"I planned to do it today," she said levelly. "And this time in a fashion that wouldn't fail."
The red-faced red-haired man said, "Hear what I have to say, for what it's worth." He sighed, a ragged, hoarse noise of resignation and unease. "I was going to do it, too."
"Not me," the gray-haired man said; he looked exceedingly angry; Joe felt the strength of the man's wrath. "I signed on because there was a great deal of money involved. Do you know what I am?" He glanced around at all of them.
"I'm a psychokineticist, the best psychokineticist on Earth." Grimly he reached out his arm and a briefcase at the rear of the compartment flew directly toward him. Fiercely, he grabbed it, squeezing it.
Squeezing it, Joe thought, the way Glimmung squeezed me.
"Glimmung is here," Joe said. "Among us." To the grayhaired man he said, "You are Glimmung and yet you're violently arguing against our trusting him. You."
The gray-haired man smiled. "No, friend. I'm not Glimmung. I'm Harper Baldwin, psychokineticist consultant for the government. As of yesterday, anyhow."
"But Glimmung is here somewhere," a plump woman with tangled doll-hair said; she was knitting and had said nothing up until now. "He's right, that man there."
"Mr. Fernwright," the stewardess offered helpfully. "May I introduce you to one another? This attractive girl beside Mr. Fernwright is Miss Mali Yojez. And this gentleman...he droned on, but Joe did not listen; names weren't important, except, perhaps, the name of the girl seated beside him. He had, during the last forty minutes, become more and more favorably inclined toward her spare, sparse, even bleak beauty. Nothing at all like Kate, he thought to himself. The opposite. This is a truly feminine woman; Kate's a frustrated man. And that's the kind which castrates right and left.
Harper Baldwin, the introductions over, said in his overbearing, ultrafirm voice, "I think our status, our true status, is that of slaves. Let's stop a minute and review this whole matter, how we happen to be here. The stick and the carrot. Am I right?" He glanced from side to side, seeking confirmation.
"Plowman's Planet," Miss Yojez spoke out, "is not a backward, deprived planet. It has an advanced society active and evolving on it; true, it's not yet a civilization in the strict sense of the word, but it's not herds of food-gatherers nor even clans of food-planters. It has cities. Laws. A variety of arts ranging from the dance to a modified form of 4-D chess."
"That's not true," Joe said, with scathing anger. Everyone turned toward him, startled by his tone. "One vast old creature lives there. Apparently infirm. Nothing about an advanced city society."
"Wait a minute," Harper Baldwin said. "If there's one thing Glimmung is not it's infirm. Where'd you get your information, Fernwright? From the government encyclopedia?"
Joe said uncomfortably, "Yes." And secondhand, too.
"If the encyclopedia described Glimmung as infirm," Miss Yojez said evenly, "I'd be interested to know what else it said. I'm just curious to see how far your knowledge of Plowman's Planet departs from the reality situation."
With growing discomfort, Joe said, "Dormant. Advanced age; hence senile. Hence harmless." And harmlessness had not been apparent in Glimmung, at least as he had appeared to Joe. And to the others.
Standing, Mali Yojez said, "If you'll please excuse me—I think I'll go sit in the lounge and perhaps read a magazine or nap." In brisk, short steps she departed from the passenger compartment.
"I think," the plump woman busily knitting said, without looking up from her work, "that Mr. Fernwright ought to go to the lounge and apologize to Miss Whateverhernameis."
His ears red, and the back of his neck prickling, Joe got to his feet and followed after Mali Yojez.
As he descended the three carpeted steps an eerie feeling came over him. As if, he thought, I'm going to my death. Or is it life, for the first time? The process of being born?
Someday he would know. But not now.
6
He found Miss Yojez, as she had declared, seated in one of the great soft couches of the lounge, reading Ramparts. She did not look up at him, but he took it for granted that she was aware of him. Therefore he said, "How—do you happen to know so much about Plowman's Planet, Miss Yojez? I mean, you didn't get your knowledge out of the encyclopedia. Obviously. As I did."
Reading on, she said nothing.
After a pause Joe seated himself near her, hesitated, then, wondering what to say. Why had her statements about the society on Plowman's Planet angered him so? He didn't know; it seemed as irrational to him now as it had seemed to the others. "We have a new game," he said, finally. She continued reading. "You search the archives for the funniest headlines ever printed, each player topping the others." She still did not speak. "I'll tell you the headline that struck me as the funniest," he said. "It was hard to find; I had to look all the way back to 1962."
Mali glanced up. Her face showed no great emotion, no resentment. Merely detached curiosity, of a social nature. No more. "And what was your headline, Mr. Fernwright?"
"ELMO PLASKETT SINKS GIANTS," Joe said.
"Who was Elmo Plaskett?"
"That's the point," Joe said. "He came up from the minors; nobody ever heard of him. That's what makes it funny. I mean, Elmo Plaskett—he came up for one day, hit one home run—"
"Basketball?" Miss Yojez asked.
"Baseball."
"Oh yes. The game of inches."
Joe said, "You have been on Plowman's Planet?"
For a moment she did not answer and then she said, simply, "Yes." He noticed that she had rolled the magazine into a tight cylinder, holding it with both hands, very tightly. And her face showed severe stress.
"So you know firsthand what it's like. And you encountered Glimmung?"
"Not really. We knew he was there, half-dead or half-alive; whichever way you'd put it... I don't know. Excuse me." She turned away.
Joe started to say something further. And then he saw, in a corner of the lounge, what appeared to be an SSA machine. Getting to his feet he went over to it and inspected it.
"May I be of help, sir?" a stewardess said, and approached him. "Would you like me to seal the lounge off so that you and Miss Yojez can make love?"
"No," he said. "I'm interested in this." He touched the control panel of the SSA machine. "How much does it cost to use it?"
"SSA service is free during your flight for one time," the stewardess said. "After that it takes two genuine dimes. Do you want me to set it up for you and Miss Yojez?"
"I'm uninterested," Mali Yojez spoke up.
"How unfair to Mr. Fernwright," the stewardess said, still smiling, but, in her voice, conveying a reprimand. "He can't use it alone, you understand."
"What do you stand to lose?" Joe asked Mali Yojez.
"You and I has no future together," she answered.
"But that's the whole point of the SSA machine," Joe protested. "To find out what—"
"I know what it finds out," Mali Yojez interrupted. "I've used they before. Okay," she said abruptly. "So you can see how it works. As a—" She searched for the word. "Experience."
"Thanks," Joe said.
The stewardess began setting up the SSA machine in a rapid, efficient fashion, meanwhile explaining it. "SSA stands for sub specie aeternitatis; that is, something seen outside of time. Now, many individuals imagine that an SSA machine can see into the future, that it is precognitive. This is not true. The mechanism, basically a computer, is attached via electrodes to both your brains and it swiftly stores up immense quantities of data about each of you. It then synthesizes these data and, on a probability basis, extrapolates as to what would most likely become of you both if you were, for example, joined in marriage, or perhaps living together. I will have to shave two spots of hair on both your heads, please, in order to attach the electrodes." She brought out a little stainless steel instrument. "How far ahead are you interested in?" she asked as she shaved the two spots on Joe's skull and then on Mali Yojez's. "A year? Ten years? You're free to choose, but the less timeelapse you pick, the more accurate the extrapolation will be."