He shrugged ponderously. “What do you want?” he asked.
He had me somewhat confused. I said, “Well, back on the Isle of Spain you made a proposition, Mr. Sperry.”
I stopped. He was shaking his huge head. “Forget that,” he said.
“I’m an old man. I bear no grudge for you trying to take me in, but it didn’t work.” He stared at me out of his sea-cold eyes. “You’re no more James Eden than I am,” he said. “You know it, I know it, what’s the use of trying to pull the wool over an old man’s eyes?”
I said, trying to control my temper, “Mr. Sperry, I am James Eden! I was knocked out and robbed—my papers were stolen—but I’m getting new ones from ‘Frisco.”
He laughed shortly. “That’s it, boy,” he applauded. “Stick to it!”
“Please, Mr. Sperry! Look, you say your son is here—ask him to identify me.”
Hallam Sperry looked at me for a long, opaque moment. Then he rose ponderously and turned his back while he poured himself some sort of drink. Without turning he said: ‘Brand?”
A voice came promptly from a speaker-diaphragm over Hallam Sperry’s desk. “Yes, sir?”
Hallam Sperry said: “Brand, have you been watching us on the scanner?”
“Yes, father,” came the metallic voice strongly. “He’s an impostor, sir. I never saw him before.”
“Thank you, Brand,” the old man said mildly. He clicked a switch on his desk and sat down, sipping his drink. He looked at me with his cold, inquiring eyes. “Eh?” He asked. “Still want to argue?”
All at once the world looked tremendously black. I could only sit there, staring at him. Had everyone gone insane? How could Brand Sperry deny that I was James Eden?
And then I remembered the words that had helped me once before, the words the instructors had dinned, dinned, dinned into me at the Academy, the most urgent lesson the Academy’s four hard years could teach:
Panic is the enemy.
Start with one fact: I knew I was sane.
Look at all the other facts in the light of that one: If I am sane, then I really am James Eden; if I am James Eden, then these people, all of them, the Sperrys and their helpers, are trying to get me out of the way.
And if they are trying to get me out of the way—then certainly there is something they must fear! Something that I can do—something that they want to prevent—something that I must find out about and accomplish!
It takes a long time to tell what passed through my mind in that one frozen moment; but it took no time at all for me to decide what to do next.
I said, “Where’s Catroni?"
Crash.
Hallam Sperry unfroze slowly, like a giant berg of the The bottle of sea-green liqueur splintered against the floor. Hallam Sperry sat icily calm, ignoring the bottle he had knocked over. He said in a colorless voice, “Would you mind repeating that?”
I stood up and moved closer to Hallam Sperry. “Catroni was with my uncle Stewart, Mr. Sperry. If Catroni survived, maybe my uncle did too. He’s here somewhere; I know that. I want to talk to him,” I said boldly.
“Southern Ocean,” he said quietly, “Catroni is dead.”
“No, sir,” I said obstinately. “He’s alive. I know that.”
“You know wrong, young man. Catroni is dead.” There was a flicker of something I could not recognize in those sea-cold eyes. Triumph, perhaps, or hidden laughter. He said, “Perhaps you don’t believe me.”
“I do not,” I said sharply.
“Of course not,” he nodded. “We never believe news we don’t like. Well, young man, let me convince you.” He clicked the switch again. “Brooks,” he said without raising his voice, “this young gentleman would like to know if Catroni is dead or alive. Will you show him?”
“Yes, sir,” said a man’s voice over the speaker. There was a pause; then the door opened, and a short, squat wrestler-type stood there, blinking at us. He was dressed in outlandishly unsuitable clothing, considering his hulking build and anthropoid brow; he wore the livery of an old-fashioned butler. “Sir?” he asked.
“This one, Brooks,” rumbled Hallam Sperry. “Take him and convince him that Catroni is dead. Let him see the—evidence.”
I should have been suspicious. Well, I was suspicious—but not sure. And even if I had been sure, if I had known as certainly as I knew the Sub-sea Oath, word by word and line by line, that Hallam plotted treachery—what could I have done?
Nothing. Nothing more than I did. I followed the brute in butler’s garb down a tapestry-hung corridor, through an inconspicuous door, into a tiny, white-walled room.
There was a dead man in the room—a short, dark-complected man who lay on a narrow table, a curious metallic affair on his head, wires leading from it to a clicking, purring machine that loomed along the sides of the room.
I recognized the machine; I had seen it once, or one like it—at the Academy. They called it a brainpump; an electronic apparatus that could seize the thoughts from a man’s mind, tear secrets from a living brain. It was a giant, ugly machine, and in my mind’s eye I could see the placard that had been on the one in the Academy’s museum:
THE USE OF THIS MACHINE HAS BEEN OUTLAWED BY INTERNATIONAL COVENANT. EVEN IN SMALL DOSES, EXPOSURE TO IT PRODUCES BRAIN DAMAGE. PROLONGED EXPOSURE INVARIABLY CAUSES DEATH.
The apelike “butler” said thickly, “You wanted to see Catroni? That’s him. Dead all right, ain’t he?”
I said sharply, “You’ve killed him! He wasn’t drowned with my uncle—perhaps my uncle wasn’t drowned at all! I’m going to report this to—”
The ape reached out a casual arm and cuffed me. There was tremendous power on those sloping shoulders and long arms; I spun half dazed, across the room. I heard his voice dimly as he contemptuously said, “Shut up.” He walked out and closed the door behind him.
Time passed. I tried the door, knowing what the result would be.
Locked. I was trapped. I sat there, in the room with that dead man and the clicking, purring machine, contemplating the catastrophe of my plans.
The door opened. It was the butler; with him, hands bound, eyes blazing anger, was a tall black man. Gideon!
“You got company,” the “butler” chortled. “I’ll leave you two boys together; you got lots to talk about.”
He shoved Gideon staggering into the room.
The door locked upon us.
15
At the Bottom of the Deeps
Time passed. Gideon and I talked briefly; then there was nothing more to talk about. He had been waiting for me outside Sperry’s quarters; he had been attacked from behind and dragged in. We were prisoners.
Gideon had been right.
Gideon roamed jestlessly around the room, peering and poking and searching; I sat quietly, trying to work things out in my mind. We were truly in a bad spot. Whatever doubts I had had about Hallam Sperry were now resolved; he was an outlaw, the mayor of Marinia, certainly, but he was an outlaw nonetheless. As prisoners in his home, we were helpless. And we couldn’t hope for outside aid, for who was there to help us? Bob Eskow had denied that he knew me—if indeed he ever got my message. The police—well, to help us they would have to know that we were in difficulties, and that they were not likely to know. My own credentials were confused; if I failed to turn up for the replacements the Immigration authorities would doubtless forget the whole thing. And Gideon was something of an outlaw himself, an indigent from Kelly’s Kingdom, with no family and no close friends to worry about his absence.