"No, William Bailey!" she cried. "Drans mustn't die!"
27
"I remember you," Bailey said. His voice sounded blurred in his ears; the room, the girl, the man sitting rigid behind the desk had taken on a dream-like quality. "You're the girl who helped me. I never learned your name."
"Throw the gun away, William," she said urgently.
Bailey trembled, sick with the hunger of his need to shoot, restrained by the impossibility of killing the girl. "I can't," he groaned. "I have to kill him!"
"Why?" the girl demanded.
"The voice," he said, remembering. "In the Euthanasia Center, it told me how to control my circulation to keep the drug from paralyzing my heart, how to make my legs work enough to carry me out through the service door. It told me to come here, shoot Micael Drans! I have to kill him! Stand aside! I'll kill you if I have to!"
"William," the girl's voice was low, urgent. "Micael Drans is more important than you can dream-than even he dreams." She spoke over her shoulder to the waiting and watching man. "Micael-something very important has happened within the last few hours." It was a statement, not a question. Drans nodded slowly. "Yes." He seemed calm, merely puzzled.
"A message," the girl said. "A message from very far away."
A look of incredulity came over Drans' face. "How could you know of that, Aliea?"
"The message is genuine," the girl said in an intense voice. "Believe it, Micael!" Bailey listened, feeling the sweat trickling down the side of his face. His heart thudded dully.
"I think I understand part of it, William," the girl went on. "You received a part-but I received the rest! You knew what-and I knew why. I made my way here-just as you did. I didn't understand, then-but now I do! And you must, too!"
"I have to kill him-"
"I can shoot first, William," she said steadily. "You're confused, under terrible stress. I'm not. You must try to understand. Perhaps…" She broke off. "William, close your eyes. Concentrate. Let me try to reach you…!"
Like an automaton, he followed instructions. Blackness. Swirling light. Out of the darkness, a shape that hovered, a complex structure of light that was not light, a structure incomplete, needing him to complete it. He moved toward it, sensing how the ragged surfaces of his own being reached out to meet and merge with its opposite Light blossomed like a sudden dawn. All barriers fell. Her mind lay open to him.
Now come, William, her voice spoke in his brain. I'll lead you… He followed along a dark path that plunged down, down, through terrible emptiness…
And emerged into-somewhere. He was aware of the compound ego-matrix that was himself, Bailey/Aliea; saw all the foreshortened perspective of his narrow life, her pinched, love-starved existence. And saw the presence that had reached out, touched him/her. And abruptly, he/she was that other presence.
28
He lay in darkness, suffering. Not the mere physical pain of the wasted, ancient body; that was nothing. But the ceaseless, relentless pain of the knowledge of failure, the bitterness of vain regret for the irretrievable blunder of long ago.
Then, out of despair, a concept born of anguish; the long struggle, probing back down along the closed corridor along which he had come, searching, searching; and at last the first hint of success, the renewed striving, the moment of contact with the feeble, flickering life-mote that glowed so faint and far away:
WILLIAM BAILEY! LISTEN TO ME! YOU MUST NOT DIE! THERE IS THAT WHICH MUST BE DONE, AND ONLY YOU CAN DO IT! LISTEN: THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO…"
The girl still stood, aiming the weapon at his heart. Tears ran down her face, but the gun did not waver.
"It was the voice," Bailey said. "You and I were… linked. We… touched him, were him. He's the one who made me live, sent me here. Who was he? What was he?"
"He's a man, William. A dying man, a hundred years in the future. In some way that perhaps not even he understands, he projected his mind back along his own life line-to us."
"A mind-reaching back through time?" Bailey asked.
"I think he meant only to reach one man, to explain the terrible thing that had happened, to enlist your help to do what he believed had to be done to right the wrong. But his brain was too powerful, too complex. An ordinary mind couldn't encompass it. I was near-on the Intermix, ready to jump. A part of his message spilled over-into my mind. I saw what had happened, what would happen-saw who and where you were, knew that I had to help you-but I didn't know-didn't understand what it was you were to do."
"A message," Bailey said, remembering the flood of impressions. "A transmission from a point in space beyond Pluto. A ship-heading for Earth. Aliens-from a distant star. They asked for peace and friendship. And we gave them-death."
Drans spoke up, his voice strained. "When did we attack?"
"Sarday, Sember twenty," Bailey said. "Black Sarday."
"Tomorrow's date," Drans said in a voice like cracked metal.
"And Micael Drans was the man who gave the order!" Bailey blurted. "Don't you see, Aliea? That's why he sent me here, why Drans has to die!"
"For three days and three nights I've wrestled with it," Drans said dully. "Pro and con, trust or mistrust, kill-or welcome. There are so many factors to consider, so terrible a risk…"
"And you decided: it had to be death, because how could man, who had betrayed his own species, trust another race?" Bailey accused.
"Is it possible?" Drans stared from Aliea to Bailey. "Can you know the future? In some miraculous way, were you sent here to save me from this terrible decision? Can we trust them? Are they what they say?"
"They come as friends," Aliea said softly.
Drans stood. "I believe you," he said. "Because the alternative is too bitter to contemplate." He stepped forward, gently thrust the girl aside. "Do your duty," he said flatly to Bailey.
"William-no!" Aliea said swiftly. "You know now, don't you? You see?"
Bailey looked at the defenseless man before him. He lowered the gun, nodded.
"The voice-the dying man, a hundred years from now. It was-is-will be you: Micael Drans. You sent me back to kill yourself before you gave the death order."
"Only a very good man would have done that, William," Aliea said. "Micael Drans is one of the few good men alive in these vicious times. He has to live-to meet the ship, welcome the aliens to our world!"
"Will you do it?" Bailey asked.
"Why-yes. Yes, of course!" Life came back into Drans' face. He turned to his desk, spoke rapidly into an intercom.
Bailey opened his fingers, let the gun fall to the floor. He felt suddenly empty, exhausted. It was all meaningless now, a vista of blown dust, crumbling ashes.
"William-what is it?" Aliea's face wavered before him. "It's all right now. It's over. You did it. We did it."
"A puppet," Bailey said. "That's all I was. I served my purpose. There's nothing left. I'm back where I was."
"Oh no!" Aliea cried. "William, you're wrong, so wrong!"
"For the first time in my life, I had pride, self-respect. I thought it was me who invaded Preke territory and stayed alive, absorbed an education, sweated out the Maxpo treatment. I believed it was me, William Bailey, who faced down the Crusters on their own turf, bluffed them all, took what I wanted, made my way here. But it wasn't. It was him, guiding me every step of the way. And now it's over, and there's nothing left."