What was it, that descending hum high in the sky, sweeping closer
out of stars and moon and wind? Minutes ago the needle on his
gravitomagnetic detector had wavered down in the depths of the pyramid.
He had hurried up and now stood looking and listening and feeling his
heart turn stiff.
_No, no, no--not a Janyard ship, not now--it was the end of everything
if they came._
Laird cursed with a hopeless fury. The wind caught his mouthings
and blew them away with the scudding sand, buried them under the
everlasting silence of the valley. His eyes traveled to his sneakboat.
It was invisible against the great pyramid--he'd taken that much
precaution, shoveling a low grave of sand over it--but, if they used
metal detectors that was valueless. He was fast, yes, but almost
unarmed; they could easily follow his trail down into the labyrinth and
locate the vault.
Lord if he had led them here--if his planning and striving had only
resulted in giving the enemy the weapon which would destroy Earth--
His hand closed about the butt of his blaster. Silly weapon, stupid
popgun--what could he do?
Decision came. With a curse, he whirled and ran back into the pyramid.
His flash lit the endless downward passages with a dim bobbing
radiance, and the shadows swept above and behind and marched beside,
the shadows of a million years closing in to smother him. His boots
slammed against the stone floor, _thud-thud-thud_--the echoes caught
the rhythm and rolled it boomingly ahead of him. A primitive terror
rose to drown his dismay; he was going down into the grave of a
thousand millennia, the grave of the gods, and it took all the nerve he
had to keep running and never look back. He didn't dare look back.
Down and down and down, past this winding tunnel, along this ramp,
through this passageway into the guts of the planet. A man could get
lost here. A man could wander in the cold and the dark and the echoes
till he died. It had taken him weeks to find his way into the great
vault, and only the clues given by Murchison's reports had made it
possible at all. Now--
* * * * *
He burst into a narrow antechamber. The door he had blasted open leaned
drunkenly against a well of night. It was fifty feet high, that door.
He fled past it like an ant and came into the pyramid storehouse.
His flash gleamed off metal, glass, substances he could not identify
that had lain sealed against a million years till he came to wake the
machines. What they were, he did not know. He had energized some of
the units, and they had hummed and flickered, but he had not dared
experiment. His idea had been to rig an antigrav unit which would
enable him to haul the entire mass of it up to his boat. Once he was
home, the scientists could take over. But now--
He skinned his teeth in a wolfish grin and switched on the big lamp
he had installed. White light flooded the tomb, shining darkly back
from the monstrous bulks of things he could not use, the wisdom and
techniques of a race which had spanned the stars and moved planets and
endured for fifty million years. Maybe he could puzzle out the use of
something before the enemy came. Maybe he could wipe them out in one
demoniac sweep--just like a stereofilm hero, jeered his mind--or maybe
he could simply destroy it all, keep it from Janyard hands.
He should have provided against this. He should have rigged a bomb, to
blow the whole pyramid to hell--
With an effort, he stopped the frantic racing of his mind and looked
around. There were paintings on the walls, dim with age but still
legible, pictographs, meant perhaps for the one who finally found this
treasure. The men of New Egypt were shown, hardly distinguishable
from humans--dark of skin and hair, keen of feature, tall and stately
and robed in living light. He had paid special attention to one
representation. It showed a series of actions, like an old time
comic-strip--a man taking up a glassy object, fitting it over his head,
throwing a small switch. He had been tempted to try it, but--gods, what
would it do?
He found the helmet and slipped it gingerly over his skull. It might be
some kind of last-ditch chance for him. The thing was cold and smooth
and hard, it settled on his head with a slow massiveness that was
strangely--_living_. He shuddered and turned back to the machines.
This thing now with the long coil-wrapped barrel--an energy projector
of some sort? How did you activate it? Hell-fire, which was the muzzle
end?
He heard the faint banging of feet, winding closer down the endless
passageways. Gods, his mind groaned. They didn't waste any time, did
they?
But they hadn't needed to ... a metal detector would have located his
boat, told them that he was in this pyramid rather than one of the
dozen others scattered through the valley. And energy tracers would
spot him down here....
He doused the light and crouched in darkness behind one of the
machines. The blaster was heavy in his hand.
A voice hailed him from outside the door. "It's useless, Solman. Come
out of there!"
He bit back a reply and lay waiting.
A woman's voice took up the refrain. It was a good voice, he thought
irrelevantly, low and well modulated, but it had an iron ring to it.
They were hard, these Janyards, even their women led troops and piloted
ships and killed men.
"You may as well surrender, Solman. All you have done has been to
accomplish our work for us. We suspected such an attempt might be made.
Lacking the archeological records, we couldn't hope for much success
ourselves, but since my force was stationed near this sun I had a boat
lie in an orbit around the planet with detectors wide open. We trailed
you down, and let you work, and now we are here to get what you have
found."
"Go back," he bluffed desperately. "I planted a bomb. Go back or I'll
set it off."
The laugh was hard with scorn. "Do you think we wouldn't know it if you
had? You haven't even a spacesuit on. Come out with your hands up or
we'll flood the vault with gas."
Laird's teeth flashed in a snarling grin. "All right," he shouted, only
half aware of what he was saying. "All right, you asked for it!"
He threw the switch on his helmet.
* * * * *
It was like a burst of fire in his brain, a soundless roar of
splintering darkness. He screamed, half crazy with the fury that poured
into him, feeling the hideous thrumming along every nerve and sinew,
feeling his muscles cave in and his body hit the floor. The shadows
closed in, roaring and rolling, night and death and the wreck of the
universe, and high above it all he heard--laughter.
He lay sprawled behind the machine, twitching and whimpering. They had
heard him, out in the tunnels, and with slow caution they entered and
stood over him and watched his spasms jerk toward stillness.
They were tall and well-formed, the Janyard rebels--Earth had sent her
best out to colonize the Sagittarian worlds, three hundred years ago.
But the long cruel struggle, conquering and building and adapting to
planets that never were and never could be Earth, had changed them,
hardened their metal and frozen something in their souls.
Ostensibly it was a quarrel over tariff and trade rights which had led
to their revolt against the Empire; actually, it was a new culture
yelling to life, a thing born of fire and loneliness and the great
empty reaches between the stars, the savage rebellion of a mutant
child. They stood impassively watching the body until it lay quiet.
Then one of them stooped over and removed the shining glassy helmet.
"He must have taken it for something he could use against us," said the
Janyard, turning the helmet in his hands; "but it wasn't adapted to his
sort of life. The old dwellers here looked human, but I don't think it
went any deeper than their skins."
The woman commander looked down with a certain pity. "He was a brave
man," she said.
"Wait--he's still alive, ma'm--he's sitting up--"
Daryesh forced the shaking body to hands and knees. He felt its
sickness, wretched and cold in throat and nerves and muscles, and he
felt the roiling of fear and urgency in the brain. These were enemies.
There was death for a world and a civilization here. Most of all, he
felt the horrible numbness of the nervous system, deaf and dumb and
blind, cut off in its house of bone and peering out through five weak
senses....
Vwyrdda, Vwyrdda, he was a prisoner in a brain without a telepathy
transceiver lobe. He was a ghost reincarnated in a thing that was half
a corpse!
Strong arms helped him to his feet. "That was a foolish thing to try,"
said the woman's cool voice.
Daryesh felt strength flowing back as the nervous and muscular and
endocrine systems found a new balance, as his mind took over and fought
down the gibbering madness which had been Laird. He drew a shuddering
breath. Air in his nostrils after--how long? How long had he been dead?
His eyes focused on the woman. She was tall and handsome. Ruddy hair
spilled from under a peaked cap, wide-set blue eyes regarded him
frankly out of a face sculptured in clean lines and strong curves and
fresh young coloring. For a moment he thought of Ilorna, and the old
sickness rose--then he throttled it and looked again at the woman and
smiled.
It was an insolent grin, and she stiffened angrily. "Who are you,
Solman?" she asked.
The meaning was dear enough to Daryesh, who had his--host's--memory
patterns and linguistic habits as well as those of Vwyrdda. He replied
steadily, "Lieutenant John Laird of the Imperial Solar Navy, at your
service. And your name?"
"You are exceeding yourself," she replied with frost in her voice. "But
since I will wish to question you at length ... I am Captain Joana
Rostov of the Janyard Fleet. Conduct yourself accordingly."
Daryesh looked around him. This wasn't good. He hadn't the chance now
to search Laird's memories in detail, but it was clear enough that this
was a force of enemies. The rights and wrongs of a quarrel ages after
the death of all that had been Vwyrdda meant nothing to him, but he
had to learn more of the situation, and be free to act as he chose.
Especially since Laird would presently be reviving and start to resist.
The familiar sight of the machines was at once steadying and unnerving.
There were powers here which could smash planets! It looked barbaric,
this successor culture, and in any event the decision as to the use
of this leashed hell had to be his. His head lifted in unconscious
arrogance. _His!_ For he was the last man of Vwyrdda, and they had
wrought the machines, and the heritage was his.
He had to escape.
* * * * *
Joana Rostov was looking at him with an odd blend of hard suspicion
and half-frightened puzzlement. "There's something wrong about you,
Lieutenant," she said. "You don't behave like a man whose project has
just gone to smash. What was that helmet for?"
Daryesh shrugged. "Part of a control device," he said easily. "In my
excitement I failed to adjust it properly. No matter. There are plenty
of other machines here."
"What use to you?"
"Oh--all sorts of uses. For instance, that one over there is a
nucleonic disintegrator, and this is a shield projector, and--"
"You're lying. You can't know any more about this than we do."
"Shall I prove it?"
"Certainly not. Come back from there!"
Coldly, Daryesh estimated distances. He had all the superb
psychosomatic coordination of his race, the training evolved through
millions of years, but the sub-cellular components would be lacking in
this body. Still--he had to take the chance.
He launched himself against the Janyard who stood beside him. One hand
chopped into the man's larynx, the other grabbed him by the tunic and
threw him into the man beyond. In the same movement, Daryesh stepped
over the falling bodies, picked up the machine rifle which one had
dropped, and slammed over the switch of the magnetic shield projector
with its long barrel.
Guns blazed in the dimness. Bullets exploded into molten spray as they
hit that fantastic magnetic field. Daryesh, behind it, raced through
the door and out the tunnel.
They'd be after him in seconds, but this was a strong longlegged
body and he was getting the feel of it. He ran easily, breathing in
coordination with every movement, conserving his strength. He couldn't
master control of the involuntary functions yet, the nervous system was
too different, but he could last for a long while at this pace.
He ducked into a remembered side passage. A rifle spewed a rain of
slugs after him as someone came through the magnetic field. He chuckled
in the dark. Unless they had mapped every labyrinthine twist and turn
of the tunnels, or had life-energy detectors, they'd never dare trail
him. They'd get lost and wander in here till they starved.
Still, that woman had a brain. She'd guess he was making for the
surface and the boats, and try to cut him off. It would be a near
thing. He settled down to running.
It was long and black and hollow here, cold with age. The air was dry
and dusty, little moisture could be left on Vwyrdda. How long has it
been? How long has it been?
* * * * *
John Laird stirred back toward consciousness, stunned neurons lapsing
into familiar pathways of synapse, the pattern which was personality
fighting to restore itself. Daryesh stumbled as the groping mind
flashed a random command to his muscles, cursed, and willed the other
self back to blankness. Hold on, Daryesh, hold on, a few minutes only--
He burst out of a small side entrance and stood in the tumbled
desolation of the valley. The keen tenuous air raked his sobbing lungs
as he looked wildly around at sand and stone and the alien stars. New
constellations--Gods, it had been a long time! The moon was larger than
he remembered, flooding the dead landscape with a frosty argence. It
must have spiraled close in all those uncounted ages.
The boat! Hellblaze, where was the boat?
He saw the Janyard ship not far away, a long lean torpedo resting on
the dunes, but it would be guarded--no use trying to steal it. Where
was this Laird's vessel, then?
Tumbling through a confusion of alien memories, he recalled burying
it on the west side.... No, it wasn't he who had done that but Laird.
Damnation, he had to work fast. He plunged around the monstrous eroded
shape of the pyramid, found the long mound, saw the moongleam where the
wind had blown sand off the metal. What a clumsy pup this Laird was.
He shoveled the sand away from the airlock, scooping with his hands,
the breath raw in throat and lungs. Any second now they'd be on him,
any instant, and now that they really believed he understood the
machines--
The lock shone dully before him, cold under his hands. He spun the
outer dog, swearing with a frantic emotion foreign to old Vwyrdda,
but that was the habit of his host, untrained psychosomatically,
unevolved--There they came!
Scooping up the stolen rifle, Daryesh fired a chattering burst at the
group that swarmed around the edge of the pyramid. They tumbled like
jointed dolls, screaming in the death-white moonlight. Bullets howled
around him and ricocheted off the boat-hull.
He got the lock open as they retreated for another charge. For an
instant his teeth flashed under the moon, the cold grin of Daryesh the
warrior who had ruled a thousand suns in his day and led the fleets of
Vwyrdda.
"Farewell, my lovelies," he murmured, and the remembered syllables of
the old planet were soft on his tongue.
Slamming the lock behind him, he ran to the control room, letting John
Laird's almost unconscious habits carry him along. He got off to a
clumsy start--but then he was climbing for the sky, free and away--
A fist slammed into his back, tossed him in his pilot chair to the
screaming roar of sundered metal. Gods, O gods, the Janyards had fired
a heavy ship's gun, they'd scored a direct hit on his engines and the
boat was whistling groundward again.
Grimly, he estimated that the initial impetus had given him a good
trajectory, that he'd come down in the hills about a hundred miles
north of the valley. But then he'd have to run for it, they'd be
after him like beasts of prey in their ship--and John Laird would not
be denied, muscles were twitching and sinews tightening and throat
mumbling insanity as the resurgent personality fought to regain itself.
That was one battle he'd have to have out soon!
Well--mentally, Daryesh shrugged. At worst, he could surrender to the
Janyards, make common cause with them. It really didn't matter who won
this idiotic little war. He had other things to do.
* * * * *
Nightmare. John Laird crouched in a wind-worn cave and looked out over
hills lit by icy moonlight. Through a stranger's eyes, he saw the
Janyard ship landing near the down-glided wreck of his boat, saw the
glitter of steel as they poured out and started hunting. Hunting _him_.
Or was it him any longer, was he more than a prisoner in his own skull?
He thought back to memories that were not his, memories of himself
thinking thoughts that were not his own, himself escaping from the
enemy while he, Laird, whirled in a black abyss of half-conscious
madness. Beyond that, he recalled his own life, and he recalled another
life which had endured a thousand years before it died. He looked out
on the wilderness of rock and sand and blowing dust, and remembered
it as it had been, green and fair, and remembered that he was Daryesh
of Tollogh, who had ruled over whole planetary systems in the Empire
of Vwyrdda. And at the same time he was John Laird of Earth, and two
streams of thought flowed through the brain, listening to each other,
shouting at each other in the darkness of his skull.
A million years! Horror and loneliness and a wrenching sorrow were in
the mind of Daryesh as he looked upon the ruin of Vwyrdda. A million
years ago!
Who are you? cried Laird. What have you done to me? And even as he
asked, memories which were his own now rose to answer him.
It had been the Erai who rebelled, the Erai whose fathers came from
Vwyrdda the fair but who had been strangely altered by centuries
of environment. They had revolted against the static rule of the
Immortals, and in a century of warfare they had overrun half the Empire
and rallied its populations under them. And the Immortals had unleashed
their most terrible powers, the sun-smashing ultimate weapons which
had lain forbidden in the vaults of Vwyrdda for ten million years.
Only--the Erai had known about it. And they had had the weapons too.
In the end, Vwyrdda went under, her fleets broken and her armies
reeling in retreat over ten thousand scorched planets. The triumphant
Erai had roared in to make an end of the mother world, and nothing in
all the mighty Imperial arsenals could stop them now.
Theirs was an unstable culture, it could not endure as that of Vwyrdda
had. In ten thousand years or so, they would be gone, and the Galaxy
would not have even a memory of that which had been. Which was small
help to us, thought Laird grimly, and realized with an icy shock that
it had been the thought of Daryesh.
The Vwyrddan's mental tone was, suddenly, almost conversational, and
Laird realized what an immensity of trained effort it must have taken
to overcome that loneliness of a million years. "See here, Laird, we
are apparently doomed to occupy the same body till one of us gets rid
of the other, and it is a body which the Janyards seem to want. Rather
than fight each other, which would leave the body helpless, we'd better
cooperate."
"But--Lord, man! What do you think I am? Do you think I want a vampire
like you up there in my brain?"
The answer was fierce and cold. "What of me, Laird? I, who was Daryesh
of Tollogh, lord of a thousand suns and lover of Ilorna the Fair,
immortalized noble of the greatest empire the universe has ever seen--I
am now trapped in the half-evolved body of a hunted alien, a million
years after the death of all which mattered. Better be glad I'm here,
Laird. I can handle those weapons, you know."
The eyes looked out over the bleak windy hillscape, and the double
mind watched distance-dwarfed forms clambering in the rocks, searching
for a trail. "A hell of a lot of good that does us now," said Laird.
"Besides, I can hear you thinking, you know, and I can remember your
own past thoughts. Sol or Janya, it's the same to you. How do I know
you'll play ball with me?"
The answer was instant, but dark with an unpleasant laughter.
"Why--read my mind, Laird! It's your mind too, isn't it?" Then, more
soberly: "Apparently history is repeating itself in the revolt of the
barbarians against the mother planet, though on a smaller scale and
with a less developed science. I do not expect the result to be any
happier for civilization than before. So perhaps I may take a more
effective hand than I did before."
It was ghostly, lying here in the wind-grieved remnants of a world,
watching the hunters move through a bitter haze of moonlight, and
having thoughts which were not one's own, thoughts over which there was
no control. Laird clenched his fists, fighting for stability.
"That's better," said Daryesh's sardonic mind. "But relax. Breathe
slowly and deeply, concentrate only on the breathing for a while--and
then search my mind which is also yours."
"Shut up! Shut up!"
"I am afraid that is impossible. We're in the same brain, you know, and
we'll have to get used to each other's streams of consciousness. Relax,
man, lie still; think over the thing which has happened to you and know
it for the wonder it is."
Man, they say, is a time-binding animal. But only the mighty will and
yearning of Vwyrdda had ever leaped across the borders of death itself,
waited a million years that that which was a world might not die out of
all history.
What is the personality? It is not a thing, discrete and material, it
is a pattern and a process. The body starts with a certain genetic
inheritance and meets all the manifold complexities of environment. The
whole organism is a set of reactions between the two. The primarily
mental component, sometimes called the ego, is not separable from the
body but can in some ways be studied apart.
The scientists had found a way to save something of that which was
Daryesh. While the enemy was blazing and thundering at the gates of
Vwyrdda, while all the planet waited for the last battle and the
ultimate night, quiet men in laboratories had perfected the molecular
scanner so that the pattern of synapses which made up all memory,
habit, reflex, instinct, the continuity of the ego, could be recorded
upon the electronic structure of certain crystals. They took the
pattern of Daryesh and of none other, for only he of the remaining
Immortals was willing. Who else would want a pattern to be repeated,
ages after he himself was dead, ages after all the world and all
history and meaning were lost? But Daryesh had always been reckless,
and Ilorna was dead, and he didn't care much for what happened.
Ilorna, Ilorna! Laird saw the unforgotten image rise in his memory,
golden-eyed and laughing, the long dark hair flowing around the lovely
suppleness of her. He remembered the sound of her voice and the
sweetness of her lips, and he loved her. A million years, and she was
dust blowing on the night wind, and he loved her with that part of
him which was Daryesh and with more than a little of John Laird.... O
Ilorna....
And Daryesh the man had gone to die with his planet, but the crystal
pattern which reproduced the ego of Daryesh lay in the vault they
had made, surrounded by all the mightiest works of Vwyrdda. Sooner
or later, sometime in the infinite future of the universe, someone
would come; someone or something would put the helmet on his head and
activate it. And the pattern would be reproduced on the neurons, the
mind of Daryesh would live again, and he would speak for dead Vwyrdda
and seek to renew the tradition of fifty million years. It would be the
will of Vwyrdda, reaching across time--But Vwyrdda is _dead_, thought
Laird frantically. Vwyrdda is gone--this is a new history--you've got
no business telling us what to do!
The reply was cold with arrogance. "I shall do as I see fit. Meanwhile,
I advise that you lie passive and do not attempt to interfere with me."
"Cram it, Daryesh!" Laird's mouth drew back in a snarl. "I won't be
dictated to by anyone, let alone a ghost."
Persuasively, the answer came, "At the moment, neither of us has much
choice. We are hunted, and if they have energy trackers--yes, I see
they do--they'll find us by this body's thermal radiation alone. Best
we surrender peaceably. Once aboard the ship, loaded with all the might
of Vwyrdda, our chance should come."
Laird lay quietly, watching the hunters move closer, and the sense of
defeat came down on him like a falling world. What else could he do?
What other chance was there?
"All right," he said at last, audibly. "All right. But I'll be watching
your every thought, understand? I don't think you can stop me from
committing suicide if I must."
"I think I can. But opposing signals to the body will only neutralize
each other, leave it helplessly fighting itself. Relax, Laird, lie
back and let me handle this. I am Daryesh the warrior, and I have come
through harder battles than this."
They rose and began walking down the hillside with arms lifted.
Daryesh's thought ran on, "Besides--that's a nice-looking wench in
command. It could be interesting!"
His laughter rang out under the moon, and it was not the laughter of a
human being.
* * * * *
"I can't understand you, John Laird," said Joana.
"Sometimes," replied Daryesh lightly, "I don't understand myself very
well--or you, my dear."
She stiffened a little. "That will do, Lieutenant. Remember your
position here."
"Oh, the devil with our ranks and countries. Let's be live entities for
a change."
Her glance was quizzical. "That's an odd way for a Solman to phrase
it."
Mentally, Daryesh swore. Damn this body, anyway! The strength, the
fineness of coordination and perception, half the senses he had known,
were missing from it. The gross brain structure couldn't hold the
reasoning powers he had once had. His thinking was dull and sluggish.
He made blunders the old Daryesh would never have committed. And this
young woman was quick to see them, and he was a prisoner of John
Laird's deadly enemies, and the mind of Laird himself was tangled in
thought and will and memory, ready to fight him if he gave the least
sign of--
The Solarian's ego chuckled nastily. Easy, Daryesh, easy!
Shut up! his mind snapped back, and he knew drearily that his own
trained nervous system would not have been guilty of such a childishly
emotional response.
"I may as well tell you the truth, Captain Rostov," he said aloud. "I
am not Laird at all. Not any more."
She made no response, merely drooped the lids over her eyes and leaned
back in her chair. He noticed abstractedly how long her lashes were--or
was that Laird's appreciative mind, unhindered by too much remembrance
of Ilorna?
They sat alone, the two of them, in her small cabin aboard the Janyard
cruiser. A guard stood outside the door, but it was closed. From time
to time they would hear a dull thump or clang as the heavy machines of
Vwyrdda were dragged aboard--otherwise they might have been the last
two alive on the scarred old planet.
The room was austerely furnished, but there were touches of the
feminine here and there--curtains, a small pot of flowers, a formal
dress hung in a half-open closet. And the woman who sat across the desk
from him was very beautiful, with the loosened ruddy hair streaming to
her shoulders and the brilliant eyes never wavering from his. But one
slender hand rested on a pistol.
She had told him frankly, "I want to talk privately with you. There
is something I don't understand ... but I'll be ready to shoot at
the first suspicion of a false move. And even if you should somehow
overpower me, I'd be no good as a hostage. We're Janyards here, and the
ship is more than the life of any one of us."
Now she waited for him to go on talking.
He took a cigarette from the box on her desk--Laird's habits again--and
lit it and took a slow drag of smoke into his lungs. _All right,
Daryesh, go ahead. I suppose your idea is the best, if anything can be
made to work at all. But I'm listening, remember._
"I am all that is left of this planet," he said tonelessly. "This is
the ego of Daryesh of Tollogh, Immortal of Vwyrdda, and in one sense I
died a million years ago."
She remained quiet, but he saw how her hands clenched and he heard the
sharp small hiss of breath sucked between the teeth.
Briefly, then, he explained how his mental pattern had been preserved,
and how it had entered the brain of John Laird.
"You don't expect me to believe that story," she said contemptuously.
"Do you have a lie detector aboard?"
"I have one in this cabin, and I can operate it myself." She got up and
fetched the machine from a cabinet. He watched her, noticing the grace
of her movements. You died long ago, Ilorna--you died and the universe
will never know another like you. But I go on, and she reminds me
somehow of you.
* * * * *
It was a small black thing that hummed and glowed on the desk between
them. He put the metal cap on his head, and took the knobs in his
hands, and waited while she adjusted the controls. From Laird's
memories, he recalled the principle of the thing, the measurement of
activity in separate brain-centers, the precise detection of the slight
extra energy needed in the higher cerebral cortex to invent a falsehood.
"I have to calibrate," she said, "Make up something I know to be a lie."
"New Egypt has rings," he smiled, "which are made of Limburger cheese.
However, the main body of the planet is a delicious Camembert--"
"That will do. Now repeat your previous statements."
_Relax, Laird, damn it--blank yourself! I can't control this thing with
you interfering._
He told his story again in a firm voice, and meanwhile he was working
within the brain of Laird, getting the feel of it, applying the lessons
of nerve control which had been part of his Vwyrddan education. It
should certainly be possible to fool a simple electronic gadget, to
heighten activity in all centers to such an extent that the added
effort of his creative cells could not be spotted.
He went on without hesitation, wondering if the flickering needles
would betray him and if her gun would spit death into his heart in the
next moment: "Naturally, Laird's personality was completely lost, its
fixed patterns obliterated by the superimposition of my own. I have his
memories, but otherwise I am Daryesh of Vwyrdda, at your service."