The Paradox Men Read online

  “Two I.P.’s are coming up the hall,” she countered quickly. “They’re sure about you now. You’ll have to run for it.”

  “Not yet. They think I’m cornered and they’ll wait for reinforcements. In the meantime, what about you? Haze-Gaunt isn’t going to like this.” His hands were on her shoulders. They looked at each other silently a moment, bonded by their unknown and dangerous features.

  “I’m not afraid of him. It’s Shey, the psychologist. He knows how to hurt people so that they will tell him whatever he wants to know. Sometimes I think he tortures just for the sake of seeing suffering. He wants to buy me—for that—but so far Haze-Gaunt hasn’t let him touch me. Whatever you do, avoid Shey.”

  “All right, I’ll keep away from him. But why are you doing this for me?”

  “You remind me of someone I used to know,” replied the woman slowly. She looked behind her. “For God’s sake, hurry!”

  His fingers tightened insistently on her shoulders. “Who is this person I remind you of?” he cried harshly.

  “Run!”

  He had to.

  Within seconds he was at the chute-door, flashing frantic fingers over it. There was no handle. The rush of feet sounded just behind him. Of course there was no handle—the thing was hinged inward.

  He plunged into the narrow blackness and was swirled around and around as he shot down. If he crashed into a pile of anything solid at this velocity, he would certainly break both legs. In the very act of trying to slow his descent by turning out his knees and elbows, he hurtled through the darkness into a mass of something foul and yielding. Nothing was hurt but his dignity. He was on his feet almost before the clouds of dust began to rise.

  The blackness was complete, save for a beam of light from one side of the incinerator that was his prison. It was apparently the operator’s peephole in the charging door. He stumbled over to the peephole, blinked and peered out.

  The great room was deserted.

  He rattled the door cautiously, and tried the iron drop-latch.

  It was locked from outside.

  The Thief wiped his forehead with his sleeve, drew his saber and pried tentatively at the lock mechanism. It was too solid.

  The soft grate of steel on steel echoed mockingly within the narrow confines of the incinerator as he replaced the weapon.

  He had begun to feel his way slowly around his prison when he heard footsteps on the concrete floor outside.

  The furnace door opened and a mass of flaming rubble sailed past his horrified eyes.

  The door clanged shut just as he leaped to smother the torch with his chest.

  The shaft of light was gone. A slave janitor was probably peering into the darkness, and wondering.

  The Thief heard a muffled curse, then the sound of fading footsteps. He was at the door instantly.

  The slave ought to be back in a minute or two.

  And he was. This time the ignition wad was larger. The peephole was closed a long time as the slave made sure the charge was burning properly. Finally he went away. The Thief removed his saber point from the lock engagement and eased the door open. Cold air rushed into his scorched lungs and over his blistered face.

  He was on the floor instantly, and forced himself to take time to close and relock the door. Precious seconds were gone, but it might delay his pursuers if they had to look in every incinerator for him.

  He vanished, wraithlike, between the bulge of two furnaces, heading toward the west wing and the fabulous T-twenty-two.

  Was the brilliant Gaines really a Thief? If he were, did that mean that Haze-Gaunt’s government was riddled with members of the Society?

  Two things were certain. The wolf pack knew a great deal about him. To them he was something more than a Thief. And the Society of Thieves had placed an incredible value on his life. Furthermore, Haven knew as much, or more, about him than the wolf pack. He had some pressing questions to ask him if ever he saw his friend again.

  He opened the door to the great vault chamber a quarter of an inch and peered along the inner wall. Nothing moved. From far away, toward the center of the chamber, he heard the hiss of the nucleic welders.

  Very quietly he slipped inside the door—and sucked in his breath sharply.

  Even in the dusky gloom the T-twenty-two shimmered with a pale blue haze. Her sleek, sheer flanks shot fifty meters into the air, but she was less than three meters in diameter at her waist. A great moon freighter would make several hundred of her.

  But the thing that troubled him, the thing that seized his mind and blanked out the trip-hammering of his heart, was this—He had seen the T-twenty-two before—years before.

  Even as the sandbag crashed into his head, and even as he clawed futilely toward consciousness, he could only think—T-twenty-two—T-twenty-two—where—when?

  8

  Discovery through Torment

  HE’S REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS,” sniggered the voice.

  Alar sat up on one knee and peered out from aching eyes.

  He was in a large cage of metal bars, barely tall enough for him to stand. The cage stood in the center of a large stone-walled room. All about him was a raw, musty odor. The rawness, he realized with quivering nostrils, was blood. In these rooms the imperial psychologist practiced his inhuman arts.

  “Good morning, Thief!” burbled Shey, rising up and down on tiptoe.

  Alar tried in vain to swallow, then struggled to his feet. For the first time in his life he was thankful that he was utterly exhausted. In the long hours that would follow he could faint easily and frequently.

  “It has been suggested to me,” chirped Shey, “that with proper stimulation you might demonstrate powers not before known in human beings—hence the iron cage that now holds you. We would like to see a good performance—but without danger to ourselves or the risk of losing you.”

  Alar was silent. Protests would avail him nothing. Furthermore, it would not improve things for Shey to recognize the voice of the Thief who had so recently robbed him.

  The psychologist drew closer to the cage. “Pain is a wonderful thing, you know,” he whispered eagerly. He rolled up his right sleeve. “See these scars? I held hot knives there as long as I could. The stimulation—ah!” He inhaled ecstatically. “But you’ll soon know, won’t you? My difficulty is that I always release the knife before I attain maximum stimulation. But with someone else to help as I shall help you—” He smiled engagingly. “I hope you won’t disappoint us.”

  Alar felt something cold crawl slowly up his spine.

  “Now,” continued the psychologist, “will you hold out your arm and let the attendant give you an injection or do you prefer that we crush you between the cage walls to administer it? Just a harmless bit of adrenalin so you won’t faint—for a long, long time.”

  There was nothing to be done. And in a way he was even more curious than Shey as to what would happen. He thrust out his arm in grim silence and the needle jammed home.

  The phone buzzed. “Answer that,” ordered Shey.

  “It’s from upstairs,” called the attendant. “They want to know if you’ve seen Madame Haze-Gaunt.”

  “Tell them no.”

  Additional attendants wheeled up a heavy hinged case, opened it and began to take things from it and to lay them on the table. Still others rolled the cage walls together, flattening the Thief like a bacillus between microscope slides.

  Alar listened vaguely to the sweat plashing from his chin to the stone floor, providing an insane obbligato to the strumming of an adrenalin-fed heart. From behind him somewhere wafted the odor of red-hot metal.

  At least Keiris had got away.

  It was twilight and, because there was no longer any pain, he thought for a moment that he was dead. Then he stood up and looked about him in wonder. In this world he was the only moving thing.

  He was suspended in space near a silent, winding column. Gravity was banished here. There was no up, no down, no frame of reference for direction, so the colu
mn was neither necessarily vertical nor horizontal. He rubbed his eyes. The physical contact of palm to face seemed real. This was no dream. Some enormous soul-shaking thing had happened to him that he could not fathom. Here there was no movement, no sound, nothing but the column and vast brooding silence.

  Gingerly he reached out to touch the column. It had a strangely fluid, pliant quality, like a ray of light bending. And it had a strange shape. The part that he touched was a five-finned flange that extended from the central portion of the column.

  If he had a power saw, he thought, how simple it would be to saw out innumerable arms with hands and fingers. Touching the flange lightly, he floated around the column to the other side, where he found an identical five-finned arrangement. He frowned, perplexed. Farther around the column were leg-like fins.

  His eyes brightened as he realized that a cross-section of this column would resemble very closely the vertical cross section of a human being. Looking about, he discovered that the column appeared to go on indefinitely.

  He then floated along it in the opposite direction for some minutes, noting that it gradually grew smaller in cross section. The cheek outline was thinner, the bones more prominent. The outline might be that of a skinny youth. Even farther on, the column was still smaller, and, by straining his eyes, he thought he could see where it shrank to a thread in the distance.

  The Thief believed his life depended on the solution to this mystery, but cast about as he might, the answer eluded him.

  He returned slowly, pensively, and studied the column at approximately the point where he had found himself when he recovered consciousness. He knotted his jaws in exasperation.

  Perhaps the interior of the column held an explanation. He thrust an arm into it slowly, and noted with interest that some plastic force seemed to draw his fingers into the five-finned portion of the column. He stuck in his right leg. That fitted perfectly.

  Tentatively, he eased the rest of his body into the column.

  And then something immense and elemental seized him and flung him—

  “He’s regaining consciousness,” sniggered the voice.

  Alar sat up on one knee and peered out from aching eyes.

  His head was whirling. He was in the center of the cage, not crushed between the walls. There was no blood on him anywhere and somehow his shirt and coat had got back on him. Everything—the position of the men, the table, the instruments—were in the same places as when he first awakened in the cage an infinity ago, before the injection and the pain.

  Had the pain really been just a nightmare, topped off by that queer episode of the man-shaped column? Was it just an illusionary déja vu to expect Shey to rise up and down on tiptoe and burble—

  “Good morning, Thief!” burbled Shey, rising up and down on tiptoe.

  Alar felt the blood draining from his face.

  He understood one thing very clearly. Through means utterly incomprehensible to him he had, for a time, left the time stream and had re-entered it at the worst possible locus. He knew that this time his resolution would falter—that he would talk and that his comrades would die. And he had no weapon, no means to prevent this catastrophe that was finally upon him.

  Except—his heart bounded in fierce joy and he listened to his calm icy voice. “I think that you will release me very soon.”

  Shey shook his curly head in rare good humor. “That would spoil everything. No, I won’t release you for a long time. I might even say—never.”

  Alar’s lips compressed in a chill confidence he was far from feeling. Speed was utterly essential. He must get in his point before the telephone rang. Yet he must not seem hurried or anxious. Shey was sure to recognize his voice but that couldn’t be helped.

  He folded his arm across his chest and leaned against the back bars. “I am perhaps overvalued by the Society of Thieves,” he said shortly. “Be that as it may. Still, certain precautions have been taken against my capture and I must warn you that if I do not leave the palace safely within ten minutes the corpse of Madame Haze-Gaunt will be delivered to the chancellor tonight.”

  Shey frowned and studied his quarry thoughtfully. “That voice—Hmm. You’re lying, of course—just trying to gain time. Her excellency is still on the ballroom floor. Your shortened breathing, narrowed pupils, dry voice—all point to a deliberate lie. I won’t even check on it. Now, will you hold out your arm, please, for a little shot of adrenalin?”

  Wasn’t the phone ever going to ring?

  His continued calm exterior amazed him. “Very well,” he murmured, thrusting out his arm. “We three die together.” The needle jabbed in and struck a nerve. Alar’s face twitched faintly. The attendants rolled the cage walls together, flattening the Thief spread-eagle fashion.

  The odor of heating metal was strong behind him. His head was beginning to spin. Something was wrong. But for the bars crushing him he knew he would drop. Wet circles of sweat were spreading slowly from the armpits of his jacket.

  Two burly attendants wheeled up the instrument chests. Alar forced himself to watch them casually as they opened it and handed a strange-shaped pair of pliers to Shey.

  A shudder of nausea crept up Alar’s throat as he remembered his bloody nail-less hand-things from—that other time.

  “Do you know,” chuckled Shey as he fixed a coy eye on Alar, “I believe you’re the chap that called on me a few nights ago.”

  The phone buzzed.

  Shey looked up absently. “Answer that,” he ordered dreamily.

  Time ground slowly to a halt for the Thief. His chest was heaving in great gasps.

  “It’s from upstairs,” called the attendant hesitantly. “They want to know if you’ve seen Madame Haze-Gaunt.”

  Shey waited a long time before answering. His look of introspection died away slowly. Finally he turned around and carefully replaced the nail pullers in the chest.

  “Tell them no,” he said, “and get the chancellor on the phone for me instantly.”

  Alar was left at the busy downtown intersection as he had demanded and, after an hour of careful wandering to elude possible I.P. tailers, he walked via alley and cellar to the door of the Society rendezvous. Before he slept, ate or even got a new blade, he wanted to lay before the Council the incredible occurrences in the slave underground and in Shey’s torture chamber.

  Something sharp jabbed into his side. He raised his hands slowly to find himself surrounded by masked Thieves with drawn blades. The man wielding the nearest saber stated, “You are under arrest.”

  9

  Wild Talent

  YOU ARE NOW under a sentence of death,” intoned the masked man on the dais. “In accordance with the laws of the Society the charges against you will be read, and you will then be given ten minutes to present your defense. At the end of that time, if you have failed to refute the charges against you beyond a reasonable doubt, you will be put to death with a rapier thrust through your heart. The clerk of this tribunal will read the charge.”

  Alar could not free his brain of a numbing dullness. He was too tired even to feel bewildered. Of all the Thieves here he recognized only Haven, whose stricken eyes peered out at him through a brown mask.

  The masked clerk arose from a desk near the dais and read gravely. “Alar was captured by government operatives in the imperial palace approximately four hours ago, taken to the lower chambers and delivered into the custody of Shey.

  “A few minutes later he was escorted unscathed from the palace to the street and there released. In view of his unbroken skin it is presumed that the prisoner disclosed confidential information concerning the Society. The charge is treason, the sentence death.”

  “Fellow Thieves!” Haven sprang to his feet. “I object to this procedure. The burden of proof of betrayal ought to be on the Society. In the past Alar has risked his life for the Society many times. I now urge that we give him the benefit of the doubt. Let us presume him innocent until we have proved him guilty.”

  Alar studied the
sea of masks confronting him. The judge listened to several men who bent toward him and whispered. Finally the judge straightened up. Alar’s nails dug into the wooden rails. He knew he could prove nothing.

  “Number eighty-nine,” said the judge slowly, “has proposed a radical innovation in trial procedure. In the past, the Society has found it necessary to liquidate Thieves who have been unable to free themselves from suspicion. Trial boards of the Society unanimously agree that by this method we destroy more innocent men than guilty.

  “That price, I feel, is small, if it ensures the continuation of the Society as a whole. The question now is—are there any special circumstances that indicate the ends of the Society will best be served by a reversal of the burden of proof?”

  Alar listened to his pulse-rate mount slowly. One seventy-five … one eighty…

  “There are unusual, even strange, circumstances in this case,” continued the judge, leafing slowly through the brochure before him. “But all of them”—he transfixed Alar with steely eyes and hardening voice—“all of them indicate that we should redouble our care in dealing with this man, rather than lessen it.

  “He is unable to account for his life prior to one night five years ago when, as an ostensible amnesiac, he found shelter with two members of this Society. And we must keep in mind that Chancellor Haze-Gaunt would be sufficiently ingenious to attempt to plant an agent provocateur among us by just such a ruse.

  “When Alar emerged safely from the clutches of Shey we were entitled to suspect the worst. Does the defendant deny that he stands here among us with a whole skin when by rights he should be dead or dying?” The voice was faintly ironic.

  “I neither deny nor affirm anything,” replied Alar. “But before I begin a defense, I would like to ask a question. Since the sentence is death and I cannot leave this room alive, perhaps the judge will be willing to tell me why the Society protected me when I was a helpless amnesiac and why, after permitting me to lead the dangerous life of a Thief, Dr. Haven and Dr. Corrips suddenly decided my life was more important than some twenty-odd brilliant minds in the Geotropic Project at the University. Without regard to what has—or has not—happened since, you must admit the stand is inconsistent.”