There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
_The Rubaiyat._
Clawly quit his nervous prowling and perched on Oktav's desk. His
satanic face was set in tight, thwarted lines. Except for his rummaging
everything in the room was just as it had been when he had stolen out
early this morning. The outer door aslit, Oktav's black cloak thrown
over the back of his chair, the door to the empty inner chamber open.
As if the seer had been called away on some brief, minor errand.
Clawly was irked at the impulse which had drawn him back to this place.
True, his rummaging had uncovered some suggestive and disquieting
things--in particular, an assortment of small objects and implements
that seemed to extend back without a break to the Late Middle Dawn
Civilization, including a maddeningly random collection of notes that
began in faded stain on sheets of bleached and compressed vegetable
fiber, shifted to typed characters on similar sheets, kept on through
engraving stylus and plastic film to memoranda ribbon and recording
wire, and finally ended in multilevel writing tape.
But what Clawly wanted was something that would enable him to get a
hook into the problem that hung before him like a vast, slippery,
ungraspable sphere.
He still had, strong as ever, the conviction that this room was the
center of a web, the key to the whole thing--but it was a key he did
not know how to use.
His heels beat a muffled tattoo against the desk as he searched his
mind for possible alternate avenues of attack.
Thorn? That was a whole problem in itself, only a few hours old, but
full of the most nerve-racking possibilities. He took from his pouch
and nervously fingered the fragment of tape with its scrawlingly
recorded message which he had found earlier today on Thorn's desk at
their office--that message which no one had seen Thorn leave.
A matter of the greatest importance has arisen. I must handle it
alone. Will be back in a few days. Cancel or postpone all activities
until my return.
Thorn.
Although the general style of recording was characteristically Thorn's,
it had a subtly different swing to it, an alien undercurrent, as if
some other mind were using Thorn's habitual patterns of muscular
action. And the message itself, which might refer to anything, was
alarmingly suggestive of a cryptic amnesiac's play for time.
On the other hand, it would be just like Thorn to play the lone wolf if
he saw fit.
If he followed his simplest impulses, Clawly would resume the search
for Thorn he had begun on finding the message. But he had already put
that search into the hands of agencies more competent than any single
individual could possibly be. They would find Thorn if anyone could,
and for him to try to help them would merely be a concession to his
anxiety.
His heels beat a sharper tattoo.
The research program? But that was crippled by the Committee's adverse
decision, and by Thorn's absence. He couldn't do much there. Besides
he had the feeling that any research program was becoming too slow and
remote a measure for dealing with the present situation.
The Committee itself? But what single, definite thing could he tell
them that he had not told them last night?
His own mind, then? How about that as an avenue of attack? Stronger
than ever before, the conviction came that there were dark avenues
leading down from his consciousness--one of them to a frighteningly
devilish, chaos-loving version of himself--and that if he concentrated
his mind in a certain peculiar way he might be able to slip down one of
them.
There was a devil-may-care lure to those dark avenues--the promise of
a world better suiting the darker, Dawn phases of his personality.
And, if Thorn _had_ been displaced, that would be the only way of
getting to him.
But that wasn't grappling with the problem. That was letting go,
plunging with indefensible recklessness into the unknown--a crazy last
resort.
To grapple with a problem, you had to have firm footing--and grab.
The tattoo ended with a sudden slam of heels. Was this room getting
on his nerves? This silent room, with its feel of tangible linkages
with future and past, its sense of standing on the edge of a timeless,
unchanging center of things, in which action had no place--sapping his
will power, rendering him incapable of making a decision, now that
there was no longer a seer to interpret for him.
The problem was in one sense so clear-cut. Earth threatened by invasion
from across a new kind of frontier.
But to get a grip on that problem.
* * * * *
He leaned across the desk and flipped the televisor, riffling through
various local scenes in the Blue Lorraine. The Great Rotunda, with its
aerial promenade, where a slow subtronic current carried chatting,
smiling throngs in an upward spiral past displays of arts and wares.
The Floral Rotunda, where pedestrians strolled along gently rolling
paths under arches of exotic greenery. The other formal social centers.
The endless corridors of individual enterprises, where one might come
upon anything from a puppet-carver's to a specialized subtronic lab,
a mood-creator's to a cat-fancier's. The busy schools. The production
areas, where keen-eyed machine tenders governed and artistically varied
the flow of processing. The maintenance and replacement centers. The
vast kitchens, where subtle cooks ruled to a hairbreadth the mixing
of foodstuffs and their exposure to heat and moisture and other
influences. The entertainment and games centers, where swirling gaiety
and high-pitched excitement were the rule.
Everywhere happiness--or, rather, creative freedom. A great rich
surging world, unaware, save for nightmare glimpses, of the abyss-edge
on which it danced.
Maddeningly unaware.
Clawly's features writhed. Thus, he thought, the Dawn gods must have
felt when looking down upon mankind the evening before Ragnarok.
To be able to shake those people out of their complacency, make them
aware of danger!
The seer's words returned to him: "Arm it. Mobilize it. Do not let it
wait supine for the hunter--You must give it a reason ... extemporize a
danger--Mars."
Mars! The seer's disappearance had caused Clawly to miss the idea
behind the word, but now, remembering, he grasped it in a flash. A
faked Martian invasion. Doctored reports from the First Interplanetary
Expedition--mysterious disappearance of spaceships--unknown craft
approaching Earth--rumor of a vast fleet--running fights in the
stratosphere--
Firemoor of the Extraterrestrial Service was his friend, and believed
in his theories. Moreover, Firemoor was daring--even reckless. Many of
the young men under him were of similar temperament. The thing could be
done!
Abruptly Clawly shook his head, scowled. Any such invasion scare would
be a criminal hoax. It was a notion that must have been forced upon him
by the darker, more wantonly mischievous side of his nature--or by some
lingering hypnotic influence of Oktav.