“Then he hasn’t got any front or back,” I said slowly.
“No, that’s right. He’s trilaterally symmetrical. Drive you crazy to watch him walk. His legs work the same way as his eyes—any one can pair up with either of the others. He wants to change direction, he doesn’t have to turn around. I’d hate to try to catch him in an open field.”
“How did they catch him?” I asked.
“Luckiest thing in the world. Found him in the woods with two broken ankles. Now look at his hands. What do you see?”
The voice inside was still droning; evidently it was a long question. “Five fingers,” I said.
“Nope.” Donnelly grinned. “One finger, four thumbs. See how they oppose, those two on either side of the middle finger? He’s got a better hand than ours. One hell of an efficient design. Brain in his thorax where it’s safe, six eyes on a stalk—trachea up there too, no connection with the esophagus, so he doesn’t need an epiglottis. Three of everything else. He can lose a leg and still walk, lose an arm and still type, lose two eyes and still see better than we do. He can lose—”
I didn’t hear him. The interviewer’s voice had stopped, and Aza-Kra’s had begun. It was frightening, because it was a buzzing and it was a voice.
I couldn’t take in a word of it; I had enough to do absorbing the fact that there were words.
Then it stopped, and the interviewer’s ordinary, flat Middle Western voice began again.
“—And just try to sneak up behind him,” said Donnelly. “I dare you.”
Again Aza-Kra spoke briefly, and this time I saw the flesh at the side of his body, where the two lobes flowed together, bulge slightly and then relax.
“He’s talking with one of his mouths,” I said. “I mean, one of those—” I took a deep breath. “If he breathes through the top of his head, and there’s no connection between his lungs and his vocal organs, then where the hell does he get the air?”
“He belches. Not as inconvenient as it sounds. You could learn to do it if you had to.” Donnelly laughed. “Not very fragrant, though. Watch their faces when he talks.”
I watched Aza-Kra’s instead—what there was of it: one round, expressionless, oyster-colored eye staring back at me. With a human opponent, I was thinking, there were a thousand little things that you relied on to help you: facial expressions, mannerisms, signs of emotion. But Parst had been right when he said, There isn’t a single possibility we can rule out. Not one. And so had the fat man: It’s the triped that’s disturbing them. And Ritchy-loo: Ifs the same way ... wherever you get a lot of these people together.
And I still hadn’t figured out any way to tell Freeman what he had to know.
I thought I could arouse Eli’s suspicion easily enough; we knew each other well enough for a word or a gesture to mean a good deal. I could make him look for hidden meanings. But how could I hide a message so that Eli would be more likely to dig it out than a trained FBI cryptologist?
I stared at Aza-Kra’s glassy eye as if the answer were there. It was going to be a video circuit, I told myself. Donnelly was still yattering in my ear, and now the alien was buzzing again, but I ignored them both. Suppose I broke the message up into one-word units, scattered them through my conversation with Eli, and marked them off somehow— by twitching a finger, or blinking my eyelids?
A dark membrane flicked across the alien’s oyster-colored eye.
A moment later, it happened again.
Donnelly was saying, “... intercostal membranes, apparently. But there’s no trace of ...”
“Shut up a minute, will you?” I said. “I want to hear this.”
The inhuman voice, the voice that sounded like the articulate buzzing of a giant insect, was saying, “Comparison not possible, excuse me. If (blink) you try to understand in words you know, you (blink) tell yourself you wish (blink) to understand, but knowledge escape (blink) you. Can only show (blink) you from beginning, one (blink) little, another little. Not possible to carry all knowledge in one hand (blink)."
If you wish escape, show one hand.
I looked at Donnelly. He had moved back from the spy-window; he was lighting a cigarette, frowning at the match-flame. His mouth was sullen.
I put my left hand flat against the window. I thought, I’m dreaming.
The interviewer said querulously, “ ...getting us nowhere. Can’t you—”
“Wait,” said the buzzing voice. “Let me say, please. Ignorant man hold (blink) burning stick, say, this is breath (blink) of the wood. Then you show him flashlight—”
I took a deep breath, and held it.
Around the alien, four men went down together, folding over quietly at waist and knee, sprawling on the floor. I heard a thump behind me.
Donnelly was lying stretched out along the wall, his head tilted against the corner. The cigarette had fallen from his hand.
I looked back at Aza-Kra. His head turned slightly, the dark flush crinkling. Two eyes stared back at me through the window.
“Now you can breathe,” said the monster.
3
I let out the breath that was choking me and took another. My knees were shaking.
“What did you do to them?”
“Put them to sleep only. In a few minutes I will put the others to sleep. After you are outside the doors. First we will talk.”
I glanced at Donnelly again. His mouth was ajar; I could see his lips fluttering as he breathed.
“All right,” I said, “talk.”
“When you leave,” buzzed the voice, “you must take me with you.”
Now it was clear. He could put people to sleep, but he couldn’t open locked doors. He had to have help.
“No deal,” I said, “You might as well knock me out, too.”
“Yes,” he answered, “you will do it. When you understand.”
“I’m listening.”
“You do not have to agree now. I ask only this much. When we are finished talking, you leave. When you are past the second door, hold your breath again. Then go to the office of General Parst. You will find there papers about me. Read them. You will find also keys to open gun room. Also, handcuffs. Special handcuffs, made to fit me. Then you will think, if Aza-Kra is not what he says, would he agree to this? Then you will come back to gun room, use controls there to open middle door. You will lay handcuffs down, where you stand now, then go back to gun room, open inside door. I will put on the handcuffs. You will see that I do it. And then you will take me with you.”
... I said, “Let me think.”
The obvious thing to do was to push the little button that turned on the audio circuit to the gun room, and yell for help; the alien could then put everybody to sleep from here to the wall, maybe, but it wouldn’t do any good. Sooner or later he would have to let up, or starve to death along with the rest of us. On the other hand if I did what he asked —anything he asked—and it turned out to be the wrong thing, I would be guilty of the worst crime since Pilate’s.
But I thought about it, I went over it again and again, and I couldn’t see any loophole in it for Aza-Kra. He was leaving it up to me—if I felt like letting him out after I’d seen the papers in Parst’s office, I could do so. If I didn’t, I could still yell for help. In fact, I could get on the phone and yell to Washington, which would be a hell of a lot more to the point.
So where was the payoff for Aza-Kra? What was in those papers?