If only she would react to him emotionally in some way. But she never seemed even to hate him, let alone show any affection. He said, for a trial start, “Why don’t you call me Rudolph?”
“Anything you say, Rudolph.”
“That’s better.” But it was not better; as with every previous response it had an empty, listless quality to it. “Perhaps a little dip in the sensory- withdrawal tank would be nice today,” he decided. “What do you think about that?”
“Anything you say, Rudolph. She began dutifully to undress; Balkani watched, his palms sweating. In a moment she stood nude before him, waiting for his next command.
He picked up the diving coveralls from their hook on the wall and walked hesitantly up to her. “Can I help you?” he said hoarsely.
“Anything you say, Rudolph.
With trembling fingers he helped her into the garment, then, just before he zipped her up the back he kissed the nape of her neck, quickly and furtively. Then he led her by the hand to the tank chamber.
As the two robots lowered her into the water he looked again at the strangely mechanical patterns made by her encephalic waves on the polygraph. So unusual; unique, in fact. Unlike anything he had ever come across before. And he did not like it, not at all.
But there seemed to be nothing he could do about it; for reasons which he did not comprehend, the situation had gotten out of hand.
Paul Rivers guided the ionocraft so low that the ancient and obsolete telephone wires still used in the bale of Tennessee shot past above him. There’s no alarm out for us, he reflected. But still, as we near the mountains, it’s best that we don’t attract any undue attention from wik radar stations.
The lights on the vehicle had been turned off, except for the infrared headlights; Paul wore conversion goggles so that he could get a look at the countryside for some distance ahead—without being seen. A low overcast hung everywhere. It depressed him.
Because of the low altitude he had slowed to less than a hundred miles an hour, feeling little danger of pursuit; it therefore came as a very disagreeable surprise when the radio, which had been tuned to the local police band, suddenly sprang to life long enough to announce curtly, “Unidentified ionocraft in sector C, heading south without lights. This is police central. Repeat: unidentified ionocraft in sector C; move to intercept. May be someone trying to join the Neeg-parts.”
“Get out the laser rifles,” Paul said quietly. Percy X and Ed Newkom moved quickly to obey. Joan continued to stare out into the darkness, seemingly indifferent to the danger.
He lifted the craft to a slightly higher altitude and increased the speed to a hundred-and-fifty, then two hundred miles an hour. Yet he had it still only a little above treetop level; it seemed wiser to him to hug the earth as long as he knew that the police did not have a positive fix on him. Glancing at his own radar he saw that two fast crafts hung behind and above him, catching up fast. They’ll probably try to take us alive to begin with, he decided. “Two police vehicles approaching from the rear,” he informed Percy X.
“I can see their running lights,” the Neeg-part leader said, lifting his laser rifle to his shoulder as he stood beside the open hatch, coils of wind flapping his clothes.
“Think you can nail both of them before they have a chance to launch anything at us?” Paul asked.
“Sure,” Percy X said, and fired two short bursts. Behind them one of the police crafts exploded; the other zigzagged a moment, then plunged earthward like a streamlined brick and buried itself in a hillside.
Paul changed course, changed course again, then increased speed to a dangerous three hundred miles per hour. Trees now whipped past too fast to dodge if he should come upon a really tall one.
Now the radio blurted out, “Unidentified ionocraft definitely enemy; just shot down two of our patrol crafts. All crafts converge on sector G. Shoot to kill.”
There’s one nice aspect to consider, Paul said to himself. At least it can’t get any worse.
But he was wrong.
At that instant, out of the darkness ahead appeared a high-tension power line. At the speed which he was
traveling Paul did not have a chance to react to, let alone dodge, the oncoming obstacle; he could only hang on as the ionocraft struck the wires with an impact that smashed his head forward against the wheel, almost knocking him unconscious. But, though his mentation had become dazed and confused, the habit-patterns imprinted in his subconscious by years of flying high-velocity ionocrafts under all sorts of conditions remained functioning; he fought frantically to regain control as the vehicle spun wildly and lost altitude. Another crash shuddered through him as the ship struck the top of a sandy hill and bounced once again into the air.
Now, miraculously, Paul managed to get the ship under control and, still swerving erratically, to regain a little altitude. He glanced briefly at Joan, Ed and Percy X. All seemed stunned, perhaps unconscious. The ion grids of the ship had suffered severe damage and threatened to break off at any moment; the ship appeared to be losing power. He realized with reluctance that he would be able to keep it in the air only a few minutes more. I guess, he thought bitterly, we’ll have to get out and walk.
Just then the radio spewed forth another message. “Unidentified ionocraft surrounded! Close in, all patrol craft, and shoot on sight!”
“It has become time,” said the Timekeeper, “to key into the Common Mind broadcast from the home world, sir.” The nervous little creech gestured toward the surge-gate amplifier in the comer of the Administrator’s office.
“Eh?” muttered Mekkis in response.
“Sir, this is the third time this month that you have failed to join the fusion. How will you know what is happening back home?”
“I have more important matters to attend to. Anyhow I know what is occurring back home. My enemies are enjoying themselves at my expense. Why should I plug in just to empathize with their gloating?”
The Oracle chimed in gloomily. “It is not from the home world that the darkness approaches.”
The Timekeeper slunk off in silence and Mekkis returned to his “more important matters.” This consisted of a reading of the entire published works of the brilliant but verbose Terran psychiatrist, Doctor Rudolph Balkani; Mekkis had secured microfilm copies of all the books available through the channels of the Bureau of Cultural Control and had devoted virtually his complete attention to them. Never before had he encountered a thinker that so obsessed him. The very first sentence of the initial book had passed through him like a shot.
“The number of men on this planet is great but finite. The number of potential men within me is infinite. I am, therefore, greater than the entire human race.”
This thought would never have occured to a being accustomed to the telepathic melting together of the Great Common, and yet there was something about it, a certain incredible yet plausible egotism, a fantastic daring that seemed to speak to a deep, hitherto untouched part of Mekkis’ spiritual mind. It seemed somehow to explain the painful state of affairs existing between himself and the other members of the Ganymedian ruling class. They all, every last one, he thought, are against me; yet I know I am right—that
in fact I’ve been right all along. How can such a condition occur unless Balkani is correct; unless one being really can be greater than the entire race from which it comes?
Balkani’s method struck him as outrageous. Instead of performing systematic experiments, cautiously moving the boundary of knowledge forward inch by inch, Balkani simply looked within his own unique mind and described what he saw, brushing aside whole schools of psychiatry with a single snide remark, making not even a feeble attempt at politeness, let alone scientific fairness. Yet his theories prodiiced results. Balkani, the master, lurched drunkenly into the unknown, carelessly tossing off dogmatic statements as if they were proven facts simply because they seemed to him, intuitively, to be true. Then others could follow behind him, picking up his ideas and testing them scientifically, and produce miracles.