“Of course,” decided Nevin. “There are four of us.”
Cartwright spread the napkin in his lap. “Perhaps, Louis, we might as well let Mr. West see the painting.”
Nevin hesitated. “I’m not quite satisfied, Cartwright …”
Cartwright clucked his tongue. “You’re too suspicious, Louis. He had the creature, didn’t he? He knew about your painting. There was only one way that he could have learned.”
Nevin considered. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
“And if Mr. West should, by any chance, turn out to be an impostor,” said Cartwright, cheerfully, “we can always take the proper steps.”
Nevin said to West: “I hope you understand.”
“Perfectly,” said West.
“We must be very careful,” Nevin pointed out. “So few would understand.”
“So very few,” said West.
Nevin stepped across the room and pulled a cord that hung along the wall. One of the tapestries rolled smoothly back, fold on heavy fold. West, watching, held his breath at what he saw.
A tree stood in the foreground, laden with golden fruit, fruit that looked exactly like some of that in the bowl upon the table. As if someone had just stepped into the painting and picked it fresh for dinner.
Under the tree ran a path, coming up to the very edge of the canvas in such detail that even the tiny pebbles strewn upon it were clear to the eye. And from the tree the path ran back against a sweep of background, climbing into wooded hills.
For the flicker of a passing second, West could have sworn that he heard the whisper of wind in the leaves of the fruit-laden tree, that he saw the leaves tremble in the wind, that he smelled the fragrance of little flowers that bloomed along the path.
“Well, Mr. West?” Nevin asked, triumphantly.
“Why,” said West, ears still cocked for the sound of wind in leaves again. “Why, it almost seems as if one could step over and walk straight down that path.”
Nevin sucked in his breath with a sound that was neither gasp nor sigh, but somewhere in between. Down at the end of the table, Cartwright was choking on his wine, chuckling laughter bubbling out between his lips despite all his efforts to keep it bottled up.
“Nevin,” asked West, “have you ever thought of making another painting?”
“Perhaps,” said Nevin. “Why do you ask?”
West smiled. Through his brain words were drumming, words that he remembered, words a man had whispered just before he died.
“I was just thinking,” said West, “of what might happen if you should paint the wrong place sometime.”
“By Lord,” yelled Cartwright, “he’s got you there, Nevin. The exact words I’ve been telling you.”
Nevin started to rise from the table, and even as he did the rustling whisper of music filled the room. Music that relaxed Nevin’s hands from their grip upon the table’s edge, music that swept the sudden chill from between West’s shoulderblades.
Music that told of keen-toothed space and the blaze of stars. Music that had the whisper of rockets and the quietness of the void and the somber arches of eternal night.
Rosie was singing.
West sat on the edge of his bed and knew that he had been lucky to break away before there could be more questions asked. So far, he was certain, he’d answered those they asked without arousing too much suspicion, but the longer a thing like that went on the more likely a man was to make some slight mistake.
Now he would have time to think, time to try to untangle and put together some of the facts as they now appeared.
One of the minor monstrosities that infested the place climbed the bedpost and perched upon it, wrapping its long tail about it many times. It chittered at West and West looked at it and shuddered, wondering if it were making a face at him or if it really looked that way.
These slithery, chittering things … he’d heard of them somewhere before. He knew that. He’d even seen pictures of them at some time. Some other time and place, very long ago. Things like Annabelle and the creature Cartwright had dumped off the chair and the little satanic being that perched upon the bedstead.
That was funny, the thing Nevin had said about them … they keep sneaking through … not sneaking in, but through.
Nothing added up. Not even Nevin and Cartwright. For there was about them some subtle tinge of character not human in its texture.
They had been working with hormones when something had happened that occasioned the warning sent to Earth. Or had there been a warning? Had the warning been a fake? Was there something going on here the Solar government didn’t want anyone to know?
Why had they sent Stella to Earth? Why were they so pleased that she was so well received? What was it Nevin had asked … and the government, it does not suspect? Why should the government suspect? What was there for it to suspect? Just a mindless creature that sang like the bells of heaven.
That hormone business, now. Hormones did funny things to people.
I should know, said West, talking to himself.
A little faster and a little quicker. A mental shortcut here and there. And you scarcely know, yourself, that you are any different. That’s how the race develops. A mutation here and another there and in a thousand years or two a certain percentage of the race is not what the race had been a thousand years before.
Maybe it was a mutation back in the Old Stone Age who struck two flints together and made himself a fire. Maybe another mutant who dreamed up a wheel and took a stoneboat and changed it to a wagon.
Slowly, he said, it would have to be slowly. Just a little at a time. For if it were too much, if it were noticeable, the other humans would kill off each mutation as it became apparent. For the human race cannot tolerate divergence from the norm, even though mutation is the process by which the race develops.
The race doesn’t kill the mutants any more. It confines them to mental institutions or it forces them into such dead-ends of expression as art or music, or it finds nice friendly exiles for them, where they will be comfortable and have a job to do and where, the normal humans hope, they’ll never know what they are.
It’s harder to be different now, he thought, harder to be a mutant and escape detection, what with the medical boards and the psychiatrists and all the other scientific mumbo-jumbo the humans have set up to guard their peace of mind.
Five hundred years ago, thought West, they would not have found me out. Five hundred years ago I might not have realized the fact myself.
Controlled mutation? Now that was something different. That was the thing the government had in mind when it sent the commission here to Pluto, taking advantage of the cold conditions to develop hormones that might mutate the race. Hormones that might make a better race, that might develop latent talents or even add entirely new characteristics calculated to bring out the best that was in humanity.
Controlled mutations, those were all right. It was only the wild mutations that the government would fear.
What if the members of the commission had developed a hormone and tried it on themselves?
His thought stopped short, pleased with the idea, with the possible solution.
Upon the bedpost the little monstrosity fingered its mouth, slobbering gleefully.
A knock came on the door.
“Come in,” called West.
The door opened and a man came in.
“I’m Belden,” said the man. “Jim Belden. They told me you were here.”
“I’m glad to know you, Belden.”
“What’s the game?” asked Belden.
“No game,” said West.