Although, I told myself, someone had closed the window and now it might be locked. But that wouldn’t stop me. There was nothing that was going to stop me now. Although, I realized, if I’d taken time enough to figure out why I wanted to get in, what possible reason I had for wanting to see Atwood, I’d probably find no answers. Instinct? I wondered. Joy had said something about the human instinct—or had it been Atwood who’d said it? I could not remember. Was it, then, instinct that drove me up the walk to see Atwood once again—not knowing why, not with the least idea of what I’d say to him or what purpose I might have in the saying of it?
I mounted the step and rang the bell and waited. And as I put out my finger to ring it once again, I heard footsteps in the hall.
And the bell, I remembered, had been of order when I’d been here the night before. It had been loose and had wobbled underneath my finger when I had tried to ring it. But now it was all right and the window had been closed and there were footsteps in the hall, coming toward the door.
The door came open and a girl stood there, dressed in the stark black-and- whiteness of a maid’s uniform.
I just stood and stared.
The maid stood without moving, waiting for me. There was a pert look on her face.
“I had hoped,” I finally said, “to find Mr. Atwood here.”
“Sir,” she said, “won’t you please come in?”
I stepped into the hail and there was a difference there as well. Last night the house had been dusty and untenanted, with covers over what little furniture there was. But now the place had a lived-in look. The dust was gone and the wood and tile of the hail shone with cleanliness and polish. There was an ancient hail tree, standing lone and empty, and beside it was a full-length mirror that gleamed with recent washing.
“Your hat and coat, sir,” said the maid. “Madam’s in the study.”
“But Atwood. It was Atwood—”
“Mr. Atwood is not here, sir.”
She took my hat Out of my hand. She waited for the coat.
I took it off and handed it to her.
“That way, sir,” she said.
The door was open and I walked through it, into a room where books jammed shelves from floor to ceiling. At the desk beside the windows sat the icy blonde I’d met in the bar, the one who’d handed me the card that said “We Deal in Everything.”
“Good day, Mr. Graves,” she said. “I am glad you came.”
“Atwood told me—”
“Mr. Atwood, unfortunately, is not with us any more.”
“And you, of course, are about to take his place.”
The iciness was there, and the smell of violets. She was part blond goddess, part efficient secretary. And she was, as well, a thing from another world and a tiny, perfect doll I’d held within my hands.
“You are astounded, Mr. Graves?”
“No,” I said. “Not now. Once perhaps. But not any longer.”
“You came to talk with Mr. Atwood. We had hoped that you would come. We have need of people like you.”
“You need me,” I said, “like I need an extra head.”
“Mr. Graves, won’t you have a chair? And please don’t be facetious.”
I sat down in the chair just across the desk from her.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Should I break down and weep?”
“There is no need of your doing anything,” she said. “Please just be yourself. Let us talk exactly as if we were two humans.”
“Which, of course, you’re not.”
“No, Mr. Graves, I’m not.”
We sat there looking at one another and it was damned uncomfortable. There wasn’t a flicker of movement or emotion in her face: it was just graven beauty.
“If you were a different kind of man,” she said, “I’d try to make you forget I am anything but human. But I don’t suppose it would do me any good with you.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry about it, too,” I told her. “Believe me, I am sorry. I would like nothing better than to think of you as human.”
“Mr. Graves, if I were human, that would be the nicest compliment I ever had been paid.”
“And since you’re not?”
“I believe it’s still a compliment.”
I looked sharply at her. It was not only what she’d said but the way she’d said it. “Maybe, after all,” I said, “there may be some human in you.”
“No,” she said. “Let’s not start kidding ourselves, either one of us. Basically youshould hate me, and I suppose you do. Although maybe not entirely. And basically I should have a great contempt for you, but I can’t say honestly I do. And yet, I think, we should talk together, if possible, with some rationality”
“Why be rational with me? There are a lot of others—”
“But, Mr. Graves,” she said, “you know about us. And few of the others do. A very, very few throughout the entire world.
You’d be surprised how few.”
“And I’m to keep my mouth shut.”
“Really, Mr. Graves. You know better than all that. How many people have you found so far who would listen to you?”
“Exactly one,” I told her.
“That would be the girl. You’re in love with her and she’s in love with you.”
I nodded.
“So, you see,” she said, “the only acceptance for your story has been emotional.”
“I suppose that you could say so.” I felt like an utter fool.
“So let’s be businesslike,” she said. “Let us say we’re giving you a chance to make the best bargain that you can. We’d not have approached you if you’d not known of us, but since you do, there’s nothing to be lost.”
“Bargain?” I asked stupidly.
“Why, of course,” she told me. “You’re in on—what do you call it? The ground floor; is that right?”
“But, perhaps, on a deal like this—”
“Listen, Mr. Graves. You must not have illusions. I suspect you do, but you must get rid of them. There is no way you can stop us. There’s nothing that can stop us. The operation has simply gone too far. There was a time, perhaps, when you could have stopped us. But not any longer. Believe me, Mr. Graves, it is far too late.”
“Since it is too late, why do you bother with me?”
“We have use of you,” she said. “There are certain things that you can do for us. The humans, once they know what is going on, are going to resent what is being done to them. Is that not right, Mr. Graves?”
“Sister,” I told her, “you don’t know the half of it.”
“But we, you understand, want to have o trouble. Or as little trouble as is possible. We feel that we stand on firm moral and legal ground, that we have abided by all the injunctions set up by your own society. We have violated none of the rules and we have no wish to be forced to go through a program of pacification. I am sure the humans would not want it, either, for it can become, I must assure you, very, very painful. We want to get this project finished and go on to something else. We want to terminate it as smoothly as lies within our power. And you can help us do that.”
“But why should I?”
“Mr. Graves,” she said, “you would beperforming a service, not for us alone, but for the human race as well. Anything that you can do to make this go smoothly for us would be of benefit to your people, too. For no matter what they do, their fate in the end will be the very same. There is no reason for them to be subjected to unnecessarily harrowing experiences to achieve that end. Consider this: you are an expert in mass communications“Not as expert as you think,” I said.
“But you know the methods and the techniques. You can write convincingly. . .”
“There are others who would be more convincing.”
“But, Mr. Graves, you are the one we have.”
I didn’t like the way she said it.
“What you want me to do,” I said, “is keep the people quiet. Keep them lulled asleep.”
“That, and any counsel you may have about how we should react in different situations. A consultative position, you might say.”
“But you know. You know as well as I do.”
“You are thinking, Mr. Graves, perhaps, that we have absorbed the human viewpoint in its entirety. That we can think as humans think and act as humans act. But this is simply not the case. We know what you call business, certainly. Perhaps you would agree that we know it rather thoroughly. We are well versed in your laws. But there are many areas we have not had the time to study. We know human nature only to a point—insofar as it reacts in the world of commerce. But we know it otherwise most imperfectly. We have no good idea how the humans will react when they learn the truth.”