The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (27 page)

Graham exchanged an agonized glance with Jeru-Bhetiru. Before he let them simply execute him, he’d throw something or sock somebody, even if they killed him in the act. He tautened himself for a spring.

As the men moved to obey, the taciturn Adzik piped up: “Wait.” Then the Thothian engaged in a rapid conversation in a language unknown to Graham with its reptilian partner.

Finally, The’erhiya said: “We haff a better itea. Now he does not have hiss helmet, we can use him.” The Osirian thrust his scaly muzzle into Graham’s face. “Kraham!”

“Yes?” said Graham. Those great green eyes really had hold of him now. It was as though everything else in the world had dissolved into gray mist, leaving only those eyes glaring through their slit pupils.

“Repeat after me: I, Korton Kraham . . .”

They went through the whole rigmarole again, but this time with a difference. As he repeated each phrase, Graham felt as though invisible but unbreakable handcuffs were being snapped shut on his spirit. He had committed himself morally to help these beings, and could no more disobey them than an ordinary man could shoot his mother.

“Now,” said The’erhiya, “hit her. Hart.”

Although Graham wanted nothing less, he could no more help himself than one can help blinking at a strong light. He stepped over to Jeru-Bhetiru, drew back his fist, and, disregarding her horrified expression, let her have a strong right to the jaw.
Smack!
Down she went, out cold.

“You see,” said The’erhiya.

“He might still be pretending,” said Lundquist sourly.

“No, I can tell.” The’erhiya tapped a claw against the scales that covered his bulging cranium. “Now, Kraham, tell us who sent you to us with that thing on your het.”

“Reinhold Sklar, World Federation Constable.”

“Very well. You will ko with my men, who will put you out near the city. Then you will ko into the city, fint Sklar, and kill him. To you unterstant?”

“I understand.” And the worst of it was, he did. Given the order, he knew he’d kill Sklar the first chance he got, that he’d use whatever stealth or deception needed, and that he’d be unable to warn his victim in any way.

“And when you haft killed Sklar,” continued the Osirian, “you will immediately kill yourself. Iss that clear?”

“Yes,” said Graham.

They led him out. He did not even look back at the crumpled heap on the floor that was the girl he loved.

VI.

Gordon Graham climbed out of the subway and walked like a remote-controlled robot towards Sklar’s hotel in the west fifties. The dominant half of his mind thought of plans for killing Sklar. He must be careful, for instance, not to get excited and pump the entire magazine into the constable, because then he would have no shots left to kill himself with. And when he did kill himself, he must remember to shoot himself well back, over the ear. People sometimes shot themselves in the temple and blinded themselves without killing . . .

Meanwhile the rest of his mind, like a prisoner in a cage, raged futilely in vain efforts to regain control of his body, and was carried along, a helpless spectator, to witness whatever crimes the body had been ordered to commit. Whatever the Osirian pseudo-hypnosis was, it certainly seemed to work. Fool-proof. Could it be that the other men of the gang were under The’erhiya’s control in the same fashion? He knew from what Ivor Graham had told him that Osirians had to promise not to use this uncanny ability of theirs before they were allowed on Earth. But if they broke their promise, there was no way of physically sealing up this faculty.

The hotel lay in the next block.

And why hadn’t they done the same to Jeru-Bhetiru? Then he remembered reading somewhere that of all the civilized species, human beings were the most susceptible to this influence. Krishnans could be influenced for only a short time . . .

“No,” said the clerk at the desk of the Baldwin, “Mr. Sklar isn’t in.”

“I’ll wait,” said Graham, and sat down in the shabby lobby.

Hours passed.

Still the autonomous part of Graham’s mind lunged against the walls of its psychic prison, while the other half resigned itself with unwonted calm to waiting for his victim. Although darkness had fallen outside, and his stomach was protesting its lack of sustenance, he sat there in the moth-eaten old plushy armchair, waiting as quietly as a statue.

Then in came Reinhold Sklar. He saw Graham as quickly as the latter saw him, raised an eyebrow, and stepped forward with a hand out.

“Hello there!” he said. “I didn’t expect you back so soon. Come on up to my room for a tuck, huh?”

Graham smiled, replied with a mechanical, “Hello,” and followed the constable to the elevator. This was going to be easy. As soon as the elevator started on its way he would simply take out his pistol and shoot Sklar—several times. As the magazine held nineteen shots, each with enough power to tear a limb off a man, a few shots should do a good job. Then the muzzle to his right ear, a pull on the trigger, and his brains would be spattered all over the inside of the elevator to finish a good job well done.

Stop! Wait! Watch out!
shrieked the other part of his mind—but silently. This part of his consciousness could no more affect events than a spectator at a movie could, by wishing, alter the course of the plot.

The door of the elevator stood open. Graham remembered that he must do nothing to arouse the suspicions of Sklar.

Sklar stood aside and waved Graham in, then stepped in after him and punched the No. 9 button. The doors slid quietly closed, and the elevator started up.

Graham drew his right hand, clutching the pistol, out of his pants pocket.

And, just before it hit, he was aware of the blurred movement of a blackjack in Sklar’s hand, swinging towards his own head with the speed of a striking snake . . .

###

He woke up with a terrific headache, as if somebody had sent a miniature Gamanovian maggot boring into his head and then touched off its atomic pile. He also had a taste in his mouth something like the waste from an oil refinery. He was lying on his back on a cot. When he tried to move his head he became aware of a gadget attached to it by means of wires that limited its motion.

“Now just you lie still,” said a female voice, and a motherly nurse called: “Mr. Sklar!”

“Comink,” said the brisk familiar voice.

The nurse continued: “Just hold still, Mr. Graham, so we can get the psycho-integrator off you.” There were metallic sounds, and the cap was pulled off his head.

He sat up, almost falling over onto the floor with dizziness. “Wh-what—” he mumbled.

One of Sklar’s hairy, muscular hands was gripping his shoulders to steady him.

With great effort, Graham said: “How—How did you know—”

“That crew haircut of yours. I knew right away you didn’t have your wig on no more, so I expected somethink like what happened.”

“I n-never thought I’d be glad to have somebody bop me on the bean. Am I suss-safe now?”

“Sure; that’s what for is the psycho-integrator. Wonderful machine. You’re in the hospital of the Division of Investigation Headquarters on Lunk Island. But quick, now, tell me what happened to you and where the gank is now hidink out?”

Graham furrowed his brow in an effort to think. It all seemed so long ago and far away.

“Let me see—Joseph Aurelio’s house, something Atlantic Avenue, Bay Head, New Jersey . . .” and he told his tale.

Before he had gotten out more than a few sentences, Sklar had dialed his phone and was rattling orders into it.

“G-going to raid the place?” said Graham.

“Yes, sure.”

“Let me come too.”

“Not you. You’re still an invariable; you ain’t up to it.”

“O yes I am. You forget they’ve still got my girl.”

“Oho. Okus-dokus, come alunk then.”

###

The little squadron of W.F.D.I. automobiles purred slowly over Barnegat Bay, barely visible below as a paler strip against the blackness of the land. Graham could see the other cars only by their flying lights.

He finished his account of his experiences, saying: “What did I do wrons this time?”

“You did pretty good, considering. For a man without special trainink you’re a pretty keen absorber, which I would not suspect from that dopey absent-minded look of yours. That man in the nudery being a member of the gank was just a bad break. I don’t think I’d have tried to rescue the girl too, but then you are yonk and romantic. One rizzon I sent Varnipaz to South America was that he is too damn romantical for this kind of work.”

“Then you don’t think he’ll accomplish anything?”

Sklar made a rattling noise in his throat. “That gloop? Naw. He don’t know his way around Earth good enough, for one think, even if he has been here a couple years. Didn’t want an argument, so the easiest way to get rid of him was to send him off chasing wild geeses. But you now, maybe with a few years’ trainink and experience we could make a constable out of you. Would you be interested?”

“I doubt it,” said Graham. “After all I’ve put a good many years on getting to be a geophysicist.”

“Sure, and you don’t want to throw that away. I wish I knew who that ‘One’ that The’erhiya talked about was. If we knew that . . . You sure he said ‘One’? ”

“Yes; at least it sounded like ‘One.’ Of course with that accent it might have been almost anything to begin with.”

“Sure,” said Sklar. “You can’t expect those lizards to spick good Enklish, like me for instance, because they ain’t got human focal organs. ‘One,’ huh? Say, how many of the other Gamanovia brains do you know?”

Graham thought. “I know all the scientists on the job here at Columbia, and I’ve met a good many of those at Rio. I was down there last winter, and met Souza, the big chief, and Benson, and Nogami, and Abdelkader, and van Schaak . . . That’s all the names I can remember just now.”

“You keep trying,” said Sklar. “Now, here we are. Remember, if we get close to quarters with this Osirian, don’t let him look you in the eyes.”

The cars maneuvered with clockwork precision. While three of them hovered over the Aurelio house, the other four dropped into the streets nearby. As the swish of their rotors died away, uniformed men issued from them and filed silently around the intervening corners towards the house.

Sklar and Graham followed hard behind the uniformed men. Sklar whispered: “Now don’t get excited and shoot one of your own pipple in the back. Very bad for morals. Don’t shoot nobody unless to save your life or to kip them from gettink away.”

“I won’t,” promised Graham.

“Now we got to wait,” said Sklar. “You’ll find the suspension of waitink is much worse than a fight.”

Graham waited, heart pounding.

Nothing happened for at least a quarter-hour. Out of sight around the nearest house, the surf boomed lazily. Overhead the rotors of the hovering cars still burbled.

Then a whistle split the silence. At once lights came on everywhere: a searchlight in each of the hovering cars, a parachute flare, several more lights that had been set up on the ground. Then came a crackle of shots and the sound of smashed methacrylate windows like the tinkle of broken glass but duller.

Then silence again while the lights still played on the house. Here and there came the sound of windows opening in other houses and voices calling questions into the night.

“What is it?” said Graham.

“Gas,” said Sklar, looking at his watch. “I’m afraid our pipple have flown the kite, gone, though. Okay, in we go. Here, stick these up your nose, and don’t breathe through your mouth unless you want to be laid out cold like a turnkey.”

There was a rending of wood as the men broke in the front door. By the time Graham arrived in Sklar’s wake, the house resounded (despite its extensive sound-proofing) to the tramp of heavy feet, upstairs and down. The lights were already switched on. The gas made Graham’s eyes sting.

“Nobody here,” said a man in uniform.

For half an hour, Graham had nothing to do but keep out of the way of the men, who took impressions of fingerprints, turned over furniture, and otherwise busied themselves in the search for clues.

He said to Sklar: “Say, it just occurred to me they might have—er—booby-trapped the house.”

Sklar, puffing his usual cigarette, shrugged. “Sure, we all knew that when we first came in. Got to teck chances in my business sometimes, you know.”

Graham, increasingly bored and restless, wandered upstairs. The body of Edwards had been removed, though when, whither, and by whom Graham did not know. His broken drawing board still lay where he had dropped it.

He strolled into the room that had been occupied by Jeru-Bhetiru. Perhaps he could find some trace of the girl that had been overlooked by the W.F. troopers.

But this room was as bare of tangible relics as all the others. The bed had been tipped up against the wall and the rug thrown back by the searchers, who had then gone on to other business.

Graham gave the room a good looking-over nevertheless. When he examined the floor, a slight streaky discoloration on the part that had been covered by the rug drew his attention.

By moving his head until he got a highlight from the room’s one light bulb to coincide with the discoloration, he saw that it consisted of a word written on the floor with some pigment almost but not quite the same as the color of the boards. The word was: RIO

“Hey, Sklar!” yelled Graham. “Come here!”

Sklar saw it at once, and stooped closely over it, playing a pocket flashlight on the stains.

“Blood,” he said. “Your girlfriend must have cut herself and written this for us to find. Good kid. Hey, who was in charge of searchink this room?”

After a pause a very large trooper explained in a very small voice: “I was, sir.”

“Your name?” said Sklar ominously.

“Schindelheim, Trooper, first class.”

“That,” said Sklar, “will go on your fitness report . . . What is it now?”

“Mr. Sklar,” said somebody else, “one of these local cops has put tickets on all our cars for parking in the street with rotors attached.”

Sklar made an impatient motion. “You take charge and take care of that, Roth. We’re goink back to the city and then on to Rio. Come, Graham. How lunk will it take you to pack for a trip to South America, huh? Can you mit me at the airport at sixtin hunderd tomorrow? Good.”