Bess Reilly came in. She slammed the door, yawned, hitched her bony hips onto the edge of the desk. She grinned at Jerry and said lazily, “Time’s running short, Raul. And I can’t say I’m sorry. You don’t have much fun in your dreams, do you? I’ve had to change hosts forty times to find you again.”
“I felt you near a few moments ago,” Raul said. He turned to Sharan. “I present my sister, Leesa Kinson.”
Sharan looked blankly at Bess Reilly’s familiar face. Bess stared at her. She said, “Does she believe you, Raul?”
“Yes, she does.”
“It gives me a funny feeling to have one of them understand how it is with us. I never had it happen before. Once, for a gag, I tried to make a man understand who I was when I took over the body of his bride. It took him just about an hour and a half to go crazy. I haven’t tried since. That is, until today. I took over a little blond nurse and tried to introduce myself to your friend, Bard Lane. He got a bit confused. Are you in any danger of going crazy, girl?”
“Yes,” Sharan said. “If this keeps up.”
Bess laughed. “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
Bard Lane came in slowly and shut the door behind him. He glanced curiously at Jerry Delane and Bess Reilly. He addressed himself to Sharan. “You sent for me.”
“This is your old friend, Leesa,” Bess said. “How did the little nurse act after I moved away from her?”
Sharan saw the color leave Bard’s face. She spoke hurriedly. “Bard, we were wrong. Just believe me. They’ve proven it to me. It is impossible, I know. But it’s true. Some sort of long-range hypnosis, I guess. But there is a Raul Kinson. He had... he is using Jerry Delane’s body. He wants to talk to us. And his sister, Leesa, is... Bess is Leesa. Jerry and Bess won’t remember what has happened. That recording you made. Everything is true, Bard. I think one moment I’ve gone mad and the next moment I know it’s the truth.”
Bard Lane dropped heavily into a chair and held his hand across his eyes. No one spoke. When at last he looked up, his expression was bleak. He stared at Jerry. “What is this test you have to say to me?”
Speaking slowly, pausing at times, Raul Kinson told of the Watchers, the Leaders, the Migrations, the dream machines, and of the perversion, over fifty centuries, of what had once been a logical plan. He told of the one Law which governed all of those who dreamed.
Bess sat on the edge of the desk, a bored look on her face.
Bard looked down at the knuckles of his clenched fist. “And so,” he said softly, “if we can believe you, you give us the answer to why, with most of the techniques under control, every attempt to conquer deep space has been a miserable failure.”
There was no answer. He looked up. Jerry Delane stood with an odd expression on his face. “What am I doing in here? How did I get in here?”
Bess slid quickly off the desk. “Did you call me, Dr. Inly?” she asked in a shrill, frightened voice.
Sharan forced a smile. “The conference is over, kids. You can go. You will stay, Bard?”
Jerry and Bess left the office.
“Have we gone mad?” Bard asked.
“There is no such thing as shared delusion, mutual fantasy, Bard,” Sharan said in a tired voice. “And either you are still in the ward and all this is taking place in your mind — or else I have gone off completely and I only imagine you are here. Or, what seems the most difficult of all — it is all true.” She stood up. “Dammit, Bard! If I close my mind to this thing, it means that my mind is too little and too petty to encompass it. But try — just try — to swallow this tale of alien worlds, Leaders, Migrations. No, it won’t wash. I have a better idea.”
“Which I will be delighted to hear.”
“Sabotage. A new and very clever variety. Some of our friends on the other side of this world have managed to develop hypnotic technique to a new level of efficiency. Maybe they use some form of mechanical amplification. They’re trying to discredit us if they can’t drive us mad. That has to be it.”
Lane frowned. “If their technique is that good, why do it the hard way? Why not just take over Adamson and Bill Kornal and a few other key men and have them spend a few hours damaging the Beatty One?”
“You forget. They already took over Kornal. It gave them a few months of grace. Now they’re experimenting. Maybe they will try to talk us into leaving here and going to another country. You can’t tell what they have in mind. Bard, the one who calls himself Raul Kinson warned me that he was going to enter my mind. And then he did. It was... degrading and horrible. We’ve got to get in touch with our own people who might know something about this. Maybe some of the ESP men. And then there’s Lurdorff. He’s done some amazing things with hypnosis. Hemorrhage control. That sort of thing. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m trying to picture just how you’d state the problem without ending up on the receiving end of some fancy shock therapy, Sharan.”
She sat down slowly. “You’re right,” she said. “There’s no way we can warn them. No way in the world.”
Ten
Leesa, walking down one of the lower levels, saw Jord Orlan step off the moving ramp, glance at her and look quickly away. She lengthened her stride to catch him.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
He looked nervously down the corridor.
“It’s all right. Raul has gone up to the unused levels.”
“Come then,” he said. He led the way to his quarters, walked in ahead of her. When he turned around he saw that she was already seated. He frowned. The respectful ones waited to be asked.
“I have been expecting a report, Leesa Kinson.”
“Raul trusts me. Perhaps, too much. It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Remember, this is for his own good.”
“I’ve had to pretend to be very contrite for all the damage I’ve caused in the dream worlds to all those precious little people he thinks are actually alive.”
Jord Orlan forgot his annoyance with her. “Very good, child! And have you shared his dreams?”
“Yes. He explained how he found a space ship project by searching the mind of a certain colonel in Washington. He told me how to find the project. We met there, in host bodies. Raul seems very proud of the people who work there. He wants to protect the project against... us. Not long ago the project was damaged by one of us who came across it, probably by accident, and forced a technician to smash delicate equipment. Raul does not want that to happen again.”
“How does he hope to prevent it?”
“He has told two of them about the Watchers, and he has managed to prove to them that we exist.”
Jord Orlan gasped. “That is a paradox! To convince someone who does not exist of existence on the only true plane. Many of us have amused ourselves trying to tell the dream people about the Watchers. They invariably go mad.”
“These two did not. Possibly because the woman is an expert on madness and the man is... strong.”
He stared at her. “Do not fall into the trap in which your brother finds himself. When you spoke of the man you looked as though you might believe him to be real. He is merely a figment of the dream machine. That you know.”
“Then isn’t it pointless, Jord Orlan, to destroy what they build?”
“It is not pointless because it is the Law. You are absurd to argue. Come now. Tell me about the location. I shall organize a group. We will smash the project completely.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “That would spoil my game. I am beginning to find it amusing. Leesa reserves that pleasure for herself, thank you.”
“I can make that an order.”
“And I shall disobey it and you can thrust me out of this world and perhaps never find the project.”