VI

They roared through downtown Honolulu with the siren blaring and cars

scattering out of the way. At seventy miles an hour they raced down a

road by the sea. Chandler caught a glimpse of a sign that said "Hilo,"

but where or what "Hilo" might be he had no idea. Soon there were fewer

cars; then there were none but their own.

The road was a surburban highway lined with housing development,

shopping centers, palm groves and the occasional center of a small

municipality, scattering helterskelter together. There was a road like

this extending in every direction from every city in the United States,

Chandler thought; but this one was somewhat altered. Something had been

there before them. About a mile outside Honolulu's outer fringe, life

was cut off as with a knife. There were no people on foot, and the only

cars were rusted wrecks lining the roads. The lawns were ragged stands

of weeds in front of the ranch-type homes.

It was evidently not allowed to live here.

Chandler craned his neck. His curiosity was becoming almost unbearable.

He opened his mouth, but, "I said, 'Shut up.'" rumbled the cop without

looking at him. There was a note in the policeman's voice that

impressed Chandler. He did not quite know what it was, but it made him

obey. They drove for another fifteen minutes in silence, then drew up

before a barricade across the road.

Chandler got out. The policeman slammed the door behind him, ripping

rubber off his tires with the speed of his U-turn and acceleration back

toward Honolulu. He did not look at Chandler.

Chandler stood staring off after him, in bright warm sunlight with a

reek of hibiscus and rotting palms in his nostril. It was very quiet

there, except for a soft scratchy sound of footsteps on gravel. As

Chandler turned to face the man who was coming toward him, he realized

he had learned one fact from the policeman after all. The cop was

scared clear through.

Chandler said, "Hello," to the man who was approaching.

He too wore a uniform, but not that of the Honolulu city police. It

was like U.S. Army suntans, but without insignia. Behind him were

half a dozen others in the same dress, smoking, chatting, leaning

against whatever was handy. The barricades themselves were impressively

thorough. Barbed wire ran down the beach and out into the ocean; on the

other side of the road, barbed wire ran clear out of sight along the

middle of a side road. The gate itself was bracketed with machine-gun

emplacements.

The guard waited until he was close to Chandler before speaking. "What

do you want?" he asked without greeting. Chandler shrugged. "All right,

just wait here," said the guard, and began to walk away again.

"Wait a minute! What am I waiting for?" The guard shook his head

without stopping or turning. He did not seem very interested, and he

certainly was not helpful.

Chandler put down the copy of _The Prophet_ which he had carried so

far and sat on the ground, but again he had no long time to wait. One

of the guards came toward him, with the purposeful movements Chandler

had learned to recognize. Without speaking the guard dug into a pocket.

Chandler jumped up instinctively, but it was only a set of car keys.

As Chandler took them the look in the guard's eyes showed the quick

release of tension that meant he was free again; and in that same

moment Chandler's own body was occupied once more.

He reached down and picked up the book. Quickly, but a little clumsily,

his fingers selected a key, and his legs carried him toward a little

French car parked just the other side of the barrier.

* * * * *

Chandler was learning at last the skills of allowing his body to have

its own way. He couldn't help it in any event, so he was consciously

disciplining himself to withdraw his attention from his muscles and

senses. It involved queerly vertiginous problems. A hundred times a

minute there was some unexpected body sway or movement of the hand,

and his lagging, imprisoned mind would wrench at its unresponsive

nerves to put out the elbow that would brace him or to catch itself

with a step. He had learned to ignore these things. The mind that

inhabited his body had ways not his own of maintaining balance and

reaching an objective, but they were equally sure.

He watched his own hands shifting the gears of the car. It was a make

he had never driven, with a clutchless drive he did not understand, but

the mind in his brain evidently understood it well enough. They picked

up speed in great, gasoline-wasting surges.

Chandler began to form a picture of that mind. It belonged to an older

man, from the hesitancy of its walk, and a testy one, from the heedless

crash of the gears as it shifted. It drove with careless slapdash

speed. Chandler's mind yelled and flinched in his brain as they rounded

blind curves, where any casual other motorist would have been a

catastrophe; but the hand on the wheel and the foot on the accelerator

did not hesitate.

Beyond the South Gate the island of Oahu became abruptly wild.

There were beautiful homes, but there were also great, gap-toothed

spaces where homes had once been and were no longer. It seemed that

some monstrous Zoning Commissar had stalked through the island with

an eraser, rubbing out the small homes, the cheap ones, the old ones;

rubbing out the stores, rubbing out the factories. This whole section

of the island had been turned into an exclusive residential park.

It was not uninhabited. Chandler thought he glimpsed a few people,

though since the direction of his eyes was not his to control it was

hard to be sure. And then the Renault turned into a lane, paved but

narrow. Hardwood trees with some sort of blossoms, Chandler could not

tell what, overhung it on both sides.

It meandered for a mile or so, turned and opened into a great vacant

parking lot. The Renault stopped with a squeal of brakes in front of a

door that was flanked by bronze plaques: _TWA Flight Message Center_.

Chandler caught sight of a skeletal towering form overhead, like

a radio transmitter antenna, as his body marched him inside, up a

motionless escalator, along a hall and into a room.

His muscles relaxed.

He glanced around and, from a huge couch beside a desk, a huge soft

body stirred and, gasping, sat up. It was a very fat old man, almost

bald, wearing a coronet of silvery spikes.

He looked at Chandler without much interest. "Vot's your name?" he

wheezed. He had a heavy, ineradicable accent, like a Hapsburg or a

Russian diplomat. Chandler recognized it readily. He had heard it often

enough, from his own lips.

* * * * *

The man's name was Koitska, he said in his accented wheeze. If he had

another name he did not waste it on Chandler. He took as few words as

possible to order Chandler to be seated and to be still.

Koitska squinted at the copy of Gibran's _The Prophet_. He did not

glance at Chandler, but Chandler felt himself propelled out of his

seat, to hand the book to Koitska, then returning. Koitska turned its

remaining pages with an expression of bored repugnance, like a man

picking off his arm. He seemed to be waiting for something.

A door closed on the floor below, and in a moment a girl came into the

room.

She was tall, dark and not quite young. Chandler, struck by her beauty,

was sure that he had seen her, somewhere, but could not place her face.

She wore a coronet like the fat man's, intertwined in a complicated

hairdo, and she got right down to business. "Chandler, is it? All

right, love, what we want to know is what this is all about." She

indicated the book.

A relief that was like pain crossed Chandler's mind. So that was why he

was here! Whoever these people were, however they managed to rule men's

minds, they were not quite certain of their perfect power. To them the

sad, futile Orphalese represented a sort of annoyance--not important

enough to be a threat--but something which had proved inconvenient at

one time and therefore needed investigating. As Chandler was the only

survivor they had deemed it worth their godlike whiles to transport him

four thousand miles so that he might satisfy their curiosity.

Chandler did not hesitate in telling them all about the people of

Orphalese. There was nothing worth concealing, he was quite sure. No

debts are owed to the dead; and the Orphalese had proved on their own

heads, at the last, that their ritual of pain was only an annoyance to

the possessors, not a tactic that could long be used against them.

It took hardly five minutes to say everything that needed saying about

Guy, Meggie and the other doomed and suffering inhabitants of the old

house on the mountain.

Koitska hardly spoke. The girl was his interrogator, and sometimes

translator as well, when his English was not sufficient to comprehend

a point. With patient detachment she kept the story moving until

Koitska with a bored shrug indicated he was through.

Then she smiled at Chandler and said, "Thanks, love. Haven't I seen you

somewhere before?"

"I don't know. I thought the same thing about you."

"Oh, everybody's seen me. Lots of me. But--well, no matter. Good luck,

love. Be nice to Koitska and perhaps he'll do as much for you." And she

was gone.

Koitska lay unmoving on his couch for a few moments, rubbing a fat nose

with a plump finger. "Hah," he said at last. Then, abruptly, "And now,

de qvestion is, vot to do vit you, eh? I do not t'ink you can cook, eh?"

* * * * *

With unexpected clarity Chandler realized he was on trial for his life.

"Cook? No, I'm afraid not. I mean, I can boil eggs," he said. "Nothing

fancy."

"Hah," grumbled Koitska. "Vel. Ve need a couple, three doctors, but I

do not t'ink you vould do."

Chandler shook his head. "I'm an electrical engineer," he said. "Or

was."

"Vas?"

"I haven't had much practice. There has not been a great deal of call

for engineers, the last year or two."

"Hah." Koitska seemed to consider. "Vel," he said, "it could be ...

yes, it could be dat ve have a job for you. You go back downstairs

and--no, vait." The fat man closed his eyes and Chandler felt himself

seized and propelled down the stairs to what had once been a bay of a

built-in garage. Now it was fitted up with workbenches and the gear of

a radio ham's dreams.

Chandler walked woodenly to one of the benches. His own voice spoke

to him. "Ve got here someplace--_da_, here is cirguit diagrams and de

specs for a sqvare-vave generator. You know vot dat is? Write down de

answer." Chandler, released with a pencil in his hand and a pad before

him, wrote _Yes_. "Okay. Den you build vun for me. I areddy got vun but

I vant another. You do dis in de city, not here. Go to Tripler, dey

tells you dere vere you can work, vere to get parts, all dat. Couple

days you come out here again, I see if I like how you build."

Clutching the thick sheaf of diagrams, Chandler felt himself propelled

outside and back into the little car. The interview was over.

He wondered if he would be able to find his way back to Honolulu, but

that problem was then postponed as he discovered he could not start the

car. His own hands had already done so, of course, but it had been so

quick and sure that he had not paid attention; now he found that the

ignition key was marked only in French, which he could not speak. After

trial and error he discovered the combination that would start the

engine and unlock the steering wheel, and then gingerly he toured the

perimeter of the lot until he found an exit road.

It was close to midnight, he judged. Stars were shining overhead; there

was a rising moon. He then remembered, somewhat tardily, that he should

not be seeing stars. The lane he had come in on had been overhung on

both sides with trees.

A few minutes later he realized he was quite lost.

Chandler stopped the car, swore feelingly, got out and looked around.

There was nothing much to see. The roads bore no markers that made

sense to him. He shrugged and rummaged through the glove compartment

on the chance of a map; there was none, but he did find what he had

almost forgotten, a half-empty pack of cigarettes. It had been--he

counted--nearly a week since he had smoked. He lit up.

* * * * *

It was a pleasant evening, too. He felt almost relaxed. He stood there,

wondering just what might be about to happen next--with curiosity more

than fear--and then he felt a light touch at his mind.

It was nothing, really. Or nothing that he could quite identify. It was

though he had been nudged. It seemed that someone was about to usurp

his body again, but that did not develop.

As he had about decided to forget it and get back in the car he saw

headlights approaching.

A low, lean sports car slowed as it came near, stopping beside him, and

a girl leaned out, almost invisible in the darkness. "There you are,

love," she said cheerfully. "Thought I spotted someone. Lost?"

She had a coronet, and Chandler recognized her. It was the girl who had

interrogated him. "I guess I am," he admitted.

The girl leaned forward. "Come in, dear. Oh, that thing? Leave it here,

the silly little bug." She giggled as they drove away from the Renault.

"Koitska wouldn't like you wandering around. I guess he decided to give

you a job?"

"How did you know?"

She said softly, "Well, love, you're here, you know. Otherwise--never

mind. What are you supposed to be doing?"

"Going to Tripler, whatever that is. In Honolulu, I guess. Then I have

to build some radio equipment."

"Tripler's actually on the other side of the city. I'll take you to the

gate; then you tell them where you want to go. They'll take care of it."

"I don't have any money for fare."

She laughed. After a moment she said, "Koitska's not the worst. But I'd

mind my step if I were you, love. Do what he says, the best you can.

You never know. You might find yourself very fortunate...."

"I already think that. I'm alive."

"Why, love, that point of view will take you far." The sports car slid

smoothly to a stop at the barricade and, in the floodlights above the

machine-gun nests, she looked more closely at Chandler. "What's that on

your forehead, dear?"

Somehow the woolen cap had been lost. "A brand," he said shortly. "'H'

for 'hoaxer.' I did something when one of you people had me, and they

thought I'd done it on my own."

"Why--why, this is wonderful!" the girl said excitedly. "No wonder I

thought I'd seen you before. Don't you remember? I was in the forewoman

at your trial!"