Gann was taken aback. He had not expected so quick a confession. All he could do was say, "But why? Why did you shoot her? To get her out of the way as a witness?"
"Of course," rapped Machine General Wheeler.
"And pretend I was the Starchild? To make yourself more important to the Planner and the Machine?"
"Precisely," the general crackled out.
Gann studied him thoughtfully, then said, "Something must have changed your mind. What was it?"
The general answered without changing expression or tone. Only a faint color on the brow, a pale brightness as of perspiration, showed the strain he must have felt. "The girl recovered," he snapped. "She told the Planner the truth—that I had merely found that document, and planted it on you. The Planner reported to the Machine, and—"
"And what?" demanded Boysie Gann.
The general's voice cracked. "And the Machine went mad. It ordered my arrest. Then it began ordering the arrest of Sister Delta Four, the Vice-Planner for Central America, the guards in the Hall of the Planner, even the Planner himself. There was confusion. I shot my way clear. I secured an aircraft, the one Sister Delta Four had come to the Planner's headquarters in, and I escaped. But I must leave Earth, Gann! I want you to take me to the Reefs, because . . . because I must get away."
"Get away? Why?"
The general's voice tolled out the answer. "In shooting my way out of the Planner's headquarters, I killed two men. One of them was the Planner."
Boysie Gann had never known where the training school was located on Earth. As they emerged to the surface he saw for the first time the great sweep of mountains to the north, felt the icy sting of cold air, and realized that they were on the plateaus below the Himalayas. For thousands of years only nomads and warriors had shared this bleak, desolate land. Now a great hydroelectric plant boomed beyond the level sweep of a rocket-port hewn out of rock.
There was something about the power plant that looked strange. As Machine General Wheeler led him quickly to a waiting jetcraft Gann realized what was wrong with the hydroelectric plant. Even at this distance he could see that it was a wreck. Its great windows reflected no light; they were shattered. There were cracks in its solid masonry walls. There had been an explosion within—some mighty burst of short-circuiting energy, volatilizing all matter within its scope.
"Never mind that," rapped out the general. "Come aboard! There's someone there you'll want to see."
Gann followed, staring about. If destruction had come even here, it must be radically more far-reaching than he had dreamed.
Was it the Starchild?
And who was the Starchild? Hurrying after General Wheeler, Gann's mind was a vortex of thoughts, memories, impressions. The body-shaking rupture of his communion with the Machine. The terrible fight in the Planner's hall, and the terrible shock that had struck him when he saw Sister Delta Four—the girl who had once been Julie Martinet, his love-shot down before him. The long, dizzying fall through nonspace, from the Reefs to Earth. The strange hermit, Harry Hickson. . .
It was almost more than he could take in. Bemused, he was hardly aware when they reached the waiting jetship. He followed General Wheeler into the open hatch, and then he saw who it was who awaited them there.
"Julie!" he cried. "Julie Martinet!"
But it was Sister Delta Four who answered. "Come in. Close the hatch. We must take off at once! I have a message from the Machine."
General Wheeler reacted at once. He turned and closed the hatch, then leaped across the narrow cabin of the jetship and snatched from the grasp of Sister Delta Four the black cube that was her linkbox. "Fool!" he rasped. "A message from the Machine! Don't you know the Machine's gone mad? The Starchild has been tampering with it. It is no longer functioning according to Plan. The evidence of your eyes should tell you that. Can't you see what's been going on?"
The girl lifted her head, unafraid, and stared at him with objective, remote eyes. The black fabric of her hood fell away, baring the bright medallion of the communion plate in her forehead, just like Boysie Gann's own. She said in her melodic, chiming voice, "I serve the Machine, General Wheeler. And you are a traitor, condemned to death."
"So are you, for that matter," growled the general. He tossed the linkbox to Boysie Gann. "Here. Keep her quiet while I get us started. We've got to get off Earth at once." He dived for the control cabin to set the automatic instruments that would start the motors, take the plane off the field, fly it straight and true to its destination, radio for landing instructions, and set it down. Gann glanced at the linkbox in his hands, then at Sister Delta Four.
The linkbox carried its communion plug racked in a recess in its cubical bulk. Gann could see the bright glitter of its rounded tips that mated so perfectly with the plate in his own skull.
If, he thought ponderously, he were to take that plug off its clip and place it into the plate in his forehead ... if he were to complete his communion ... he would once again feel that total rapture, that almost unbearable ecstasy of soul and senses that he had tasted, just once, an hour before.
The temptation was overpowering.
He could understand Julie—or rather, Sister Delta Four—a great deal better now. There had never been an addiction like this one, no drug, no narcotic, no mere alcoholic craving that was as overpowering in its appeal.
He could understand why Julie Martinet had given up family, freedom, the pleasures of the senses, and himself for the shroud of an acolyte of the Machine.
He could understand it, because he was all but at that point himself, after one single exposure. . . .
With a swift motion, before he could stop to think, he lifted the link-box and dashed it to the floor. It crackled and sputtered. In its static-filled buzzing sound he could detect some of the tonal morphemes he had been taught, but he did not give himself a chance to puzzle out their meaning, did not allow the linkbox the time to beg for its preservation— if that was its intention. He lifted a foot and crushed it, stamped it again and again, like a noxious insect. Its buzzing abruptly stopped. There was a faint blue flash of electric sparks; then it was only a mangled mass of printed circuits and crushed transistors.
"That's the end of that, Julie," he said. "And that's the end of our relationship with the Machine."
She was watching him silently, her eyes dark and incurious.
"Don't you have anything to say?" he demanded.
She pealed, "Only what I am instructed to tell you, Major Gann. The message that was given me by the Machine."
"Damn the Machine!" he cried. "Can't you understand that's over? It's finished. Gone! First we have to try to straighten out this mess; then —maybe then!—we can think about using the Machine again. Using it! Not letting it use us!"
"I know nothing of that, Major Gann," she sang. "I only know the message. It follows: To Major Gann. Action. Proceed at once to the "Togethership" on the Reefs of Space via Mercury Terminator Line Station Seven. Message ends."
Gann shook his head dazedly. "Julie, Julie!" he protested. "That's ridiculous on the face of it. Go to the Reefs by way of Mercury? That's like coming across a room by way of . . .of Deneb. It's not the way at all-"
"I don't know about that," rasped the voice of Machine General Wheeler from behind him. Gann turned. The general was standing in the open door of the control cabin, something in his hand. His expression was dark and fearful, like some trapped and dangerous creature of the jungle.
Gann said, "But Mercury is near the Sun. Even if we wanted to go to the farthest part of the Reefs, where we're at superior conjunction, we might go near Mercury, yes, but we'd never land there. Not anywhere on the planet, much less at some particular station on the terminator line."