The faint laugh from the house was drowned by a howl of laughter from Mara.
Red with mortification, violently angry, George jumped up, threw a withering glance at the convulsed Mara, and strode purposefully toward the house. He’d find this joker and wring his neck.
The moss-grown path was hard under his feet. For a time. Then, although its surface texture looked just the same, it became soft, sticky, gooey, like molten rubber. He sank ankle-deep.
Grimly, he tried to plod on. But the stuff clung. Soon, he was walking slow-motion, lifting one enlarged blob of a foot after the other with care, striving to keep his balance. He realized that the accumulation was becoming so heavy that presently he would be incapable of movement. So he abandoned the frontal assault and floundered to the solid ground bordering the driveway. His dignity had been hurt. Mara trotted along to him on the verge, and he wouldn’t look at her. He tried to pull the stuff off his feet. It stretched and stuck like chewed gum. He got himself into a fine mess. The unseen watcher was cackling continually. Mara, grinning, pulled out her knife and cut or scraped most of the stuff off.
As she finished, a man emerged from the house into the dull daylight. He was short and broad, in a monkish gown corded at the waist. He was red-cheeked, healthy-looking, seemed to be around fifty. His mouth was sensual and hung half open, giving him a vacant look which was enhanced by his pale eyes, which appeared to comprehend only part of what they saw.
He looked stupid and harmless. He said something in a weak, cracked voice to George, who merely scowled at him. Mara answered him in his own language. They had a chat.
Then Mara said: “This is Senilde.”
“I had gathered as much,” said George, morosely. He’d been reflecting that as he needed information from this fool, it would hardly be politic to start by screwing his head off. He made an effort and swallowed his gorge. He took a spare Teleo from the satchel and told Mara: “Explain this to Senilde.”
“I have explained,” she said, taking it. She was still two steps ahead of him. Through the new medium, Senilde said: “Once, long ago, I invented a gadget like this.”
“Indeed?” said George. “Where is it now?”
Senilde made a careless gesture. “I threw it away. I threw all my toys away in time. One gets bored… Still, I’m glad you came and let me play with my garden again. I haven’t been able to find a victim for years now. There are very few people left on this planet, you know. Maybe I overdid it.”
“Overdid what?”
“The war. It’s a game I used to play.”
“A game! For Pete’s sake, you call it a game?”
“ ‘It’s all a pointless game…’” Mara quoted.
George remembered the men who were killed, and controlled his anger with difficulty. “A game you used to play? Seems to me the game’s still in full swing.”
“Oh, yes, it’ll run on for a century or two, I suppose, until the last of the things have smashed themselves,” said Senilde. “I became tired of them, and just let them run on. They’re purely automatic, you know.”
“You mean, all of those tanks and planes and things are unmanned?”
“Naturally.”
George thought of Freiburg basing his faith on his white circle “allies.” He recalled his own moment of emotion when the wheeled HQ seemingly rushed off to defend them. It was dismaying to have it confirmed that they’d been kidding themselves. He felt he’d been played a dirty trick. He said, truculently: “Why the hell do you let them go on smashing up everything?”
Senilde shrugged. “Why not? None of it means anything.”
“Well, it does to me. You nearly killed me. You did, in fact, cause the death of some of my companions—and for all I know, the rest of them may have been killed by now. Can you stop it?”
“Yes, if I want to.”
“Then stop it right now, damn you.”
Senilde said, petulantly: “Why should I stop my game just because of you?”
George snatched Mara’s knife. “Because I’ll stick this through you if you don’t.”
“My dear fellow, that wouldn’t embarrass me in the least. I’m a good healer. In fact, I heal instantly. You can’t hurt me and you can’t kill me: I happen to be immortal.”
“We’ll see about that,” said George, grimly, and started for him with the knife.
Mara grabbed his arm, held him back. “No, George, violence won’t help. There’s always a way to get what you want without making trouble. Brutality is no substitute for brains.”
Senilde looked at her with some approval. “You’re sensible besides being beautiful, young girl. George (what a queer name!)—let me have your girl, and I’ll switch off the war.”
George let him have a hay-maker instead. It hit the solar plexus more by luck than judgment. Senilde rebounded like a rubber man. His pale eyes lit up, and he smiled slobberingly.
“Oh, a new game! What do you call it? What do I do now?”
George groaned. “Okay, Mara, he’s all yours to use your brains on.”
She said: “Would you like to show us around your house, Senilde? Do you have any more gags like that fountain?”
“Yes, lots of them. Such fun when I used to have visitors. Of course, I can’t show you all of them—that would spoil it. I’d like you to discover some for yourselves—that’s much the best way to do it. You’ll be so amused. Come on.”
Mara began to follow him back to the house. George shrugged, then followed her. He watched carefully where Senilde trod—then as carefully trod in his footprints. He wanted to avoid any more gooey patches. The doorstep behaved perfectly normally for Senilde and Mara. But it swung down like a trapdoor under George’s feet. He found himself sliding down a chute into darkness, with the echo of laughter following him. There was more sticky stuff awaiting him at the bottom. He reclined, helpless, in the dark, struck like an insect on fly-paper, thinking: There must be some way to kill that old maniac. He began wondering if Freiburg were still alive. If the skipper was still hopefully awaiting his return, maybe with some friendly and intelligent Venusians, willing to help. Thank heavens Freiburg didn’t know what was going on, that the intrepid explorer, George Starkey, was actually falling and fooling about like a slapstick comedian, getting no place at all in a crazy Lewis Carroll world.
A light went on. He was in a cellar which was bare save for some benches over by the wall. Presumably they accommodated an invited audience in Senilde’s halycon days—to watch the fate of unfortunate fellow-guests. Senilde entered, with his foolish grin. Then Mara, who again went into peals of laughter.
George frowned at her. “Mara, you disappoint me. I thought you had an adult sense of humor. There’s nothing remotely funny in this childish clowning.”
“Maybe not from where you sit,” she gurgled.
George turned to Senilde. “As for you, you silly little fat fool, why don’t you be your age? How old are you, anyhow?”
“Let me see now—three thousand, maybe four thousand, years. My memory isn’t what it was. Venusian years, that is—slightly shorter than your own.”
George said, gruffly: “I don’t believe a word of it. Get me out of here.”
“By all means.” Senilde pressed a button. Liquid bubbled from small holes in the floor. It was a solvent which melted the gummy substance and freed George.
The tour continued. The whole house was full of fool tricks like that. There were door handles which came off in your hand, or stuck to it, or gave you an electric shock. Stairs which changed into smooth inclines and shot you to the bottom again. Flowers sprinkled with sneezing powder. Passages where the floor began to move backwards under your feet, whichever way you tried to go, so that you remained perpetually on the same spot.