Gordon R. Dickson (9 page)

"Enter
into
the
jungle."

It
was the same illusion over again, and this time Kil could have thrown off the
suggestion, but instead he allowed himself to slip part way under. For a while
he roamed the jungle. . . . When a certain time had gone by, he pulled himself
back to reality.

Again,
as he came out of it, Kil found himself in the atmosphere of something like a
polite cocktail party. The only differences from last time were that the place
was larger and the guests more numerous. He threaded his way among them,
indifferent except for one moment when, passing a curtained alcove, he caught
sigJit of the dark haired girl who had sp6ken to him at the Northern Star. She
sat on a divan, leaning back with her eyes closed, obviously still under the
hypnosis; and there was a look of loneliness and waiting on her face. A feel of
guilt and shame touched Kil; he turned quickly away.

Finally, he found Dekko. The little man was
seated all by himself in a corner, holding a drink. His eyes flickered with
shrewd alertness as Kil came up.

"Got it!" he
said, as Kil sat down beside him.

"Got what?"

For answer, Dekko pointed through the
shifting crowd to a tall, tanned girl with auburn hair. "O.T.L.," he
said, briefly.

Kil
stared in surprise. Of all things, he had not expected a girl. And she was
beautiful. Just how beautiful became apparent in a moment when, swinging around
to talk to someone else, her full face came into their line of vision. It was a
face as flawless as the body to which it belonged, slim-featured and serene.

"Her
name's Melee Alain," Dekko spoke softly in Kil's ear. "She's the one
I dressed you up for."

"Dressed me—"

"Sure. What kind of bait do you think
I'd make?" and Dekko rocked for a second with his silent laughter.
"She's our wire to the O.T.L. She knows where they meet and she can invite
us to wherever it is. That's what you've got to get her to do."

"I do?" said Kil. "I'm no good
at that sort of thing."

"You've
got to be. It won't be hard as you think. Listen, she's a Class Two."

"Class Two?" Kil stared.
"That girl?
Criminally Unstab?"

"That's
right. She's as much a Crim as those two of Ace's. She's got tangled circuits
up top. That'll help us."

"How
can anything like that help?" Kil was staring at the beautiful face in
horror and disbelief.

"She likes men. But she likes men who're
different.
The oddballs.
The
unusuals.
I'd be good as a hunchback, but I happen to know she's already
had a hunchback. You, now, she's never met anything like you before."

"What do you mean?" Kil was
halkangry.

"What
I say. You're hard and tight—and different. Also, you've got something on your
mind; she'll want to know what that is. If you take my advice you'll never tell
her. She's the kind of woman that wouldn't like hearing about another
woman."

"Oh,
hell," said Kil, looking across at her. "I can't do this."

"She's
your wire to the O.T.L.," said Dekko. "You want her, or don't
you?"

Kil
clenched his jaws together. The little muscles crawled in his cheek.

"All
right," he said. He got up abruptly and began to walk across the room.

Melee
Alain saw him coming. She lifted her eyes from the seated woman she was talking
to and looked at him with
a
long,
direct, and level glance. He came up to her.

"Hello, Melee,"
he said.

She
looked at him searchingly. Her head tilted back and her eyes widened slightly.
They were green eyes flecked with little gold lights; they and the lips of her
perfect mouth, parting a little, seemed to draw him almost physically to her.
It was in that moment that Kil realized instantly and fully the danger of her.
There is nothing so compelling as to be openly desired by a beautiful woman;
and Melee's desires wore no false gown of modesty.

"Now don't tell me I've forgotten your
name," she answered in a low voice. Her eyes invited him to join her in
the polite fiction.

"Kil Bruner," he told her.

"Kil," she said.
"Yes,
Kil.
How could it have slipped my mind—a strong name like that?"
She put her hand lightly and firmly on his unsleeved arm. "Shall we go
someplace where we can talk, Kil?"

"I'd like to."

She drew him across the room and through a
little door into a small lounge.

"I
reserved this," she said, closing the door carefully behind them.
"It's not set for anyone else's Key." She led the way to a couch.
"Sit down, Kil."

He
seated himself beside her tentatively, feeling large and awkward like a captive
bear. For all her height, she moved with a casual suppleness; and now she
leaned forward to a low table before them, pressing studs inset on its obsidian
top.

"Drink?"

"Tequila," he said.

A
section of the table top slid aside and the drinks rose up before them. She had
chosen a tall mixed drink of some kind. She took it and leaned back into an
angle of the couch, looking at him.

"You're quiet," she said.

He
drank the tequilla all at once, bit into his slice of lemon and tossed it back
into the dish. He scowled at it.

"This
isn't going to work," he said; and started to stand up. She caught at his
arm and held him back. He turned to look at her.

"You're a strange man," she said.
She continued to hold him, staring into his eyes.

"Don't you want to make love to
me?" she said, at last.

"Yes,"
he replied, truthfully enough. He was thinking that the fault was not in her
attractiveness.
The seductiveness of her burnt like a fierce
flame" in the closeness of the small, shaded lounge.
The trouble
lay in the fact that he was not a good liar—and he was having trouble believing
what Dekko had told him about her.

"Then what is it?" When he still
did not answer, she continued to study him. "You know, when I saw you
coming across the floor to me, I felt something odd about you. But you seemed
to be so full of purpose. I half-expected you to pick me up and carry me off
right then. And now—you don't like this place, is that it?" she said with
a sudden flash of intuition.

"It's not that," he said.

"You don't like me throwing myself at
you, this way." She bit her lip, frowning. "Forgive me, Kil."
Her face suddenly cleared and she drew her legs up beneath her to sit curled in
the angle of the couch. The change was astonishing. It was as if the fierce
lamp.of her beauty was suddenly shaded, reduced to a soft and gentle glow. She
looked small and innocent, almost shy.
"What would you
like, Kil?"

He
looked squarely into her eyes. This, at least, he could answer honestly.

"To see you again," he said.

"Away from all this,
you mean?"

He nodded.

"I'm
staying out at Bar Harbor. Do you know where that is?
Near
Brainerd, Minnesota.
It's a resort area. I'm at a place called the Twin
Pine Lodge. You could come up for a few days."

"I
will—" he hesitated. Now there was no choice but to lie. "I'm tied up
in a business deal right now. That little man I was talking to before I came up
to you—"

"Oh,"
the monosyllable was disappointed. "Can't you put him off?"

"No, but if I could bring him along, for say a day or two?"
She laughed in wonder, staring at him.
"There
cant
be
anyone like you!" she said. He shrugged, turning away. . "Well,
then—"

"Oh,
bring him, of course," she said. "You must be some crazy, wild sort
of efficiency expert. And I must be infected with that same thing from contact
with you. By all means place us both on your schedule for the next few
days." She moved suddenly over against him, all soft and warm and
appealing. "But kiss me, Kil."

He
bent toward her lips; but the impalpable presence of Ellen was suddenly between
them. He stopped.

"No," he said, harshly.

Her face twisted suddenly as if she was going
to cry.

"Oh,
get out!" she cried, with something between a sob and a laugh. She pushed
him away. "Get out of here—but come to me tomorrow at the Lodge."

He got up and went to the door. His hand was
on it, when her voice stopped him. "Kill"

He
turned to face her. She was looking at him with something on her face that was
very like hatred.

"You'll kiss me," she said.
"I'll make you kiss me." He went out.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

The
town of Brainerd was the terminal for the Bar
Harbor resort area. Dekko and Kil took an airbus for the short hop there from
Duluth,
and a cab out to the resort area. Twin Pines Lodge,
the cab's information service informed them, was a commercial resort with a
capacity of about eighty people, situated on picturesque Gull Lake. It took
them there.

They
found themselves deposited before a wide stretch of lawn enclosed by an antique
pole fence. Behind the fence, the lawn ran up a slope to a long lodge building
on the crest of a low hill which hid the lake from them. Two large and
symmetrical Norwegian pines flanking the Lodge's entrance explained the
resort's name. A gateman—rather surprising fixture—halted them at the entrance
in the pole fence to say that the resort's accommodations were already fully
occupied. On Kil's mentioning Melee, however, he called up to the lodge
building and -turned again frpm his phone set to tell them that reservations
for them had been made; but since the resort was crowded, he would have to put
them in a single cabin. He took them in and guided them to a row of small cabins.

"Cabin eighteen,"
said the gateman.

He
left them in it and departed. Kil had half expected to find Melee there and
waiting for him. But she was nowhere to be seen. The small building was
ordinary enough, equipped with its own food delivery system and the usual
conveniences. They proceeded to settle down in it.

It was still early in the day. Dekko slipped
out to look the situation
over,
and Kil found himself
somewhat restless with time on his hands. He thought of going up to the lodge
to look for Melee and decided against it. He stepped out and took the opposite
direction, along past the cabins, toward the lake.

At
the last cabin in the row, the door was opened and a deeply tanned, skinny man
with a full gray-brown beard sat crosslegged on its threshold. He did not turn
his head as Kil approached, but his eyes picked up the younger man and followed
him until Kil was directly in front of him. Then:

"Good morning," he said, in a
surprisingly bass voice.

Kil stopped.

"Hello," he answered, a little
uncertainly.

"That's
a very interesting Key band." There was humor in the bright eyes above the
beard.
"Almost the duplicate of my own."

"What—"
Kil frowned,
then
suddenly understood. He reached out
his wrist and the seated man lifted his own Key to touch it to Kil's. There was
a tingle that ran suddenly around Kil's skin under the band.

"As
I thought," said the seated man. "Sit down, won't you? I'm Anton
Bolievsky.
And not at all as eccentric as I look, by the way.
Won't you sit down?"

Kil
looked around him. There was a leveled off tree stump near the doorway to which
a cushioned top had been fixed. Kil seated himself on this.

"Thanks," he said.

"Don't
thank me," replied Anton Bolievsky. "I've been hoping you'd come by
this way ever since I saw you get here. You're an unusual sort of man to run
into here. Mind if I ask your name?"