labor camps. They'll carry off some
children to raise as spies. But their purpose is probably only to make
such a threat that the Greeks will go broke guarding against them. They
know the Greeks don't want war."
He began to wriggle back from the brushwood screen. He was filled with
the sort of sick rage that comes when you can't actively resent
insolence and arrogance. He hated the people who wanted the world to
collapse, and this was part of their effort to bring it about.
He helped the girl down. "Dillon said to wait," he said. He found
himself shaking with anger at the men who had ordered the troops to
march. "He said he was taking pictures. He must have had an advance tip
of some sort. If so, he'll have a line of retreat."
Then Coburn frowned. Not quite plausible, come to think of it. But
Dillon had certainly known about the raid. He was set to take pictures,
and he hadn't been surprised. One would have expected Greek Army
photographers on hand to take pictures of a raid of which they had
warning. Probably United Nations observers on the scene, too. Yes. There
should be Army men and probably a United Nations team up where Dillon
was.
Coburn explained to the girl. "That'll be it. And they'll have a radio,
too. Probably helicopters taking them out also. I'll go up and tell them
to be sure and have room for you."
He started for the cliff he'd seen Dillon climb. He paused: "I'd better
have your name for them to report to Athens."
"I'm Janice Ames," she told him. "The Breen Foundation has me going
around arranging for lessons for the people up here. Sanitation and
nutrition and midwifery, and so on. The Foundation office is in
Salonika, though."
He nodded and attacked the cliff.
* * * * *
It hadn't been a difficult climb for Dillon. It wasn't even a long one
for Coburn, but it was much worse than he'd thought. The crevices for
handholds were rare, and footholds were almost non-existent. There were
times when he felt he was holding on by his fingernails. Dillon seemed
to have made it with perfect ease, but Coburn found it exhausting.
Fifty feet up he came to the place where Dillon had vanished. But it was
a preposterously difficult task to get across an undercut to where he
could grasp a stunted tree. It was a strain to scramble up past it. Then
he found himself on the narrowest of possible ledges, with a sickening
drop off to one side. But Dillon had made it, so he followed.
He went a hundred yards, and then the ledge came to an end. He saw where
Dillon must have climbed. It was possible, but Coburn violently did not
want to try. Still ... He started.
Then something clicked in his throat. There was a rather deep ledge for
a space of four or five feet. And there was Dillon. No, not Dillon. Just
Dillon's clothes. They lay flat and deflated, but laid out in one
assembly beside a starveling twisted bush. It would have been possible
for a man to stand there to take off his clothes, if he wanted to. But a
man who takes off his clothes--and why should Dillon do that?--takes
them off one by one. These garments were fitted together. The coat was
over the shirt, and the trousers fitted to the bottom of the shirt over
the coat, and the boots were at the ends of the trouser legs.
Then Coburn saw something he did not believe. It palpably was not true.
He saw a hand sticking out of the end of the sleeve. But it was not a
hand, because it had collapsed. It was rather like an unusually thick
glove, flesh color.
Then he saw what should have been Dillon's head. And it was in place,
too. But it was not Dillon's head. It was not a head at all. It was
something quite different. There were no eyes. Merely holes. Openings.
Like a mask.
Coburn felt a sort of roaring in his ears, and he could not think
clearly for a moment because of the shrieking impossibility of what he
was looking at. Dillon's necktie had been very neatly untied, and left
in place in his collar. His shirt had been precisely unbuttoned. He had
plainly done it himself. And then--the unbuttoned shirt made it
clear--he had come out of his body. Physically, he had emerged and gone
on. The thing lying flat that had lapsed at Coburn's feet was Dillon's
outside. His outside only. The inside had come out and gone away. It had
climbed the cliff over Coburn's head.
The outside of Dillon looked remarkably like something made out of
foam-rubber. Coburn touched it, insanely.
He heard his own voice saying flatly: "It's a sort of suit. A suit that
looks like Dillon. He was in it. Something was! Something is playing the
part of Dillon. Maybe it always was. Maybe there isn't any Dillon."
He felt a sort of hysterical composure. He opened the chest. It was
patently artificial. There were such details on the inside as would be
imagined in a container needed to fit something snugly. At the edges of
the opening there were fastenings like the teeth of a zipper, but
somehow different. Coburn knew that when this was fastened there would
be no visible seam.
Whatever wore this suit-that-looked-like-Dillon could feel perfectly
confident of passing for Dillon, clothed or otherwise. It could pass
without any question for--
Coburn gagged.
_It could pass without question for a human being._
Obviously, whatever was wearing this foam-rubber replica of Dillon was
not human!
Coburn went back to where he had to climb down the cliffside again. He
moved like a sleep-walker. He descended the fifty-foot cliff by the
crevices and the single protruding rock-point that had helped him get
up. It was much easier going down. In his state of mind it was also more
dangerous. He moved in a sort of robot-like composure.
He moved toward the girl, trying to make words come out of his throat,
when a small rock came clattering down the cliff. He looked up. Dillon
was in the act of swinging to the first part of the descent. He came
down, very confident and assured. He had two camera-cases slung from his
shoulders. Coburn stared at him, utterly unable to believe what he'd
seen ten minutes before.
Dillon reached solid ground and turned. He smiled wryly. His shirt was
buttoned. His tie was tied.
"I hoped," he said ruefully to Janice Ames, "that the Bulgars would
toddle off. But they left a guard in the village. We can't hope to take
an easier trail. We'll have to go back the way you came. We'll get you
safe to Salonika, though."
The girl smiled, uneasily but gratefully.
"And," added Dillon, "we'd better get started."
He gallantly helped the girl remount her donkey. At the sight, Coburn
was shaken out of his numbness. He moved fiercely to intervene. But
Janice settled herself in the saddle and Dillon confidently led the way.
Coburn grimly walked beside her as she rode. He was convinced that he
wouldn't leave her side while Dillon was around. But even as he knew
that desperate certitude, he was filled with confusion and a panicky
uncertainty.
When they'd traveled about half a mile, another frightening thought
occurred to Coburn. Perhaps Dillon--passing for human--wasn't alone.
Perhaps there were thousands like him.
Invaders! Usurpers, pretending to be men. Invaders, obviously, from
space!