“What does that mean, a black cross?”
“Means they’re going to kill me if I don’t do what they say; that’s what it means.” Gus looked unhappy.
“I’ll provide you with protection,” Mekkis said shortly.
“I always heard that the best defense is a good offense. Why don’t you provide me with a little tactical force?” The drawling, rustic accent had van-
ished, now; the man’s tone bristled with direct intent. “Some ionocraft bombers and autonomic darts and let me go up into those hills after those rascals.”
“I already have several units in the hills. What could you do that they aren’t already doing?”
“I could win,” Gus said quietly. “Where you fellers, no offense intended, are likely to just keep batting around up there ’till hell skids over with ice. I know the hills. I have spies. I understand how the Neeg mind works. I can locate where they got those weapons hidden, those mind-warping things.” Routinely, Mekkis glanced into the man’s mind— and started in surprise at what he found there. Absolute deception: Gus intended to find the weapons, all right—but he would keep them for himself.
For a moment Mekkis pondered. Gus could of course be bugged and even provided with some variety of remote control instant-kill device. Even though his motives were impure perhaps he could locate the weapons and defeat the Neegs, where the Gany occupation forces had failed. Then, at the instant in which Gus believed he had everybody fooled, the remote control kill-unit, hidden somewhere on his body, would take him out and leave the weapons and the victory for Mekkis.
Mekkis could never resist a gamble.
“All right,” he said to Gus. “A unit of twenty-five creeches and their full war equipment will be placed at your disposal. Use them with wisdom.”
As Gus, amazed at his own success, turned to go, Mekkis called after him. “But if you come across something called a Nowhere Girl, destroy him, her or it immediately.”
"‘Yes sir,” Gus said, and saluted.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Ed Newkom anxiously.
Paul Rivers, lying on the couch in the fortune- telling parlor, with the telepathic amplifier on his head, had abruptly tensed with agitation. “My God,” he said, but he had become so absorbed in the thoughts which he received that he sounded, not like himself, but like Percy X. “She’s screaming!” “What are they doing to her?” Ed asked.
A long silence followed. Outside, afternoon hung heavily. Ionocraft horns beeped. A churchbell tolled five o’clock, and a slight breeze moved the curtain at the window. “She’s in a restraining jacket,” Paul said at last, again in Percy X’s voice. “She’s lying on a table with wheels, going down a long, unlit hallway.” A pause; then he spoke again, this time, eerily, in the voice of Joan Hiashi. “Damn it, Balkani, this is absurd! Let me go!”
Ed leaned forward, moistening his lips nervously. “Now what’s happening?”
“She’s in a room with padded walls, Paul answered, again in Percy X’s voice. Time passed and then he spoke again. Using the voice of Rudolph Balkani. “Robots one and two—take her out of the restraining jacket.” Then again in Joan’s voice. “Stop that. No! I won’t let you! It’s no use struggling, Miss Hiashi; these robots are at least ten times as strong as you are. That’s it. You see, it’s much easier on you when you cooperate. I’m not going to hurt you. After all, I am a doctor, Miss Hiashi. You’re certainly not the first unclad woman I’ve ever seen. Now, please, slip into this. No, I won’t!” The voices ebbed back and forth, as if tugging each’other, con- dieting in a counterpoint, with each struggling for dominance.
Ed Newkom listened with repugnance, almost unable to believe what he saw and heard; the personality of Paul Rivers had vanished completely.
Doctor Rudolph Balkani handed Joan Hiashi what looked to her like a pair of loose-fitting coveralls made from black plastic. She put them on and one of the robots zipped her up from the back. Only her head remained showing, she discovered. The coveralls had been lined on the inside with some material so soft that she could hardly feel it.
“You are no doubt familiar, Miss Hiashi,” Balkani said, “with the practices of certain mystic hermits; I refer specifically to the practice of sensory withdrawal. We possess now, thanks to contemporary science, and improved version of the hermit’s cave. It is called the sensory withdrawal tank.” He pressed a button and a sliding panel opened in the floor to reveal a pool of dark, still water. Balkani picked up a helmet with no windows in it.
“The most successful method of sense withdrawal is an immersion tank where the subject floats on water at blood temperature, with sound and light absent. When you put on this helmet and are lowered into the pool you will see nothing, smell nothing, touch nothing and, thanks to the sensory blocking drug with which we have injected you, there will not remain even the experience of your body, its pains and motions and chemical alterations. Put on the helmet, Miss Hiashi.”
She did not. The robots, however, did it for her.
Seemingly calm now, Joan said to Balkani, “Have you ever been in the tank yourself?’’
“Not yet,” Balkani answered. At his command the two robots lowered her into the pool, uncoiling the air-hose that led to the helmet; watching, Balkani lit his pipe and puffed on it thoughtfully. “Give my regards to oblivion, Miss Hiashi,” he said softly.
A knock sounded on the door. Rudolph Balkani glanced up from his notebook, frowning, then ordered one of his robots to open the door. His superior, MajorRingdahl, stepped into the room, his eyes alert.
“Is she still in the tank?” Ringdahl inquired. Wordlessly Balkani gestured toward the dark pool in the floor. The major peered down and saw the top of Joan Hiashi’s helmet just breaking surface and her body, distorted by ripples, floating motionless under the water. “Not so loud,” Balkani whispered. “How long has she been in?”
Balkani examined his wristwatch. “About five and a half hours.”
“She’s so still; is she asleep, Doctor?”
“No.” Balkani removed the pair of headphones he had been wearing, detached one and handed it to Major Ringdahl.
“Sounds like she’s talking in her sleep,” Ringdahl said, after listening intently. “Can’t make out what she’s saying, though.”
“She’s not asleep,” Balkani repeated; he pointed to a rotating drum lodged within a bank of instruments; tiny pens traced irregular lines on graph paper. “Her brain wave pattern indicates exceptional activity, almost at the satori level.
“The satori level?”
“That’s the state in which the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mind disappears; the focal point of consciousness opens out and grows tenuous and the entire mind functions as a unit, rather than being broken up into a multitude of secondary functional entities.”
Ringdahl said, “Is she suffering?”
“Why do you ask that?” The question surprised him.
“I believe that Percy X is continually following her thoughts. If he sees that she’s going through a period of discomfort maybe it’ll put a little more pressure on him to listen to our side of the story.”
“I thought you wanted a cure,” Balkani snapped. “I’m a doctor, not a torturer!”
“Answer my question,” Ringdahl said. “Is she suffering or not?”
“She may have been for a while. In a certain sense she passed through the experience of losing the outside world and then her body—an experience a great deal like death. Now, however, I would venture to say that she’s happy. Perhaps really happy for the first time in her life.”
Space did not exist.
Time did not exist.
Because Joan Hiashi had vanished; no infinitely small point where space and time could intersect remained. And yet the work of the mind continued. The memory still maintained itself. The near-perfect computers wandered over the problems which they
had been studying before, even though a great many of these problems had become phrased in such a way as to be unsolvable. The emotions came and departed, though the earlier dizzy pendulum-swing between anguish and ecstasy had now ceased almost completely. Here and there a ghostly semipersonality half-formed, then faded out again. Her roles in life hung empty in the simplicity of her mind, like costumes in a deserted theater. It had become night on the stage of the world and only one bank of worklights remained on, dimly illuminating the canvas-and-stick flats that only a short time earlier had stood for reality.
Balkani had been right, or at least half right. Happiness did exist here, the greatest happiness possible for a human being.
Unfortunately, no one remained to enjoy it.