If she should succeed in reviving Brad as the man she had known, that in itself might represent disaster. No doubt her current fever of activity had been brought about by guilt over her own prejudice. Brad was like Ivo: tainted. He had Negroid blood in his veins, melanin in his skin. If she lost him, she would convince herself that it was due to her rejection of his racial makeup.
Yet — bless her for that sensation of guilt! Was not that in essence conscience? Normal persons were held in bounds by limitations of pride and guilt; abnormal ones were defective in these qualities, and were thus dangerous to society. Even the subtle racism of the educated Southern white had its rules and restrictions; it was not inherently evil.
Schön, on the other hand, had neither intellectual nor ethical limitations. He had no guilt, no shame. He would be a terror.
Afra stirred. She stretched in a manner she would not have essayed in public and walked to the adjacent bathroom. This was not in the field of vision, and Ivo did not follow her. He was not, thanks to his guilt, a voyeur.
In a few minutes she emerged and walked to the counter. Electronic equipment was set up above it, and he saw that she had adjusted her extension-screen to aim straight down from head-height. She contemplated the transparent vat for ninety seconds, then stooped to manhandle out the basin from a lower compartment.
No doubt now: it was about to begin.
“Harold.”
Groton woke, windmilling his arms for a moment before adjusting to the free-fall state. They watched.
Afra opened the valve and let the thick liquid flow into the basin. She stood back, watching it. Ivo tried to imagine her thoughts, and could not. It was Bradley Carpenter that swirled into the container: her beloved.
“I don’t see any instruments,” Groton said. “If it’s surgery she has in mind—”
True. There was no special equipment in evidence. But if she had given up on that, what did she plan? Certainly she did not intend to nurse him indefinitely.
The protoplasm, freed from confinement and placed in a suitable environment, seemed to respond. It rippled and sparkled. Afra flushed the glass container out with water and allowed the rinse to pour into the basin too. And — the beam came on.
Here they were, using the macroscope to spy on her — yet the alien signal was able to transmit itself through the system simultaneously. This was a property Ivo had not known it had.
Once more the eye formed, the jellyfish, the pumping tunicate, the evolving vertebrate.
“You know,” Groton said, “there’s such a simple answer — if it works. What would happen if the process could be stopped a moment early? Just a tiny fraction of a lifetime—”
“So the destroyer never happened?” It was simple… too simple. Why hadn’t the galactic manual recommended it?
“She could be running him through once or twice, just to isolate the spot. To zero in on it. When she locates it — well, she must have something ready. He might be short some recent memories, but she could fill them in easily enough.”
The form continued to develop, achieving the air-breathing stage.
“Or,” Groton conjectured, “she might experiment with changes in the mixture. If it were possible to isolate the damaged cells in the fluid state and substitute healthy protoplasm—”
“But it would be protoplasm with some other lineup of chromosomes!” Ivo said. “And where would she get it?” Neither man cared to conjecture.
Afra trotted out a machine with pronged electrodes. Ivo remembered fetching the specifications for it from the macroscope, but had no comprehension of its purpose. Evidently Afra had studied its application more carefully. He saw now that the basin she was employing was metal, not plastic; it would conduct electric current.
“A jolt just before the destroyer,” Groton said. “To freeze the process right there—”
“But the melting occurred after the destroyer,” Ivo said, still namelessly disturbed. “The way the process works, every experience is part of the plasma. You can’t take it away by timing — not without shaking up the entire system, and that’s dangerous. I wouldn’t—”
“We’re about to find out,” Groton said. “Watch.” Somehow the four hours of the reconstitution had elapsed already. Helplessly, Ivo watched. Afra placed one electrode upon the rim of the basin and fastened it there; she laid the other, a disk, upon the metamorphosing head. Timing it apparently by intuition, she touched the power switch.
There was current. Ivo saw the figure in the vat stiffen. “Shock therapy?” Groton murmured. “That makes no sense to me.”
Afra cut off the power and removed the disk. She stepped back.
The figure, now recognizably Brad, ceased its evolution. The eyelids wavered, the chest expanded.
“Can she have done it?” Groton said disbelievingly.
“She’s done something. But I’m still afraid that destroyer experience is in him somewhere, waiting to take effect; Maybe after he’s been around a few hours or days—” Or was it his jealous hopes speaking?
“Oh-oh.”
There was certainly trouble. The shape in the basin, instead of coming fully alert, was changing again. “It’s regressing!” Ivo cried. “She didn’t stop it, she reversed it!”
“Then it should melt, shouldn’t it?”
“It isn’t melting!”
Whatever was happening, it was no part of the cycle they had seen before. The beam remained on, and Afra watched, hand to her mouth, helpless. The change accelerated.
The head swelled grotesquely, the legs shrank. The body drew into itself. Hands and feet became shapeless, then withdrew into mere points. The figure began to resemble a giant starfish, complete with suckers upon the lower surfaces of the projections.
And there it stopped, absolutely unhuman.
Afra screamed. Ivo could see her mouth open, lips pulled back harshly over the even white teeth, tongue elevated. He saw her chest pumping again and again, and could almost hear her desperate, ghastly sounds. She screamed until the spittle became pink.
In the basin, the star-shaped thing struggled and heaved. It raised a tentacle as if searching for something, then dropped it loosely over the edge. The beam was off now, further evidence that this was the end. For a moment the creature convulsed, almost raising its body from the bottom; then it shuddered into relaxation and the five limbs uncurled.
Slowly it changed color, becoming gray. It was dead.
CHAPTER 7
Beatryx was weeding the garden: some shoots of wheat were coming up beside the tomato plants, and she was carefully extracting them without damage to either type of plant. The tediously preserved shoots would shortly be transplanted to the south forty — forty square feet of verdant field.
Ivo squatted down beside her but did not offer to help. This was her self-appointed task, and his unsolicited participation would constitute interference. Meaningful tasks were valuable. He noted that she had continued to shed weight; the round-faced matron was disconcertingly gone, replaced by the hollow-faced one. Material comfort did not automatically bring health and happiness, unfortunately.
“You know she’s taking it hard,” he said after a suitable delay.
“What can we do, Ivo? I hate to see it, but I just can’t think of any way to help.”
“As I make it, she’s having the reaction she suppressed when Brad lost out to the destroyer. She knew he was gone, then, but she refused to admit it. Now—”