But if its position had no exact geographic boundaries, at least there were loci of special consequence. It did, for example, occupy the great animal bulk of the sleeth. It concentrated at least a sizable part of its being in the electron cloud that seeped through the rock and clay of the base of the hill. And it found other special areas of interest to toy with.
It found, for one, the antique handling machine that Cliff Hawk had used to help him construct his tunnel workshop. It was a minor puzzle to the rogue, but a faintly interesting one; the machine had obvious purpose, and it spent some moments working out that purpose and how to achieve it. Then, the machine solved, it spent a few moments now in what can only be called pleasure. Power in motors, it thought. My power. Spin gears. Drive through rubble. It reached out with its metal arms and picked up bits of debris—a yellow cylinder of helium, the half of a thousand-pound armature, bent out of shape in the explosions. It threw them about recklessly, madly. . .
Then it had had all it could enjoy of that particular game, and turned to another.
The robot inspector was a greater puzzle, but a lesser plaything. It was no particular joy to operate, since its transflection drives were too similar to the sleeth's, or the rogue's own, to be novel. But the rogue was aware that somehow the robot had been guided by other influences, far away, and that some part of it was still trying to respond to those influences as their messages crackled into its receptors. They were an irritation to the rogue, these repetitious exhortations on behalf of the star Almalik; it did not like them.
It had, by now, begun to acquire emotion.
One particular emotion troubled it, that inexplicable urging toward Molly Zaldivar which it had felt, ever more strongly, as Cliff Hawk's patterns of thought asserted themselves and fitted themselves into the organization of the rogue's own habit-structure. The rogue did not find this incongruous. It had no standards by which to judge incongruity. But it found it troubling.
There was a solution to things which were troubling. It could act on the impulse, and see what came of it.
It could attempt to add Molly Zaldivar to itself.
17
"Mol-ly. Mol-ly Zaaal-di-var. . ."
Molly woke slowly, surfacing inch by inch from sleep. She was unwilling to wake up. Sleeping though she was, a part of her mind remembered what waking would bring back to her in utter, unwanted clarity. Cliff's death, the birth of the rogue, the terrible danger that the man she loved had unloosed on the universe.
"Mol-ly. . ."
But someone was calling her name. Resentfully she opened her eyes and looked around.
No one was in the room. It was still dark; she had not slept for more than an hour or two.
"Who is it?" she whispered. No response. Molly shivered. It was eerie, that disembodied voice, unlike any she had ever heard. It was impossible to dismiss it as the ragged end of a dream, half remembered on waking; it was real enough. It was even more impossible to ignore it and go back to sleep.
Molly stood up, threw the robe Rufe had found for her over her shoulders, and padded to the door of her room. She opened it just a crack. There was the living room, with Andy Quam asleep on the couch. He stirred painfully as she looked at him, grimaced, mumbled some sleep-evoked phrase and was still again—all without opening his eyes. Poor Andy, she thought warmly, and sadly; and closed the door without sound.
Whoever had called her, it was not Andy Quam.
She went to the window, threw back the curtains—and gasped in terror.
There it was, hovering just outside the double French panes on its shimmering transflection fields.
The sleeth!
The great blind eyes stared emptily at her, the metal-tipped claws caught reflections of cold fire from the sinking moon. The shimmering field pulsed rapidly, and from the pane of glass she caught the faint vibration of sound that had called her from sleep: "Mol-ly. Come. I— want—you."
For an instant stark terror flooded her, and she half turned to run, to shake Andy Quam awake and beg for protection against this fantastic monster that called her name. But the utter wondrousness of it held her. The sleeth could not speak; nothing the Reefer had said about it gave it a voice. Nor could it have known her name, not in any way that she could hope to understand. And anyway, the sleeth was no longer even an animal in its own independent right; it was only a captive of the thing that Cliff Hawk had made, and had been killed by.
She flung open one side of the French window. She didn't know why; obviously, if the creature intended her harm, the flimsy glass and frame could not protect her. "What—what do you want?" she breathed.
But it only repeated, "Mol-ly. Mol-ly, come."
The sound came from the glass itself, she discovered; somehow the creature was vibrating to form frequencies that she could hear as words. It was even stranger, she thought, than if it had suddenly formed lips, palate and tongue and spoken to her.
It was terrifying. Worse than terrifying; without warning, she was filled with a revulsion so fierce that she almost screamed with the pain of it.
"No," she whispered. "No!" and closed the window.
"Come," sang the sleeth—or whatever it was that controlled the sleeth. The huge creature danced patiently on its shimmering fields, waiting for her to accede to its demand. "Come," said the tinny, bodiless voice again. "Mol-ly. Come."
Insane to be talking to this thing, in a perfectly ordinary room, through a perfectly normal window! "No!" she said strongly. "Go away!"
Did the thing understand her words? She had no way of knowing. It merely hung there silently for a moment, regarding her with those great blind eyes.
Then it moved, slowly and remorselessly, like a Juggernaut. It bobbed silently forward, thrusting the unopened window out of the way as though it were air. An almost soundless crack and a faint patter of shattered glass on the carpet were the only noise it made as it came toward her.
The great, deadly claws reached for her.
Molly drew a breath to scream, tried to turn and run . . .
Something bright and murderous flashed from those blind eyes. It was like an instant anesthetic, like a blow from behind that drives out awareness before the mind quite realizes it has been struck. Down went Molly Zaldivar into paralysis and dark, stunned and helpless. She felt herself falling, falling, falling. . .
The last thing she remembered was those great claws grasping her. Incredible, she thought, they don't hurt. . .
And then the world closed in around her.
Quamodian woke painfully in broad daylight that poured through the windows. He found himself on a couch, with a synthetic copy of some animal fur over him for warmth, his head throbbing, his bones aching. He felt vaguely ill, and for a moment could not recall where he was.
Then he remembered. The enigma of the sunbolts. The nightmare of the Reefer and the sleeth. The death of Cliff Hawk. The birth of the rogue . . .
He forced himself to sit up and look at the world around him.
Pinned to the arm of the couch was a note, scrawled with a photo-scriber in a huge, clumsy hand:
Preacher, I didn't want to wake you. I went to tell Miss Zaldivar's folks she's all right. Meet you there if you want. P.S., I left everybody sleeping because I thought you all needed it. Food in the kitchen.
Rufe
Sleeping they still were, to judge from the mighty rasping snores that came from the little cubicle Rufe had given the Reefer. There was no sound at all from Molly's room. Andy Quam hesitated, his hand on the door; but there was no sense disturbing her, and surely nothing could have got past him to harm her in the night. . .