"Thank you, Frank," Theo Ferry agreed; he did not take his eyes from Freya. "Was this woman searched?"
"Well, sir," the THL agent named Frank said uncomfortably, "we had in mind your overweening desire to obtain a female of this — "
"Blurb!" Theodoric Ferry quivered in agitation. "She has on her some variety of — "
"Sorry, sir," the agent named Frank broke in with utter tact. "The term of immediate and dismayed concern which you're reaching for is the word 'blast.' The term you've employed, 'blurb,' deals with a sensational ad for some form of entertainment; generally a notice on a book cover or flap as to — "
All at once Freya became aware, shockingly, of the meaning of the THL agent's remarks; everything which she suspected, everything which she had read in Dr. Bloode's book, now had been validated.
Theodoric Ferry had to be reminded, constantly, of the most commonplace Terran linguistic patterns. Of course; these patterns were to him a totally alien structure. So it was true. And, because of what had up to this instant seemed an absurd, pointless exchange of remarks, no doubt could exist in her mind, now; it had been abundantly demonstrated. With renewed courage Freya faced Theodoric Ferry, the most powerful man in either the Sol or the Fomalhaut system and perhaps even beyond, and said,
"I'm sorry, Mr. Ferry." Her voice, in her own ears, was cool, as calm as she might have hoped for. "I failed to realize what you are. You'll have to excuse my hysteria on that basis." With a slight — but unnoticed tremor — she adjusted the right strap of her half-bra, drawing it back up onto her smooth, bare, slightly tanned shoulder. "I now — "
"Yes, Miss Holm?" Ferry's tone was dark, mocking. "Exactly what do you realize about me, now? Say it." He chuckled.
Freya said, "You're an aquatic cephalopod, a Mazdast. And you've always been. A long time ago, when Telpor first linked the Sol system with the Fomalhaut system, when the first Terran field-team crossed over and returned — "
"That's correct," Theodoric Ferry agreed, and once more chuckled... although now his — or rather its — tone consisted of a wet, wailing hiss. "I infiltrated your race decades ago. I've been in your midst before Lies Incorporated was founded; I've been with your people before you, Miss Holm, were even born." Studying her intently he smiled; his eyes shone bleakly, and then, to her horror, the eyes began to migrate. Faster and faster they moved toward the center of the forehead; there they joined, fused, became one vast compound eye whose many lenses reflected her own image back at her, as in a thousand warped black mirrors, again and again.
Within the bun of cloth slightly beneath her ribcase, Freya Holm compressed the activating assembly of the defense-gun.
"Shloonk," Theodoric Ferry wheezed. His single eye rattled and spun as his body rocked back and forth; then, without warning, the great dark orb popped from his bulging forehead and hung dangling from a spring of steel. At the same time his entire head burst; screaming, Freya ducked as bits of gears, rods, wiring, components of power systems, cogs, amplifying surge-gates, all failing to remain within the shattered structure bounced here and there in the flapple. The two THL agents ducked, grunted and then retreated as the rain of hot, destroyed metal pieces condensed about them both. She, too, reflexively drew back; staring, she saw a main-shaft and an intricate cog mechanism... like a clock, she thought dazedly. He's not a deformed, nonTerran water-creature; he's a mechanical assembly — I don't understand. She shut her eyes, moaned in despair; the flapple, now, had faded momentarily into obscurity, so intense was the hailstorm of metal and plastic parts from the bursting entity which had posed as Theodoric Ferry just a moment before — had posed, more accurately, as an aquatic horror masquerading as Theodoric Ferry.
"One of those damn simulacrums," the THL agent who was not Frank said in disgust.
" 'Simulacra,' " Frank corrected, his teeth grinding in outrage as a major transformer from the power-supply struck him on the temple and sent him flailing backward, off-balance; he fell against the wall of the flapple, groaned and then slid to a sitting position, where he remained, his eyes empty. The other THL agent, arms windmilling, fought his way through the still-exploding debris of the simulacrum toward Freya; his fingers groped for her ineffectually — and then he gave up, abandoned whatever he had had in his mind; turning, he hunched forward, lurched blindly off, in the general direction of the entrance hatch of the flapple. And then, with a clatter, disappeared. She remained with the disintegrating simulacrum and the unconscious THL agent Frank; the only sound was the metallic thump of components as they continued to pelt against the walls and floor of the flapple.
Good lord, she thought indistinctly, her mind in a state of almost deranged confusion. That book they showed me — it was wrong! Or else I failed to read far enough...
Desperately, she searched about in the rubbish-heaped flapple for the book; then all at once she remembered what had happened to it. The smaller THL agent had escaped with it locked in a briefcase chained to his wrist; the book had, so to speak, departed with him — in any case, both the agent and the volume were gone, now. So she would never know what had come next in the printed text; had it corrected its own evident misperception, as she had hers? Or — did the text of Dr. Bloode's book continue on, manfully declaring that Theodoric Ferry was an aquatic — what was the term it — and she — had used? Mazdast; that was it. She wondered, now, precisely what it meant; until she had read the word in the text she had never before encountered it. But there was something else. Something at the rim of consciousness, crowding forward, attempting to enter her mind; it could not be thrust back, odious as it was.
The Clock. That term, referring to one of the so-called paraworlds. Had this been — The Clock? And if so —
Then the original encounter between the black space-pilot, Rachmael ben Applebaum, and the sim of Theodoric Ferry — that, back in the Sol system, had been a manifestation — not of a Ferry-simulacrum at all — but, like this, of the paraworld called The Clock.
The delusional worlds somehow active here at Whale's Mouth had already spread to and penetrated Terra. It had already been experienced — experienced, yes; but not recognized.
She shuddered.
15
For more than thirty minutes nothing had emanated from the anti-prolepsis chamber of Gregory Gloch, and by now Sepp von Einem realized with full acuity that something dreadful had gone wrong.
Taking a calculated risk — Gloch in the past had ranted against this as an illegal invasion of his privacy, of his very psyche, in fact — Dr. von Einem clicked to on the audio monitoring mechanism which tapped the input circuit of the chamber. Shortly, he found himself receiving via a three-inch speaker mounted on the wall the same signals which passed to his protégé.
The first rush of impulses almost unhinged him.
"Pun, there," a jovial masculine — somewhat elderly voice — was in the process of intoning. "Life of you, life lived over... see?" It then chuckled loudly in a comical but distinctly vulgar fashion. "Heh-heh," it gloated. "How you doin', ol' boy, Gloch there, ol' fella?"
"Fine," Greg Gloch's retort came. But to von Einem it had a very distinctive weak quality about it, a vivid loss of surgency which chilled him deeply, caused him to hang on each following word of the exchange. Who was this person addressing Gloch? he asked himself. And got no response; the voice was new to him. And yet —