Some of the men nearest the Eye were picking up rocks and clods of dirt and throwing them at the bobbing vortex in the air. Haendl started to yell at them to stop, then changed his mind. The Eye didn’t seem to be affected—as he watched, one of the men scored a direct hit with a cobblestone. The stone went right through the Eye, without sound or effect; why not let them work off some of their fears in direct action?
There was a fluttering of helicopter vanes, and the copter with the instruments mounted on it came down in the middle of the street, between Haendl and the Eye. , It was all very rapid from then on in.
The Eye swooped toward Haendl. He couldn’t help it; he ducked. That was useless, beyond doubt; but it was also unnecessary, for he saw in a second that it was only partly the motion of the Eye toward him that made it loom larger; it was also that the Eye itself was growing. An Eye was perhaps the size of a football, as near as anyone could judge; this one got bigger, bigger; it was the size of a roc’s egg, the size of a whale’s blunt head. It stopped and hovered over the helicopter, while the man inside frantically pointed lenses and meters—
Thundercrash.
Not a man this time; Translation had gone beyond men; the whole helicopter vanished, man, instruments, spinning vanes and all.
Haendl picked himself up, sweating, shocked beyond sleepiness.
The young man named Frampton said fearfully, “Haendl, what do we do now?”
“Do?” Haendl stared at him absently. “Why, kill ourselves, I guess.” He nodded soberly, as though he had at last attained the solution of a difficult problem. Then he sighed. “Well, one thing before that,” he said. “I’m going to Wheeling. We Wolves are licked; maybe the Citizens can help us now.”
Roget Germyn, of Wheeling a Citizen, received the message in the chambers that served him as a place of business. He had a visitor waiting for him at home.
Germyn was still Citizen, and he could not break off the pleasant and interminable discussion he was having with a prospective client over a potential business arrangement—not rapidly. He apologized for the interruption caused by the message the conventional three times, listened while his guest explained the plan he had come to propose in full once more, then turned his cupped hands toward himself in the gesture of denial of adequacy. It was the closest he could come to saying no.
On the other side of the desk, the Citizen who had come to propose an investment scheme immediately changed the subject by inviting Germyn and his Citizeness to a Sirius-Viewing, the invitation in the form of rhymed couplets. He had wanted to transact his business very much, but he couldn’t insist.
Germyn got out of the invitation by a Conditional Acceptance in proper form, and the man left, delayed only slightly by the Four Urgings to stay. Almost immediately Germyn dismissed his clerk and closed his office for the day by tying a complex triple knot in a length of red cord across the open door.
When he got to his home he found, as he had suspected, that the visitor was Haendl.
There was much doubt in Citizen Germyn’s mind about Haendl. The man had nearly admitted to being Wolf, and how could a Citizen overlook that? But in the excitement of Gala Tropile’s Translation the matter had been less urgent than normally; there had been no hue and cry: Germyn had permitted the man to leave. And now?
He reserved judgment. He found Haendl uncomfortably sipping tea in his living room and attempting to keep up a formal conversation with Citizeness Germyn. Germyn rescued him, took him aside, closed a door—and waited.
He was astonished at the change in the man. Before Haendl had been bouncy, aggressive, quick-moving—the very qualities least desired in a Citizen, the mark of the Son of the Wolf. Now he was none of these things, but he looked no more like a Citizen for all that; he was haggard, fretful. He looked like a man who had been through a very hard time.
He said, with an absolute minimum of protococlass="underline" “Germyn, the last time I saw you there was a Translation. Gala Tropile, remember?”
“I remember,” Citizen Germyn said economically. Remember! It had hardly left his thoughts.
“And you said there had been others since. Have they still been going on?”
Germyn said: “There have.” He was trying to speak directly, to match this man Haendl’s speed and forcefulness. It was hardly good manners, but it had occurred to Citizen Germyn that there were times when manners, after all, were not the most important things in the world. “There were two in the past few days. One was a woman—Citizeness Baird; her husband’s a teacher. She was Viewing Through Glass with four or five other women at the time. She just—disappeared. I think she was looking through a green prism at the time, if that helps.”
“I don’t know if it helps or not. Who was the other one?”
Germyn shrugged. “A man named Harmane. He was our Keeper. No one saw it. But they heard the thunderclap, or something like a thunderclap, and he was missing.” He thought for a moment. “It is a little unusual, I suppose. Two in one week, in one little town—’
Haendl said roughly: “Listen, Germyn. It isn’t just two. In the past thirty days, within the area around here and in one other place, there have been at least fifty. In two places, do you understand? Here and in Princeton. The rest of the world—no; nothing much; a few Translations here and there, but no more than usual. But just in these two communities, fifty. Does that make sense?”
Citizen Germyn thought. “—No.”
“No. And I’ll tell you something else. Three of the—well, victims have been children under the age of five. One was too young to walk. And the most recent Translation wasn’t a person at all. It was a helicopter. Know what a helicopter is? It’s a flying machine, about the size of this house. The whole damned thing went, bang. Now figure that out, Germyn. What’s the explanation for Translations?”
Germyn was gaping. “Why—you meditate on connectivity. Once you’ve grasped the essential connectivity of all things, you become One with the Cosmic Whole. But I don’t see how a baby—or a machine—”
“Tropile’s the link,” Haendl said grimly. “When he got Translated we thought it was a big help, because he had the decency to do it right under our eyes. We got enough readings to give us a clue as to what, physically speaking, Translation is all about. That was the first real clue, and we thought he’d done us a favor. . . . Now I’m not so sure.” He leaned forward. “Every person I know of who was Translated was someone Tropile knew. The three kids were in his class at the nursery school—we put him onto that for a while to keep him busy, when he first came to us. Two of the men he bunked with are gone; the mess boy who served him is gone; his wife is gone. Meditation? No, Germyn. I know most of those people. Not a damned one of them would have spent a moment meditating on connnectivity to save his life. And what do you make of that?”
Germyn said, swallowing hard, “I just remembered. That man, Harmane—”
“What about him?”
“The one who was Translated last week. He knew Tropile too. He was the Keeper of the House of the Five Regulations when Tropile was there.”
“You see? And I’ll bet the woman knew him too.” Haendl got up fretfully, pacing around. “Here’s the thing, Germyn,” he said. “I’m licked. You know what I am, don’t you?”
Germyn said levelly: “I believe you to be Wolf.”
“You believe right.” Germyn winced in spite of himself, but managed to sit quiet and listen. “I’m telling you that doesn’t matter any more. You don’t like Wolves. Well, I don’t like you. But this thing is too big for me to care about that any more. Tropile has started something happening, and what the end of it is going to be I can’t tell. But I know this: We’re not safe, either of us. Maybe you still think Translation is a fulfillment. I don’t; it scares me. But it’s going to happen to me—and to you, too. It’s going to happen to everyone who ever had anything to do with Glenn Tropile. Unless we can somehow stop it—I don’t know how. Will you help me?”