It took Chandler's breath away--not because it was untrue, but because
it had never occurred to him that gods were aware of their deity.
"We're gods, love, with the privilege of electing mortals to the club.
Don't judge us by anything that has gone before. Don't judge us by
anything. We are a New Thing. We don't have to conform to precedent
because we upset all precedents. From now on, to the end of time, the
rules will grow from us."
She patted her lips briskly with a napkin and said, "Would you like to
see something? Let's take a little walk."
She took him by the hand and led him across the room, out to a sundeck
on the other side of the restaurant. They were looking down on what had
once been a garden. There were people in it; Chandler was conscious of
sounds coming from them, and he was able to see that there were dozens
of them, perhaps a hundred, and that they all seemed to be wearing
suntans like his own.
"From Tripler?" he guessed.
"No, love. They pick out those clothes themselves. Stand there a
minute."
The girl in the coronet walked out to the rail of the sundeck, where
pink and amber spotlights were playing on nothing. As she came into the
colored lights there was a sigh from the people in the garden. A man
walked forward with an armload of leis and deposited them on the ground
below the rail.
They were _adoring_ her.
Rosalie stood gravely for a moment, then nodded and returned to
Chandler.
"They began doing that about a year ago," she whispered to him, as a
murmur of disappointment came up from the crowd. "Their own idea. We
didn't know what they wanted at first, but they weren't doing any harm.
You see, love," she said softly, "we can make them do anything we like.
But we don't make them do that."
* * * * *
Hours later, Chandler was not sure just how, they were in a light plane
flying high over the Pacific, clear out of sight of land. The moon was
gold above them, the ocean black beneath.
Chandler stared down as the girl circled the plane, slipping lower
toward the water, silent and perplexed. But he was not afraid. He was
almost content. Rosie was good company--gay, cheerful--and she had
treasures to share. It had been an impulse of hers, a long drive in
her sports car and a quick, comfortable flight over the ocean to cap
the evening. It had been a pleasant impulse. He reflected gravely that
he could understand now how generations of country maidens had been
dazzled and despoiled. A touch of luxury was a great seducer.
The coronet on the girl's body could catch his body at any moment. She
had only to think herself into his mind, and her will, flashed to a
relay station like the one he was building for Koitska, at loose in
infinity, could sweep into him and make him a puppet. If she chose, he
would open that door beside him and step out into a thousand feet of
air and a meal for the sharks.
But he did not think she would do it. He did not think anyone would,
really, though with his own eyes he had seen some anyones do things as
bad as that and sickeningly worse. There was no corrupt whim of the
most diseased mind in history that some torpid exec had not visited
on a helpless man, woman or child in the past years. Even as they
flew here, Chandler knew, the gross bodies that lay in luxury in the
island's villas were surging restlessly around the world; and death and
horror remained where they had passed. It was a paradox too great to be
reconciled, this girl and this vileness. He could not forget it, but he
could not feel it in his glands. She was pretty. She was gay. He began
to think thoughts that had left him alone for a long time.
The dark bulk of the island showed ahead and they were sinking toward a
landing.
The girl landed skillfully on a runway that sprang into light as she
approached--electronic wizardry, or the coronet and some tethered serf
at a switch? It didn't matter. Nothing mattered very greatly at that
moment to Chandler.
"Thank you, love," she said, laughing. "I liked that. It's all very
well to use someone else's body for this sort of thing, but every now
and then I want to keep my own in practice."
She linked arms with him as they left the plane. "When I was first
given the coronet here," she reminisced, amusement in her voice, "I
got the habit real bad. I spent six awful months--really, six months
in bed! And by myself at that. Oh, I was all over the world, and
skin-diving on the Barrier Reef and skiing in Norway and--well," she
said, squeezing his arm, "never _mind_ what all. And then one day I got
on the scales, just out of habit. Do you know what I _weighed_?" She
closed her eyes in mock horror, but they were smiling when she opened
them again. "I won't do that again, love. Of course, a lot of us do
let ourselves go. Even Koitska. Especially Koitska. And some of the
women--But just between us, the ones who do really didn't have much to
keep in shape in the first place."
She led the way into a villa that smelled of jasmine and gardenias,
snapped her fingers and subdued lights came on. "Like it? Oh, we've
nothing but the best. What would you like to drink?"
She fixed them both tall, cold glasses and vetoed Chandler's choice of
a sprawling wicker chair to sit on. "Over here, love." She patted the
couch beside her. She drew up her legs, leaning against him, very soft,
warm and fragrant, and said dreamily, "Let me see. What's nice? What do
you like in music, love?"
"Oh ... anything."
"No, no! You're supposed to say, 'Why, the original-cast album from
_Hi There_.' Or anything else I starred in." She shook her head
reprovingly, and the points of her coronet caught golden reflections
from the lights. "But since you're obviously a man of low taste
I'll have to do the whole bit myself." She touched switches at a
remote-control set by her end of the couch, and in a moment dreamy
strings began to come from tri-aural speakers hidden around the room.
It was not _Hi There_. "That's better," she said drowsily, and in a
moment, "Wasn't it nice in the plane?"
"It was fine," Chandler said. Gently--but firmly--he sat up and reached
automatically into his pocket.
The girl sighed and straightened. "Cigarette? They're on the table
beside you. Hope you like the brand. They only keep one big factory
going, not to count those terrible Russian things that're all air and
no smoke." She touched his forehead with cool fingers. "You never told
me about that, love."
It was like an electric shock--the touch of her fingers and the touch
of reality at once. Chandler said stiffly, "My brand. But I thought you
were there at the trial."
"Oh, only now and then. I missed all the naughty parts--though, to tell
the truth, that's why I was hanging around. I do like to hear a little
naughtiness now and then ... but all I heard was that stupid lawyer and
that stupid judge. Made me mad." She giggled. "Lucky for you. I was so
irritated I decided to spoil their fun too."
* * * * *
Chandler sat up and took a long pull at his drink. Curiously, it seemed
to sober him. He said: "It's nothing. I happened to rape and kill a
young girl. Happens every day. Of course, it was one of your friends
that was doing it for me, but I didn't miss any of what was going on,
I can give you a blow-by-blow description if you like. The people in
the town where I lived, at that time, thought I was doing it on my own,
though, and they didn't approve. Hoaxing--you know? They thought I was
so perverse and cruel that I would do that sort of thing under my own
power, instead of with some exec--or, as they would have put it, being
ignorant, some imp, or devil, or demon--pulling the strings."
He was shaking. He waited for what she had to say; but she only
whispered, "I'm sorry, love," and looked so contrite and honest that,
as rapidly as it had come upon him, his anger passed.
He opened his mouth to say something to her. He didn't get it said.
She was sitting there, looking at him, alone and soft and inviting.
He kissed her; and as she returned the kiss, he kissed her again, and
again.
But less than an hour later he was in her Porsche, cold sober, raging,
frustrated, miserable. He slammed it through the unfamiliar gears as he
sped back to the city.
She had left him. They had kissed with increasing passion, his hands
playing about her, her body surging toward him, and then, just then,
she whispered, "No, love." He held her tighter and without another word
she opened her eyes and looked at him.
He knew what mind it was that caught him then. It was her mind.
Stiffly, like wood, he released her, stood up, walked to the door and
locked it behind him.
The lights in the villa went out. He stood there, boiling, looking
into the shadows through the great, wide, empty window. He could see
her lying there on the couch, and as he watched he saw her body toss
and stir; and as surely as he had ever known anything before he knew
that somewhere in the world some woman--or some man!--lay locked with a
lover, violent in love, and was unable to tell the other that a third
party had invaded their bed.
Chandler did not know it until he saw something glistening on his
wrist, but he was weeping on the wild ride back to Honolulu in the car.
Her car. Would there be trouble for his taking it? God, let there
be trouble! He was in a mood for trouble. He was sick and wild with
revulsion.
Worse than her use of him, a casual stimulant, an aphrodisiac touch,
was that she thought what she did was right. Chandler thought of the
worshipping dozens under the sundeck of the exec restaurant, and
Rosalie's gracious benediction as they made her their floral offerings.
Blind, pathetic fools!
Not only the deluded men and women in the garden were worshippers
trapped in a vile religion, he thought. It was worse. The gods and
goddesses worshipped at their own divinity as well!
X
Three days later Koitska's voice, coming from Chandler's lips, summoned
him out to the TWA shack again.
Wise now in the ways of this world, Chandler commandeered a police car
and was hurried out to the South Gate, where the guards allowed him a
car of his own. The door of the building was unlocked and Chandler went
right up.
He was astonished. The fat man was actually sitting up. He was fully
dressed--more or less; incongruously he wore flowered shorts and a
bright red, short-sleeve shirt, with rope sandals. He said, "You fly
a _gilikopter_? No? No difference. Help me." An arm like a mountain
went over Chandler's shoulders. The man must have weighed three hundred
pounds. Slowly, wheezing, he limped toward the back of the room and
touched a button.
A door opened.
Chandler had not known before that there was an elevator in the
building. That was one of the things the exec did not consider
important for his slaves to know. It lowered them with great grace and
delicacy to the first floor, where a large old Cadillac, ancient but
immaculately kept, the kind that used to be called a "gangster's car,"
waited in a private parking bay.
Chandler followed Koitska's directions and drove to an airfield where
a small, Plexiglas-nosed helicopter waited. More by the force of
Chandler pushing him from behind than through his own fat thighs,
Koitska puffed up the little staircase into the cabin. Originally the
copter had been fitted for four passengers. Now there was the pilot's
seat and a seat beside it, and in the back a wide, soft couch. Koitska
collapsed onto it. His face blanked out--he was, Chandler knew,
somewhere else, just then.
In a moment his eyes opened again. He looked at Chandler with no
interest at all, and turned his face to the wall.
After a moment he wheezed. "Sit down. At de controls." He breathed
noisily for a while. Then, "It von't pay you to be interested in
Rosalie," he said.
Chandler was startled. He craned around in the seat but saw only
Koitska's back. "I'm not! Or anyway--" But he had no place to go in
that sentence, and in any case Koitska no longer seemed interested.
After a moment Koitska stirred, settled himself more comfortably, and
Chandler felt himself taken. He turned to face the split wheel and the
unfamiliar pedals and watched himself work the controls. It was an
admirable performance. Whoever Chandler was just then--he could not
guess--he was a first-class helicopter pilot.
* * * * *
They crossed a wide body of ocean and approached another island; from
one quick glance at a navigation map that his eyes had taken, Chandler
guessed it to be Hilo. He landed the craft expertly on the margin of a
small airstrip, where two DC-3s were already parked and being unloaded,
and felt himself free again.
Two husky young men, apparently native Hawaiians by their size, rolled
up a ramp and assisted Koitska down it and into a building. Chandler
was left to his own devices. The building was rundown but sound. Around
it stalky grass clumped, long uncut, and a few mauve and scarlet
blossoms, almost hidden, showed where someone had once tended beds of
bougainvillea and poinsettias. He could not guess what the building
had been doing there, looking like a small office-factory combination
out in the remote wilds, until he caught sight of a sign the winds had
blown against a wall: _Dole_. Apparently this had been headquarters
for one of the plantations. Now it was stripped almost clean inside, a
welter of desks and rusted machines piled heedlessly where there once
had been a parking lot. New equipment was being loaded into it from the
cargo planes. Chandler recognized some of it as from the list he had
given the parts man, Hsi. There also seemed to be a gasoline-driven
generator--a large one--but what the other things were he could not
guess.
Besides Koitska, there were at least five coronet-wearing execs visible
around the place. Chandler was not surprised. It would have to be
something big to winkle these torpid slugs out of their shells, but he
knew what it was, and that it was big enough to them indeed; in fact,
it was their lives. He deduced that Koitska's plans for his future
comfort required a standby transmitter to service the coronets, in case
something went wrong. And clearly it was this that they were to put
together here.
For ten hours, while the afternoon became dark night, they worked
at a furious pace. When the sun set one of the execs gestured and
the generator was started, rocking on its rubber-tired wheels as its
rotors spun and fumes chugged out, and they worked on by strings of
incandescent lights. It was pick-and-shovel work for Chandler, no
engineering, just unloading and roughly grouping the equipment where
it was ready to be assembled. The execs did not take part in the work.
Nor were they idle. They busied themselves in one room of the building
with some small device--Chandler could not see what--and when he looked
again it was gone. He did not see them take it away and did not know
where it was taken. Toward midnight he suddenly realized that it was
likely some essential part which they would not permit anyone but
themselves to handle, and that, no doubt, was why they had come in
person, instead of working through proxies.
Just before they left Koitska and two or three of the other execs
quizzed him briefly. He was too tired to think beyond the questions,
but they seemed to be trying to find out if he was able to do the
simpler parts of the construction without supervision, and they seemed
satisfied with the answers. He flew the helicopter home, with someone
else guilding his arms and legs, but he was half asleep as he did it,
and he never quite remembered how he managed to get back to his room at
Tripler.
* * * * *
The next morning he went back to Parts 'n Plenty with an additional
list, covering replacement of some parts that had been damaged. Hsi
glanced at it quickly and nodded. "All this stuff I have. You can pick
it up this afternoon if you like."
Chandler offered him a cigarette out of a stale pack. "About the other
night--"
Hsi began to perspire, but he said, casually enough, "Interested in
baseball?"
"Baseball?"
Hsi said, as though there had been nothing incongruous about the
question, "There'll be a Little League game this afternoon. Back of the
school on Punahou and Wilder. I thought I might stop by, then we can
come back and pick up the rest of your gear. Two o'clock. Hope I'll see
you."
Chandler walked away thoughtfully. He had no real intention of going
there, but something in Hsi's attitude suggested more than a ball game;
after a quick and poor lunch he decided to go.
The field was a dirty playground, scuffed out of what had probably
once been an attractive campus. The players were ten-year-olds, of the
mixture of hair colors and complexions typical of the islands. Chandler
was puzzled. Surely even the wildest baseball rooter wouldn't go far
out of his way for this, and yet there was an audience of at least
fifty adults watching the game. And none seemed to be related to the
ballplayers. The Little Leaguers played grave, careful ball, and the
audience watched them without a word of parental encouragement or joy.
Hsi approached him from the shadow of the school building. "Glad you
could make it, Chandler. No, no questions. Just watch."
In the fifth inning, with the score aggregating around thirty, there
was an interruption. A tall, red-headed man glanced at his watch,
licked his lips, took a deep breath and walked out onto the diamond. He
glanced at the crowd, while the kids suspended play without surprise.
Then the red-headed man nodded to the umpire and stepped off the field.
The ballplayers resumed their game, but now the whole attention of the
audience was on the red-headed man.
Suspicion crossed Chandler's mind. In a moment it was confirmed, as the
red-headed man raised his hands waist high and clasped his right hand
around his left wrist--only for a moment, but that was enough.
The ball game was a cover. Chandler was present at a meeting of what
Hsi had called The Society of Slaves, the underground that dared to pit
itself against the execs.
Hsi cleared his throat and said, "This is the one. I vouch for him."
And that was startling too, Chandler thought, because all these
wrist-circled men and women were looking at _him_.
* * * * *
"All right," said the red-headed man nervously, "let's get started
then. First thing, anybody got any weapons? Sure? Take a look--we don't
want any slipups. Turn out your pockets."
There was a flurry and a woman near Chandler held up a key ring with a
tiny knife on it "Penknife? Hell, yes; get rid of it. Throw it in the
outfield. You can pick it up after the meeting." A hundred eyes watched
the pearly object fly. "We ought to be all right here," said the
red-headed man. "The kids have been playing every day this week and
nobody looked in. But _watch your neighbor_. See anything suspicious,
don't wait. Don't take a chance. Holler 'Kill the umpire!' or anything
you like, but holler. Good and loud." He paused, breathing hard. "All
right, Hsi. Introduce him."
The parts man took Chandler firmly by the shoulder. "This fellow
has something for us," he said. "He's working for the exec Koitska,
building what can't be anything else but a duplicate of the machine
that they use to control us. He--"
"Wait a minute!" A bearded man came forward and peered furiously into
Chandler's face. "Look at his head! Don't you see he's branded?"
Chandler touched his scar as the man with the beard hissed, "Damned
hoaxer! This is the lowest species of life on the face of the
earth--someone who pretended to be possessed in order to do some damned
dirty act What was it, hoaxer? Murder? Burning babies alive?"
Hsi economically let go of Chandler's shoulder, half turned the bearded
man with one hand and swung with the other. "Shut up, Linton. Wait till
you hear what he's got for us."
The bearded man, sprawling and groggy, slowly rose as Hsi explained
tersely what he had guessed of Chandler's work--as much as Chandler
himself knew, it seemed. "Maybe this is only a duplicate. Maybe it
won't be used. But maybe it will--and Chandler's the man who can
sabotage it! How would you like that? The execs switching over to
this equipment while the other one is down for maintenance--and their
headsets don't work!"
There was a terrible silence, except for the sounds of the children
playing ball. Two runs had just scored. Chandler recognized the
silence. It was hope.
Linton broke it, his blue eyes gleaming above the beard. "No! Better
than that. Why wait? We can _use_ this fellow's machine. Set it up, get
us some headsets--and we can control the execs themselves!"
* * * * *
The silence was even longer; then there was a babble of discussion, but
Chandler did not take part in it. He was thinking. It was a tremendous
thought.
Suppose a man like himself were actually able to do what they wanted
of him. Never mind the practical difficulties--learning how it worked,
getting a headset, bypassing the traps Koitska would surely have set
to prevent just that. Never mind the penalties for failure. Suppose
he could make it work, and find fifty headsets, and fit them to the
fifty men and women here in this clandestine meeting of the Society of
Slaves....
Would there, after all, be any change worth mentioning in the state of
the world?
Or was Lord Acton, always and everywhere, right? Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power locked in the coronets
of the exec was more than flesh and blood could stand; he could almost
sense the rot in those near him at the mere thought.
But Hsi was throwing cold water on the idea. "Sorry, but I know that
much: One exec can't control another. The headpieces insulate against
control. Well." He glanced at his watch. "We agreed on twenty minutes
maximum for this meeting," he reminded the red-headed man, who nodded.
"You're right." He glanced around the group. "I'll make the rest of it
fast. News: You all know they got some more of us last week. Have you
all been by the Monument? Three of our comrades were still there this
morning. But I don't think they know we're organized, they think it's
only individual acts of sabotage. In case any of you don't know, the
execs can't read our minds. Not even when they're controlling us. Proof
is we're all still alive. Hanrahan knew practically every one of us,
and he's been lying out there for a week with a broken back, ever since
they caught him trying to blow up the guard pits at East Gate. They had
plenty of chance to pump him if they could. _They can't._ Next thing.
No more individual attacks on one exec. Not unless it's a matter of
life and death, and even then you're wasting your time unless you've
got a gun. They can grab your mind faster than you can cut a throat.
Third thing: Don't get the idea there are good execs and bad execs.
Once they put that thing on their heads they're all the same. Fourth
thing. You can't make deals. They aren't that worried. So if anybody's
thinking of selling out--I'm not saying anyone is--forget it." He
looked around. "Anything else?"
"What about germ warfare in the water supply?" somebody ventured.
"Still looking into it. No report yet. All right, that's enough for
now. Meeting's adjourned. Watch the ball game for a while, then drift
away. _One at a time._"
Hsi was the first to go, then a couple of women together, then a
sprinkling of other men. Chandler was in no particular hurry, although
it seemed time to leave anyway, because the ball game appeared to be
over. A ten-year-old with freckles on his face was at the plate, but
he was leaning on his bat, staring at Chandler with wide, serious eyes.
Chandler felt a sudden chill.
He turned, began to walk away--and felt himself seized.
* * * * *
He walked slowly into the schoolhouse, unable to look around. Behind
him he heard a confused sob, tears and a child's voice trying to
blubber through: "Something _funny_ happened."
If the child had been an adult it might have been warning enough. But
the child had never experienced possession before, was not sure enough,
was clear into the schoolhouse before the remaining members of the
Society of Slaves awoke to their danger. He heard a quick cry of _They
got him!_ Then Chandler's legs stopped walking and he addressed himself
savagely. A few yards away a stout Chinese lady was mopping the tiles;
she looked up at him, startled, but no more startled than Chandler was
himself. "You idiot!" Chandler blazed. "Why do you have to get mixed
up in this? Don't you know it's wrong, love? Stay here!" Chandler
commanded himself. "Don't you _dare_ leave this building!"
And he was free again, but there was a sudden burst of screams from
outside.
Bewildered, Chandler stood for a moment, as little able to move as
though the girl still had him under control. Then he leaped through a
classroom to a window, staring. Outside in the playground there was
wild confusion. Half the spectators were on the ground, trying to rise.
As he watched, a teen-age boy hurled himself at an elderly lady, the
two of them falling. Another man flung himself to the ground. A woman
swung her pocketbook into the face of the man next to her. One of the
fallen ones rose, only to trip himself again. It was a mad spectacle,
but Chandler understood it: What he was watching was a single member
of the exec trying to keep a group of twenty ordinary, unarmed human
beings in line. The exec was leaping from mind to mind; even so, the
crowd was beginning to scatter.
Without thought Chandler started to leap out to help them; but the
possessor had anticipated that. He was caught at the door. He whirled
and ran toward the woman with the mop; as he was released, the woman
flung herself upon him, knocking him down.
By the time he was able to get up again it was far too late to help ...
if there ever had been a time when he could have been of any real help.
He heard shots. Two policeman had come running into the playground,
with guns drawn.
The exec who had looked at him out of the boy's eyes, who had
penetrated this nest of enemies and extricated Chandler from it, had
taken first things first. Help had been summoned. Quick as the coronets
worked, it was no time at all until the nearest persons with weapons
were located, commandeered and in action.
Two minutes later there no longer was resistance.
Obviously more execs had come to help, attracted by the commotion
perhaps, or summoned at some stolen moment after the meeting had first
been invaded. There were only five survivors on the field. Each was
clearly controlled. They rose and stood patiently while the two police
shot them, shot them, paused to reload and shot again. The last to die
was the bearded man, Linton, and as he fell his eyes brushed Chandler's.
Chandler leaned against a wall.
It had been a terrible sight. The nearness of his own death had been
almost the least of it.
He had no doubt of the identity of the exec who had saved him and
destroyed the others. Though he had heard the voice only as it came
from his own mouth, he could not miss it. It was Rosalie Pan.
He looked out at the red-headed man, sprawled across the foul line
behind third base, and remembered what he had said. There weren't any
good execs or bad execs. There were only execs.