She shook her head.
"I never know how. Things just come to me. Sometimes I say--said things
to my customers at the Blue Grotto, and they would ask me the same
thing. How do I know?" She shrugged her strong shoulders. "How does
anyone know they know anything?"
Huth and Dr. Thame exchanged quick glances.
"Very interesting," said Huth. He moved toward the door. "We will send
for you in two hours for your basic family record test."
"Basic fam--." Lucifer choked on the word. He asked bleakly. "What
might that be?"
"It will be elementary to you, Dr. Brill. Just a basic psi-card test.
We have your record, of course, but for purposes of standardization, we
always start a new family's record in this manner. You undoubtedly will
score rather close to your high test score on Earth."
Lucifer hoped his apprehension did not show. He had not expected having
to meet this challenge so soon.
Nina had been pursing her lips, frowning and thoughtful. Now she asked.
"Mr. Huth, how long have we, Dr. Brill and I, been here on Melus?"
A hint of humor flickered in Huth's somber eyes.
"Two Earth months."
* * * * *
For several moments after their departure, Lucifer stalked silently
around the room. Nina remained on the couch. Her eyes were closed; her
hands folded on her legs. There was a click in the pantry. Nina got up
and looked inside. Breakfast had arrived.
"We'd better eat something," she told Lucifer.
"I am not hungry, Miss Poteil."
She brought a plate, and stood resolutely before him.
"This is going to be a hard day. You will need the food."
He tried to stare her down, but couldn't. He accepted the plate,
feeling like a chided school boy.
Lucifer ate in silence, and when he had finished, he wandered out into
the mossy patio behind the bungalow. There was a milky opaqueness,
without obvious form or solidity, that walled the area off from the
bungalow on either side. The rear of the patio, facing the forest, was
clear, but when he walked too far in that direction, an invisible force
shocked him warningly, and he leaped back.
The trees were incredibly high; their canopy of branches and leaves
was tightly interwoven. The rain had stopped momentarily, but water
dripped unceasingly from the canopy to the mat of leaves on the forest
floor. Spidery root tendrils crawled upward to mesh with tree boles and
hanging vines. There was a smell of eternal dampness. Somewhere back in
the shadows, an animal cried out. It sounded like a woman in pain.
Lucifer shivered. He wished forlornly that he had left matters up to
the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency. He reviewed his prospects,
and did not find them good. In a narrow sense, he had succeeded. He had
found his positives and positive positives, but he did not yet know why
they had been kidnapped. Nor was it likely that the knowledge would do
him much good. He was on a strange planet, in the system of a distant
star, apparently destined to spend the rest of his life with a woman
who had been a nightclub fortune teller.
As a doctor of parapsychology, Lucifer was appalled. As a confirmed
bachelor, he was horrified.
But a more immediate problem clamored for consideration. What happened
to non-positives on Melus?
He would soon know.
The two attendants who came to take them to Center were much younger
than Huth. They carried themselves with military stiffness. Nina and
Lucifer were led to what vaguely resembled a motorboat, covered with a
transparent bubble. The conveyance hovered in the air, about two feet
above a narrow pathway that was surfaced with a dark, burnished metal.
Lucifer accepted the vehicle without surprise. Physical scientists
had always reminded him of boys playing with erector sets, and their
accomplishments bored him.
Center was a series of low slate-metal buildings scattered over several
acres. Some were inter-connected; some were separated by mossy areas.
The outer walls were broken by tall casement windows that extended from
just above the ground to just below the eaves.
As they circled among the buildings, the casement windows began to
swing shut. Lucifer thought at first that this had something to do with
their coming, but then he saw the thunder clouds tumbling in over the
forest roof and heard the approaching rain.
The hot wind swept open a gate as they were rounding one of the
opaquely enclosed areas. Lucifer caught a nerve-shocking glimpse of
many grotesquely malformed creatures stumbling, sprawling and hopping
into the building, under the supervision of several bronzed, statuesque
attendants. One creature, with a huge bulging head that flopped
uncontrollably from shoulder to shoulder, was bounding along on a
single leg. Its twisted features were grimacing horribly.
Lucifer did not raise his eyes to Nina's face, but through the
transparent sleeves of her tunic, he saw the muscles in her arms grow
rigid.
The conveyance stopped in front of the entrance to one of the larger
buildings. An attendant met them as they stepped out of the vehicle. He
led them down a long, glass-roofed corridor. The rain was now drumming
dismally against the glass.
A blindfolded girl of about six passed them in the corridor. She
stepped politely to one side, then continued surely and unconcernedly
on her way.
Huth received them in a large room equipped with two rows of facing
desks.
"As I told you," he explained to Lucifer, "these tests will be very
elementary. Together with your Earth records, they will form part of
your basic family file. And," he added, harshness edging into his
voice, "it will be wise for you to give us your complete cooperation."
One of the attendants led Nina to a seat in front of a desk. The other
attendant beckoned to Lucifer.
"If you please," Lucifer said to Huth, "I would like to observe your
technique. Being a professional man, you know...."
Huth assented.
"May I compliment you on your attitude, Dr. Brill. Such an interest
can shorten your period of orientation, and it raises my already
considerable expectations for you. But we do not pretend to any
originality of technique."
After watching the attendant run through twenty-five cards with Nina,
Lucifer was quite ready to agree with Huth. The technique was crude,
far below minimal laboratory standards.
Nina's attention wandered about the room, but she called off the cards
without hesitation. The attendant took her through three runs, checked
his file record and stood up with a shrug. He said something to Huth in
a language that blurred and rasped.
"Dr. Brill," said Huth, "will you oblige us now?"
Lucifer stepped resolutely to the desk, but the palms of his hands were
moist. Over the past two decades he had taken many tests, enough to
know that he could never score above chance save for an occasional run
of coincidence.
And this was not one of those runs. He saw it in the attendant's manner
before five cards had been turned. Desperately, he fumbled ahead,
guessing blindly.
At the end of the first run, the attendant spoke rapidly to Huth.
Lucifer saw Nina watching him with surprise.
"This technique is incredible!" he snapped at Huth. "With all the
distractions in this room, not to mention the emotional stress of our
situation, a true score would have to depend on chance!"
"That is not necessarily so," Huth answered calmly. "The stronger a psi
sense may be, the more easily it is brought into use, regardless of
external circumstances. You Earth scientists go to incredible lengths
to test under laboratory conditions an ability that does not belong in
the laboratory."
"Ridiculous! Laboratory standards were necessary to prove the existence
of psi."
"Therefore, Earth scientists will go on proving it to each other for
the next hundred years."
"What are you proving by this inferior duplication of our psi tests?"
Lucifer challenged, hoping to divert attention from another disastrous
run of the cards.
"More than you suspect, Dr. Brill. For one thing, by checking this
first test with your Earth record, and later with additional tests, we
can obtain an indication of your response to orientation. This could
be important to you, vitally important, I might add. Now, shall we
proceed."
It was an order, not a question.
Lucifer saw Nina nod at him, and try to smile encouragingly. This fed
his anger with the fuel of humiliation.
The attendant took a new deck of cards, began to turn them.
Brill felt his eyes drawn again to Nina. He called out his answer,
unthinkingly. "Circle ... circle ... star ... rectangle ... circle...."
When the run was completed, the attendant instantly started another.
A third and a fourth run, then the attendant turned to Huth with a
rapid burst of language.
"Excellent," said Huth. "Excellent, Dr. Brill. All you needed to do was
relax! Excepting the first run, you averaged very close to your Earth
score."
Since awakening that morning, Lucifer had found his professional
equanimity tried sorely on several occasions. But never more so than
at this moment. To have scored so significantly above chance on three
consecutive card runs was a greater shock than awakening to find
himself with a strange wife on a strange planet. The law of probability
was the unchallengeable bastion of his private world.
He caught Nina's glance again. Her dark eyes were watching him in a way
he could not understand.
Huth said, "This has been a most satisfactory prelude to orientation.
We can proceed immediately." He touched a button. In a moment, Dr.
Thame entered. "You will go with Dr. Thame," Huth told Nina. "Your
husband will remain here."
Nina looked at Lucifer again, hesitated, then turned away without
comment and followed Dr. Thame out of the room. Huth led Lucifer into a
smaller office.
"This procedure is somewhat unusual," Huth commented. "Ordinarily, new
arrivals are assigned directly to units of the Orientation Staff. But
we have special hopes and plans for both of you. In particular, Dr.
Brill, you can be of great service to us."
It was difficult for Lucifer to be anything but forthright, but he
tried. "Psi is my work," he said. "I suppose it matters little enough
where I work at it. But it would help to know the purpose of all this."
"Undoubtedly. But it will not be easy for you."
"I am not a child."
"No, but you are an Earth scientist."
Lucifer felt his anger rising again.
"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"I intended no invidious comparison, Dr. Brill. But, as orientation
progresses, you will better understand what I mean. Have you ever
thought how your science would appear to an extra-terrestrial mind?"
"The concept has never occurred to me," Lucifer snapped, thinking of
the grotesque creatures running out of the rain, and the blindfolded
child walking alone down the corridor. "We see your science as a great
number of cubicles, all operating within one structure, with a minimum
amount of inter-communication. Each cubicle is engrossed in a process
of infinite abstraction from a body of potential knowledge self-doomed
to be finite. It studies every new idea chiefly in terms of concepts
fundamental to its own specialized body of knowledge."
Huth waved a large hand to cut off a protest from Lucifer.
"And what of the phenomena an individual scientist observes and
evaluates? He shapes the facts into an hypothesis that may be valid
only within his own cubicle. He does not venture outside. A most
glaring example is that of your medical diagnostician. He uses the
tools of his science brilliantly, then lays them down and becomes a
therapeutic nihilist!"
"Specialization has meant progress," Lucifer protested.
"Progress, yes, but progress only to the frontiers of infinity. Will
you dare venture into that frontier, Dr. Brill?"
"Of course."
"Be careful! The price of that venture is very high. Consider for a
moment your Earth biologist: The very nature of the subject on which
he has founded his science eventually dooms him to technological
unemployment! If he follows the living cells to their ultimate sequence
of interactions between ions and molecules, biology ends as it
began--as applied chemistry and physics!"
Lucifer shifted uneasily.
"From another value judgement," Huth continued, "the orthodoxy of
Earth science is a product of its fragmentation. Within each cubicle,
isolated from the fertilization of new concepts, the unorthodox all too
often and too soon can become rigidly orthodox. This is the circle
around which each science seems forever to travel!"
Lucifer felt himself being moved skillfully toward an unknown
objective. It was like being a Knight on a chessboard in the hands of
an expert player.
Huth moved in closer to his objective. "And so it is with psi, Dr.
Brill. Or so it appears to an extra-terrestrial viewpoint, which is now
necessarily your own! Parapsychology had to depart from the physiology
of orthodox psychology in order to get a look at itself. It became
unorthodox avant guarde! It established a scientific case for psi,
and for two decades thereafter established little else. What have you
proved that Rhine did not prove twenty years ago?"
"It is necess--"
"Already we see forming a dogma of psychic research, a cult
of psychologizers that may match in exclusivity the cult of
physiologizers--each declining to draw upon the resources of the other!
We see a tendency to look backward instead of forward, a bemusement
with the historical concepts of association theories, psychon systems
and continuums of cosmic consciousness--all of which suggests a turning
away from the frontiers of infinity to an interminable abstraction of
possibilities from your own finite knowledge.
"Do you follow me, Dr. Brill?"
Lucifer removed his glasses, breathed on them, polished them carefully
on the sleeve of his tunic. He looked beyond Huth to the window and
the steaming tropical rain. When his thoughts were composed again, he
answered, "I follow you--with reservations."
"Naturally. Now consider this question: Have you looked into other
cubicles of science for answers to psi?"
"We welcome all viewpoints."
"Do you now? I wonder! From our extra-terrestrial viewpoint, it is
evident that biology, chemistry and physics all have within their
present finite bodies of knowledge the fragments of concepts that
could propel psi, and hence all of science, into the very frontier of
infinity."
Huth paused, looked searchingly at Lucifer.
"Dr. Brill, are you ready to share your primacy in psi research with
the physicial scientist?"
"The physical scientist scoffs at us."
"He also is reluctant to leave his cubicle. However, by using the
mathematical tools of logic to enclose psi research in a framework of
anti-logic, built on the principle that man cannot know, your psychic
theorist has alienated the handyman physical scientist who has so much
to contribute--but who insists that man must know."
Huth raised himself to his magnificent seven feet of height.
"Let the thoughts germinate, Dr. Brill. This is only your first
orientation session. On the whole, we have made good progress."
He handed Lucifer a printed card.
"This will instruct you how to tune in your visagraph to a closed
circuit orientation program after the dinner hour. Do not fail to
follow instructions."
With the briefest of nods, Huth stalked toward the door, where he
turned, as if in response to an afterthought.
"Your motivations to progress in orientation will be several, Dr.
Brill, but it may be well for you to know that you already have a
hostage to the future success of our program."
"Hostage?"
"Your first child, Dr. Brill. It will be born in approximately seven
Earth months, according to the calculations of Dr. Thame.
"Meditate on this while you await the attendant who will return you to
your quarters."
* * * * *
Lucifer tried to square his thin shoulders against the straight-backed
chair. He ran the tips of his fingers over his upper lip, and out
of the numbness that gripped his brain came a vagrant thought: His
mustache really did need trimming; it wouldn't do at all to let down
about such things.
The door clicked open. He turned, expecting to see one of Huth's
attendants, instead he faced Nina. Her cheekbones made two spots of
white against her olive skin.
"Hello, Lucifer," she said. Her voice was even deeper, huskier than
usual.
Her tone and the way she used his first name told him she knew about
the child. But he pretended not to notice. He couldn't discuss the
child until he had time to evaluate the meaning of it all.
"Miss Poteil," he began firmly. His voice shook a little, and he
started again, "Miss Poteil, I trust your first orientation session was
not too unhappy an experience."
Her dark eyes were thoughtful, troubled.
"What is unhappiness?" She shrugged in reply to her own question. "I am
never sure about crossing the line between happiness and unhappiness.
Are you?"
She sat down facing him.
"Is your question philosophical or psychological, Miss Poteil?"
She smiled faintly, and shook her head.
There was silence between them. Finally she spoke again, "I saw the
little girl as I came in."
"The girl with the blindfold?"
"Yes. She stepped right past me, and went into a room just down the
corridor. The room seemed to be full of children."
Lucifer stood up with sudden decision. "I believe I will try to look
around."
The white spots grew in her cheeks. Her full, expressive lips tightened.
"Be careful, Lucifer," she said quietly.
The long corridor was frighteningly deserted. With so many doors
opening off it, the odds seemed overwhelming that someone would step
out one of them at any moment and challenge his right to be there.
Lucifer's plastic boots scraped on the metallic composition floor.
A subdued tinkle of children's voices drew him to a door some thirty
steps down the corridor. The door appeared to be of a glass-like
material, but it was opaqued. He pushed against it, and it moved. He
drew a long breath, then inched the door open.
A tall, bronzed women of Huth's racial characteristics was grouping
a dozen or so youngsters into an activity pattern. The children were
all around five or six years old. Their fair skin and bone structure
indicated they were offspring of Earth parents.
The woman blindfolded one of the youngsters, a square-shouldered, blond
little fellow. The she tossed a ball to one of the other boys, and gave
a short command in her own language.
The children scattered about the large room. The boy with the ball ran
and stood against the window, which was blurred from the driving rain.
After chanting what appeared to be a number count, the blindfolded
boy began to move around the room. As he approached one child after
another, he would hesitate while still three or four steps away, shake
his head and move on to someone else.
Finally, when still some ten feet from the window, he swerved abruptly
toward the boy holding the ball. He ran directly to him, grabbed him by
the arm, then fumbled for the ball and clutched it triumphantly.
The other children broke into an excited babble, and everyone seemed to
be clamoring for the next chance to be blindfolded. The woman looked
disconsolately at the rain-streaked window, and began to blindfold
another child.
Lucifer eased the door shut. He moved on down the corridor, past room
after room that seemed deserted. A tentative testing of several doors
proved they were locked.
Near the end of the corridor, where it turned at right angles and
headed down an equally long wing of the building, Lucifer found another
room that sounded occupied.
Again he inched the door open.
This room was occupied by smaller children, mostly of prenursery school
age. They were playing a version of a game Lucifer recognized from his
own childhood: Tail on the donkey. Only this donkey was a sinister
looking creature with tiny ears and formidable jaws.
One by one the children toddled up to pin a stubby tail on his
derriere. Three of them hit the target with biological exactitude. The
fourth missed badly. It was a little girl. When the others laughed, she
tore off her blindfold, stamped her tiny foot.
A bench sailed across the room, thudded flatly against the opposite
wall.
The children's derisive laugh changed to one of excitement, and the
girl felt encouraged to expand her tantrum. The bench caromed from wall
to wall to ceiling and off, with a crash, into a corner. The woman
attendant picked up the child by the shoulders and shook her.
For an instant, wild defiance flared on the childish features. Then the
girl pouted, and two tears trickled down her soft cheeks.
Lucifer didn't try to analyze his impressions. There would be time
for that later. Now it was important only to gather as many facts as
possible before he was detected.
The second corridor contained many rooms. From the sound of the voices
coming through the doors, and from spot-checking several rooms, Lucifer
judged they were all occupied by children engaged in some form of play
activity that required psionic ability.
At the end of the corridor, Lucifer opened a door and found himself
staring out into the rain.
Urged on by a growing eagerness to learn as much as he could before
he was stopped, he ducked outside and ran across a mossy stretch of
courtyard toward a second building.
Rain plastered his hair, and trickled down his neck, but his tunic and
leggings seemed waterproof.
The rain was hot and stinging, and the wind surged out of the forest
with lashing force. Half-blinded, Lucifer stumbled over some unseen
object. He sprawled to his knees. He got up, slipped again, and skidded
into the partial shelter of a doorway.
The door couldn't be moved. Lucifer moved out into the rain again, and
groped his way along the side of the building.
He stumbled over something else, fell heavily.
A hoarse outcry, lifting above the wind and the rain, brought him to
his knees. Shielding his eyes, he saw that he had stumbled over a
figure huddled in a corner of the building. The figure straightened
above him. Its movements were jerky, like a carpenter's rule unfolding.
It was one of the grotesque, misshapen creatures Lucifer had glimpsed
on first approaching Center. Through the slanting rain, Lucifer could
make out a gigantic head that bulged sickeningly and was utterly devoid
of hair. The head sagged forward, flopped back again until it struck
the wall of the building, then snapped forward. It had two blank eyes,
a flattened horror of a nose, a mouth that sagged and twitched.
The mouth was trying to say something, but the words dissolved in a
bubble of red saliva and a merciful wash of rain.
The head flopped back and forth. The figure jerked toward Lucifer,
lunged and fell on top of him.
For the first time in his adult life, Lucifer lost control of himself.
He screamed, and screamed again.
* * * * *
Hands clawed him down, smashed his face into a choking puddle of water
and wet moss. The hands and arms beat against his back and ribs. Each
blow was a flailing, uncoordinated effort, but the impact was crushing.
Water bubbled into Lucifer's mouth and nostrils. He raised his head to
breath, and a random blow smashed it back down. He gulped air and water
together. He choked, strangled.
And then the weight was gone from his back. The hands and arms stopped
smashing against his flesh and bones. Lucifer raised himself on his
elbows, retched chokingly.
A powerful pair of hands picked him up and half carried him out of the
rain. Someone brushed back his hair, wiped his eyes. He opened them.
A tall attendant held him up. Nina dried a trickle of water from his
cheek. Her dark features showed shock and concern. Huth watched him
sardonically.
"It was fortunate your wife sensed your danger and helped us find you,"
Huth said. "Your zeal for orientation is commendable, Dr. Brill, but I
suggest you proceed less rigorously."
Lucifer took the handkerchief from Nina, wiped his mouth. It tasted
salty. He attempted to stand with some measure of dignity.
"Who or what was that creature?" he demanded.
"I think you have had quite enough orientation for the time being,"
Huth replied.
The strange conveyance whisked them back to their bungalow. Lucifer
soaked himself in a hot bath, and it was a long time before his
trembling muscles relaxed. Dinner, via the tubicular, consisted of
a meat dish, more strongly flavored than venison, two rather salty
green vegetables and a flagon of warm, spicy amber liquid. They ate in
silence.
Soon after dinner, Huth appeared on the visagraph screen, for what he
called their second orientation session. This was largely a development
of the first, and so were those that followed on succeeding days. Each
left Lucifer feeling more unsure of himself, tense, mentally adrift.
The distance between Melus and his safe, secure little laboratory at
Western University was becoming greater than could be measured in light
years.
Ranging from geology to biochemistry, from physio-psychical sources of
neurosis to what he called the "molecular site of understanding", Huth
hammered incessantly with semantics and logic against the carefully
mortared bricks of Lucifer's own scientific cubicle. Sometimes he
spoke with almost mystical fervor of a frontier beyond a frontier, a
science beyond a science. One evening, during a visagraph session, Nina
suddenly interrupted:
"Your words speak about the infinite," she murmured, "but your mind
does not sing with the music of infinity."
Now, for the first time, Lucifer saw uncertainty on Huth's face.
Uncertainty, and a look of indescribable sadness.
Then the visagraphs screen went dark.
Nina was on the couch beside Lucifer. Her eyes were half-closed; her
strong fingers were clasped around her knees and she rocked back and
forth gently.
"What a strange man," she said. "What a strange and strong and lonely
man. For a moment, I saw all the loneliness of the universe in his
eyes...."