No! He must forget the notion. Find another way.
He slid from the desk, began to pace. Opposition. That was what he
needed. Something concrete to fight against. Something, some person,
some group, that was opposed to him, that was trying to thwart him at
every turn.
He stopped, wondering why he had not thought of it before.
There were two men who were trying to thwart him, who had shrewdly
undermined his and Thorn's theories, two men who had shown an odd
personality reversal in the past months, who had impressed him with a
fleeting sense of strangeness and alienage.
Two members of the World Executive Committee.
Conjerly and Tempelmar.
* * * * *
Brushing the treetops, swooping through leaf-framed gaps, startling a
squirrel that had been dozing on an upper branch, Clawly glided into
the open and made a running landing on the olive-floored sun-deck of
Conjerly's home.
It was very quiet. There was only the humming of some bees in the
flower garden, up from which sweet, heavy odors drifted sluggishly and
curled across the deck. The sun beat down. On all sides without a
break, the trees--solid masses of burnished leaves--pressed in.
Clawly crossed quietly to the dilated doorway in the cream-colored
wall. He did not remove his flying togs. His visor he had thrown open
during flight.
Raising his hand, he twice broke the invisible beam spanning the
doorway. A low musical drone sounded, was repeated.
There was no answering sound, no footsteps. Clawly waited.
The general quiet, the feeling of lifelessness, made his abused nerves
twitch. Forest homes like this, reached only by flying, were devilishly
lonely and isolated.
Then he became aware of another faint, rhythmic sound, which the
humming of the bees had masked. It came from inside the house. Throaty
breathing. The intervals between breaths seemed abnormally long.
Clawly hesitated. Then he smoothly ducked under the beam.
He walked softly down a dark, cool corridor. The breathing grew
steadily louder, though there was no change in its labored, sighing
monotony. Opposite the third opened doorway the increase in volume was
abrupt.
As his eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness, he made out a low
couch and the figure of a man sprawled on it, on his back, arms dropped
to either side, pale blob of bald head thrown limply back. At intervals
the vague face quivered with the slow-paced breathing.
Clawly fumbled sideways, switched on a window, went over to the couch.
On the floor, under Conjerly's hand, was a deflated elastoid bag.
Clawly picked it up, sniffed, quickly averted his head from the faintly
pungent soporific odor.
He shook the bulky sleeper, less gently after a moment.
It did not interrupt the measured snores.
The first impression of Conjerly's face was one of utter emptiness, the
deep-grooved wrinkles of character and emotion a network of disused
roads. But on closer examination, hints of personality became dimly
apparent, as if glimpsed at the bottom of a smudgy pool.
The longer Clawly studied them, the surer he became that the suspicions
he had clutched at so eagerly in Oktav's office were groundless.
This was the Conjerly he had known. Unimaginative perhaps, stubborn
and blunt, a little too inclined to conservatism, a little too fond
of curling down those deep furrows at the corners of the mouth--but
nothing alien, nothing malign.
The rhythm of the breathing changed. The sleeper stirred. One hand came
slowly up, brushed blindly at the chest.
Clawly watched motionlessly. From all sides the heavy summery silence
pressed in.
The rhythm of the breathing continued to change. The sleeper tossed.
The hand fumbled restlessly at the neck of the loose house robe.
And something else changed. It seemed to Clawly as if the face of the
Conjerly he knew were sinking downward into a narrow bottomless pit,
becoming tiny as a cameo, vanishing utterly, leaving only a hollow
mask. And then, as if another face were rising to fill the mask--and
in this second face, if not malignity, at least grim and unswervingly
hostile purpose.
The sleeper mumbled, murmured. Clawly bent low, caught words. Words
with a shuddery, unplacable quality of distance to them, as if they
came from another cosmos.
"... transtime machine ... invasion ... three days ... we ... prevent
action ... until--"
Then, from the silence behind him, a different sound--a faint crunch.
Clawly whirled. Standing in the doorway, filling half its width and all
its height, was Tempelmar.
And in Tempelmar's lean, horse-like face the vanishing flicker of
a look in which suspicion, alarm, and a more active emotion were
blended--a lethal look.
But by the time Clawly was looking straight at him, it had been
replaced by an urbane, condescending, eyebrow-raising "Well?"
Again a sound from behind. Turning, backing a little so that he could
take in both men at once, Clawly saw that Conjerly was sitting up,
rubbing his face. He took away his hands and his small eyes stared
at Clawly--blankly at first. Then his expression changed too, became
a "Well?"--though more angry, indignant, less urbane. It was an
expression that did not belong to the man who had lain there drugged.
The words Clawly had barely caught were still humming in his ears.
Even as he phrased his excuse--"... came to talk with you about the
program ... heard sounds of distressed breathing ... alarmed ... walked
in ..."--even as he considered the possibility of immediate physical
attack and the best way to meet it, he came to a decision.
He would see Firemoor.